Yes, yes, I know that moonshine is potentially dangerous stuff, but I can’t help admiring the initiative that went into this:

“Border guards in Lithuania have unearthed a lengthy pipeline that was intended to ship illicit alcohol from the neighbouring, authoritarian state of Belarus, giving Lithuanians a last cheap and perhaps deadly shot of Soviet-era liquor on the edge of the newly expanded European Union. Rokas Bukinskas, spokesman for the Lithuanian border guard, said: "We found it [yesterday]. It is 3km [2 miles] long and goes under a local river, some fields and roads."

It’s also nice to know that some forms of genuinely free enterprise are hanging on in Belarus, a country run by a thug who is the worst sort of post-Soviet nightmare.

Britain’s Labour Party continues with its plans to muzzle religious debate. The London Times’ Matthew Parris is not impressed:

“There is a huge danger at the centre of the thinking which grounds this measure. What counts as hateful depends very much on the sensitivities and tolerances of the complainant. As we never tire of reminding ourselves, you can get away with verbal aggression towards Christianity which would be considered unacceptable if directed towards Islam. It follows that the less tolerant any religious group is of criticism or mockery, the greater the protection the proposed new law will offer them. But these may be the very faiths or sects which ought to be confronted — confronted and attacked for the very intolerance and self-righteousness which, if this measure becomes law, will be adduced as evidence of their “sensitivity”. In the 1970s this used to be defined as “self-defined” oppression: the notion that it is for you to say what oppresses you. It is a nonsense.”

Parris also makes the vital point that religious controversy is not always polite, and nor should it be:

“Religion can oppress. I hate — yes hate — the sect and its followers who are stopping women in Saudi Arabia from voting. Religion can bully, it can cow, it can coerce. One of the ways it does so is by impressing upon its adherents the idea that none dare offend it, twit it or tweak its tail. Such sects or faiths cast a spell — cultural, even political, as well as theological — over their adherents. Such spells must be broken. A necessary weapon in the hands of those who would do so is ridicule, contempt and the power of real anger. Ask Voltaire: scorn, laughter, calumny and abuse are vital to those who confront bullies.”

Indeed they are.

But for a contrary view, we can turn to Madeleine Bunting in the Guardian:

”The clause on religious hatred lays down the kind of crucial boundary necessary for ordering relations in a multicultural society; as Muslim has become an increasingly important and visible political identity in this country, the state has an urgent responsibility to provide that boundary.

Free speech or multiculturalism? That’s the choice, it seems.

Amy Richards' Opting In: The Case for Feminism and Motherhood, “an exploration of the anxiety over parenting that young women face today, mixing memoir, interviews, historical analysis, and feminist insight to bridge the seeming gap between everyday moms and the feminist movement while providing advice on how women can forge their own path in parenthood.”

Regarding your post about Ronald Reagan in The Corner: Last night my wife and I watched an episode of What's My Line from 1952-53 era where Ronald Reagan was the Mystery Guest. He came across as very friendly, funny and down to earth. Reagan was trying to disguise his voice, and used a number of different dialects. We commented that if the Reagan haters had that footage they would have taken it out of context and used it as an example of some bumbling fool rather than an example of someone having fun.

My wife had recorded the episode with a digital video recorder and made sure our son had a chance to see the man who later became a hero to so many of today's conservatives. Our son is in his second year at Santa Clara University and is the lone conservative voice as one of the school newspaper's opinion page columnists. It is good that he can see that conservative icons aren't always the stuffed shirts the MSM makes them out to be.

When he was still out and about, his offices were in the Fox Plaza, home to many of Twentieth Century Fox offices. It may surprise you to know that even us crazy lefties working in Hollywood were always thrilled to catch a glimpse of him striding through the lobby. He was an important man for all Americans.

Hearing that the office is officially closing is sad, I was wondering to myself the other day if that office was even still open. I did not vote for Bush and wasn't old enough to vote during the 80's but I'll never forget the day that President Reagan pointed his finger at me and gave a smile. I was always amazed that a man who stared down communism would bother to take a moment to smile at a regular citizen.

We Regret to Announce that The Office of Ronald Reagan Will Close on December 31, 2004.

When I saddle up and ride into the sunset it will be with the knowledge that we’ve done great things.

—Ronald Reagan

Crichton's 2003 Commonwealth Club speech [to which several Corner readers directed me] is news to me. I'm persuaded that I got something important wrong. I assumed that the shift in focus apparent in State of Fear (which I haven't yet read) was aimed primarily at selling more books. However, this change may well be a result of all of the books Crichton has already sold. By this reading, the author is successful enough to feel comfortable departing from his tried-and-true techno-thriller formula to deliver a serious and heartfelt message. Pretty much the opposite of hypocrisy.

Jonah: In the mid 1970's a tribe of people in New Guinea were discovered that were so remote they had never had any contact with modern civilization. These people did not even know who Mary Anne is, or for that matter, Gilligan. When the scientists studying the tribe requested more supplies a helicopter was dispatched to the tribe's location. The reaction of the tribe was that an "insect" of that size simply could not exist (they obviously had missed not only Gillian's Island but all those 50's monster movies). Their way of dealing with this impossibility was they refused to look at the helicopter. It was impossible in their worldview, so it did not exist, or at least could not be acknowledged to exist. I fear that the "softies" you speak of are like that primitive tribe. The fact of terrorism is so counter to their world view that it simply cannot exist. They can read about it, have it shown to them, even get killed by it, but they can never, ever "see" it.

Once upon a time, in the days before Japanese animation, there was St. Nicholas--the magazine, not the jolly man in the red suit. As we pick our way through GameCubes and PlayStations under our trees this Boxing Day, we may find it hard to credit that there was a time (from 1873 to 1940, to be precise) when the arrival of the latest issue of St. Nicholas occasioned the same sense of excitement now reserved for the latest Harry Potter sensation.
For good reason. Though we now tend to dismiss 19th-century children's stories as moralistic, in fact the opposite is more often true. Today the American child who opens a book or clicks on his TV is more likely to get a cartoon sermon on the virtues of recycling than the kind of rip-roaring adventures that were standard fare back when Mary Mapes Dodge was editing St. Nicholas.
Children's literature, she insisted, “must not be a milk-and-water variety” of what adults are served. To the contrary, children's stories need to be “stronger, truer, bolder, more uncompromising.” And she backed that up by publishing the best authors she could find: from Rudyard Kipling, Lewis Carroll and Mark Twain to Jack London, L. Frank Baum and Louisa May Alcott. She herself is better known as the author of “Hans Brinker,” and it's no coincidence that when Millie Benson--author of the Nancy Drew series--made her own writing debut at age 12, it would be in the pages of St. Nicholas.
The good news is that even children of the 21st century now have the opportunity to relive the exploits that brought so much joy to their late-19th and early 20th-century counterparts. For William F. Buckley Jr.'s National Review has just reissued its second volume of St. Nicholas stories in its “Treasury of Classic Children's Literature” (along with a companion volume of Bedtime Stories).
Whether it's Louisa May Alcott's country girl Daisy Field making her way in the big city or Allen French's Sir Marrok avenging wrongs across medieval Britain or Frances Hodgson Burnett's little grain of wheat that was too proud for its own good, the stories involve characters forced to make choices: between lying and telling the truth, between selfishness and generosity, between cowardice and courage.
In his introduction, Mr. Buckley affixes these stories with the much-maligned adjective “wholesome” but notes that they come “with bite and wit and cunning.” They don't mince the dark side, either: These fictional worlds are populated by wicked witches, mean-spirited neighbors, irredeemable villains and a Mother Nature that can be heartless.
Yet however fantastic the settings, the presentation of vivid characters caught up in drama helps excite in children an appreciation for the human condition. After all, how are we ever to expect our children to recognize good and evil in real life if they have never been introduced to it in their imagination?

WASHINGTON - Terrorists may seek to down aircraft by shining powerful lasers into cockpits to blind pilots during landing approaches, federal officials are warning in a bulletin distributed nationwide.

The memo sent by the FBI and the Homeland Security Department says there is evidence that terrorists have explored using lasers as weapons, though there is no specific intelligence indicating al-Qaida or other groups might use lasers in the United States.

"Although lasers are not proven methods of attack like improvised explosive devices and hijackings, terrorist groups overseas have expressed interest in using these devices against human sight," the memo said.

"In certain circumstances, if laser weapons adversely affect the eyesight of both pilot and co-pilot during a non-instrument approach, there is a risk of airliner crash," the agencies said.

In September a pilot for Delta Air Lines reported an eye injury from a laser beam shone into the cockpit during a landing approach in Salt Lake City. The incident occurred about 5 miles from the airport. The plane landed safely.

FBI and other federal officials are investigating. It is not clear if a crime was committed or if the laser was directed into the cockpit by accident.

Steve Luckey, a retired airline pilot who is chairman of the Air Line Pilots Association's national security committee, said pilots are concerned about a recent increase in laser incidents, but do not know what to make of them. He said he has learned of two or three cases in the past 90 days.

"The most recent incidents appear to be aimed at pilots in the vicinity of airports," Luckey said. "A few seem to be intentional, and we're wondering why and what's going on."

This year, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security bought Edward Koorse a new Ford pickup truck.

If terrorists attack somewhere near Cattaraugus County, where Mr. Koorse is the director of emergency services, he will use the $27,000 truck to haul a huge trailer full of the decontamination equipment that the state bought him last year. But that scenario doesn’t seem very likely in the quiet farmland of southwestern New York State.

So in the meantime, Mr. Koorse uses the pickup to drive to work.

"I went no frills," he said of his vehicle. "It doesn’t have the fancy-schmancy stuff."

