Writing for Austria's Format magazine, Christian Ortner has not been impressed:

""European intellectuals went wild when the electricity failed in Baghdad. They note the 10,000 heat deaths in France with a shrug of the shoulders."

This is an analogy that shouldn't be pushed too far, but interesting nonetheless.

Via Bill Dawson blogging away from Vienna

Here's an extract from the letter he wrote to his family on July 14th the same year:

" …we came to a huge collection of mud houses, with some stone in the middle surrounded by hills. It was Kalgan, the outpost for trade between the Mongols and China. There, two magnificent cars were waiting for us. We were to be the guests of Mr. Purpis, a Latvian, the "King of Kalgan" who is the chief trader in Inner Mongolia and sells about 30,000 horses each year to the Chinese Army. Our chauffeur was the former chauffeur of the Panchen Lama, who with the Dala Lama is the chief lama of Tibet and Mongolia. He drove us through the dirty town to a kind of mud-wall fortress on the outskirts of the town. It was Wostwag, the company for trading with the Mongols, a German firm…"

Indiana Jones was, rather surprisingly, no relation.

"I, ___________________, release 5 Spot from all liability of any weight gain that may result from ordering and devouring this sinfully fattening treat. I will not impose any sort of "Obesity-Related" lawsuit against 5 Spot or consider any similar type of frivolous legislation created by a hungry trial lawyer.

5 Spot will not be held liable in any way if the result of my eating this dessert leads to a "Spare Tire", "Love Handles", "Saddle Bags", or "Junk in my Trunk". If I have to go to "Fat Camp" at some time in my life, I will not mail my bill to 5 Spot.

According to 5 Spot's co-owner, Jeremy Hardy this waiver was created to "make a statement about frivolous lawsuits and accountability."

It does.

Bravo.

Via the Fifty Minute Hour.

He's still around - and flourishing. Sadly he has been stopped from drinking beer, a habit that reportedly reached ten pints a day, after killjoy Brigitte Bardot complained that it could damage his health. Despite that setback, Cheeta still 'likes to go to the drive-through and get a hamburger and a Coke'.

Don't tell the Center for 'Science' in the Public Interest.

"According to a report in the Los Angeles Times in October 2001, from 1992 as many as 4,000 volunteers from the Middle East, North Africa and Europe, 'known as the mujahedin', arrived in Bosnia to fight with the Muslims. Richard Holbrooke, America's former chief Balkans peace negotiator, has said that the Bosnian Muslims 'wouldn't have survived' without the help of the mujahedin, though he later admitted that the arrival of the mujahedin was a 'pact with the devil' from which Bosnia is still recovering.

By the end of the 1990s State Department officials were increasingly worried about the consequences of this pact. Under the terms of the 1995 Dayton peace accord, the foreign mujahedin units were required to disband and leave the Balkans. Yet in 2000, the State Department raised concerns about the 'hundreds of foreign Islamic extremists' who became Bosnian citizens after fighting against the Serbs, and who pose a potential terror threat to Europe and the United States. US officials claimed that one of bin Laden's top lieutenants had sent operatives to Bosnia, and that during the 1990s Bosnia had served as a 'staging area and safe haven' for al-Qa'eda and others. The Clinton administration had discovered that it is one thing to permit the movement of Islamic groups across territories; it is quite another to rein them back in again.

Indeed, for all the Clinton officials' concern about Islamic extremists in the Balkans, they continued to allow the growth and movement of mujahedin forces in Europe through the 1990s. In the late 1990s, in the run-up to Clinton's and Blair's Kosovo war of 1999, the USA backed the Kosovo Liberation Army against Serbia. According to a report in the Jerusalem Post in 1998, KLA members, like the Bosnian Muslims before them, had been 'provided with financial and military support from Islamic countries', and had been 'bolstered by hundreds of Iranian fighters or mujahedin ...[some of whom] were trained in Osama bin Laden's terrorist camps in Afghanistan'. It seems that, for all its handwringing, the USA just couldn't break the pact with the devil."

Intriguing.

Why the British want to reproduce themselves is a question which is as puzzling in its own way as that of the origin of life. Their existence is so wretched, so utterly lacking in anything reasonably resembling a purpose, so devoid of those things that make human life worthwhile (I am merely paraphrasing what thousands have told me) that it is a marvel that they should go in for children. I suppose the nearest I can come to an explanation is that they hope a child will supply the want that they feel: the triumph of hope over experience, for they soon discover that a British child merely adds chores to emptiness."

Blimey.

LOS ANGELES Gov. Gray Davis has officially validated the view in parts of the USA that the Golden State is far-out. Meeting Sacramento voters late Wednesday, Davis praised California's diversity: "We have people from every planet on Earth in this state. We have the sons and daughters of every of people from every planet of every country on Earth."

The San Francisco Chronicle called this a "stumbling" remark, but it reflects Davis' background. He started in state government in 1975 as chief of staff to Jerry Brown, whose proposal for a state-owned satellite earned him the title "Gov. Moonbeam."

By Martin Kasindorf

Dear K-Lo:

You posted today that some Cornerites are without power.

Assuming that telephone service is not interrupted, are you all aware of what you can do to keep your computers running during a power outage?

Buy a UPS (unterruptible power supply.) Essentially a big battery.

Buy a spare battery for your laptop.

Configure your computer to conserve power: - Dial-down the brightness of the screen.
- Make the hard drive go to sleep after only a brief period of inactivity.
- Arrange your work to do all hard-drive accesses in bunches. (Compose a bunch of emails or postings, and do not save or submit them until you have a bunch ready to go.)
- Tell your AntiVirus software not to scan files on your hard drive.
- Close unnecessary programs, to prevent them from accessing the hard drive at odd moments.
- Remove unneeded devices from your laptop. Even though you're not using the floppy drive and CD-ROM drive, they're still eating electricity.

Buy a second UPS, and use it to power a small flourescent lamp during power outages.
(That's for well-paid Cornerites, I suppose.)

At Arlington National Cemetery, soldiers who guard the Tomb of the Unknowns were given — for the first time ever — permission to abandon their posts and seek shelter, Superintendent John Metzler said. But they stood guard anyhow.

The western edge of the storm skirted New York City--a degree or two of difference in longitude and Manhattan would have been devastated. The glancing blow pelted the city with rain and wind. Heavy morning thunderstorms turned to monsoons by afternoon. Gusts as high as 120 miles an hour screamed from the top of the Empire State Building and thirty-miles-per-hour winds swirled down the avenues. Street signs swung. Billboards toppled. Garbage cans tipped and rolled, clanging down the streets. The afternoon commute became a nightmare. Subways flooded. Trolleys stalled. The Empire State Building swayed four inches.

