"We believe it is fair to ask whether those Democrat senators now criticizing the way the public case for war was made, have themselves met the standard to which they seek to hold administration officials on the 'use' of intelligence," wrote Sens. Jon Kyl of Arizona and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. The two senators, both members of the Republican leadership team, sent the letter to Sen. Pat Roberts, Kansas Republican and chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Several economists have written me nice notes. Here's one from our friend Steve Horwitz of St. Lawrence University:

Not sure who your email correspondent was, but I just read your piece and don't see any obvious glaring errors. I could nitpick a few things, but that would only add to the boredom of my already horrifically boring life as an economist. Plus it would confirm the belief of millions that economists are pedantic, anal-compulsive, boring, nerdy, and overly flatulent, not to mention arrogant. As a fellow economist, I can provide only one theoretical and professional response to your critic:

Lighten up, Francis.

Steve (as always, you may publish)

And another from a longtime reader:

Hey Jonah I'm an economist too and I thought today's column was pretty good. You got a lot of the basic facts (and analysis) right, without mentioning the dreaded term "Ricardian equivalence." If you really want to generate some economic wonk e-mail, launch that phrase into cyberspace. Just one suggestion - if you ever want to boil the whole deficits/size of government tangle down to one pithy phrase, just remember "the real tax is government spending." Keep hope alive

I have read many hysterical, and many sober, criticisms of the movie. Many of the criticisms have suggested that the movie is, in some way or other, anti-Semitic. Krauthammer comes up with two suggestions that are new to me. The first is that because half of Satan's four appearances in the movie have him inciting the Jewish crowd, the movie is saying that these are Satan's people. This is, depending on your view, either evidence that Krauthammer has found a very devious anti-Semitic ploy of Gibson's that almost nobody else was able to see, or evidence that Krauthammer is looking extremely hard to find anti-Semitism in the movie.

The second is that the scourging scene is anti-Semitic too. Now many people have argued that the scene is far too long, and I think there's a reasonable case to be made for that view. While many of the commentators who believe this also believe the movie to be anti-Semitic, they have not generally said that the scene itself was anti-Semitic, for the simple reason that the Romans and not the Jews were doing the scourging. Krauthammer thinks it anti-Semitic because it has "the high priest Caiaphas stand there with his cruel, impassive fellow priests witnessing the scourging." Another point for originality, to be evaluated in either of the above ways.

Krauthammer refers several times to Vatican II. Now there is no reason for a non-Catholic to be familiar with what Vatican II did and did not do; there is no shame in Krauthammer's not knowing much about it. But perhaps if you don't know much about it you should refrain from writing columns that refer so frequently to the subject.

Says he's coming back.

This guy doesn't agree with me entirely either:

In today's [syndicated] column on deficits, you remark:

"By which I mean it is an astoundingly boring and complicated subject that unfortunately allows people to sound righteous on a subject they don't know much about."

Apparently, this sentiment applies to you as well, because your discussion makes it clear you understand nothing at all about the economics of budget deficits. Of course, as seems to be universally true of journalists, ignorance never gets in the way of sounding off, so you sound off ignorantly. I could give you a couple quick examples to show some of the fundamentals of deficit economics, but then I am an economist, a group you causally dismiss elsewhere in your article. Given that you so casually dismiss us economists and our profession, and so evidently never have learned any economics, I won't waste any more time trying to educate you. You clearly are willfully self-ignorant with desire to change that state of affairs. So I'll leave you to wallow in your self-imposed, willful ignorance. Just be aware that you are indeed ignorant and virtually everything you said in your column was elementary gibberish.

Firefighters were among the earliest and most ubiquitous backers of Democrat nominee John Kerry. At cities across the United States, the yellow-shirted firefighters were at every rally, helping organize and raise money for the Massachusetts senator.

Kerry has reciprocated and promised to help first responders who say they will lose $700 million in next year's Homeland Security budget.

"We should not be opening firehouses in Baghdad and shutting them down in the U.S.,'' Kerry says often, most recently in Florida, the day after he clinched the nomination.

In my column today I write "Too bad we won't have another Y2K issue to occupy them until Y3K." Alas, this has sparked an unexpected deluge from computer geeks. Here are two representative examples. Note: This is not an issue I care very much about.

Ahem, Geek alert:

"Too bad we won't have another Y2K issue to occupy them until Y3K."

Actually, there won't be a Y3K issue (will still need, and already have, a
4 digit year field), rather, we're only 7,997 years away from the Y10K
problem

And...

Hey, Jonah!

I've been reading your syndicated and NR columns for a couple of years now and love them.

In your most recent syndicated column about the federal deficit, you say as an aside: "Too bad we won't have another Y2K issue to occupy them until Y3K."

Well, my friend, if you're looking for another computer date crisis, you're in luck. The next time bomb is set to go off in 2038 -- right about the time that you and I will be ready to retire -- and promises to be significantly more difficult to solve than the Y2K problem. It's also more difficult to explain to non-geeks.

It's detailed here http://maul.deepsky.com/%7Emerovech/2038.html
and here
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/question75.htm

In summary, Unix and Unix-like systems mark time as a number of seconds since midnight on January 1, 1970. These systems set aside a data structure for storing the date that can hold only 2,147,483,647 seconds. Add that to January 1, 1970 and Unix runs out of space to store its dates on January 19, 2038. What might happen then is anybody's guess because different systems will likely behave differently when confronted with an overflow. My best guess is that most software that relies on date calculations will simply stop running.

The 2038 problem is significantly worse than the Y2K problem because it occurs at the operating system level rather than the application level and because the problematic way of storing dates has worked its way into the base libraries for the C language on which most modern operating systems are based. A couple of years ago, I ran some tests with Windows 2000 and managed to crash the operating system when I advanced the date.

If you're looking for an expert who can describe this in more detail, you'll need to find a real computer scientist, not a mere application developer like me.

K-Lo already posted that before. Sorry.

You gotta love this: (Link via Drudge):

North Korea's state-controlled media are well known for reverential reporting about Kim Jong-il, the country's dictatorial leader. Advertisement

But the Dear Leader is not the only one getting deferential treatment from the communist state's propaganda machine: John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic candidate, is also getting good play in Pyongyang.

In the past few weeks, speeches by the Massachusetts senator have been broadcast on Radio Pyongyang and reported in glowing terms by the Korea Central News Agency (KCNA), the official mouthpiece of Mr Kim's communist regime.

The apparent enthusiasm for Mr Kerry may reflect little more than a "better the devil you don't know" mentality among the North Korean apparatchiks. Rather than dealing with President George W. Bush and hawkish officials in his administration, Pyongyang seems to hope victory for the Democratic candidate on November 2 would lead to a softening in US policy towards the country's nuclear weapons programme.