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Mr. Koorse and dozens of officials like him in rural counties around the state have found themselves with more federal money than they know how to spend on their modest counterterror needs. The Observer reviewed the three main 2004 grant programs, based on figures from the state Office of Public Safety and interviews with emergency-management officials in 32 of the 57 counties outside the city. The results showed that most local officials spent the money filling existing needs with doubtful connections to stopping Al Qaeda.

For example, Ontario County (pop. 100,000) is purchasing a climate-controlled mobile command post, said Jeffrey Harloff, director of the county’s emergency-management office. Mr. Harloff will buy the vehicle with his share of the Department of Homeland Security’s main grant to the state. How will he use the command post? It depends on who’s asking.

"If it’s the federal government asking me, it is for the intended purpose of W.M.D. incidents and HazMat incidents," Mr. Harloff said. "In reality, we’re going to use it for everyday stuff in our office."...

Kathryn,

The Supreme Court of Canada handed down a decision on same-sex marriage this morning. The Court opinion was sought by Parliament as a way of obtaining the green light for legislation proposed by the governor that would redefine marriage. In short, the government got its green light but the specifics of the case are still interesting.

The government had sent four questions to the court: (1) whether the national Parliament had sole authority to enact a redefinition of marriage (as opposed to the Provincial legislatures), (2) whether redefining marriage would violate Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, (3) whether the protection of religious freedom in the Charter prevented religious officials from being forced to perform same-sex marriages and (4) whether a redefinition of marriage was mandated by the Charter.

On the first question, the Court decided that the national Parliament had sole authority to define marriage but could not legislate on who may (or must) perform the marriages. On the second question, the Court ruled that the Charter did not prevent a redefinition of marriage (rejecting arguments that the definition of marriage was settled at the time the Charter was created and thus could not be changed) so Parliament could go ahead with its proposed legislation. On the third question, the Court held that “absent unique circumstances” the Charter prevents compulsion of religious officials to solemnize same-sex marriages or requiring religious facilities to be used for such marriages. Somewhat surprisingly, the Court did not answer the fourth question saying that since many Provincial courts have already redefined marriages and the government has not appealed those decisions, the answer is probably settled. This refusal, however, preempts any use by Members of Parliament that they were forced to enact legislation by the Court.

In theory, then, Parliament could reject the government bill to redefine marriage. So, the debate now shifts to the Parliament with news reports suggesting the bill will be formally introduced early next year. ... P.S. The decision is online here.

Mr. Robinson,
As [a] classical music archivist.., I get queries similar to yours fairly frequently so when I read your request on the Corner, I decided to have a go at it. Alas, I can find no carols that mention dogs. However, I do remember a children's hymn of thanksgiving, no. 313, in the Episcopalian 1940 Hymnal (a far better hymnal than the 1982) entitled, "We Thank You, Lord of Heaven." I've pasted it below. In the second stanza, please note the reference to "dogs with friendly faces," a line that delighted me as a kid and does so now.

According to website whence I copied the text the words are by "Jan Struther," pseudonym of Joyce Maxtone Graham, author of "Mrs. Miniver." We thank you, Lord of Heaven,
For all the joys that greet us,
For all that you have given
In earth and sky and seas;
The sunlight on the meadows,
The rainbow's fleeting wonder,
The clouds with cooling shadows,
The stars that shine in splendour?
We thank you, Lord, for these.

For swift and gallant horses,
For lambs in pastures springing,
For dogs with friendly faces,
For birds with music thronging
Their chantries in the trees;
For herbs to cool our fever,
For flowers of field and garden,
For bees among the clover
With stolen sweetness laden?
We thank you, Lord, for these.

For homely dwelling-places
For bread to stay our hunger
And sleep to bring us ease;
For zeal and zest of living,
For faith and understanding,
For hope of peace unending?
We thank you, Lord, for these.

Kuhn complains that we pajamahadeen have "no code of ethics, or even an employer, to enforce any standard." But help is coming: "Beginning next year, the F.E.C. will institute new rules on the restricted uses of the Internet as it relates to political speech."

Time for the blogosphere to fight back, given that, unlike, say, CBS and FOX., the pajamahadeen also tend to lack attorneys on retainer to defend our First Amendment rights. I have no desire to see NRO's Kathryn Lopez in the defendant's chair because an article in NRO criticized some politician three months before an election. Neither should the Bush Administration.

HarperCollins just released Michael Crichton’s latest novel, State of Fear, today. The subject matter was officially top secret until release, although a Crichton essay in last Sunday’s Parade magazine telegraphed the thesis comprehensively: the environmental movement is using junk science to scare the public. Mr. Crichton’s essay and -- from what I can glean today on the Internet -- his book, aim to debunk such fear-mongering.

First off, I’d like to welcome Crichton to the conservative movement.

But just a cotton-pickin’ minute: Isn’t the reason for Crichton’s fame the very fear-mongering he now decries? Crichton didn’t make his fortune from ER, after all. He built his reputation as a technical visionary through a series of apocalyptic novels warning the public about the dangers of whatever technology happened to be perceived as sufficiently leading-edge at the time. Consider that Crichton has asked us to be alarmed by the prospect of deadly viruses brought back by the military from space (Andromeda Strain); advanced computer technology producing homicidal robots (Westworld); seizure-preventing neuro-implants creating, instead, a Frankenstein’s monster (The Terminal Man); biotechnology used not to ameliorate disease or feed the hungry, but to reintroduce lethal – and hungry -- dinosaurs into the environment (Jurassic Park, The Lost World); and most recently, nanotechnology entrepreneurs (in order to appease rapacious venture capitalists!) creating an intelligent and inevitably malicious hive-like creature which immediately does its best to re-enact the Invasion of the Body Snatchers storyline (Prey). And this is just a partial list.

I suppose that I should just be grateful that Crichton – who definitely has a sense for what’s popular – is ratifying the growing conservatism of the American public. But the hypocrisy is still just a little mind-blowing

So, now is come our joyfulst feast;
Let every man be jolly;
Each room with ivy leaves is drest,
And every post with holly.
Though some churls at our mirth repine,
Round your foreheads garlands twine;
Drown sorrow in a cup of wine,
And let us all be merry.

Rank misers now to sparing shun;
Their hall of music soundeth;
And dogs thence with whole shoulders run,
So all things there aboundeth.
The country folks themselves advance
With crowdy-muttons out of France;
And Jack shall pipe, and Jyll shall dance,
And all the town be merry.

Winter Wonderland
(to the tune of "Winter Wonderland")
Dog tags ring, are you listenin'?
In the lane snow is glistenin'.
It's yellow, not white - I've been there tonight,
markin’ up my winter wonderland.

Q: Yes, Mr. Secretary. My question is more logistical. We’ve had troops in Iraq for coming up on three years and we’ve always staged here out of Kuwait. Now why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromise ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles and why don’t we have those resources readily available to us? [Applause]

SEC. RUMSFELD: I missed the first part of your question. And could you repeat it for me?

Q: Yes, Mr. Secretary. Our soldiers have been fighting in Iraq for coming up on three years. A lot of us are getting ready to move north relatively soon. Our vehicles are not armored. We’re digging pieces of rusted scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass that’s already been shot up, dropped, busted, picking the best out of this scrap to put on our vehicles to take into combat. We do not have proper armament vehicles to carry with us north.

SEC. RUMSFELD: I talked to the General coming out here about the pace at which the vehicles are being armored. They have been brought from all over the world, wherever they’re not needed, to a place here where they are needed. I’m told that they are being – the Army is – I think it’s something like 400 a month are being done. And it’s essentially a matter of physics. It isn’t a matter of money. It isn’t a matter on the part of the Army of desire. It’s a matter of production and capability of doing it.

As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time. Since the Iraq conflict began, the Army has been pressing ahead to produce the armor necessary at a rate that they believe – it’s a greatly expanded rate from what existed previously, but a rate that they believe is the rate that is all that can be accomplished at this moment.

I can assure you that General Schoomaker and the leadership in the Army and certainly General Whitcomb are sensitive to the fact that not every vehicle has the degree of armor that would be desirable for it to have, but that they’re working at it at a good clip. It’s interesting, I’ve talked a great deal about this with a team of people who’ve been working on it hard at the Pentagon. And if you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up. And you can have an up-armored humvee and it can be blown up. And you can go down and, the vehicle, the goal we have is to have as many of those vehicles as is humanly possible with the appropriate level of armor available for the troops. And that is what the Army has been working on.

And General Whitcomb, is there anything you’d want to add to that?

GEN. WHITCOMB: Nothing. [Laughter] Mr. Secretary, I’d be happy to. That is a focus on what we do here in Kuwait and what is done up in the theater, both in Iraq and also in Afghanistan. As the secretary has said, it’s not a matter of money or desire; it is a matter of the logistics of being able to produce it. The 699th, the team that we’ve got here in Kuwait has done [Cheers] a tremendous effort to take that steel that they have and cut it, prefab it and put it on vehicles. But there is nobody from the president on down that is not aware that this is a challenge for us and this is a desire for us to accomplish.

SEC. RUMSFELD: The other day, after there was a big threat alert in Washington, D.C. in connection with the elections, as I recall, I looked outside the Pentagon and there were six or eight up-armored humvees. They’re not there anymore. [Cheers] [Applause] They’re en route out here, I can assure you. Next. Way in the back. Yes.

My nomination and permanent appointment to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has been pending before the full Senate for more than one year. The recess appointment given to me by President Bush on January 16, 2004 expires when Congress adjourns. Opposition by some Democratic senators prevented an up or down vote on my nomination. A minority of senators prevented the majority from confirming me to a permanent position on the Fifth Circuit. The actions of the minority leave me with no alternative than to retire as Congress adjourns.