At the southern tip of Manhattan, the flag on the U.S. Weather Bureau office shredded like ticker tape, and the station’s barometer nose-dived. By 3:50 P.M. it read 28.72, a record low for September….

Yet sophistication is not morality. Neither is nihilism. More people, remember, fried in France this August while its social utopians snoozed at the beach than all those lost in Kabul and Baghdad together. I think an American pilot who flew over the peaks of Afghanistan or a Marine colonel now patrolling in Iraq was far more likely to ensure that his aged mother back home lives under humane conditions than was a Frenchman this summer on his month-long vacation on the Mediterranean coast. So remember, this August Americans lost 100 brave soldiers fighting selflessly for the liberty of others while thousands of Frenchmen perished through their children’s neglect and self-absorption.

A Bruce Willis burp: "Ted Kennedy's still running around Washington. Somebody tell him to get a real job."

"The Eurostat fraud scandal, which has shed doubts over whether the present Commission took the necessary steps against alleged corruption and fraud, appears not to be an isolated case as investigations have spread to other departments."

"President Romano Prodi, whose Commission had pledged 'zero-tolerance' on fraud and mismanagement when they took office in 1999, will appear before a meeting of the political group leaders on 25 September in Strasbourg, where he will personally answer questions over this affair."

Ha ha ha.

"One of the nice things about being so close to Scotland is cheap smoked salmon (and cheap Scotch, of course) -- although the Scots could learn a thing or two from New York delis about how to smoke it. Anyway, smoked salmon must be eaten with a bagel, cream cheese, and red onion (or, as KS would want me to point out, scrambled with eggs and onion), and low fat cream cheese isn't worthy of the name. Hence, "full fat" it is!"

This is nonsense. Ordinarily I would say that the cheese, the cement-bread better known as a bagel and the sensory overload represented by an onion would obliterate the delicate taste of smoked salmon, except that there is nothing delicate about the pink slabs of cured fish that New Yorkers call smoked salmon.

Proper smoked salmon is Scots, eaten with brown bread and butter and flavored with a little lemon juice. Come to think of it, this delicacy (along, perhaps with potted shrimps) is one of the few that does need brown bread. Everything else tastes better with Wonderbread, an often overlooked treat.

There's more on this important topic over at Crooked Timber, but the writer there goes too far. The butter does not have to be Irish, and homemade bread is just pretentious. Store-bought will do just fine, and ignore those remarks in the comments section about capers. Capers are the anchovies of the vegetable kingdom - useless and rather nasty.

It was your "English-speaking world" line that did it. My husband and I budget twenty bucks apiece per month for whatever we want. Usually my twenty gets frittered away, but now I will reap the benefits of a wise choice for a whole year. Of course, I must forgo my visits to Rembrant's Coffee Shop for the month of October because that is the twenty I spent...drat, Folger's drip for a whole month with no breaks.

What nonsense. Byrne's argument is as shaky as his grammar. Any correlation is statistically irrelevant, except, perhaps, in the case of asthmatic children - and children should not be in bars in the first place. To be blunt, Byrne's statements are dishonest, manipulative and insulting. In any normal organization he would be drummed out of office.

In Brussels, doubtless, he will be promoted.

I've been thinking some more about those truculent capuchins, and the more I do, the more reassured I am. Forget Marx or those other folks. Socialism has no intellectual or moral foundation - it's just the accumulated resentment of generations of monkeys.

Other readers also found some rather different encouragement in the story. We are, it seems, hot-wired to reject welfare:

"The animal's umbrage was even greater if the other monkey was rewarded for doing nothing. They did more than sulk, sometimes throwing the food out of their cage."

And anyone who describes this too as the accumulated resentment of generations of monkeys is just being pedantic.

All we need from him is silence.

Britain has a bicameral system of government. Until recently, the country's 'senate' (the House of Lords) was a motley blend of judges, bishops, hereditary peers and a mass of stooges, cronies and the retired appointed as 'life peers' by various grateful governments. It tended to the center-right. This was unacceptable to Tony Blair. He swept away most of the hereditaries (fair enough), boosted the number of cronies and made a few patronizing promises about the introduction of an 'elected element'. Needless to say, the judges and, even more disgracefully, the bishops, clung to their seats.

Now, Blair is proposing to junk the remaining hereditaries (too many Conservatives), but he has nothing to say about that 'elected element'. The Tories' reaction? A spirited defense of, uh, the hereditary peers.

Talk about losing the plot. The Conservatives have an ideal opportunity to champion democracy. There should be no hereditaries, no bishops, no judges and no 'life peers,' just a fully elected upper house, and the Tories should say so. Instead, judging by this report in the Daily Telegraph , they are planning to mount a full-throated defense - of the hereditaries.

Losers.

Just what is wrong with siphoning money from the tribes AWAY from Bustamante? More importantly, is Hugh saying that there's something wrong with taking money from Indians? Is that the best he's got?

I am a voting member of the Oklahoma Choctaw Nation, and no, I don't think gambling does Indians any favors. I am also a social conservative, however, and [McClintock's use of Indian money] is hardly a dealbreaker. Shows Tom can maneuver, and that he's still a-scrappin.'

By the way, I'm still getting three or four emails a day on the Bush = Hitler G-File like this one:

I think the point is that he is on his way to becoming a Hitler and that we should all maybe step in before more atrocities are commited in the name of Greed and Christian Fundamentalism. You should be smart enough to grasp that... they gave you your own column after all. A couple of clues: Concentration Camps = Guantanamo Bay

Nazis murdered millions of unarmed people = Iraq and Afghanistan

launched wars for territorial and egotistical gain = launched war for economic and egotistical gain

banned books and burned them too = Patriot Act
etc...

Good stuff:

Sorry Jonah, here’s one more from a conservative librarian:

The ALA is certainly culpable. Stalinist, self-important, pin-heads who see themselves as the last defense against fascism make up most of the leadership. They pass resolutions on Cuba (good), Israel (bad) and American foreign policy (worse).

But the re-education starts in grad school. What used to be Library Studies is now “Information Science.” Librarians (oops, I mean, Information Media Specialists) are constantly drilled in the notion that they and only they can properly deliver “Information Bearing Entities” (that’s books and stuff to you) to a public desperate for “critical thinking skills.” I once mentioned in an Archives class that the archivists of old learned their trade by working in archives, without the degree. People reacted as if I advocated home-surgery kits. This is the cult of the advanced degree. After all, when ALA denounced the dissident Cuban librarians who were jailed for operating private libraries, the number one complaint about these brave folks was that they did not have a Library Science degree.

If you want to be part of the Master Race you must have a Master’s Degree.