“I have a classically conservative take on gay marriage: I see no reason to mainstream a good old-fashioned perversion."

"On the new Princess Diana tapes, she says that she threw herself down the stairs even though she knew she was carrying a child. She wasn't just carrying a child, she was carrying England. As soon as the baby was born she should have been beheaded for treason."

"The Kobe Bryant rape victim is starting to sound like Caroline of Brunswick, consort of George IV, who boasted, "I change my drawers twice a year whether they're dirty or not."

I don't know one percent of what Diane McWhorter or (my boss) William F. Buckley Jr. know about Westbrook Pegler, so I'm not going to get in the middle of this dispute. McWhorter's use of the word "demagogues" in the following passage is, however, a bit rich given what comes before and after it: "At his peak in the 1930s and 1940s, Pegler was a leading popularizer of one of the most concerted antidemocratic crusades in this country's history: the vicious backlash against the New Deal and the labor movement to which it gave legal protection. This anti-Roosevelt front included the country's major industrialists, anti-Semitic, red-baiting pamphleteers, Congressman Martin Dies' Committee on Un-American Activities, and an assortment of Depression-era demagogues (and men on horseback who conspired with Hitler's agents in this country).

"Although Pegler did not turn against Roosevelt until the president's second term, he quickly became a shrill cheerleader for the right's campaign to paint the New Deal's democratic advances as an internationalist Communist plot."

On second thought, the use of the word "democratic" may be even better. Diane McWhorter: the Sid Blumenthal of the New Deal.

I did notice, but forgot to mention, that they got Deal Hudson's name wrong in that AFP piece as well.

A reader just sent me an Agence France Press stroy from last year about the then-premature controversy about The Passion.
Here's how the article ends:

"The film is going to be a classic," said Dean Hudson, editor of the Catholic magazine Crisis.

"It is going to be the 'go-to' film for Christians of all denominations who want to see the best movie made about the passion of Christ."

The harsh criticism reminds many of the Martin Scorsese's "The Last Temptation of Christ" (1988) which many considered blasphemous.

Why such controversy?

"The crime in question is a big one: the killing of God," wrote National Review Online editor Jonathan Golberg.

Now, never mind calling me "Jonathan" -- than happens all the time. And forget about dropping the "d" from my name. What bothers me is that I never spoke to anyone from AFP about the movie so I can only assume they're quoting my syndicated column from last August. Am I wrong to complain that the quote was not only edited but also changes the tone if not the context of what I wrote at least a little bit? Here's the passage from which they get the quote:

This has got to be one of the strangest controversies in a long time. A movie that won't be released for months is being denounced by people who haven't seen it. Why? Because they claim the film assigns blame for a crime to a handful of people who have been dead for 2,000 years.

Now, to be sure, the crime in question is a big one: deicide, the killing of God. And the handful of people are a pretty controversial bunch: "The Jews" - scourge of history to some, heroes of history to others, ethnicity of accountants, borscht-belt comics and deli sandwich makers to most.

Nevertheless, I still find the controversy over Mel Gibson's yet-to-be-released film, "The Passion," too rich in irony to take at face value.

From a reader:

The thing is, it’s not just rock music that’s been pre-empted by the left. There’s an automatic assumption in classical music circles that everyone’s a liberal. What I find particularly frustrating about that is that much of the funding for local symphonies, opera companies, etc. comes from very successful conservatives (at least, in my part of the world, where conservatives rule). I was performing as a chorus member with the local symphony when I saw a bumper sticker on a string bass case that said “Vote Republican—it beats thinking.” The irony there is that this particular organization had gone belly up last year, and was reforming with the very generous support of several Republican Party stalwarts.

It makes me crazy.

From a reader:

Thanks for the bit about the (no-relation) Goldberg book and smashing the idea that popular music and lefty social rebellion go hand-in-hand. It’s maddening for me, a young conservative and rabid music fan, to be repeatedly told that liking the newest underground band automatically means you’re a left-wing fanatic. I can’t read Rolling Stone anymore without my blood pressure going through the roof—I used to be able to ignore the asinine political commentary in search for actual music reviews (which are increasingly crap these days anyway), but putting Howard Dean on the cover was truly gag-worthy. The day they elevated Dean to rock god status was pretty much the end for me. It’s really pathetic that a magazine that used to have some independent musical clout is now just another drooling lackey for the political left. And they think the *right* is lame...

I have a better problem for Mr. D's erudition (and his real-life knowledge would help, too). Please make him available to develop a new Federal Tax Function (FTF), one which would keep track of the way each citizen's representative and senators vote on spending bills. In general, if the politician votes for bill that doubles spending, his Spending Quotient (SQ: the output of Derb's FTF) is 2.000. If he votes to cut spending in half, his SQ=0.500. The Derb FTF would have to formulate a way to arrive at a Total SQ for the year for each of the three members of Congress.

At tax time, as a last step, when we calculate our taxes, we'd take our total fed tax owed and multiply it by the SQ's of your reps. That way, if our Congressmen are big spenders, then we are big spenders, too.

Oh, and make Election Day April 16.

What do you say?

Has anyone at NRO -- or anywhere else to your knowledge -- attempted to put the Democratic primary votes into a mathematical/demographic context? That is, to calculate and compare the Democrat turnout in each primary and caucus state to 1.) the number of registered Democrats in each state and 2.) its total population. I can't recall the number, but I remember being astonished at how few votes it took for Dennis Kucinich to register 37% of the vote in Hawaii.

All the stuff we've been fed by the media about an energized base and record turnouts sounds like so much hooey to me given the lack of enthusiasm for John Kerry I see among my Democratic acquaintances. It would be interesting to quantify and at least see then, by state and in the aggregate, just how few votes had to be scored by a "runaway" nominee in a truncated primary season.

From a reader:

Apparently Katie Couric was attacking Karen Hughes about the 9/11 ad this morning. I really wish Hughes would have asked Couric, if it was appropriate for NBC to use 9/11 images in their promos.

I'm sorry, but while I have a great deal of sympathy for the families of 9/11 victims, I think these complaints are nonsense squared. A lot more people died during Vietnam than on 9/11 and John Kerry has been running ads with footage from there for months. These families may have a unique relationship to 9/11 but they do not have ownership of that day, politically, culturally or otherwise and it would be absurd if this administration caved on this point, even though I'm sure the media will be delighted to exploit the personal tragedies of these families.