I thank Senator Trent Lott for fighting for my nomination. He made Herculean efforts on my behalf. I thank Senator Thad Cochran for his consistent and steady support. I thank my son Congressman Chip Pickering who fought hard for my nomination, my reputation and the image of Mississippi. I thank President George Bush for nominating me in 2001, in 2003 and in 2004. I am grateful for his strong support throughout the process, including his invitation to the White House to support my nomination, and then for giving me the recess appointment.

My confirmation struggle lasted four years. Although I would prefer confirmation, I am in good spirits and at peace with the result. My faith is strong. I will continue to be involved in community and civic affairs. I will also speak out on issues relating to confirmation reform. I feel I can be a constructive voice in this vitally important debate.

The bitter fight over judicial confirmations threatens the quality and the independence of the judiciary. The mean-spiritedness and lack of civility reduces the pool of nominees willing to offer themselves for service on the bench. For the first time in the history of the Senate, judicial nominations were blocked by filibusters.

The recent election demonstrated that the American people rejected this unprecedented obstruction by the minority Senate leadership. Those voices will continue to be heard until the confirmation process is reformed and judicial filibusters ended.

Extreme special interest groups opposed my nomination primarily due to their hostility to any nominee with strong religious convictions who personally disagrees with them on abortion, marriage and references to God at public ceremonies and institutions. They demonstrate their intolerance and religious prejudices not just in opposing my nomination, but also that of the Catholic nominees who hold deep religious beliefs. These groups believe nominees with committed religious values are not qualified to serve on America’s federal courts, despite the fact that our judicial records, statements and testimony demonstrate a commitment to uphold the law and current precedents. These far left groups cowed Democrat leadership into opposing my nomination. In doing so, they pushed those Senators out of the American mainstream, some out of their Senate seats, and the Democratic Party out of entire regions of the country.

I thank all of the Republican Senators who without exception supported my nomination. I also thank Democratic Senators Zell Miller, John Breaux and Ben Nelson and the only Senate Independent, Jim Jeffords, for supporting my nomination and their courage to fairly examine my record.

I will always be grateful to the people of Mississippi - both black and white, both Democrat and Republican - who supported my confirmation with their prayers, their words of encouragement, letters of support and trips to Washington to speak on my behalf. The people of Mississippi are a constant source of encouragement to me and my family. Most of all I want to express appreciation to my wife who walks with me each day through this journey. Margaret Ann and I are at peace. I look forward to the opportunities to contribute to my State and community in the future. I am blessed by my experiences on the Court and the work of all those who serve the Court and the administration of justice.

SEN. John Kerry's wife: "The job of a political spouse is to say, 'Hey, idiot . . .' It enables the partner to remind the person of who they are — or were — and of the sudden discrepancies of that person's inner core. You have to be able to say to them, 'You didn't used to think like that.' "

Great piece from Amir Taheri in the Jerusalem Post [Nod to Andrew Sullivan]:

In his recent foray into Ramallah, Britain's Foreign Secretary Jack Straw identified the Palestine-Israel conflict as the most important issue between the West and the Muslim world. Straw was echoing the conventional wisdom according to which a solution to that problem would transform relations between Islam and the West from what is almost a clash of civilizations to one of cuddly camaraderie.

But what if conventional wisdom got it wrong?

I have just spent the whole fasting month of Ramadan in several Arab countries, where long nights are spent eating, drinking coffee and, of course, discussing politics.

There are no free elections or reliable opinion polls in the Arab world. So no one knows what the silent majority really thinks. The best one can do is rely on anecdotal evidence. On that basis, I came to believe that the Palestine-Israel issue was low down on the list of priorities for the man in the street but something approaching an obsession for the political, business, and intellectual elites.

When it came to ordinary people, almost no one ever mentioned the Palestine issue, even on days when Yasser Arafat's death dominated the headlines. When I asked them about issues that most preoccupied them, farmers, shopkeepers, taxi drivers and office workers never mentioned Palestine. ....

"Right now there are 22 active conflicts across the globe in which Muslims are involved. Most Muslims have not even heard of most of them because those conflicts do not provide excuses for fomenting hatred against the United States.

Next time you hear someone say the US was in trouble in the Muslim world because of Israel, remember that things may not be that simple."

So, the whole family's up because Lucy's got a post vaccine fever, and well, we do these things as a group (note: trip to Mexico may be postponed). So I thought since I'm up anyway, I'd just sneak every single thing Kathryn doesn't want in the Corner in here with a single link!"

Behold the picture of everything!

Re: Today's syndicated column:

Jonah:

As one who spent 15 years as all kinds of reporter – general assignment, cop shop, trials, features and, mostly, political and legislative – I was pleased to read your column on the subject of journalists’ so-called privilege in refusing to assist law enforcement investigations.

Especially telling was your mention of the paradoxical nature of the whole Joe Wilson kerfuffle – the press demanded the investigation and now faces the unpleasant question: do we help or not?

The reason I cited my experience is so I could make this following point with some legitimacy: You point out that journalists love to compare what they do to what doctors and lawyers do. In other words, they seek to ‘professionalize’ their jobs. That, to me, is just so much crap. Before I became a reporter, I spent a number of years as a carpenter, and I would compare the job of a reporter more to that of a tradesman. You don’t need advanced education to be a reporter or columnist. You should, ideally, know how to spell and use correct grammar. The rest is up to the innate talent of the individual.

I know where all this First Amendment absolutism and professionalization comes from. We got it, big ladles of it, spooned over us every day in J-school back in the 70s. Bob Woodward and Don Bolles were Lancelot and Galahad in our eyes, because that was what the faculty told us.

It wasn’t until much later that I came to realize that the burning zeal for afflicting the comfortable I had inhaled in college was just so much parsley.

The MSM is coming undone because the literate public is tired of the poseurs, as you said, in their ermine robes dispensing THE WORD. During the past election cycle, the guy behind the curtain was exposed for the hustler that he is. Bloggers far better educated than the scribbling and chattering classes took apart the silly “blockbusters” like Rathergate in no time flat. I still don’t know why so many people were surprised by this.

As always, it is a treat to read your work. All the best,

I like the Powerline Blog and I think those guys do a great job and seem quite decent folks from TV etc. Which is why I think this post is such a shame. I don't think comparisons are particularly fruitful, but it's childish and stupid to say -- hesitatingly or otherwise -- that the Corner "sucks" as a blog or as anything else. Well, okay, as a nuclear power plant or airborne laser volcano lancer it ain't to hot. But in this context, I think this was just plain lame, particularly considering the prize:

So long as our closest competitor for best overall blog in the Wizbang Best Overall Blog category was my own favorite blog -- Little Green Footballs -- I refrained from soliciting your votes for Power Line.

Now, however, we are within a shade of being overtaken for first place by NRO's The Corner. The NRO site is outstanding, easily one of the best on the Web. Despite the fact that almost all of NR's fine editors contribute to the Corner, I do not hesitate to say that as a blog The Corner -- how to put this? --sucks, or that Power Line is a better blog.

If you agree with me, will you please exercise your Aylward-given right as a citizen of the World Wide Web to vote once every 24 four hours for your favorite site in the Wizbang Best Overall Blog category? Thank you for your consideration.
Posted by The Big Trunk at 02:50 PM

Update: Um, to the emailers who've said nice things about the Corner, thanks. To those who thinks the Corner sucks, fine. To those who misread this post to the extent that they think I'm weepy about what the guys at Powerline think, put down the pipe. But in case the miscommunication was on my part, I'll just be clear. I don't take it very seriously. What I was calling lame was precisely that sentiment on their part. The Powerline post came across, to me at least, like a guy talking trash about an opposing chess team.

From a reader:

Jonah,
The Labrador Retriever is not a Canadian dog. Despite it's name the dag is an English breed. First called St.John hounds they were used by English fishermen fishing on the Grand Banks of Canada. The dogs were used to retrieve floats and fish. The breed was latter used as retrievers in England to retrieve birds. So Cosmo would not be doing any whining at the U.N.

Regards,

A life long Lab owner.

The war on drugs or the war on Islamic extremism. Choose one. You can't fight both.

"The offence will not criminalise material that just stirs up ridicule, prejudice, dislike, contempt or anger or which simply causes offence."

As the minister well knows, the mere existence of this law will give a tool to religious bigots, particularly, I suspect, on the Islamic extreme, to threaten their critics with prosecution. Even if there actually are no prosecutions, the mere threat of litigation (plus the inevitable embarassment, legal expenses and so on) will have a chilling effect on free speech, and if there's one thing that is needed to combat the superstition and hatred of Muslism extremism., it's more free speech, not less.

This law should not be passed.

From a reader:

Dear Jonah: I have a Labrador Retriever, am I being un-american for having a "Canadian" Dog? What's your policy on " Axis of Weasel" breeds like the German Shephard or the French poodle? Maybe I should be asking Cosmo...

This is a difficult question if only for my serious bias against poodles, not entirely because they're French so much as that they're, well, poodles (sorry Peter). Though I have met poodles I've liked, a little. But in general, I don't believe that dogs buy into the nation-state paradigm at all. Canine loyalty is to the tribe, to the family, the pack. In that sense dogs are very American breeds in that they're loyalties do not attach at all to genetic kinship. If this reader we're right than Cosmo -- allegedly half-lab, half Australian cattle dog -- would be very confused indeed. On the one hand he'd want to fight by America's side no matter what the sacrifice and then he'd turn right around and whine about us to the UN.