[Name and library withheld]

Tim - I agree with everything you -- and Ramesh -- have to say about Noah's latest non-whopper. However I think one thing needs clarification. You write, "Minutes earlier, reporters were pressing Ari (and Bush) to condemn the speech of Rep. John Cooksey, who had said airport screeners ought to search anyone "with a diaper on their head," which upset many American Sikhs."

That's true, and Sikhs had every right to take offense. However, they were not the only group. Some Arabs who wear turbans were rightly upset. And, the unsung minority of folks -- like me -- who actually wear diapers on our heads took offense as well. Some of use feel we shouldn't be discriminated against simply because we enjoy that crinkly-swooshing sound -- and total hair protection -- that comes with wearing a Pampers Chapeau.

I just wanted to get that off my chest.

From a conservative librarian:

Sorry, one more from a Librarian.

For public librarians, especially Reference librarians, much of their day is spent wading through library seating packed with drunks, the homeless, and leagues of people who are, to one extent or another, sociopaths. Add to this the fact that, out of 100 reference questions, 93 will be, "where's the can?"

Given the above, and given the fact that librarianship requires an expensive undergrad and grad degree, you will begin to understand that most librarians feel that there MUST be more to public librarianship than this! This line of thinking, coupled with the able leadership of the far-Left cabal at the American Library Association, leads directly to parades of librarians on the steps of the Supreme Court.

Sincerely,
[Name and Library location withheld]
(please, no public mention of my name or library. As a conservative librarian, I'm usually in a state of apoplectic terror of my colleagues).

Here's a fun email:

Jonah,

Librarians for years have been trying to "sex-up" their image, unfortunately, not in the way I would prefer it. Over the years, they have been very successful in increasing their budgets as they have proven their usefulness, especially in academic centers. Unfortunately, their usefulness, in my opinion, is coming to a close as nearly all journals are now on-line and so librarians are going to be left competing with major book retailers for customers still interested in books on dead tree. As a result, they need a new advocate (scientists won't need them much longer), and as with all industries facing obsolescence, the best place to turn to is the one segment of society that is the best at resisting change: liberals. So I see this as a ploy to endear librarians to the vocal left to gain allies for future battles. But who knows? Maybe they actually believe this crap.

What I haven't seen pointed out is that after the next terrorist attack in this country, I'm sure that plaintiffs' attorneys will be very interested in whether or not a specific librarian interfered in Patriot Act investigations that could have prevented such an attack. And I'm sure that those librarians will scream bloody murder when they get sued for a gazillion dollars since, after all, anyone who is standing up for a principle should be able to do so consequence free. Of course, I also haven't seen pointed out that they would gladly roll over if the police wanted to come look through the library records of a suspected spouse abuser. None of them want to look like the heavy on a Lifetime movie of the week. (So, Ma'am, let me get this straight. You thought that when this guy checked out Wife-Beaters and the Women Who Love Them and How They Got Rid of Those Women, he was just being provocative? How droll. Do you realize he ended up murdering his wife?!?! [Close-up of librarian, sobbing] My God! How can I ever live with myself! I thought I was protecting the Constitution! [Pan back to detective] No, ma'am. The Constitution is a dead piece of paper. It's his wife who was a living, breathing thing.)

So my opinion is: Librarians think they're doing me and my children a favor? I'll remember whose side they were on the next time a bond issue comes up. Thank God for local control of library funding.

[Name withheld]

This is the mother lode for flying monkeys of my generation. This is better than the box of old wire hangers and expired prescription medicine Homer Simpson found on the curb. This is a huge resource of 1970s TV.... stuff: commericals, theme songs, they even have the Calgon ad and the PSA from that odd moldy looking cartoon character who explained how to make popcicles out of toothpicks and orange juice on a rainy day. I know Rod Dreher, John Podhoretz and Robert George -- wherever they are -- will appreciate this. Nostalgia overload.

That's the number of times the Justice Department has used the super-dooper-scary Section 215 of the Patriot Act which critics say allows the jack-booted thugs of the Leviathan State to come riding into town woopin and a hollerin' kick'n and stomp'n all over our civil liberties. That's 0 times the government has searched libraries. That's 0 times it's rummaged through your video rental records like Bill Clinton at an interns underwear drawer. Zero.

In fact, I'm kind of ticked off. Why hasn't the Federal Government used 215 more? Why hasn't it searched the records of these bad guys. Don't get me wrong, I like the egg on the face of the naysayers, but maybe we should be giving the civil libertarians a little more ammo. You know?

UPDATE: Sorry, I didn't post the link to the story.

Just caught the “Corner” posts on DC think tanks closing down due to Isabel, and I just have to say that you should have stuck to your guns. You were, of course, correct the first time. Here we are at the John Locke Foundation, in North Carolina, in the path of the storm, with the wind already whipping up and rains whomping down, the trees already shaking — and we’re open and working. We’re putting out a school-choice report and a piece on Smart Growth nonsense. We’re preparing for a Friday night event with former CIA director James Woolsey to assess the War thus far. And we’re getting ready to pounce on a new state law sure to come into play in the wake of the storm, a foolish law that purports to ban “price gouging” but will do little more than create artificial scarcity and long lines.

Now THAT’s dedication to the cause of freedom. Heritagers and Catons, this is no time to wimp out — particularly if your excuse is that you can’t get to your job because the government’s mass-transit system isn’t operating.

K J L,

Alright you got me. I'm in, digitally that is.

Best to you all,

[A new subscriber.]

P.S. You know it is a great feeling, being a part of your publication. I did feel a little guilty, getting all this wonderful reading for free.

"The most important eight hours of my life."

Vaclav Havel, Lech Walesa, Arpad Goncz are less enthusiastic about Spielberg's pal. Here's an extract from a letter they published today:

"It is time to put aside transatlantic disputes about the embargo of Cuba and to concentrate on direct support for Cuban dissidents, prisoners of conscience and their families.

Europe ought to make it unambiguously clear that Castro is a dictator, and that for democratic countries a dictatorship cannot become a partner until it commences a process of political liberalisation."

"The [research] team taught brown capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) to swap tokens for food. Normally, capuchins were happy to exchange their tokens for cucumber. But if they saw their partner getting a grape - which is more coveted by capuchins - they took offence."

Fat Brits, like everything else that the world is supposed to regret, are, it seems, America's fault, well sort of anyway. This piece from the London Independent is also noteworthy for the following statistics:

"Research in the US has shown that in the past 20 years the size of a standard hamburger has increased by 112 per cent and bagels by 195 per cent. Pasta servings are 480 per cent bigger and cookies 700 per cent larger."

The key, I suppose, is in the word 'serving', but, even allowing for that, the figure for cookies seems unbelievable. A cookie a seventh of the size of the typical offering we see today wouldn't be a cookie, it would be a crumb.