Reason's David Weigel has a good
review of Daniel Goldberg's book Dispatches From the Culture Wars: How the Left Lost Teen Spirit. I haven't read the book and unless I get paid to (or need to for my book), it's a metaphysical certainty I never will. But I've listened to Goldberg (no relation) in a couple long interviews and think he sounds like a crystalized liberal cliché. Weigel confirms my suspicions. He writes:

As "save the Democrats" messages go, Goldberg’s thesis is more fun than a prescription drug plan. And it definitely comes from the gut. But in the end, Dispatches From the Culture Wars fundamentally misunderstands politics, pop culture, and the connections between them. By equating aesthetics with ideology, Goldberg makes a common but serious mistake: He thinks you can tell a person’s politics from the music she listens to.

My favorite bit -- which I first heard Goldberg discuss in a radio interview -- is the Danny Goldberg's shock that in 2000 Chuck Schumer has never heard of Eminem. "Eminem. Goldberg can't believe that "one of New York’s most progressive congressmen" didn't know about the white hip-hopster.

Now, it may be shocking that someone hadn't heard of Eminem, but what on earth does it matter that Schumer's a "progressive"? Moreover maybe Goldberg doesn't understand that just because young people, particularly young black people, like something doesn't make it "progressive." While I'm sure there's all sorts of uplifting liberal claptrap in rap music, there's also piles and piles of nastiness in it.

Babyboomer liberals seem incapable of grasping that just because music, drugs, whatever were major themes of their own comfy rebellious phases that these props are not universal constants for "progressive" movements, or movements at all. Get over yourselves already.

My old "colleague" Norman Ornstein said something very odd on public radio yesterday (I use quotation marks because Norm was (and is) a major scholar at AEI when I was a mere policy gnome). In a conversation about John Kerry's potential veeps, Norm suggested that a very good pick might be....Donna Shalala, the current president of the University of Miami and former HHS Secretary in the Clinton White House. Now, I think Shalala's sharp and all that, but what the hell is Norm thinking? We're on the verge of a major culture war conflict in this presidential campaign and he thinks picking an aging feminist -- who looks like an aging feminist -- who is ferociously pro-choice and who is widely rumored to live an alternative lifestyle is the best move for a very liberal Senator from Massachusetts? I wouldn't traffic in the rumor except for the fact that she was kinda-sorta outed by Andrew Sullivan in the New York Times a few years ago and there's no doubt whatsoever that her orientation would come up again. Norm Ornstein knows a lot about politics, but I've got literally know idea what he could be thinking.

Remember him? Well, he sent me a new email. I'd responded to the last "F*** you" email by saying "you're all class Tommy." Here's his response:

You're a right wing loser. What do you know about business or Vermont? Your a sniveling little employee for an extreme neo-fascist magazine. The whale had no choice but to spit your ugly butt back into the sea, Jonah! Enjoy your pathetic little life. Next time get your facts straight.

Yeah, he's really the guy to "change the tone"

Last week I post this item about The New Republic running an article by John R. Bradley formerly of the Arab News. Bradley's articles have in the past featured some fairly nasty comments about Israel and The New Republic. I'm not quite sure if I stepped in the middle of something or if I started something or a little of both. But my friend Peter Beinart said they took all of this very seriously and he sent me the following by way of an explanation, clarification, etc. It works for me since I trust The New Republic to be a better defender of its own honor than anyone else. That said, their explanation does make Arab journalistic outlets sound even more dicey than I thought:

From the New Republic:

We have decided to continue using John Bradley's articles because we are convinced that he did not write the phrases in the article posted by AlJazeerahinfo.org (which incidentally is not related to the TV network Al Jazeera.) Bradley says that he did not write the phrases identifying the New Republic as an "ultra-right campaigning American political journal that has long been defined by its crude Zionist agenda" and comparing Nazism to Zionism, but that they were inserted by the AlJazeerah website. He has complained many times to the site, and finally has written to the site and forecefully asked them to remove the article, which they have done. He also has compiled a record of writing fairly about the Middle East, and has published his pieces in a number of prestigious journals, including Prospect, the London Telegraph, the Washington Times, the Economist, Salon, and others. In fact , he resigned from Arab News because the publication published an article that compared yarmulkes to Nazi flags.

From one of several readers telling me the same thing:

Jonah -- Pat Toomey was interviewed yesterday morning on an Allentown radio station and was asked about the Specter / Les Sheaffer ad. He vehemently denied the accusation, and was prepared to present evidence (letters, etc.) of a longstanding relationship he'd had with the Sheaffer family ("beginning with my first year in the House"), including copies of legislation into which he'd inserted language that would help people with MPS.

I checked Toomey's website today but it had nothing on this subject (www.pattoomey.org).

Still, might be worth following if Toomey produces the evidence. Somebody is lying, and I don't think it's the challenger...

Continuation of this large immigration...could divide the United States into a country of two languages and two cultures....such as Canada and Belgium....The transformation of the United States into a country like these would not necessarily be the end of the world; it would, however be the end of the America we have known for more than three centuries. Americans should not let that change happen unless that are convinced that this new nation would be a better one.

Bailey makes some reasonable points, and it's a very well-written piece. But as I've said before, the folks complaining about the stacked Kass council would be more credible if they mentioned the actual diversity of opinion that exists there. I haven't seen these critics, including Bailey, mention the fact that the new appointee Peter Lawler told the Baltimore Sun that he is not opposed to therapeutic cloning. To be sure, whether he is for or against it is somewhat beside the point, since the council has already issued its report on the subject and is now seems likely to turn to the subjects of neuroscience and the treatment of the age. But cloning seems to be the issue that most vexes the critics who say that the council is stacked.

If, on the other hand, the appointment of Lawler is to be condemned because he seems, in general, skeptical of claims that biotechnology should be left unregulated, then perhaps the critics have a point. But my sense is that the vast majority of people do not share Bailey's almost-anything-goes views on this subject. That doesn't mean Bailey is wrong, of course. But it does take away a lot of the force behind the stacked-council critique.

Bob Schieffer: "Well, I thought it was a gracious thing to do and maybe that's why he did it. I don't know why he did it but he said, you know, 'let's talk about the issues.' Well, we all know that one of the first things they're going to do is not talk about the issues --"

Harry Smith: "Take the gloves off."

Schieffer: "They're going to define John Kerry, and they're going to try to paint him as a left-wing liberal who's out of touch with the rest of the country. But we may have a few issues creep in there. And I think when you get to the bottom line here, there'll be some rough stuff here at the front, but this election is going to be about issues. It's going to be about jobs and it's going to be about the war in Iraq. Those two things will drive this election."

From a reader:

Dear Jonah:
I'm another NRO reader and Pennsylvania voter who can't stand Specter. The polls seem to indicate that Specter will win handily in the primary. However, I find that hard to believe because having polled my fellow conservatives in my hometown, we all can't stand the man and plan on voting for Toomey in the primary. Even if Specter wins, I also would consider voting for the democratic candidate just to get rid of Specter once and for all. [Because of my company policy, please withhold my name]

McDonald's seems to have given in to the menu monitors, not that it will do the burger chain any good. The company "has started phasing out its trademark Supersize fries and drinks in its U.S. restaurants as part of an effort to simplify its menu and give customers choices that support a balanced lifestyle." In other words, less is more.