John Laughland writes in the Guardian of the double standard our media employ: "Enormous rallies have been held in Kiev in support of the prime minister, Viktor Yanukovich, but they are not shown on our TV screen. ... Yanukovich supporters are denigrated as having been 'bussed in.' The demonstrators in favor of Yushchenko have laser lights, plasma screens, sophisticated sound systems, rock concerts, tents to camp in and huge quantities of orange clothing; yet we happily dupe ourselves that they are spontaneous."

Laughland is saying the Yushchenko demonstrations may be as phony as that U.S-Albanian war in the Dustin Hoffman-Robert DeNiro film Wag the Dog....

In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, James Taranto had a short op-ed arguing that it would be good for Democrats, and bad for Republicans, if Roe were overturned. Maybe he’s right. But there are two weak points in his analysis. First, he suggests that the official position of the Republican party is to “ban all or most abortions,” and that “[o]pinion polls consistently show that only a small proportion of Americans favor” this “extreme” view. You can certainly find polls in which people say they don’t want to ban all or most abortions. But you can also find many polls in which a majority of people say that they want to ban abortion with exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother—which is to say, they want to ban almost all abortions. The polls don’t “consistently” show that only a small proportion of Americans favor a general prohibition. Second, Taranto assumes that pro-lifers would be dumber politically than pro-choicers in a post-Roe world. He assumes, that is, that pro-lifers would immediately push for a ban on abortion everywhere rather than, say, a ban on third-trimester abortions that would put Democrats in a corner. (I've written about this possibility before, when Stuart Taylor Jr. made the same argument as Taranto.)

Come to think of it, there's a third flaw in Taranto's argument. He says that the smartest thing congressional Republicans could do after Roe would be to leave the issue to state legislatures. If the rest of his analysis were correct, however, it would mean that serious political damage would then be done to Republican state legislators and governors. But if the rest of his analysis is unsound, as I think, then it would make a lot of sense to let states address the issue right after Roe went. (Incidentally, I think it's a very good thing that people, including people who favor legal abortion, are starting to think more about life after Roe.)

Picking up from yesterday's conversation, here are some nominations from readers to compete with the Oil-for-food scandal and Derb's suggestions:

I nominate reunification of Germany. Several months before that West German government "exchanged" East German's savings at 1:1 rate when the market exchange rate was actually 20:1. The government implicitly recognized that it was really a gift rather than exchange by putting relatively small caps on the amounts to be "exchanged". I estimate that Helmuth Kohl's government thus gave away at least $40 billion to induce East Germans to vote for him. It was effectively a Money-For-Votes scheme.

And...

Hello Jonah,

Maybe not inflation wise, but % of GDP.

Wasn't the pelop..... the war between ancient Sparta and Athens instigated
by an Athenian charlatan spending the common defense fund on public works
for his own aggrandizement ?

I think we have to restrict the definition of scandal to free societies.
How could the Ming dynasty be monetarily scandalous? All the money was
already theirs.

And...

Jonah One of my favorite scandals involved one of Alexander the Great's generals. I believe that it was Eumenes. Hanson can correct me if I am wrong. Alexander's conquests pretty well captured the entire Persian treasury. Now, remember that the Persian fiscal policy was "tax and horde". Thus, the treasury consisted of thousands of talents of gold bullion. Alex seized the tresuries at Babylon and Persepolis. I am away from my references (I am at work), but I believe that the latter was 10,000 talents. Since a talent is 60 lbs, or perhaps with gold, the equivalent value to 60 lbs of silver, that's a lot of gold. Alexander's fiscal policy was "seize and spend". To spend it, it had to be minted into coins. The lucky guy put in charge of this was allowed to become fabulously wealthy by keeping one out of every twenty gold coins he minted, or 5%. This was his legal cut. Eumenes is alleged to have kept for himself 10%. This is how he financed his own military escapades after the death of Alexander. Imagine graft on the order of a bonus of 3000 lbs of gold (or silver) in 320 BC.

And...

Jonah,

How about thirty pieces of silver for the life of the Son of God? By my calculations, if we correct for inflation and fluctuations in the price of silver, it would be about a bajillion dollars.

Does anyone out there know if Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, has any WiFi hotspots, internet cafes etc? My in-laws have rented the same place they got last year and we're going. But dial-up was unworkable last year.

I must sadly admit I have passed myself off as a Cannuck. I was in my mid-twenties, living in France/Germany. Any time I made a social blunder and someone would mutter something derogatory about Americans, I would say '…but I'm Canadian'.

Sam Rosenfeld at Tapped whines that conservatives play the race card too much when it comes to defending Thomas, Rice et al. "This pose of faux-racial sensitivity that Republicans adopt reflexively whenever a minority conservative gets criticized is really pretty disgusting -- and it's really getting old," he writes after posting a long excerpt from Hannity and Colmes.

In one sense I think he makes a fair point. But frankly, I just don't think liberals like the gang at Tapped have much credibility when it comes to this sort of gripe (remember their insistence that Hillsdale is racist because it showed some white kids in an ad with a tagline "remember the good old days?").

The argument that Hannity uses, I suspect, would not raise an eyebrow (at least not in public) from Rosenfeld and his colleagues were it to come from Mary Francis Berry, Julian Bond et al and if it was aimed at conservatives. Indeed, Hannity's argument is exactly the sort of thing we hear every day from liberals. He's pointing to disparate impact, in effect. I think this is a shabby form of argumentation, but if liberals are going to insist that A) this sort of thing is not only fair when they do it, but B) that it is a moral obligation to translate this logic into law and that C) anyone who disagrees is in effect a racist, they should keep their traps shut when their opposition buys into it. Rosenfeld can gripe about bad arguments getting old after spending his entire adult life being accused of racism because he opposes giving the sons of rich black doctors preferential treatment over the daughters of poor whites, Asians, Jews, et al. Or when he applies this complaint in defense of conservatives who've whethered such accusations unjustly. Until then he should celebrate the victory Hannity's argument represents.

But, hey, maybe, I've missed Rosenfeld's color-blind philosophy on display in the past. I eagerly await the opportunity to correct my impression.

Your statement about Vincent Astor being 'in the womb' on the TITANIC was waaaay wrong. Vincent was born in 1891, the son of John Jacob and Ava (Pilling, or Pulling). He never had children. There was a sister Alice, too, who married two or three times and had four children in total, I believe. Brooke had been married previously and had a son (at least one), John Marshall.

Vincent was in disbelief at the news of the TITANIC, went to meet the Carpathia etc. Because the trip to Europe by his father was the latter's wedding-trip, JJA had not revised his will so Vincent inherited most of the fortune.

The 'babe in the womb' became another John Jacob Astor, and was an international 'playboy' and in assorted scrapes and scandals, a media celebrity in the 40s and 50s. He was quite the reverse of Vincent!

Vincent's mother, after divorcing the TITANIC's John Jacob Astor, went to England and married Lord Ribblesdale. Alice died in '56 or '57 and Lady Ribblesdale in '58 (both in NY).

Our nation also honors the men and women who've been injured in the line of duty. I met some of these Americans. This Saturday, I'll be going to Bethesda to meet more. Many face a hard road ahead. They've inspired their comrades with their strength of will. General Sattler recently visited with some of the wounded in the Fallujah campaign. One Marine was pretty beat up, but when he saw the General, he lifted his hand and said, "Sir, I've still got my trigger finger. I can get back out there." That is the spirit of the Corps. And America will show the same sense of duty.

He writes today: "[T]he same people who claim that Social Security isn't an independent entity when it runs surpluses also insist that late next decade, when the benefit payments start to exceed the payroll tax receipts, this will represent a crisis--you see, Social Security has its own dedicated financing, and therefore must stand on its own.

"There's no honest way anyone can hold both these positions, but very little about the privatizers' position is honest."

There isn't even an inconsistency here, let alone dishonesty. Krugman would have a point if reformers had ever claimed that the Social Security surplus did nothing to balance the government's books. But they haven't. They recognize that the surplus does help with the total budget balance, and that future deficits will make the total budget picture much worse. That's a consistent treatment of Social Security as part of the government. (I'm using the phrase "help with the total budget balance" in a specific sense here: if you hold other spending and taxes outside of Social Security constant, the excess of payroll taxes over current benefits helps the total budget. If the existence of that excess makes it easier for Congress to cut other taxes and raise other spending, the statement ceases to be as true.)

What reformers have denied is that past and present Social Security surpluses help (or help much) with the deficits in the future. For more on the subject of Social Security, and Paul Krugman's standards of honesty, go here.

I want to be very clear: I don't care about this subject at all. I know nothing about it and desire to read no email or anything else on it. But in the interests of those who do, here's a note from a reader:

Jonah, Nobody in the Corner seems to give a twit that a supreme act of injustice has denied Cal its rightful berth in the Rose Bowl. It is outrageous that the #4 team the nation should be relegated to playing the #23 team . . . in the Holiday Bowl? Is that a ceramic something with trees and Santa Clauses on it that you put out at this time of year to hold the nuts? Besides, anyone with any sense of tradition at all knows the Rose Bowl is a Pac 10 POSSESSION, not to be invaded by interlopers. Come on; the BCS has to be an Islamist plot. Now I freely acknowledge that I am probably one of the very few Cal grads regularly in the Corner, but we need some support here!

Although its regrettable that another school will abandon single gender education, at least this one was the result of a freely made decision, which is reported to have been based on market conditions in the culture (i.e., dwindling demand). I much prefer this demise to the bitter experience of my alma mater, the Citadel, which was forced to admit women by Justice Ginsburg and the federal government in her opinion United States v. Virginia. As Justice Scalia said in his dissent,

"And all the federal military colleges -- West Point, the Naval Academy at Annapolis, and even the Air Force Academy, which was not established until 1954 -- admitted only males for most of their history. Their admission of women in 1976 came not by court decree, but because the people, through their elected representatives, decreed a change . . . Today, however, change is forced upon Virginia, and reversion to single-sex education [by publicly funded colleges] is prohibited nationwide, not by democratic processes but by order of this Court." See United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515, 567-70 (1996).