Herb London continues to perpetuate a myth and he should know better. He writes, "National Review editors contend that homosexual marriages are virtually inevitable so there is little sense in resistance." Variations of this assertion proliferate in certain corners of conservatism and it's simply nonsense. I can't help but get the sense that various commentators continue to insist it is true so they can sound more conservative, courageous and true-believing than the the French-like folks at National Review. That would be fair if it were true, but since even a modicum of research would demonstrate it's not, it's very annoying.

London is presumably referring to Ramesh's cover story on gay marriage which not only did not endorse gay marriage or surrender to its inevitability but rather offered a sober-eyed analysis of the current state of the debate. Ramesh -- a senior editor of the magazine -- and the magazine in general have come out time and again for the Federal Marriage Amendment. Indeed, no other conservative magazine has dedicated so much space and energy to endorsing the FMA and opposing same-sex marriage.

Much the same can be said for National Review Online. Stan Kurtz is a cottage industry on this issue. David Frum has been fighting with Andrew Sullivan and others on this point for years. Maggie Gallagher, Kathryn Lopez, and pretty much the whole NR gang have written over and over against same-sex marriage.

Then there's me. Presumably London gets to use the plural "editor" by lumping me and Ramesh together. Well, first of all I am not an editorialist or senior editor for National Review. Second, I remain opposed to gay marriage (though I haven't thought through the FMA) as a matter of public policy. If possible, I'd allow federalism to solve much of this so long as states were allowed to ban gay marriage too. The place where I am off the reservation is on civil unions. For reasons that I've offered many times, I think it's untenable to deny both marriage and some form of civil union or contract to gays. So, I choose civil unions as a necessary compromise in part to do right by homosexuals and in part because I would like to preserve the integrity of marriage.

Many of those condemning NR for its editorial position because of what I've written commit a pas de deux of dishonesty, they not only get my position wrong they then misapply their mistaken view to all of NR. Enough already.

Robert Samuelson in today's WaPo: "There are grounds for hope. One is that job losses are exaggerated. The government has two employment surveys: a payroll survey of 400,000 business establishments (firms report how many people they employ) and a survey of 60,000 households (people are asked who's working and who's looking for work). Only the payroll survey shows continuing job losses. The household survey indicates a 1.8 million gain since January 2002. The payroll survey misses hiring by new companies, goes the argument; they are not in the sample. Unfortunately, the case is shaky. About 60 percent of the reported job gain occurred in one month (January 2003) and seems mostly to reflect statistical adjustments. Another question mark involves a huge jump in the self-employed, almost 600,000 in a year; many of these 'jobs' may be wishful thinking.

"The stronger case for optimism lies elsewhere."

My syndicated column.

From a reader:

This is the man who tells Tim Russert "I thought that this country was founded on the principle of progressive taxation."

See also libertarian blogger, Gene Healy, who compared Dean and Clark thusly : "Dean, unlike Clark, is able to blink and doesn't have a creepy thousand-yard stare that makes him look like he's ready to either burst out incongruously into giggles or stab you in the eye with a pen."

I see great comic potential here, Jonah.

I've gotten a lot of email from folks defending the first Highlander movie from the shlock charge etc. I agree. The first movie was great and a brilliant idea from Highlander creator Gregory Widen. I also thought his movie "The Prophecy" was a brilliant idea, less brilliant executed -- particularly in the sequels. He also wrote Backdraft which I thought was a terrible, terrible movie from soup to nuts.

I'm still reserving judgement, but I'm getting lots of email like this:

Jonah: Take heart, your vexation at finding Wes Clark an incomparable won't last. The man is an empty suit or I should say uniform complete with four stars. My father and husband were both military officers and I have seen the likes of Wesley Clark many, many times. He is a political officer. That means that his main objective in his career is to be promoted and he will say and do anything to achieve that objective up to and including ruining other officers careers. He was promoted up the line by others of the same ilk. These guys always look good on paper---that means, they went to the right schools (usually the Academies or one of the private military schools), they went to the right wars (known as being in the right place at the right time) and had the right sponsors. Even had the right medals. But they are lousy leaders of men and real leaders can spot them a mile away. It is somehow fitting that Bill and Hillary Clinton would sponsor him. I'm sure they see him as one of their people and he is. Vain, shallow, looks good in a uniform and easily manipulated. You will no doubt receive plenty of e-mail from people who have had the occasion to run into or afoul of General Clark. You should also look into his record as Commander during the war in Kosovo. He almost started WWIII but thankfully a British commander wouldn't follow his orders. He didn't do it out of mendacity just good old garden variety stupidity and vanity. Wesley Clark is not a class act.

[Name withheld]

Okay, okay. He can be made fun of. Most of the email comes from current or former military types who deeply dislike political generals like Clark. I'm not sure that's a angle of attack that the pundits can take up willy-nilly, but it is interesting. One of the leaders of this camp is one of my original Military Guys (remember them?). He's started a blog and promises to pound at Clark like only an old artillery officer can.

Folks, I didn't say there wasn't anything about Clark one couldn't criticize I said there doesn't seem to be much one can make fun of. There is a distinction. I appreciate all the critiques of Clark, but that wasn't really my point.

Besides the fact that the Clinton mafia is mysteriously supporting him (If they think he can win, then you'd think Hillary wouldn't want him to run since a Clark Presidency would ruin her chances to be president) I'm opposed to Wes Clark running for President because he is the only Democrat it's hard to make fun of. It's hard not to make fun of Sharpton, Kucinich, and Braun. Lieberman looks like a rodeo clown who hasn't had his foundation make-up removed yet. Edwards is a trial lawyer who would still be a trial lawyer if he looked like Kucinich. I think I've said this before, but Dean's the sort of arrogant liberal who yells at you for buying the wrong book at his used book store. John Kerry looks like some suction-cup-fingered demon sucked-out his soul through his temples. Graham thinks he's doing history some great favor by recording his bowel movements on notepads.

But what am I supposed to say about Wesley Clark? He's too neat? I'm sure we'll find something, but for now it's vexing.

A couple emails on my assertion that our best students are as good as their best students:

You mentioned that you'd put the top 5% of American kids against the top 5% of Europe and Asia any day. That's a little hard to find, but we do put around the top .000002% in competition every year. Check out for the US Physics team , which blew the rest of the world away last year. The US tends to do similarly well in the Chemistry and Math Olympiads.

And...

We do pretty darn well. Send more people to college than any other country on earth -- you don't see anyone clamoring to get into Korean colleges. We're winning a war that is mainly being fought by kids who graduated from high school in the last four years.

Not to mention more school spirit, baggier pants, way cooler Slipknot T-shirts, and let's face it, our high school football teams rule -- did Tokyo High even makethe playoffs last year?