On a related topic, am I the only person around here to think that McDonald's french fries taste terrible these days?

Here's the text for those of you who can't watch the video. Obviously the footage of this poor little girl contributes mightily to the exploitation:

Les Sheaffer – Brittany’s father:

“Brittany has a disease called Mucopolysaccharidosis, MPS.

She’s not going to go to the prom. She’s not going to have a wedding. She’s eleven years old but cognitively she functions as an infant, and she can’t be left unattended for any length of time.

We had nursing care that was approved. The insurance company then reduced her care and then denied the care that her doctor said that she needed. When I went to Pat Toomey’s office, and I asked for help and I followed up with three phone calls after that meeting and I never even got a phone call back.

I approached Senator Specter’s office and asked for some assistance because I didn’t know what else to do; I didn’t know where else to go. Senator Specter cut the red tape and made sure that Brittany got the nursing care that she needed.

The bottom line is nobody’s been better in the Senate for children with rare diseases than Senator Specter.

Pat Toomey has other priorities, but I don’t know what they are.”

From a longtime reader in PA:

Holy moly Jonah (I promised my wife I'd stop cursing for Lent),

I just saw the ad you linked to from Arlen Specter. Up until this point, I thought perhaps he might be a nice guy who's simply too liberal, but had valuable experience that made him a worthy Senator.

Not anymore. This guy is disgusting and I'm ashamed to have voted for him 6 years ago. That won't happen again. Even if he wins the nomination over Toomey - I'll split my vote between Bush and his opponent. I don't mean some 3rd party candidate, I'm talking about the Democrat - anything to get Specter out of office.

From a reader:

To your Mr. Vermont; talk about not doing your homework! I was born, bred, raised in NH. Yes, the property taxes were complained about and generally considered high. This was due in part to NH’s status as a vacation state and was a way to get MA, NY, CT and other peoples to help pay for the government since they used the roads plenty on their summer and weekend trips. We also were considered to have “high tolls” by most locals, though one trip on the NY interstate or the Garden Parkway will certainly tell otherwise!

I now live in Maine, which is TAX HELL for a NH girl. I love Maine’s sense of community, the natural settings can’t be beat, with plenty of both coastline and mountains, and am generally happy here, but for the bleeping taxes! Our property taxes are the same as NH at least in mid coast to southern Maine where most of the population resides. Our excise tax is way higher, we have a sales and income tax, and a bloody “government” for every little town and municipality no matter the size. That means that if you live in a town with 526 people, you’ll still have your own fire, police, etc. instead of “sharing” costs with another town right next door (which NH does).

Even our liberal magazine, Downeast, recently ran an article on Maine vs. NH, what do our neighbors do so differently that we don’t in the area of the State economy.

1. NH sets a budget and sticks to it. Yes, I know that it is unheard of, but in NH, if you have say a $20 million budget, than all monies outgoing from the state treasury must not exceed that. Things will get trimmed because there is an acceptance to stick to the budget. NH does not live on credit, unlike the rest of the country.
2. NH politicians have always had to take the “tax pledge”. Even Shaheen had to in order to win. No income or sales tax. They recognize that if they’ve found a way to pay for everything over the past 200 years without one they can probably continue to do so.
3. NH sets off as much of it’s costs as possible with high hotel % taxes, etc. to take advantage of a “consumption based” tax.

Goes without saying that we don’t do any of this stuff in Maine, much less in Vermont. That’s why NH is business rich.

From a reader:

Jonah-- Speaking of expanding the death penalty: What, ethically and morally, is the difference between attempted murder and successful murder? We recently had a case in Illinois where a woman was brutally beaten and left for dead in a dumpster. She was miraculously found; the woman was so cold she had to have all her toes amputated. Her ex-husband has been charged with the crime. Why shouldn't he be eligible for the death penalty? I think there is something in the Torah about intent that supports this notion.

Way back in 1964, Herman Kahn promulgated a broad spectrum continuum of lethal force with a convenient numerical scale for rating one's own preference:

The fact that such unilateral restraints exist should not surprise anyone. Indeed almost all nations and individuals are likely to have limits which they will not cross even if under great pressure to do so to protect themselves or to further their policies. I have used the following chart to illustrate this point:

Where Do You Draw the Line?

1. Insecticides
2. Eating meat
3. Any violence
4. Police
5. Conventional warfare
6. Kiloton weapons
7. Megaton weapons
8. Gigaton weapons
9. Doomsday machines
10. Galaxy-destroying machines

It is the purpose of the above chart to make it clear to both the pacifist (who generally draws the line somewhere between 3 and 5) and the more resolute militarist (who draws the line somewhere between 7 and 9) that both believe in some degree of universal disamarment; that there are means neither would use, no matter what risk results. In particular, if one could show that by building a doomsday machine one doubled one's personal (or one's nation's) chance of survival, one would still be unalterably opposed to building such a machine.
-- Herman Kahn, "Thinking About the Unthinkable", Chapter 7, Footnote 6, p. 232 in the 1964 paperback edition.

Assault rifles? Call it 4.7

The primary problem with the Assault Weapons Ban is that it does not base it's prohibitions on a point on the continuum between .22 rifle and hydrogen bomb. Instead, the AWB prohibits weapons based entirely cosmetic characteristics. That is, a banned rifle can shoot the exact same cartridge, carry the same number of rounds in its chamber, and auto-load as quickly as a legal rifle -- the only difference is that the banned rifle might have a pistol grip stock, a flash suppressor, or some other feature that does NOT make the gun any more dangerous. Some of these cosmetic differences might make a rifle better for hunting or target shooting than a more traditional model. For example, a rifle equipped with a plastic stocks will be lighter and easier to carry in the field than one with a traditional wood stock. A rifle with a pistol grip may be more comfortable to shoot than one with a traditional stock. But these features don't make the guns demonstrably better for holding up your local liquor store. So why ban them? Because it allows Congress to say it did something about crime -- even if what was done had no positive practical effect and was only symbolic.

I have completed with great pleasure a two-year term on the President's Council on Bioethics. That is what I expected to do when I accepted appointment. From the outset, both by the roster of council members and in his conduct of meetings, the chair of the council, Dr. Leon Kass, sought to develop both sides of issues in bioethics as fully as possible so as to produce documents that would be a continuing resource in our national deliberations. I expect him to continue to do so and have expressed my willingness to serve as a consultant in that effort. This willingness grows out of great respect for Dr. Kass and, of course, for my diverse former colleagues on the council.