I am glad that the SCOTUS showed mercy and left privately funded colleges to their own choices and market forces despite some private colleges for women receiving up to 19% of their budget from public sources. How magnanimous of Justice Ginsberg and the federal government to have allowed private colleges to continue as they desire. At least Wells has the freedom to run their school as they wish.

That's what NRO calls the oil-for-food scandal in our latest editorial (Note: I obviously didn't work on the editorial). This is a common talking point, and as far as I know it's entirely accurate. Still, I was wondering if there haven't been greater corruption scandals in history that we are discounting because we aren't accounting for inflation or because we've simply forgotten them. Unfortunately I don't know enough history. This is more of a question for Derb or VDH: were there greater scandals during say the Ming Dynasty? Or some other period from antiquity? What would be the top five? These are the sorts of questions the Corner exists to answer -- along with what's tatier Ring Dings or Ho-Hos?.

The witch-hunt against Kofi Annan and the United Nations over the Iraq oil-for-food scandal is, quite simply, a scandal all on its own. The leaders of this lynch mob in the US Congress and the rightwing commentariat are not gunning for Mr Annan so much as aiming to destroy the UN as an institution. That would be a disaster - for all of us, including, especially, the US. ...

First, the oil-for-food policy was devised and run by the member states of the UN Security Council, not by the UN Secretariat. All of the roughly 36,000 contracts were approved by a Security Council committee dominated by the US and the UK. Of these, about 5,000 were held up. But objections were entirely about imports to Iraq that might have offered Baghdad dual-use technology with which to reconstitute its weapons programmes. There was not one objection about oil-pricing scams, although UN officials brought these to the attention of the committee on no fewer than 70 occasions. ...

If the independent inquiry headed by Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman, finds any UN official complicit in Iraq's roughly $4.4bn oil price skimming, then that person should have his diplomatic immunity lifted and be prosecuted. But there is nothing here to be laid at the door of Mr Annan, even though the lobbying activities of his son Kojo, who was still receiving severance payments from a company seeking Iraq's trade after oil-for-food started, will have hurt him.

Confessore is particularly vexed by the fact that Republicans who don't like the UN at all are claiming to care about the UN's credibility in the wake of the oil-for-food scandal. Now, while I haven't followed it that closely, I do think the FT's point about the Security Council deserving more blame is a sound one.

Nevertheless, as someone who has consistently stood on solid principle that the UN sucks (let's not gild the lilly), let me see if I can clarify what is not an inconsistent position at all.

Countless liberals have imbued the UN with a glowing moral stature that has never existed. Because they want the UN to be great, they often lapse into believing the UN is great. A classic case of confusing ought and is. Meanwhile, people like me see the UN as a flawed institution which relentlessly exploits this misperception. But, because UN-lovers have so skewed the debate, it is almost impossible to persuade the unpersuaded that the UN sucks unless you speak in "responsible" terms. Saying US out of the UN, UN out of the US in "sophisticated" company is seen as no less antediluvian than fretting about fluoridated water sapping our precious bodily fluids. And, since it's not going anywhere (sigh) one must fight for the changes one can. Holding Kofi accountable for that hothouse of sanctimony and quasi-legalized corruption seems like a nice place to start. I know a lot of liberals who loathe, say, Fox News but who constantly use the same language -- "losing it's credibility" etc -- that the Republicans Confessore dislikes are using about the UN. Should liberals who think the world would be better off without Fox News be considered inconsistent hypocrites for sounding like they actually care about Fox's credibility?

I've received numerous emails conveying this sentiment:

Jonah,

As a prolife pro-big-family conservative, I assure you, it's not, as Brooks suggests, that we are "too busy to fight the culture wars". We do our part every day. It just doesn't make the evening news.

What WE DON'T DO is carve out time from work and school to take our kids to ridiculous protest marches, bang bongo drums in the streets, wear stupid contumes, chant silly slogans, and disrupt other people's businesses and schedules.

Or is that what Brooks really means when he refers to being "active in the culture wars"??

"The British establishment's current complacent approach accepts that ever greater and ever more violent crime is a fact of life, rather than a historical aberration encouraged by the unprecedented constraints placed on the law-abiding and the boundless licence extended to the criminal class. That policy leads remorselessly to more deaths, and to lives lived under small but ever more insidious and corrupting restrictions. The Tories' big mistake was their failure to understand that "freedom" isn't just about consumer choices or buying your council flat. It's also about being free to defend your home - after all, you're there on the scene and the West Midlands Police 24-Hour Crime Hotline answering machine isn't. And an assertive citizenry, confident in its freedoms and its responsibilities, is a better bet for long-term survival than the passive charges of the nanny state. If... the police persist in victimising the victims of crime, then I hope we'll see widespread jury rebellion and a refusal to convict."

There's no informed reason for optimism, but it'd be nice if this panned out:

CAIRO (Reuters) - Palestinians and Israelis have agreed in principle to proposals aiming to end their conflict, Egypt's official news agency MENA said on Tuesday.

Quoting unidentified high-level sources, it said the steps, including an Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire, had the support of both the United States and the European Union.

There was no immediate official comment from Israel, the Palestinians or from Egypt which has tried to play the role of mediator in previous efforts to ease Israeli-Palestinian violence.

"High-level sources confirmed an important understanding -- reaching the point of an agreement in principle -- has been completed between Egypt, Israel, the Palestinians and several active international parties, America and Europe, regarding a comprehensive settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian struggle," MENA said.

Update Another positive sign.

Good thing this isn't a fireable offense at NR.

In the last tape to come out, Osama Bin Laden admitted that he was behind the 9/11 attacks. But the BBC writes: "The Taleban had given sanctuary to Osama Bin Laden and members of his al-Qaeda network, who are accused of carrying out the attacks."

In related news, a new museum exhibit dealing with Adolf Hitler, who was accused of ruling the Third Reich which was alleged to have killed many Jews and others, opened today...

Ramesh -- Very good point. But isn't this a round-about way of discussing the more basic fact that conservatives, cultural and otherwise, are now overwhelmingly Republican and the demographic trends that are associated with conservatives are now -- as you say -- associated with Republicans?

My old boss Ben Wattenberg (for whom I was studying TFR's and UN population projections) has come out with a new book demography called Fewer about declining birth rates. From Andy Ferguson's column:

``Our traditional view of those countries is completely outdated -- the population explosion and all that,'' Wattenberg says. ``Forty years ago, less developed countries averaged about 6 children per woman. Now it's about 2.8 -- still a growing population. But the UN projects it will fall to 1.85 --a declining population.''

Wattenberg sees world population, now 6.4 billion, trending to 8 billion over the next several decades, then beginning to fall. At a 1.85 replacement rate, world population would decline to 2.3 billion people by 2300.

The great exception to these trends is the U.S., where the fertility rate is just below replacement and moving higher. The UN projects 400 million Americans by 2050, up from about 285 million. Much of the U.S. growth is fueled by immigration.

A Matter of Choice

So what does this all mean? ``Never before in history have populations chosen not to reproduce themselves,'' Wattenberg says. ``Declining populations have always been a result of plague or famine.''

For those people weaned on the small-is-beautiful humbug of the 1960s and '70s -- which saw humans as a kind of blight on a pristine planet -- news of a population implosion will be good news indeed. But for a ``pro-people'' futurist like Wattenberg, who sees human beings as a positive good and growth as a gift, the implosion carries ominous implications.

``The repercussions touch every aspect of our lives,'' he says. What is commonly called the ``aging problem,'' for example, is better understood as a low-fertility problem.

In 1950, 8 percent of Europeans were over 65. That percentage will rise, by 2050, to 28 percent.

As a guy who spent his first couple years in Washington having to learn about Total Fertility Rates and memorizing UN population projections, I find the new politics of birth rates fascinating, if oddly otherworldly. A decade ago, it was still a major talking point of the sophisticated left to talk about overpopulation, not just in the Third World but here. And not just because of immigration, but because Americans were supposedly having too many children. Of course, this argument was -- and still is -- linked to the notion that Americans are a disproportionate "drag" of the global environment. But that's a tangent will ignore for now.

As for Brooks' point as well as Ramesh's emailer, I'm not convinced that the political significance of red-state natalism isn't overblown (though I haven't read Steve Sailer's piece which many smart folks liked). Red states are culturally conservative. Culturally conservative people have more kids. People with more kids tend to be culturally conservative. People with lots of kids in liberal places tend to move to places that are more conservative. At some point, isn't this the repetition of basically the same point from different angles? The YaYa plant grows in blue soil. Plants in blue soil tend to be YaYa plants. And, besides, was it not ever thus?

I can see why the red-state natalism stuff might be an important longterm trend, but let's not forget that many of the red states tend to be underpopulated and the centuries-long American story of young people moving to cities for fun and opportunity isn't likely to end any time soon. Many red states consider the on-going brain-drain from their universities to out-of-state cities to be one of their most pressing problems.

Anyway, I'm not dismissing this as a non-story, I'm just not convinced this is the mammoth, important trend some people are claiming it to be.

Stephen Moore argues that he is a good man, that he is being treated shoddily, and that conservatives should get behind him. Based on my limited acquaintance with him, I'll agree with the first point. I'll agree with the second, too: That Washington Post leak was brutal. I can't agree with the third.