And....

On your corner blog:

I don't think your excuse works. These are not college results, but high school results. Universal education is still universal education. Asian peasants? You won't find that many peasants in South Korea, one of the most urbanized populations around.

I think you will find some controversy behind math education related to this. See mathematicallycorrect.com, where they argue that "new-new math" has ruined US math education. That site also has a bunch of older international comparison links...

Look, I don't believe in the journalist as hero, because I think that wherever we go, and whatever degree of resolve that may be required of us, there are always much, much braver people than us. I travel in a suit of armor. I work for The New York Times. That means that I have the renown of the paper, plus the power of the United States government. Let's be honest. Should anything untoward come to me, I have a flak jacket. I have a wallet full with dollars. I'm here by choice. I have the incentive of being on the front page of The New York Times, and being nominated for major newspaper prizes.

From a reader:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

John Burns unveils the tawdry side of American journalism in Iraq.

A letter I agree with entirely (at least the part about the movies stinking but the TV show being good):

I agree with your comment re Adrian Paul as a James Bond option, even though I stopped watching the movies years ago as they got goofier and goofier. Highlander the Series was an interesting case of where the cable TV series was much superior to the various movies. See also Le Femme Nikita the Series as compared to the original movies (U.S. and French). This is all total blather, but I'm bored with legal stuff today.

A very nice bucket of cold water on Dems who insist they have the high ground from my old friend Will Saletan.

On education spending. Alas, we're in the meaty part of the curve when it comes to results.

Though, to be honest I never really buy this junk completely. I'd put the top 5% of our students against the top 5% of Europes and Asia's anyday. We try to educate everyone. European countries channel kids into trades and only send a fraction of kids to college. Asian countries don't count peasants and send even fewer to college. Still, we spend way too much on education for what we get.

How come they never mention Adrian Paul as a contender for the James Bond franchise. He was good in Highlander: The Series and while he does do quite a bit of shlock, so did Pierce Brosnan (Remington Steele anyone?) and Timothy Dalton (Remember his role as the guy in tights in Flash Gordon?). "The Saint" wasn't shlock, but it wasn't Shakespeare either.

From a reader:

You'd better watch out quoting Hitler in the corner...soon Dana Milbank will have a headline in the WAPO: FAMOUS CONSERVATIVE WEBSITE ESPOUSES FASCIST VIEWS...EDITOR ALLOWS HITLER "TO SPEAK FOR" HIM.

Andrew - I really can't afford to unload my whole book in the Corner, but I also would really love to have this discussion. On the economics front, allow me to have Hitler respond.

Here’s how he explained his thinking on the question of nationalizing industry, the way the Communists did, versus the Fascist approach in a letter to Herman Rauschning:

“Of what importance is all that, if I range men firmly within a discipline they cannot escape? Let them own land or factories as much as they please. The decisive factor is that the State, through the Party, is supreme over them regardless of whether they are owners or workers. All that is unessential; our socialism goes far deeper. It establishes a relationship of the individual to the State, the national community. Why need we trouble to socialize banks and factories? We socialize human beings.”

As for the Communitarian thing, I'd love to see any articles on that point because it dovetails nicely with some of my arguments.

Jonah, this could be the sort of controversy that will drive away any readers that we may have, but while fascism may have socialist roots (Mussolini himself was, as you know, originally a socialist), it's at least arguable that, in addition to the nationalist component you mention, fascism evolved into a distinctively corporatist ideology. While the fascist state could - and did - control some of the means of production, there was no belief in the need to expropriate all of them. Unlike socialism, fascism sought to co-opt rather than replace many of the existing institutions within a society: fascists were in that sense far less revolutionary than the folks with red flags. That said, both ideologies have one thing in common - individuals counted for little or nothing.

As to who is - or is not - a 'fascist' these days, I've seen an interesting case made that, in some ways, communitarians are the natural (but certainly far more benign) inheritors of that particular intellectual tradition.

Okay, Kathryn,

I did it. I was reading the Corner and kept tripping over your (um?) "frequent" tsk-tsk comments about those who read NRO but aren't subscribers to NRD. The little guy on my shoulder (right side, naturally) whispered into my ear, "hey, didn't you used to subscribe to NRODT? But you let it lapse about a decade ago, didn't you? What's that all about anyway? I remember us scurrying around the local public library when we were teenagers, reading National Review clandestinely so nobody would think you were a nerd. You loved that magazine. Then you grew up, got a job and subscribed. So, how long have you been on the NRO dole? These people work hard to create great content, and what do you do? That's right, you panhandle your way through the door into NRO and read and read, never realizing what a bum you are!"

I started feeling guilty. And so tonight I subscribed, downloaded my first issue of NRD (which comes across perfectly in .pdf format) and cleansed my soul… all for $19.95 (quite a bargain!).

Thanks, Kathryn (AKA "NRO Travel Agent for Guilt Trips").

Woodward, Bernstein, and, er, Puffer...

Via Reason

From a Financial Times editorial today:

"EU officials are already talking about allowing countries to put the proposed constitution to voters two or three times until they come up with the right answer."

No further comment necessary.

As I've been researching a book on precisely this point for the last few months, I found the Times story particularly interesting. The fact is that this effort to use fascism as a cudgel against your enemies is nothing new on the Left. Indeed, you could argue that the effort to redefine fascism to fit George Bush is a sign of increasing intellectually honesty. In the past academics wouldn't even care that they were using the word wrong. I don't want to spoil the book, but let's just say that this is all nonsense on stilts on the cone of a rocket to the moon.

Fascism is socialism in one state. Nazism is socialism for one race. It is the rejection of intenational socialism in the face of the obvious fact that individuals seek more meaning in their lives than the sanitary principles of international socialism could provide in the 1920s and 1930s. The Soviets -- along with their fellow travellers -- invented the idea that Fasicism is right-wing in order to discredit the threat Fascism posed to their own popularity. This is why, for example, Leon Trostky was labelled a "fascist" the second he fell out of favor with Stalin. It's not like Trostky became a free-market right-winger in terms of his philosophy. He was merely a Marxist heretic and Soviet apostate and therefor dubbed a fascist.

If you go back and look at the political agenda of real, self-described fascists there is almost nothing recognizably "conservative" in the American sense save for its nods to patriotism. Its economic agenda, its educational approach, its social policies are all thoroughly socialist according to any definition we have today.

Consider this nonsense from the Times article:

"Whenever people start locking up enemies because of national security without much legal care, you are coming close," said Robert Paxton, an emeritus professor of history at Columbia University and the author of a forthcoming book called "Fascism in Action," a comparative study that tries to distill the essence of fascism.

So: according to this definition, every Marxist, Soviet and Maoist nation in the history of the 20th century was Fascist. I could go on and on and on. But that's what the book is for.