William F. May, PhD

Fellow of the Institute for Practical Ethics And Public Life, University of Virginia, Professor Emeritus of Southern Methodist University

From a reader:

Since I enjoy your work and Dennis Prager's work (he was the first contemporary Jewish writer to address the issue of Islamic Jew-hatred, in Why The Jews?) I find your comments intriguing. From what I know about Prager, I'm sure that he will take your comments to heart.

More important, you demonstrated a vital point. There is much more diversity of opinion, tolerance for that diversity, and true internal debate today on the right than on the left. Prager published something you thought was wrongheaded so you offered a critique. You then proceeded to provide a forum for Prager's supporters to respond. The left isn't nearly as open to internal dialogue like this.

From a reader:

The fact that so many NRO readers embrace Prager's argument that gay marriage poses the same threat to Amierca as Islamofascism is deeply depressing. I'm a straight guy who lives in the Bay Area and have numerous gay and lesbian friends who have gotten married at SF City Hall in the past few weeks and to a couple they are all embracing the institution, not trying to subvert it. Tim Graham's arguments are simply unattatched to reality. Gay couples are having, adopting and raising children--giving them the same benefits and protections as married couples can only strengthen families. Nothing demonstrates how this issue unhinges people better than Graham's assertion that straight kids might consider gay marriage an option for themselves if they're taught about homosexuality in school. Does that ring true for your experience as a straight guy, Jonah? I truly believe, counter what Stanley Kurtz has been arguing, that gay marriage will strengthen the institution, not undermine it.

From a reader:

Jonah,

I just read that email criticizing you for your stand on Vermont. You are right and that person is very wrong. Does New Hampshire have relatively high property taxes? Yes they do. But the e-mailer conveniently left out that New Hampshire is the only state in the nation without an income or sales tax. The move by Killington makes complete sense from that standpoint. Its just too bad your e-mailer had to distort the facts and resort to name calling. Ya think he might be a liberal?

I never even responded to him, I just posted that email in its entirety without his last name. Here's his follow-up:

Hey Jonah:

F*** you and your little band of right wing freaks...
Thomas [Name withheld] Esq.

Thomas from Vermont works hard to combat Vermonter's reputation as unfriendly:

Jonah,

I'm a Vermonter. Your point that VT is not business friendly is NOT supported by the Killington vote. The Killington vote is rooted in the revenue sharing VT communities are required to do in order to ensure an equitable education system. A similar problem exists in NH where property taxes are astronomical because of the lack of an other tax base. I suggest you do your homework and get your facts right before you make ignorant, asinine, unsupportable statements about Vermont. Perhaps you should slither back to your NYC or DC condo....

From a reader:

Don't listen to anybody who tells you anything good about the business climate in Vermont: they are liars. Vermont truly is Hell, in every way (health insurance, taxes, environmental regulations).

Killington wants to leave because the town's restaurants, inns and other businesses send a reported $20 million a year to the State in sales and meal & room taxes -- but get only about $1 million back in municipal and education aid (according to local reports).

While a bit comical, Killington's move is, I think, laudable.

You have a standing invitation to either the local brewpub or the nearby wine bar for a chat about the sorry little state of Vermont.

From a reader:

Jonah, I think the point of horse theft meriting hanging in the Old West was that when you stole a man's horse in an Arizona desert in 1870, you were effectively condemning him to death. This does not hold true of today's gorilla poachers in Africa.

One problem with expanding (or contracting) the number of death penalty
offenses is that you need to maintain some sort of graduated punishment
system. If the penalty for rape, e.g., is the same as the penalty for murder (be that hanging or three years probation), what incentive do rapists, muggers, etc., have to leave their victims alive? Doing so only increases the likelihood that the victims will eventually testify against the perps. Of course egregious cases like that poor two-year old could be made to fall into a special "aggravated" category deserving death.

David Frum writes today:

"The greatest reward of writing for NRO – aside of course from the lavish pay and princely benefits – is the contact from readers. I’ve written for a lot of magazines and papers in a lot of the world. Never have I written for anyplace where the readers write with the thoughtfulness and conviction that you see in the email from NRO readers."

I remember when David first came on board NRO and he was just stunned by how smart NRO's readers are. Ditto goes for me. My problem is worse than David's though, because he had a lengthy writing career before he came on board NRO. I, on the other hand, had written very little under my own name (a couple pieces for the Wall Street Journal and a few reviews for magazines like Commentary, the Public Interest, the Standard and NR). So, as I grew up on NRO I became hopelessly addicted and in some ways I felt entitled to huge feedback -- positive and negative -- from readers. For a long time I thought it was simply a product of the web versus print. But I don't think that explains all of it any more. Even now, I get more responses to a random post in the Corner than I do to op-eds in major newspapers which certainly appear on the web. NRO is very lucky to have cultivated the readers we have and when we have enough of you we shall unleash you upon the lands as an unstoppable army of .... oh, wait, sorry. I was revealing a bit too much.

Hey, K-Lo, given that you've been pretty boosterish about Mel Gibson's blood-soaked passion play, you couldn't cut the Shi'ites some slack? Sure it's weird to us, but it's fundamentally no different than a lot of medieval Catholic practices of mortification, or even some contemporary passion plays in places like the Philippines where they actually put a guy on the cross. The blood on children's faces comes from painlessly cutting a vein right under the hairline with a razor. It bleeds like the dickens, but it doesn't hurt. (The theology behind it is that they're expressing their collective guilt for their forebears' having abandoned their God-given leader to torture and death.)

It's weird, but no weirder than the Opus Dei wearing hairshirts and using cilices and flagella.

From a reader:

Jonah,

I'm not sure about other states, but in California I believe that the death penalty can also be applied in cases of treason, perjury in a trial that could lead to the death penalty, and (my favorite) train wrecking.

Obviously the latter case is a holdover from another era, and may it remain so, but I like it because it shows how serious society must be about such crimes. Even if deliberately wrecking a train somehow causes no deaths, the crime itself is heinous enough to warrant execution. Unlike with attempted murder, the fact that the perp got "lucky" does not cast any conceivable doubt on his intent.

From Diane in Norman, Oklahoma:

Did you notice the headline on the story about the man who raped the 2-month-old?

The act was described as "having sex with".

I was taught that rape is not a sexual act. Rape is an act of violence, just as choking someone is not a hug.