Moore says that Snow is right about the dollar, which should be set by markets and not politicians. I think that oversimplifies the issues involved, but let's assume Snow is right. Does it really make sense to have a Treasury secretary whose inartful comments roil the currency markets? (The second Treasury secretary in a row, I might add.)

Speaking of inartful comments: Moore defends Snow's pre-election remarks about the jobs situation in Ohio by not directly quoting them. The thrust of his remarks, Moore says, was accurate. Well, that's lovely. Cabinet secretaries are, however, supposed to have enough political competence to avoid saying things that can be taken out of context in a way that is damaging to the president. Appearing to say that job losses in Ohio were a "myth" was not at all helpful to Snow's boss.

And this record does make one wonder about what Snow might say while Congress is debating Social Security reform.

David Brooks notes the link between family size and party affiliation. (And he's got a good headline, too.) A friend emailed me yesterday about a related trend: "I was looking through some demographic numbers today and came across something very interesting in a publication by the National Center for Health Statistics. The data was from 2002 and show the median age of women in each state at first birth. In states where the median age at first birth is 24 or less, Bush won 199-3 in electoral votes. The only exception was DC. In states with a median age at first birth of 25, the electoral vote split was 118-87 in Kerry's favor. In states with a median age of 26 or more, Kerry won 131-0."

Brooks tries, unpersuasively, to minimize the political effects of the trend he describes. Politicians shouldn't "pander" to natalists because they are less interested in money than in values, and they should understand that the natalists are too busy to be culture warriors. Well, there's pandering and there's pandering. Federal tax policy has gotten much tougher on large middle-class families over the last few decades, and I suspect that they would appreciate a reversal of that trend. Social Security is an implicit tax on large families, and I can see a case for reducing its anti-natalist bias. As for the "culture wars"--horrible phrase--I suspect that large families do tend to have more conservative views on issues such as abortion. People with conservative social views must be more likely to have large families in the first place, and then having them reinforces those views. Can Brooks really think otherwise?

Maybe it's just me, but I think there's a certain poetry that today is the anniversary of Pearl Harbor and it is also the date that the first popularly elected President of Afghanistan was sworn-in. 9/11 was our Pearl Harbor and just three years afterwards we've made taken this huge symbolic stride.

Today happens to be my 25th wedding anniversary. My father-in-law was the first to suggest our nuptials would be another great American disaster. The Charming and Delightful and I disagree.
Cheers to us, and doubly to NR for 50 great years. Congratulations!

The law said that defendants like Mr. Pabon, who was convicted two years ago of advertising to receive or distribute child pornography over the Internet, should be fined or receive a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years "and both."

The appeals court said this language "makes no sense."

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Crusading New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer will announce Tuesday that he will run for governor in 2006, his spokeswoman Cindy Darrison said.

"He's announcing that he has decided to run for governor," Darrison said of the state's top prosecutor, who has used his office to take on Wall Street for fraudulent stock research, and mutual funds for overcharging ordinary customers.

Poor Frank J. he's been emailing me for weeks. He's threatened to kidnap Cosmo. He's flattered, he's cajoled, he's made some funny jokes. And all the while I've refused to endorse him as the best humor blogger in those now hopelessly befuddled Weblog Awards. Indeed, I turned my indifference up an existential notch. I refused to care who wins said award. But then James Taranto went and endorsed Scappleface as the funniest blog, or hairiest blogger or something. Again: the caring is not a huge priority. But poor Frank seems to care. Apparently Scrappleface is the one-eyebrowed baby to his Maggie Simpson. Right now he's huddled in the corner screaming "it burns! it burns!" but when I told him I'd put a good word in their for him, he started shrieking "Festival! Festival!" like the those Landru-worshipping Archons and gleefully twirling around the room like Michael Moore after those first bogus exit poll numbers came in.

So anyway, as Bernie Bernbaum says to Tom in Miller's Crossing, "look in your heart" and see if you can throw a vote or two towards this pathetic, twisted angry young man. You can read some of his stuff here and here. But please note, I am not disparaging Scappleface nor am I trying to engage Jim Taranto in a proxy war, though that might be fun.

I am pleased that the chain-of-command issues Chairman Duncan Hunter has raised have been resolved so that our war-fighters will not be put at risk. Unfortunately, even with these improvements, the current bill is woefully incomplete and one I cannot support.

Americans deserve a complete bill so that we can prevent another 9/11 from occurring. Border security and immigration reform are vital components of our homeland security efforts, so why are they not included in this legislation? The time to address these issues is now, not next month, not next year. Hollow promises of future consideration are just that - hollow promises.

Marta Andreasen was the EU’s chief accountant. Here’s what happened to her:

“In 2002 I was appointed chief accountant to the European Commission to help — as I then believed — to reform the inadequate systems and stamp out fraud. I drew attention to those inadequacies; I refused to sign accounts that I believed unreliable; for two years I was suspended from my job, obliged to live in Brussels yet forbidden to enter any EU building; and in October I was dismissed, the charge against me being disloyalty, a decision against which I am appealing.”

It appears that the results of last night's talks are:

1. Sides agreed that the Supreme Court decision gave the framework for resolving the political conflict and must be carried out by all sides.
2. Sides agreed that the President would cut short the authority of the Central Election Commission and introduce changes to the make-up of the CEC and submit those changes to the Parliament for ratification.
3. Sides agreed that changes and amendments need to made to the law on presidential elections to make them transparent leading to a fair vote that would limit abuse and falsification.

It also appears that once points 2 + 3 are completed, the opposition will unblock access to government buildings. (Though I surely hope they monitor who goes in and out of the president's administration building - - and what they come out with.)

These things were agreed to by Yushchenko, Yanukovych (with reservations); Lytvyn (given they are upheld by Parliament’s Council of Faction Leaders and Committee Chairmen); and Kuchma (same reservations as Lytvyn).

As I understand it going into the talks, Viktor Yushchenko wanted two groups of issues discussed: a small group and a wider group. The aforementioned issues is what he would refer to as the small group. We’ll see if and when the Rada and President move on these issues. Hopefully, today.

At the table talks the problems occurred in the voting over the wider set of issues.

And at the Parliament (Rada)

Yesterday, the Rada agreed to the following sequence of events: Kuchma dismisses government; then parliament votes in a block changes and amendments to the election law and to the constitution. The changes to the constitution take effect September 1, 2005 if the changes to local self-government are approved. If not, then the changes to the constitution take effect January 1, 2006.

At this point we understand that Yanukovych did not agree on dismissal of the government and instead took a leave of absence (or vacation). This is what broke off talks between the sides.

This was not something that Kuchma was expecting. He thought the opposition would not agree to the changes in the constitution and thus he could blame the lack of progress on Yushchenko. Now it turns out his own man - - or the man who had up until that point been "his" man - - is holding up the progress and not letting Kuchma get the "reforms" sought by the president. This deserves very close scrutiny.

Some Muslim activists are attempting to have Danish broadcasters prosecuted under blasphemy laws for having broadcast an extract from the murdered Theo van Gogh’s Submission. Doubtless the case will fail, but in the current climate the chilling effect on free speech of such litigation should not be underestimated.

It’s time to repeal such laws. All of them.

I have no knowledge about this myself, but it's an interesting take, from a reader:

It was interesting that you posted an email where the poster who claims embryos aren't human as they haven't yet implanted. Up until the mid 1950s the consensus of science was that life began when the egg was fertilized. So why the change in the 50s? Simple-it was the development of the IUD for birth control. Since it works by preventing implantation the pharmaceutical companies started a massive PR campaign to change the definition of conception from when the egg was fertilized to when it was implanted. obviously they were very successful.

argued that the stem-cell controversy would be good for abortion rights a few years ago. I can't find a link to her column, but here's what I said about it at the time. Michael Kinsley wrote a smarter column (natch) that was more analytical about the link, drawing the same conclusion with less celebration.

When embryo-destructive research first became a controversy, the late Robert Bartley argued that it would end up being the reverse of partial-birth abortion. Just as pro-choice arguments look their weakest and most theoretical at the end of pregnancy, pro-life ones look the most abstract and least compelling at the front end. Focusing attention on partial-birth abortion thus weakened the pro-choice movement generally, and Bartley thought that stem-cell research would weaken pro-lifers.

That's probably the way to bet. There is, however, another possibility. The risks pro-lifers made in raising partial-birth abortion as an issue is that it would a) make other abortions seem better, and b) end up increasing liberal support for infanticide. The debate over stem-cell research carries some risk, how big I would not venture a guess, for pro-choicers. So much of the time they are turning their argument on the fact that the early human embryo has no limbs, has no heart, is "undifferentiated," etc.--the more they stress this, perhaps, the more it will begin to seem wrong that they believe it should be possible to kill young human beings when they do have hearts, limbs, internal differentiation, etc. I may be grasping for a silver lining here.

One point several angry or objecting pro-choice or pro-stem cell readers keep making is that I admit my argument wasn't "logical." Actually, the point of that line was to say that the motivation on the part of the pro-stem cell folks wasn't entirely logical. I wasn't clear.

Let me try again. When I was talking about motivation, I was talking about a general psychological approach to the issue which infects the politics of the issue. I wasn't talking about the scientific facts. There are, in my mind at least, very real differences between abortion and embryonic stem cell research. But I think people -- on both sides -- have a more global approach to the issue which contains some irrationalism. The irrational connection of stem cells, abortion and progress is what I intended to call illogical. I think my argument is fairly logical and accurately describes some of what is going on. I don't think one could fairly accuse me of saying it describes everything that's going on on the pro-stem cell side. But just in case that's not clear: I think it's obvious there are other motivations at work as well.