Victoria De Grazia of Columbia University lumps Bush and Italy’s prime minister Silvio Berlusconi with Osama bin Laden: “I think the problem is that we are dealing with all sorts of new, strange political phenomena--Osama bin Laden, Hindu nationalism in India, the Le Pen phenomenon in France, Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, Bush's doctrine of pre-emptive force--and we don't have the right words to describe these things."

Remember how Milton Friedman once suggested that the best way to reframe the debate over public schools was to call them "government schools"? Maybe we should do the same thing with marijuana and call it "government pot"? [Link Via Drudge]

Alan Reynolds on unemployment: "When government officials asked people if they had a job last month, 137.6 million said 'yes.' But when employers were asked, they said they had only 129.8 million on nonfarm payrolls.

"There are several reasons why the number of people on business payrolls is bound to undercount the number of workers. . . . What is nonetheless quite remarkable is that these two measures of employment are now much further apart than they were back in early 2001. . . .

"Depending entirely on which measure you choose, we have either recovered all the jobs lost during the recession or lost 2.7 million. Reporters who relish bad news and bad politics invariably tout the latter figure. . . .

"Yet to the debatable extent employment might affect next year's election, it is the household survey rather than the payroll survey that surely matters. If 137.6 million people say they have jobs, what difference could it possibly make if the payroll survey implies a few million of them are somehow mistaken?"

The whole thing is worth reading.

Two views:

It's an affirmation of the free market in multiple ways ... your assertion that no one cares plus the idea that gross mismanagement can't last forever. If I give you enough money to last for five years and you lose it in one, there's something wrong. If I then boost that total from $40M to $100M ( so now you have 12 years of money in the bank) and that's all gone in three years, there's been no changes in the waste. They can whine about the lack of corporate sponsorship but it's the lack of prudent management coupled with the belief that the money spigot would never end because this was a politically correct idea. They were meeting the attendance targets they set when they started, they just couldn't meet the revised ones necessitated by the wasted money and increased debt.

The MLS has only lost $150M in seven years. For WUSA, with half the attendance and non-existent TV revenue, losing $100M in three is shocking.

Hank

And...

No sport makes it on fans. That's why stadia always have to be built with bond issues, even though privately owned entities, the teams, are the only ones to use them. Sports make it on collaterals, on licensing, on merchandise sales, on television licensing (of value because advertising may be sold for televised games), and the like. The fan base pays for the sports that way, by buying merchandise, not through ticket sales, which never amount to a small fraction of what it costs to pomp up these circuses. No team pays anything close to its keep from ticket sales. The greatest income is from being able to deliver audience to advertisers. Women do not care for sports, generally; so female athletes are of comparatively little value in the marketplace for endorsements, licensing, etc., etc. But no sports organization can make it without corporate sponsorships of one kind and another. That's where the money all comes from. Having written, or consulted on the writing of, business plans for several sports-related businesses, I'd explain it as following the Martha-Stewart model. The magazine or the TV show itself may not make any money, but as a vehicle for advertising branded and licensed merchandise, it's well worth the constant losses. Sincerely yours, [Name withheld]

For the completely opposite point of view check out ESPN.

A reader writes:

Jonah,

Did you see this paragraph in the Post story?

"I would say that corporate sponsorship has been the issue from day one,"
Button said. "I think that's the essence of it. We could not meet the funding requirements in our business plan without greater corporate support. It's important for our fans to know that this is not in any way from a shortage of fan support. Our attendance was right where our business plan called for it to be."

Then your business plan sucked. I'm no Donald Trump, but any business plan
that relies on corporate support for fiscal solvency instead of cultivating attendance from a loyal fan base was doomed from the start.

Jeff in Virginia

I'm not happy that women's soccer has folded like a cheap suit. In fact, I simply don't care. What makes me happy is that this news demonstrates that most Americans don't care either. If they did, they'd be going to the games. This is one of the beauties of the free market -- it confronts propaganda. If women's soccer were publicly funded -- as I'm sure many would like -- we'd never know that the all the spoutings from feminists groups were, in fact, lies.

The answer? Paper ballots. Next topic, please.

Via Instapundit

In his latest coup, blogger John Hawkins interviews Milton Friedman. The whole thing is a must read, but as we’re on the topic of the Euro, try this:

"John Hawkins: Europe has been moving towards a single currency. Do you think that's a wise move for all the states, some of them, or none of them? Why so?

Milton Friedman: We're in the midst of wonderful natural experiment. You have a really different arrangement with the Euro than we've ever had historically. We've had many cases in which a number of countries have used the same currency. That's when they've used gold or silver as money. But each individual country has been able to control the content of its own money. So while they were using the same commodity as currency, they were always in a position to determine what the terms of exchange were between their own currency and the other currencies.

But the Euro is a very different arrangement. For the first time in history, we have essentially an independent central bank for a considerable number of distinct political entities. I, in advance, was very negative about it and have been very negative & pessimistic about it. We'll see how the Europe plan does on the one hand and on the other, how the other countries of the world, the UK, the United States, Japan, which are linked together by flexible exchange rates, we'll see how they do.

So we'll have a really nice, natural experiment just as before the Soviet Union dissolved, we had a natural experiment comparing socialism and capitalism."

Fabulous.

The next EU drama will be the draft ‘constitution’ slated for discussion by the heads of government later this year. The approved text is then due to be submitted for approval by voters in Denmark, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain and Holland (and perhaps France and Italy). But not the UK: Blair’s not asking his voters what they think. If the Danes are any indication, who can blame him? Only 18 percent of them are in favor of a 'constitution' that was, readers may remember, supposedly meant to make the EU more democratic.

Ha ha ha.

The EU establishment is in an entertaining state of disarray in the aftermath of Sweden’s rejection of the euro. The mandarins have learned nothing from the experience. The Guardian is reporting that Swedish premier Persson is blaming his predecessor for having set the scene for a referendum in the first place.

Translation: the people should never have been asked for their opinion.

Meanwhile the EU Commission is attempting to refute claims that the Swedish vote was influenced by France’s decision to ignore ‘the growth and stability pact’ that is a key part of the structure that is supposed to underpin the euro. Brussels may not like it, but there’s no doubt that it was (the ‘no’ lead increased in the aftermath of the French prime minister’s most definitive statement of intention to ignore the spending restrictions contained in the pact) and the Swedes were quite right to come to the decision that they did.

To Brussels, this is all most unfair. "People do not say they will not take up driving just because some other people do not respect the highway code," a spokesman told the Guardian . Even by the standards of Commission sophistry, this is a most remarkable piece of dishonesty. The Pact is best compared with a contract. France has signaled (quite sensibly, as it happens) that it is going to break the terms of that contract. Why then should Sweden be expected to sign up for it?