From a reader:

Jonah, What I think Alice Walker and your correspondent both fail to realize is that if it actually were easier to fight wars with pillows, we'd for darn sure be using them. An Australian friend once related to me an event that occurred when he was in the Australian Defence Force, during a joint training exercise with the US Army and USAF. My friend was plotting with his squad to take a particular feature (hill) on the battlefield and figuring it was going to require an extreme amount of effort and (pretend) casualties. An American officer asked what they were doing, and when my friend replied that they were plotting to take the feature, the American responded, "No problem. Just call in the F-4s. No more feature." If pillows could do that, they be deployed in every theatre on the globe!

Jonah

Perhaps we could reclassify execution as "full-birth abortion"? Then maybe the left would demand it as a fundamental right of man!

Thanks

Carl

From a reader:

Jonah

Louisana has it for rape where the victim is under 12. There is one person on death row in LA for this right now.

CA has it for "trainwrecking" and perjury which leads to execution.

The federal gov't has it also for espionage and (I believe) large scale drug trafficking

Thanks

Carl

I was just reading this story about a man who allegedly had sexual relations with a two month old girl and distributed pictures of him doing it over the internet. It revived for me an idea I've been meaning to write about at length for a while.

I'm for the death penalty, as everyone around here knows. And lately I've been thinking that maybe the penalty should be applied to crimes other than murder. I'd certainly be open to the suggestion that child rapists should get the chair. But I don't really want to run through the crimes I think deserve the ultimate penalty (note: not even I think those responsible for Jar-Jar Binks deserve the gallows).

Rather, I'm trying to work through the philosophical justification for expanding the death penalty. In the 19th century, this wasn't a difficult issue. We hung people for barn-burning and horse-stealing because we didn't have prisons, because we understood the utility of maintaining order etc. But for a host of reasons we detached capital punishment from all other crimes except murder and treason (am I missing any?). I sincerely doubt we could ever reverse that trend without the support of the left. And, since the popular front mentality of the left requires unanimity on these sorts of issues, it's unlikely it would ever happen. Still, I could imagine a fairly compelling argument for support the death penalty in African countries for crimes like the poaching of the great apes. I don't think apes have rights or that they are more "valuable" than humans. But if you could make the case in 19th century America that horse-theft is a capital crime, surely you can make an equally compelling case about the destruction of gorillas (or pandas or Siberian tigers) in the 21st. The argument would have to be both moral and utilitarian focusing both on the aesthetic as well as the economic. A tiger, for example, is a glorious creation of God and its lost would be a crime of historic proportions -- and a huge economic blow to countries dependent on tourism. Something like that.

As for executing the very worst category of child rapists, that argument sort of writes itself.

The obvious downside to all of this is that whenever the left expands its reasons for killing people, it goes way too far so perhaps its best to keep the genie in the bottle.

Just something I've been noodling.

Taking a page from her father's campaign playbook, a daughter of Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry yesterday criticized the Bush administration for its handling of the crisis in Haiti.

"I believe this administration just helped overthrow, basically overthrow, a democratically elected president," Vanessa Kerry, 26, said during a campaign stop at Stony Brook University in New York. "We basically, in our silence, allowed him to be deposed."

"We were prepared to get married today,'' said Margot D. Chiuten, 28, a landscape architect who intends to marry Shawna M. Black, 27.

The couple said they were a bit disappointed they couldn't marry on Monday, but were encouraged that the city and its legal department would be on their side. "We're trying to have a child,'' Ms. Black said. "And we don't want it to be born out of wedlock."

Since so many emailers keep saying the same thing, let me further clarify. I don't dispute that the Left is riddled with destructive and anti-American attitudes. I don't dispute that if some on the left got the America they claim to want, America would fall apart. I don't even dispute that we are -- and should be -- in a metaphorical war with the left, i.e. a political war of ideas and votes. But that sort of conflict is so profoundly and deeply different than the sort of conflict where it is morally acceptable to cheer at your enemy's literal death.

Prager is a very smart man and a very good writer but nowhere in that column does he forcefully expand on this very important distinction. If he'd written a column saying that the secular left is at war with America's traditional institutions I would have probably agreed with it. If he wrote a column saying we were at war with the Islamists I would certainly have agreed with it -- because that's so obvious. But he wrote that the two are the same war, marrying the metaphorical with the literal without spilling any ink to distinguish between the two. That's what I object to.

Email's running five-to-one in favor of Dennis. I'm unpersuaded. Still, here's an interesting one:

Prager expresses the idea that fighting religious extremism and secular extremism are two sides of the same war, but he misses an important point of how they reinforce each other. When a secular government legitimizes behaviors that even the not very religious non-extremists consider decadent and perverse, it allows the extremists and opponents of secular government to claim the high ground and gather support. It demonstrates that secular government can be a danger to their society and culture. While many on the left want to portray Islamic anti-Americanism as economic, but anyone paying attention knows that it is sexual. They oppose promiscuity and decadent sexual behavior,

Prager describes American values as “a Judeo-Christian society (as opposed to a secular one), capitalism (as opposed to socialism), liberty (as opposed to equality) and exceptionalism (as opposed to universalism, multiculturalism and multilateralism),” but the real issue here is individualism, also an important American value. Americans believe in individualism and generally tolerant of individuals doing what they want. In recent decades, however, the secular minority whose behavior and values are far out of the American mainstream has used the media as a big microphone to force the majority to change their laws and institutions not only to tolerate but to promote the most extreme and dangerous forms of individual behavior. In other words, those on the fringes of society are now insisting that their lifestyles not only be accepted, but be established as the norms of society. This is never healthy.

I expect I'll be getting more email like this one:

Jonah, Most of the time I agree with you, but just because gays don't see themselves as TRYING to destroy America doesn't mean that that's exactly what they're going to do. Although, it may be conscious after all. Radical leftists are attempting to turn America into a country that it is not. America is NOT the Netherlands. America is NOT Canada. These people won't be happy until we're just like them, and that will eventually mean the shutting down of any and all dissenting opinion, which (only my opinion) WILL lead to the incarceration and persecution of those daring to dissent (killing? Maybe not yet, but we'll see). I agree with Prager on this one.

I'm normally a big fan of Dennis Prager's but I really think this column of his is irresponsible. He writes:

America is engaged in two wars for the survival of its civilization. The war over same-sex marriage and the war against Islamic totalitarianism are actually two fronts in the same war -- a war for the preservation of the unique American creation known as Judeo-Christian civilization.

One enemy is religious extremism. The other is secular extremism.

One enemy is led from abroad. The other is directed from home.

The first war is against the Islamic attempt to crush whoever stands in the way of the spread of violent Islamic theocracies, such as al Qaeda, the Taliban, the Iranian mullahs and Hamas. The other war is against the secular nihilism that manifests itself in much of Western Europe, in parts of America such as San Francisco and in many of our universities....

....This civilization is now fighting for its life -- as much here as abroad. Join the fight, or it will be gone as fast as you can say "Democrat."