Two emails, the first is from a friend who works on these issues closely:

Dear Jonah: I couldn't agree more about your stem cell point. Embryonic stem cell research doesn't involve abortion per se, of course, since it involves embryos before implantation in the womb, but the basic point that an important element of the enthusiasm for it on the left has to do with the fact that it puts the pro-lifers on the side of the dark ages seems right to me. In the abortion debate, the pro-life forces can speak about love and compassion and equality, while the pro-choice folks have to appeal to abstract notions of freedom or else concoct imaginary oppressions or newly minted rights. In the stem cell debate, on the other hand, the pro-life forces are stuck defending the humanity of a microscopic organism that looks nothing like anyone, while the pro-choice (now dubbed "pro-research") forces can speak about compassion and help for the suffering, and the like. Of course, the basic issue is the same: the defense of the defenseless against the selfishness of the strong; but the emotional calculus (on which, frankly, so much rests in both cases) is very different.

Watching the Democratic convention this summer, I found myself wondering why
speaker after speaker brought up the stem cell issue, and why the audience
seemed so energized by it. There were many reasons, I'm sure, but one key
one must have been that the issue offers a way for pro-abortion types to
stake out what feels like a kind of moral high ground, and to feel like the
expansion of license is akin to the progress of science.

and from a reader...

Jonah,

I'm on board with you as far as the non-embryonic research is concerned. However, the pro-life crowd has hijacked the stem cell debate much as the pro-choice crowd has. Naturally, abortion proponents don't want to see embryonic stem cell research banned because that would be tantamount to assigning some intrinsic value to the embryo. Taken to its conclusion, this could mean that they openly root for success in embryonic research and failure in other non-controversial types of research.

The pro-life people want to see the cord blood/adult stem cell route succeed so they can credibly add "Because embryonic research doesn't work as well, anyway" to their list of reasons for wanting it banned. Whether embryonic stem cell research works or doesn't work has little to do with the pro-life argument for wanting it banned. However, if it can be proven to be inferior to the cord blood alternative, the "miracle cure" red herring will be squashed and the ban will be easier to get passed.

K-Lo -- I know you've probably heard this argument a zillion times because you follow this stuff far more than I do. But it's always seemed to me that one strong motivation for pursuing embryonic stem cell research over less offensive techniques has been simply that it would make abortion "necessary." I completely understand this isn't a completely logical argument, but I think the reproductive freedom crowd is enamored with the idea of tying abortion to "progress" in as many ways as possible. The less it's solely about lifestyle and the more it's part of the larger technological-cultural momentum toward Something Better, the more easy it is for them to paint those who stand in their way as not merely "anti-woman" and "anti-choice" (a slogan itself designed to convey the alleged anti-modernism of abortion foes) but "anti-progress." In other words, those other stem cell avenues aren't merely less exciting -- because compromise in such existential battles is always unexciting -- they are less useful.

If abortions helped solve global warming, I'm sure lots of people would be not-too-secretly delighted.

From a reader:

Jonah:

I couldn't agree more with your point. One thing that
really got to me about this story was how the Army
keeps to its rules- just look at the picture in the
story you linked, of Jenkins saluting and the salute
being returned. Furthermore, the Army actually got him
a fully up to date uniform, with all of his rank
insignia, decorations, and so on, to wear at the court
martial. After all, he was still on active duty after
all these years, just AWOL. They must have had to hunt
down ribbons that haven't been issued in decades, not
to mention making a uniform that would fit his frame,
probably unique in the armed forces. He was even
wearing the black beret the Army only adopted a few
years back.

I think this says something profoundly positive about
our military and country.

I'm all in favor of people getting justice for their crimes and all that stuff. But there are some mistakes whose consequences are so severe that further legal punishment really doesn't make any sense. For example, I think people should pay a fine if they try to feed cigars to bears at the zoo. But, if in the process the bear bites off half your face, the courts should pretty much stay out of it.

The story of Robert Jenkins seems to fall pretty squarely into that category. Desertion is bad and should be punished. Defection is even worse. But forty years of hell in North Korea seems to have been a pretty good punishment for his actions. He wasted his whole life, and regretted his decision every day. I was glad to see the army went relatively easy on the guy -- dishonorable discharge, demotion, but only 25 days in the stockade -- while still upholding the principle that what he did was unforgivable. He reportedly had to share as much intelligence as he could as well. If he'd spent the last forty years living it up in a Russian dacha, I would have been glad to see him spend the remainder of his days behind bars. But this seems like the right call to me.

Most people tell their browser to not underline links? He's kidding, right? "Most people" can't find Tools-internet options [KJL: or the time!] to empty their own Temporary Internet files, much less tell it how to display links.

I think Drudgereport looks just fine in it's uber-uglified underlined-linkiness. And NRO is nice and neat without blue lettering scarring up the landscape.

Someone needs to relax a little.

The vast majority of emailers who have an opinion on the subject have this opinion, more or less:

This guy says "Most people tell their browser to not underline links".

What polling company did he use to come up with that? Zogby?

I think you'd find in a scientific poll of 1000 likely browser users that
most people don't even know how to turn the underlining off (although they
do now, since you've published it).

But what do I know. I personally like the underlined links. Makes them
easier to see.

Everyone in Moscow wants to be in Kiev.

I had no idea this might be an issue. Kathryn should we have someone flogged? From a reader:

Most people tell their browser to not underline links (Tools-internet options-advanced then choose underline links-never). For instance, the Drudgereport, washingpost, etc all look much better with links NOT underlined.

Color, not underlining, is used to mark links, blue especially. For some f--ked up reason NRO chooses not to make links blue or any other color and so i (along with many others) constantly have to run my pointer along the sentence to find the link.

the result is, with my browser, the Corner does not LOOK like a blog. there are no links visible anywhere on the page. the menu buttons in the navigation bar are obviously links but otherwise the Corner defies www linking conventions.

in spite of this odd behavior i read the corner every day. thanks and congradulations on a great site (but please make your links blue).

The EU Observer has the details:

"According to Dutch daily De Volkskrant on Saturday (4 December), a police raid in September 2003 revealed dangerous abuses of environmental and safety standards at a reactor based in Petten, which is owned by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre.

However, documents from the Dutch Justice Ministry, obtained by the paper, show that the Dutch government hindered further judicial investigations against the plant. The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs allegedly feared a diplomatic conflict with the European Commission.

The Commission had stated in a series of letters to the Dutch authorities that it would find prosecution of the Petten plant staff unacceptable, as Commission employees working at Petten possess legal immunity in the Netherlands.

Ongoing investigations against the plant by the Dutch public prosecutor were therefore hastily broken off in March 2004. However, after the police raid, Dutch prosecution authorities characterised the situation at Petten as very serious. The investigations had revealed that toxic waste was stored without protection, bearing a risk of explosion. "

As we enter this critical week the Constitutional Court tomorrow is suppose to rule on the validity of the government's dismissal. The Parliament's consultative meeting has proposed candidacies for the new Central Electoral Committee--80% of the current members, minus the present chairman and one or two others. And, Kuchma has gone on record that the Supreme Court's ruling must be implemented.

But what does any of this mean?

According to Viktor Yushchenko--speaking to the demonstrators in Independence Square yesterday--the next three days are absolutely critical.

The Supreme Court victory on Friday was huge, and the momentum clearly has built in favor of the people of Ukraine and Yushchenko but this is Ukraine. The will of the people and rationale standards of behavior and following laws are what is at issue--the people in power do not "play" by those rules and those standards. To the extent Kuchma and company are even influenced by law and rationale standards it is only because high-priced and mostly foreign advisors try to coat and spin their lawless and criminal behavior in terms of national interests and protecting society.

This struggle is a long way from over. Everything remains in doubt--serious doubt. President Kuchma--always the meticulous, clawing, determined thug--has not given up and is following a methodical "anybody but Yushchenko campaign."

Kuchma is also trying to press the necessary number of parliamentarians into amending the constitution before the revote to limit the powers of the presidency--to make sure that if Yushchenko does win it will be a hollow victory and the Kuchmnestas can continue to control Ukraine and the citizens of Ukraine from another power base. The horse trading going on in Parliament today involves the dilution of the powers of the presidency, by shifting some powers to the parliament and Prime Minister effective January 1, 2005. Yushchenko's team supports the constitutional reforms, but wants them to go into effect after the March 2006 parliamentary elections, when a new parliamentary election on proportional party list basis can form a cabinet of ministers for which it will be accountable. Kuchma supporters and allies of the Communist Leader Symonenko and Socialist Leader Moroz want the changes to take effect next month, leaving Yushchenko with very limited presidential powers. Critical negotiations on these issues are taking place in Kyiv today.

Note also the potential for Kuchma to hold out long enough--in not dismissing the government, the Central Election Commission, etc.--to have the December 26th election take place and be just as disgraceful and farce as that which took place on November 21st--remember all the same players, including eastern oblast chiefs--and with the same result--an election all election monitors proclaim to have been contrary to international norms. Then Kuchma might declare some sort of a state of an emergency, renounce the election and the candidates and--posing as some sort of statesman--try to start the entire process over without either of the "offending" candidates "in the interests of Ukraine."

Never forget the lengths to which these people will go--

PETER ROBINSON: I’m going to quote…from an essay. [Proceeding to read from Wolfe’s famous essay in Forbes ASAP:]

“I had a picture of modern man plunging headlong back into the primordial ooze….He’s floundering, sloshing about, gulping for air, frantically treading ooze when he feels something huge and smooth swim up beneath him and boost him up like some almighty dolphin. He can’t see it, but he’s much impressed. He names it God.”

Does Tom Wolfe believe in God?

TOM WOLFE: No.