Here's a lead-in that NPR listeners heard last week: "Two evil geniuses of the twentieth century died nearly the same time, after surviving the century they helped shape. Commentator Andre Codrescu on two other deaths we marked this week."

Some excerpts from the NPR commentator's remarks: "The thing that accounts for Teller and Riefenstahl's longevity is the same thing that accounts for ours. That is to say, if Teller's hydrogen bomb had ever been used, none of us would have been around long enough to survive the twentieth century. And, if Riefenstahl's Hitler had had his way, the same would be true. Happily they both failed and here we are, wondering what it's all about. . . .

"From the intentional standpoint, there is no equivalency between them. Edward Teller's H-bomb was created as a deterrent to evil such as Hitler, though his name happened to be Stalin. . . . On the other hand, the H-bomb still has the potential to annihilate us, as do neo-Nazis just waiting to be unleashed by the right movie. The passing of Teller and Riefenstahl marks the true end of the twentieth century. My guess is that Edward and Leni are together in the next world. They have eternity to work out the implications of their work."

Listen to the whole thing, if you'd like.

"In addition to the public interest factors we have discussed, we would be remiss if we did not observe that this is a critical time in our nation's history when we are attempting to persuade the people of other nations of the value of free and open elections. Thus, we are especially mindful of the need to demonstrate our commitment to elections held fairly, free of chaos, with each citizen assured that his or her vote will be counted, and with each vote entitled to equal weight. A short postponement of the election will accomplish those aims and reinforce our national commitment to democracy.

While I agree with the blogger on the Corner who said that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals suspending of the recall election date is the "best of all possible worlds" politically speaking (for the GOP and possibly George W. Bush's chances to take the state in '04), but shouldn't we all be concerned that the world's 5th largest economy is sinking further and further into a morass of Democratic-driven litigation and chaos?

I love seeing Davis having to fight for his political life, but at some point this should be at an end..and the people of California left to suffer with their decisions.

Isn't the best of all possible worlds for the GOP?

California is stuck with an extremely unpopular democratic governor; no honeymoon for Bustamante; no Schwarzenegger uncertainty; and no chance for the media to suddenly start blaming California's problems on the GOP.

Jeffrey Smith, formerly general counsel for the CIA (as his bio indicates) and a West Point classmate of Wesley Clark (as he mentions in the text), has an op-ed in today's WaPo. He was general counsel for the CIA during the Clinton administration, by the way, not that the Post mentions that information.

Smith beats up the president for misleading the public about the case for war. He wants to increase funding for the military and increase the size of the armed forces--policies that I also favor, FWIW. I'm more skeptical about reinstating the draft, as Smith suggests. He says that we might need to raise taxes. So far, nothing remarkable. But how's this for a closer? "Whether [Gen. Clark] runs or not, the views that he, Gen. Zinni and others have recently been expressing must be heeded. All of the men and women who now rest in national cemeteries demand it." All of them agree with Clark, Zinni, and Smith? All of them want a draft? Was there a poll?

My eyes just about popped out of my head when I read this passage from a front-page story in the Washington Post today: "Cheney was less forthcoming when asked about Saudi Arabia's ties to al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 hijackers. 'I don't want to speculate,' he said, adding that Sept. 11 is 'over with now, it's done, it's history and we can put it behind us.'"

I was going to write an attack on Cheney for Corner readers, but I figured I should check the transcript of Cheney's remarks to make sure he hadn't been taken out of context--especially after I saw that Dana Milbank was one of the authors of the Post article.

Good thing I did.

On Meet the Press yesterday, Tim Russert asked Cheney about "reports that the investigation Congress did does show a link between the Saudi government and the hijackers but that it will not be released to the public."

Here's what Cheney actually said: "I don't want to speculate on that, Tim, partly because I was involved in reviewing those pages. It was the judgment of our senior intelligence officials, both CIA and FBI that that material needed to remain classified. At some point, we may be able to declassify it, but there are ongoing investigations that might be affected by that release, and for that reason, we kept it classified. The committee knows what's in there. They helped to prepare it. So it hasn't been kept secret from the Congress, but from the standpoint of our ongoing investigations, we needed to do that.

"One of the things this points out that’s important for us to understand—so there’s this great temptation to look at these events as [discrete] events. We got hit on 9/11. So we can go and investigate it. It’s over with now. It’s done. It’s history and put it behind us.

"From our perspective, trying to deal with this continuing campaign of terror, if you will, the war on terror that we’re engaged in, this is a continuing enterprise. The people that were involved in some of those activities before 9/11 are still out there. We learn more and more as we capture people, detain people, get access to records and so forth that this is a continuing enterprise and, therefore, we do need to be careful when we look at things like 9/11, the commission report from 9/11, not to jeopardize our capacity to deal with this threat going forward in the interest of putting that information that’s interesting that relates to the period of time before that. These are continuing requirements on our part, and we have to be sensitive to that."

In other words, Cheney was saying more or less the exact opposite of what the Post made him out to be saying, denying the very proposition they attributed to him.

I don't mind pro-tax propaganda in the New York Times Magazine. It's what the readers want, after all. I'm sure the letters section of the magazine will in two weeks' time carry plenty of letters from readers appalled at President Bush's scary right-wing agenda. (No publication's letter-writers are quite so Pavlovian as the Times Magazine's.)

But must the Times carry more pro-tax propaganda on its front page the same day? Here's how David Firestone's "news story" opens: "When President Bush informed the nation last Sunday night that remaining in Iraq next year will cost another $87 billion, many of those who will actually pay that bill were unable to watch. They had already been put to bed by their parents."

That's the big lesson I took away from Sept. 11: Don't be passive. After 9/11, my wife bought me a cell phone, so that in the event I found myself in a similar situation I could at least call my family one last time. It's not much use up here in the mountains, so I never bothered getting it out of the box. If I ever am on a hijacked plane, while everyone else is dialing home, I'll be calling AT&T or Verizon trying to set up an account. But, of course, no one will ever hijack an American plane ever again -- not because of idiotic confiscations of tweezers, but because of the brave passengers on that fourth flight. That's why, three months later, the great British shoebomber had barely got the match to his sock before half the cabin pounded the crap out of him. Even the French. To expect the government to save you is to be a bystander in your own fate.

Email from a reader:

This goes along with Miller's post on The Corner.

Much ado is made of Dean "getting it" on the internet, in this case the "it" being loads of money.

But the first internet fundraising campaign I ever saw was for the 1998 campaign of Judge Roy Moore to the Alabama Supreme Court.

It was the first campaign contribution I have ever given.

I don't know how much money he raised, but the campaign was obviously successful.