Me: Now I understand what he's saying and I agree with several of his specific points but he glosses over the point which should supercede all others: "secular nihilists" -- or whatever you want to call them -- aren't murdering people. They aren't blowing up buildings, hijacking planes or shooting at our soldiers either. To date, no gay dudes have been caught on international flights trying to ignite their shoes.

In short, Prager equates a metaphorical war with a literal one and not once does he distinguish between the two. Moreover these are by no means "the same war." And to say so is to practice precisely the sort of moral equivalence we complain about when it comes from the left. As much as I disagree with them, it is no more fair or accurate to say that gay marriage activists are trying to "destroy" America than it is to say that conservative activists are from "the Taliban wing" of the Republican Party (never mind all the Bush=Hitler nonsense). If it's wrong when Bob Herbert says that cutting back on on a remedial reading program at a public university amounts to "ethnic cleansing" it's just as wrong for Dennis Prager to say that peaceful -- but wrong -- leftwingers are largely indistinguishable from people who would use nuclear weapons on us if they could (he's also wrong to say only leftwingers support gay marriage). The difference is that I expect such silliness from Bob Herbert.

From a reader:

Jonah, As a military man, I have always agreed that something like pillow fights would be preferrable to bullets, missiles and bombs. (Although nuclear fallout does provide for some really outstanding sunsets!) The problem is, of course, to what do you escalate when the other guy cheats and brings a knife to a pillowfight?

From a reader:

Dear Mr. Goldberg,

Thanks for linking to the "Reason" article about Americans and Jews being equated as the same thing; it was interesting, if depressing. You might be interested to know that this wholesale equation isn't limited to Iraq/the Middle East. When I was living in Russia, four years ago, I had a lot of people tell me that "Americans are all Jews" and sometimes almost the first question that somebody would ask me was whether I was Jewish. (Part of this may have been due to the fact that I have a Germanic surname). I don't mean to imply that everyone did this, but I would say that in about 25-35% of conversations with new acquaintances, the topic was broached within five minutes. It is true that in Russia, ethnicity goes on one's passport, and Jewish counts as its own ethnicity, so the question may not be meant to be as rude as I found it, but it's still there.

Of course, the confounding factor in all this is that there's no love lost between Russians and radical Islam either; witness their attitude towards Chechnya. Doesn't seem to have increased their sympathy for Israel, though, alas.

A reader is concerned:

I do nout understand what Mr. Goldberg is trying to say.

It appears that he is agreeing with the muddle-headed Alice Walker, whose inane observations regarding the USSR put her into the same camp in a sense as those that support Walter Duranty's Pulitzer.

Perhaps Mr. Goldberg should explain what he was trying to say?

Me: No, I don't actually agree with Alice Walker. My joke was simply pointing to the fact that A) it would be much cheaper to fight wars with pillows stuffed with food and music (though canned soup and CD boxes would hurt like the dickens) and B) if in fact wars could be fought with pillow fights it would be better (assuming that the United States of America enjoyed overwhelming pillow-superiority, I'll be damned if I'm going to relinquish, say, California simply because the ChiComs have superior numbers of pillow-fighters!). I hope my sarcasm is more clear now.

Record 194 nominations for Nobel Peace Prize

OSLO, Norway (Reuters) - A record 194 groups and individuals have been nominated for the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, the Nobel Institute said Tuesday, including world leaders, U.N. officials and an imprisoned Israeli nuclear whistle-blower.

"We just finished our first meeting of the year," Geir Lundestad, director of the Norwegian institute, said. "The final count shows that we have 194 nominations, of which 50 are organizations."

The number of candidates beat the previous record of 165 last year when the award went to Iranian lawyer Shirin Ebadi, the first Muslim woman to win the prize.

The deadline for mailing nominations for the award, named after Sweden's Alfred Nobel, was Feb. 1.

The list of names is secret but some people who are eligible to nominate -- ranging from legislators to former laureates -- make their candidates public.

Among the nominees for the 2004 prize are the head of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, Mohamed ElBaradei, imprisoned Israeli atomic whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu, former Czech President Vaclav Havel and former chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix.

President Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and French President Jacques Chirac are also among the nominees.

The winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, worth $1.35 million, will be announced in October, followed by an awards ceremony in Oslo in December. REUTERS

Calpundit makes an excellent point. Writers like Tom Shales complain every year that the Oscars went too long as if this "mistake" stemmed from a lack of discipline on the part of the producers when in reality the show has to be exactly -- or darn close to exactly -- as long as the producers want it to be.

Good article at Reason on growing anti-Semitism in Iraq. I particularly liked this part because if it were true that America was entirely Jewish there would be a lot fewer complaints about Jews:

For a journalist, not a day goes by without mention of Jews and Israel. "We are Muslims!" a taxi driver declared proudly during an evening ride to a hotel. "And Jews come to our land?" When asked to whom he was referring, he said: "They are all Jews. The Americans are all Jews and mercenaries. We know their religion." Another taxi driver explained that "America and the Jews are one. We know this from their interests, their relationships, and America’s defense of the Jews....America and Jews are the same because they have the same goals and the same faith." An angry man in the market of Abu Ghraib, a town west of Baghdad, explained that "the Americans are Jews. Their work is Jewish. Nobody accepts them."

"If we want to fight people in the world, we should fight them with pillows -- pillows stuffed with food, medicine, music. ... That would be so much cheaper than bombs."

Enough! I don't like bullies. Never have. And I don't think we have to accept bullying simply because bullying is a permanent feature of the human landscape. But what the hell is the Federal government doing spending an iota of time on this issue?

I don't blame "compassionate conservatism" for the new Federal war on bullying, but I don't give Bush any credit either for having this happen on his watch. This follows the classic pattern of gitchy-goo government nicey-nice. Education activists identify a problem. They call the Today Show crowd and the coverage concentrates on some bad things happening to some cute kids and then the logical response is Washington must do something about it. Nonsense. Just because there are problems in America does not mean that the government in Washington needs to worry its pretty little head with them.

I mean how much more nanny state can you get than literally having some little kid in Oklahoma whine, "Uncle Sam! Timmy's picking on me!"

I listened to the Elijah Cummings, the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus last night go on about how the CBC is the "conscience of the Congress" and "the country."

I'm sorry, but this is just so much garbage and it only serves to highlight the arrogance and delusions of the black left today. There isn't a single issue -- including Civil Rights -- that I look to the CBC for moral authority on. There may be individuals within it who have some gravitas, but as a group they're little more than a leftwing cabal of patronage seeking leftwingers eager to call their opponents on almost every public policy issue "racists." It takes a lot of chuztpah for anybody to claim for themselves the role of "conscience" for other people. The notion that John Conyers is someone anybody should defer to because of his moral stature is laughable.