The Swedes were given the right to vote on the single European currency, despite the fact that the country’s pro-euro establishment knew that there was a good chance that they would lose the vote, which, in the event they did. All over the EU, voters will now be given the chance to decide on the EU’s proposed ‘constitution,’ but not in Britain. The Sun is not impressed.

Tony Blair has shown political courage before. He should demonstrate that he believes that he has a good enough case to win this debate. It would also be healthier in terms of the overall political process. If Britain is – finally - to be finished as a sovereign nation, let it be an act of suicide, not murder.

One of the more grimly entertaining spectacles of recent years is the way that many on the left, usually so skeptical of religious and cultural tradition, have, in their self-loathing, seemingly turned into such enthusiasts for the religions and cultural traditions of the non-Western world. Over at the London Spectator, Matthew Leeming seems to have encountered a prime example of this in the course of a recent visit to Oxford University (he was criticized as describing an arranged marriage between an Afghan 38 year old and a 14 year-old girl was ‘legitimized rape.’). So far, alas, so standard, but, in its eloquence, Leeming’s conclusion is not:

“Afghanistan is a good place to ponder one’s good fortune in being born in the modern West and not in a culture where malaria is treated by yelling, or the best cuts of meat are reserved for the dead, or it is believed that the motions of the stars are controlled from the liver of a rogue elephant, or divine honours paid to shallow depressions in the ground. We have the Enlightenment to thank for this, the moment when the West achieved intellectual maturity (or rediscovered that of the classical world) and reduced religion to a matter of opinion and turned the mullahs into comic turns like Rowan Williams. The Orientalist witch-smellers and postmodernists at Oxford have the Enlightenment in their sights. It is a sobering thought that whole cultures and educated elites can commit intellectual suicide.”

Yes, it is.

One of the arguments used by Swedish advocates of the Euro for a vote in favor of the single European currency was that it would give Sweden a seat at the EU’s top table for economic decision-making. This was always a hopelessly naïve point of view, but all credit to the French for a recent demonstration of quite how naïve the ‘ja’ camp were being.

The cornerstone of the EU’s currency regime is something known as the ‘growth and stability pact’. Amongst its provisos are limits on public sector deficits as a percentage of GDP. In principle that’s fair enough for any number of reasons, but the pact’s limit (roughly speaking, three percent) underestimated the importance of counter cyclical spending, particularly in a climate where the worst threats are deflationary not inflationary. The French government has now said that it will ignore the limit until, ahem, ‘around’ 2006. As France’s prime minister explained, “my first duty is employment and not to solve accounting equations and do mathematical problems until some office or other in some country or other is satisfied.”

The longer term implications of France’s declaration of economic independence are uncertain, to say the least, and will, I suspect, make a lot of speculators very rich, but Raffarin is right to stress that, when it comes to economic self-interest, France should put its needs (even if we disagree with how Raffarin defines them) ahead of the gimcrack structures of Brussels’ corrupt, undemocratic and xenophobic ‘union’.

Other countries should follow suit.

Over at Reason , Jacob Sullum is, as usual, fighting the good fight against the encroachments of the nanny state. This time the subject is advertising by the liquor industry. The FTC has just exonerated the drinks industry from the charge that it is deliberately targeting underage drinkers with its campaigns for alcopops. Needless to say this is unlikely to be enough for the hair shirt Neanderthals of the Center for ‘Science’ in the Public interest, who, it turns out, have an ‘alcohol policies project’. Oh dear.

Well, anyway, the director of this project, one George Hacker, is, concerned that "it's impossible to construct an advertisement that appeals to a 21-year-old, on his 21st birthday, and doesn't appeal to someone who's 18 years old or maybe even 16." As Sullum notes, he’s quite right. That’s why it is unreasonable to expect the drinks industry to have to target commercials in such a way that they cannot possibly appeal to any potentially tipsy teenager. This doesn’t seem to worry the National Academy of Sciences, which seems ready to envisage coercing the industry to try and do just that.

Yet again, it seems that the freedoms of adults are to come under attack in the supposed interests of ‘the children’. Not that this campaign is actually in their interest. The problem with drinking is in the excess. Moderate drinking is a pleasure, a social facilitator and it may be even good for you. It is also something that it is best taught to people relatively early in life. The alternative, barring – and thus fetishizing – alcohol from individuals deemed old enough to be able to vote, be executed or serve in Iraq is insulting and, by the way, almost guaranteed to encourage irresponsible drinking.

Quite why Elizabeth Dole wanted to increase the legal drinking age to 21 is beyond me. Suffice to say that it was the crowning ‘achievement’ of a career notable only for its singular uselessness.

The age of Budweiser consent should be cut to 17 forthwith.

Clergymen should, generally, keep out of politics. They only embarrass themselves and annoy anyone with a shred of rationality about them. Here’s a prime example from England, where the Archbishop of Canterbury, an over-promoted parson who doesn’t need a red nose to turn himself into a clown, has apparently objected to ‘triumphalist’ references in a service in St. Paul’s to commemorate the Iraq war. While it is, obviously, wildly premature to celebrate the ‘end’ of a conflict that drags tragically on, some element of thanksgiving is, surely, appropriate for what has been achieved so far. We should honor victories in a war as well its conclusion.

What’s more (and, of course, it’s not an issue over here), the archbishop also misunderstands the function of a national church. We English are a skeptical lot; we don’t expect much from the ‘C of E’ (which we never attend) other than unintentional comedy, a vague homily or two, kindliness and a sense of national tradition. If Rowan Williams sees himself as a fiery preacher, that’s his right, but maybe he should take another look at the wilderness, a pulpit more congenial for such folly than the churches built and paid for by the efforts of generations of Britons.

“No matter what accord the two peoples might grudgingly agree to, it would take leadership to drive it through. Israel and Palestine's tragedy is that while the peoples themselves now know what has to be done, their leaders refuse to do the job. As the Israeli novelist and peacenik Amos Oz likes to put it, the patients are ready for their operation - the trouble is, the surgeons are cowards.

This leaves only two possible solutions. The men and women of Ramallah and Tel Aviv might have to sit tight and wait for new leadership. Given Sharon's support among Israelis and Arafat's grip on Palestinians, that could be a long wait. Or both nations could look to the outside world.”

Anyone who thinks that it is in the interests of the US for the current bloody impasse to endure is fooling himself. Something has to be done, but what? All too often, “the outside world” has shown itself viciously prejudiced against Israel, while the US (which should nevertheless be using the leverage that its generosity to some of the protagonists in the region ought to – but does not – bring) will not be seen as even-handed in a world where conspiracy theory has long since replaced rational discourse.

I hate to say it, but is it time for Tony Blair?

A nice write up of National Review Online from the tecnofolks.