According to this parody:

Spurred by the success of Mel Gibson's recent movie "The Passion of Christ" studios have begun to target the massive audience who apparently desire to see movies which are accused of being anti-semitic. Through six days in theatres Mel Gibson's "Passion of Christ" has grossed over $125 million. MGM has jumped on the band wagon first and completely re-edited and over-dubbed "Cody Banks II: Destination London".

"We have recut our movie to see just how anti-semitic we can get....allegedly." MGM President Larry Gleason stated, "The audience is there and we just have to give them what they want." In the original script, teen spy Cody Banks, was sent by the CIA to London to recover a stolen mind-control device. In the new ending, he goes to Jerusalem to take on the evil Knesset who are secretly controlling the United States government and subjugating innocent Palestinians to death and torture. The studio has also redubbed the movie so that Frankie Muniz's character has a codename of Adolph. And, in a final surprise twist, Agent Banks discovers that Israeli spies were actually the cause of September 11th. "Is it anti-semetic?" Gleason asked, "I think that's an answer only and audience of 40 million ticket buyers could decide."

Actually, that makes me think. What are the things they could find on Mars that would either be too big to report because of the mass-panic that would set in or so big that Americans would immediately assume the government was making it all up like in Capricorn One. Here are some possibilities:

• The Bible, a Crucifix or the Koran would definitely cause lots of folks to stock up on bottled water.
• Weapons of Mass Destruction -- with Iraqi lettering on them.
• A happily married gay couple.
• A Starbucks
• The Canadian flag.

I'm still ambivalent about the FMA, but I'm confused by one of the main arguments of its opponents. I keep hearing that it's terrible to "change" or "tinker" with the Constitution. I'm sympathetic, but the gist of these arguments makes it sound like the Constitution currently has a fixed meaning. I wish! In fact, the folks fretting over changing the Constitution are largely -- though not entirely -- the same people who celebrate the pernicious doctrine of a "living Constitution." There are conservative opponents of the FMA who are consistent in their opposition to both an amendment judicial activism.

Which brings me to my confusion.

What I don't understand is why it's a great thing for unaccountable judges to change the meaning of the Constitution without a public debate while it is some form of tyranny for the House, Senate and fifty states to debate the issue over the course of months or years under the glaring spotlight of the media.

Before you answer that an amendment is more permanent, let me pre-emptively say: Not so fast. Amendments can be, and have been, repealed or superceded. Meanwhile, I'm hardly convinced that decades of activist jurisprudence could be rolled back -- and I'm certainly not persuaded that it could be done more quickly than the repeal of a Constitutional amendment. For example, tell me exactly what could be done under our regime to reverse the Supreme Court's banning of sodomy laws under Lawrence. I'm against sodomy laws, but I don't think they're necessarily unconstitutional. In effect, the Supreme Court amended the constitution just last year and the pro-gay marriage folks cheered.

Of course, there are other arguments against an FMA, but particularly since so many advocates of gay marriage openly celebrated the flagrantly illegal weddings in San Francisco and elsewhere as well as the flagrantly activist re-writing (i.e. "tinkering" "changing" etc) of the Mass. State constitution, it's increasingly difficult to take their arguments as good faith efforts. Indeed, my guess is if there was hope it passing we'd be hearing how we need an FMA to require all states to recognize gay marriages, the sanctity of the Constitution notwithstanding.

I'm looking for a good article/articles on a fairly discrete topic: the spread of an idea or sentiment around the world (or continent). I don't particularly care what the idea is, so much as the dynamics of its spread. For example, in 1968 there were mass student protests in France, Indonesia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Senegal, South Korea, Mexico and of course the United States. Obviously, these countries have very different cultures and communities and yet these students seemed united in a common desire. In Europe in 1848 something somewhat similar happened, in that rebellions and revolts erupted everywhere.

I'm much, much less interested in the content of the ideas than I am in getting a collection of examples of this sort of thing. Similarly, while I'm sure organizations -- linked Communist Parties for example -- sometimes explain what only appear to be simultaneous events, I'm not looking for anything about that either. I'm also much less interested in the dynamic in the age of the internet and mass-communication where it's pretty obvious how ideas spread. What I want are examples from before, say, WWII of various fads and fashions, philosophical and political which seemed to erupt everywhere almost at once. Thoughts?

Manufacturing is near a 20 year high and so is Paul Krugman's cat.

Whether they're high or low depends on who's president, according to a very nice analysis by Tim Blair: (Nod to Instapundit)

In yesterday's LA Times. I put on my David Brooks hat and criticize conservatives and liberals, but the left comes in for the biggest whacking. For example:

Meanwhile, American liberalism has grown cowardly and anti-democratic. It boldly spouts clichés about "giving power to the people," but in reality it increasingly distrusts the people. Unable to win at the polls and unwilling to compromise on ideological objectives, liberals empower judges to fight their battles for them. Gay marriage advocates claim to favor federalism, but federalism requires that local communities democratically decide the issue. That's what happened in a referendum in California, and yet when Mayor Gavin Newsom broke the law, the harshest criticism from gay activists was Massachusetts' Rep. Barney Frank's admonition that the mayor's "timing" was bad.

We like to say that the increasingly ugly battles over judicial nominations are a sign of increasing partisanship in the culture, when in reality they are a completely rational outgrowth of the culture wars. Because from abortion to affirmative action to gay rights (all issues where the bulk of the public disagrees with elite liberal opinion), liberals have gladly ceded the unpopular choices to an imperial judiciary that is more or less immune to democratic correction. John F. Kerry says he's against gay marriage, but does anyone doubt that he would appoint precisely the sorts of judges who rubber-stamp the practice? Indeed, speaking of America's leading "multilateralist," one could say that the Democratic Party's fetishization of the United Nations, the International Criminal Court and "coalition-building" generally suggests that many liberals would like to outsource all their losing issues to undemocratic institutions and hence absolve themselves of any responsibility for unpopular policies.

The governing council members agreed to compromise language on several difficult issues, the Iraqi officials said. Islam was to be designated "a source" of legislation, not "the primary source," as had been demanded by several Muslim members of the council.

That compromise, which had been one of the most intractable areas of disagreement, was finessed when Iraqi leaders agreed to insert language prohibiting the passage of any legislation "against" Islam, Mr. Qanbar said.

A dissent from one reader too good not to pass on:

” They couldn’t go to sleep. I couldn’t stay awake.”

John, burger hell? That’s easy. A ‘Wimpy Bar’ somewhere in the UK around 1970. Outside it’s raining. Inside gray, pallid people stare glumly at a thin, curling slice of gray, pallid meat trapped between the two halves of a gray, pallid bun…

Admit it, you’ve been there. I know I have.