From a blogger who wishes to remain anonymous:

Jonah-

Why don't hardcore bloggers consider The Corner a
blog? Well, ya'll are missing a couple of key
elements that separate you from the rest of the
blogosphere: a blogroll and links within posts to
other blogs.

Beyond occasional links to Glenn Reynolds, The Corner
writers rarely connect with the rest of the
blogosphere. You have no one to blame but yourselves
for this reputation.

[name withheld]

Now, it's true we don't have a long line of links along the side. But as for not linking to other blogs, that's just factually not true. Just ask all the people who yell at me for paying attention to Andrew Sullivan, Matt Yglesias, Kevin Drum etc. I see links in just the last few days to all sorts of blogs. Stuttaford links to blogs a lot. But I guess we don't do it as much as others do. If that's why the Corner's not a blog in some bloggers' minds, okay. But maybe that says more and less than this correspondent thinks.

To head-off a lot of email, let me just tell you the results from our poll from the
Spring of 1999: They were:

In the Heat of the Night (129) 9%

Raging Bull (156) 11%

The Rocky Movies (233) 17%

The Bridge on the River Kwai (409) 29%

Cool Hand Luke (474) 34%

This was whittled down from a very long list of movies I don't have time to reconstruct. Also, to head-off even more email, I am very aware that Cool Hand Luke was the answer to the same question from the TV show Cheers.

From the AP:

CONNANTRAY-VAUREFROY, France - A French soldier who locked himself in an explosives depot and threatened to blow it up surrendered Monday, ending a three-day standoff, the Interior Ministry said.

Lots of folks keep emailing me to ask why I/we care about winning blog awards. I don't want to speak for K-Lo who runs the show around here, but I'd be shocked if she violently disagreed with me. I don't care that much. It's nice. It's good. It's flattering and reassuring. It's better than losing. But NRO (as I often tell quite a few Corner readers) is about a heck of a lot more than just the Corner. And while I'm just an editor-at-large now, I am still a jealous defender and promoter of this ol' rustbucket.

That said, it does bother me that the Corner doesn't get the props it deserves. Journalists are constantly writing stories about blogs, but they don't think the Corner counts because magazine blogs don't fit their storylines about the pajamahedeen and all that (historical note: I was writing about writing in my underwear -- never mind my spaghetti strainer codpiece -- long before anyone heard of blogs). When the Corner pretty much swept the Washington Post's blog survey recently there was barely a ripple of press attention. That's fine, in the big scheme of things it's not a hot story like the release of a hot dog toaster thingamajig. But I just know that if the Daily Kos or some such won those awards we'd be hearing a lot about it. And, I must say, NRO gets it from both ends. We are sufficiently huge that the bloggers often treat us like we're Big Media. We're strangers in both lands.

But enough of that. Here's something I don't understand. The Corner on a fairly good day can have 100,000+ readers. My understanding is that Instapundit and a few others do even better. I also assume that most blog readers couldn't bother to vote in such polls. I don't blame them. But can someone explain to me how it is that the total number of votes cast in the Weblog Awards for best blog is only 37 thousand after days of voting, when you're allowed to vote again every day. Doesn't that seem remarkably low? These are the most popular blogs, after all. Is it because the universe of blog readers is much smaller -- and much more shared -- than we've been lead to expect? Is it because for all the enthusiasm at the top, most people don't care enough about blogs to even vote? Is it something technological or strategic (fear of cookies or some such?). I noticed a similar phenomenon when I ran polls in the very early days of NRO (What was the sweatiest movie ever made? for example). The number of respondents would always be tiny compared to our readership. Anyway, I just don't get it.

Kathryn - Here's more Reid on Thomas and the Court (via Drudge), who knew he was such a deep thinker?

When asked to comment on Thomas as a possible replacement for Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Reid told NBC's "Meet the Press": "I think that he has been an embarrassment to the Supreme Court.

"I think that his opinions are poorly written. I just don't think that he's done a good job as a Supreme Court justice."

Rehnquist announced he had thyroid cancer earlier this year, and there has been speculation about a possible replacement should he retire.

Kathy Arberg, a spokeswoman for the Supreme Court, said Thomas' policy is not to comment on such matters.

But the Nevada Democrat said that he could support Thomas' fellow conservative, Justice Antonin Scalia, if he were nominated.

"I cannot dispute the fact, as I have said, that this is one smart guy," Reid said of Scalia. "And I disagree with many of the results that he arrives at, but his reasons for arriving at those results are very hard to dispute."

Citing a hunting trip Scalia took with Dick Cheney before hearing a case involving the commission the vice president set up to work on an energy bill, Reid said the justice has some ethics problems.

"So we have to get over this," he said.

Incoming Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid said yesterday that Democrats would vigorously oppose the privatization of Social Security, a proposed constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage and any effort to appoint as U.S. chief justice Clarence Thomas, whom he referred to as "an embarrassment."

New York – The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is demanding airline carriers “immediately” report each incident that could be considered a security threat – first to the TSA rather than any other law enforcement agency, including the FBI, reports TIME’s Sally Donnelly.

ONLINE

The airlines tell TIME that being forced to report even minor incidents is unnecessary and will add delays. “The TSA has no idea what they are getting into,” says one airline-industry source. “The airlines get thousands of prank calls a year, and there are thousands more disruptive passengers who turn out to be drunks, not terrorists.”

Ken Maxwell, a former counterterrorism official who is now vice president of security for JetBlue Airways, says he is “very concerned” that the new TSA rules will hinder security.

Here's a follow-up to Peter Robinson's comment about the three royals who lived from 1738 to 2002. Not so impressive for longevity, but illustrative of how short our history is: John Quincy Adams turned nine years old the year of the Declaration of Independence. When he was very old, he met a little boy named Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr, who turned seven the year Adams died. When Holmes was an aged justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, one of his clerks was named Alger Hiss. Hiss died in 1996 at the age of 92. Three long lives (1767-1848, 1841-1935, 1904-1996) spanned 220 years of our history as a nation, and each man knew the one before. Three lives that in their understanding of politics went from good to bad to worse, but that's another subject.

I have not yet read John J. Miller and Mark Molesky's Our Oldest Enemy. Now that I have read the review published in today's New York Times Book Review, I know the book is a must-read. Miller and Molesky have reduced Bernard-Henri Levy to sputtering and frothing at the mouth: "racism . . . fascism . . . caricature . . . lunacy." Levy's review is a veritable invitation to stereotype all Frenchmen as incapable of constructing an argument. Must . . . resist . . . temptation.

There was a murder last week in London of a prominent financier, stabbed to death in his home in a very Ritzy part of the city by burglars. His wife was badly injured by the same assailants and it was left to their nine-year-old daughter to find her parents and call for help.

A paricularly terrifying aspect of this crime is how helpless the victims were. A report in the London Times notes that “burglars who carry weapons are most likely to strike between the hours of 6pm and 11pm, knowing they are breaking into houses when the homeowners are there.”Of course they are. Under Britain’s lunatic firearms laws homeowners are left largely unable to defend themselves. In the wake of this crime, there have, at last, been proposals to increase the level of force with which householders can defend themselves. Allowing them guns, however, remains unacceptable.

It wouldn’t be civilized you see.

Here’s an account of a pro-Yankovych demonstration in Eastern Ukraine earlier last week. The most striking thing about it – the protestors were rallying beneath a huge statue of Lenin.

That murderer and despot still has his admirers in Donetsk, it seems.

Revealing. And revolting.

From the Daily Telegraph:

“Ken Livingstone [has] announced a 60 per cent increase in the London congestion charge, drawing criticism from motoring organisations and business leaders. The increase, from £5 a day to £8, provoked accusations of bad faith against the city's mayor, who indicated at the time of the scheme's launch two years ago that the toll would not be raised for 10 years.”

The phrase to use, I think, is “told you so.”

Some people still don’t get it:

”A small group of Muslims in the Netherlands is preparing a lawsuit to block a sequel to Submission, the movie scripted by a right-wing lawmaker and directed by a slain Dutch filmmaker, the group's lawyer said Thursday.”

Charming.

The now identified Dagmara (“I loooove this woman) is, readers tell me, on TV tonight in, sigh, a Hallmark Entertainment Production of "The Five People You Meet in Heaven", one of the more hellish ideas for a TV movie that I have heard recently.

What to do?

Cold Case beckons, I think.

That the former democracy known as Belgium has the misfortune to be run by Western Europe’s most unpleasant establishment is no secret, but it’s disappointing nevertheless to see that the thuggery has spread to the country’s royalty.

The Belgian newspaper De Standaard is reporting that the heir to the throne had this to say recently:

"Some people and parties, like the Vlaams Belang, are against Belgium and want to destroy our country. I can assure you that they will have to deal with me in that case. And make no mistake about it: if needed I can be a pretty tough one.”

Who, I wonder, does this princeling think he is?

Over at the Live from Brussels Blog, Maarten is not impressed. Citing the electoral success of Vlaams Belang (Flemish separatists and much more besides, not all of it likeable), he has this to say:

“More that one million people voted for the Vlaams Belang (about 25% of the vote in Flanders), while prince Philippe got no votes at all, he just owes his position to being born from the right womb.”

That’s right. If the prince wants to go into politics, he’s free to do, but he should renounce his claim to the throne.

Perhaps (he says, removing his tinfoil hat) it is too much to say that the UN’s sudden interest in combating opium production in Afghanistan is deliberate sabotage of allied efforts over there, but take a look at what the troops on the ground have to say:

'The guys have been out there, building relationships with local people that brings in crucial intelligence and keeps us safe. If the same guys start kicking down doors and reporting on ordinary people who are just trying to earn a living in difficult circumstances, then they are not going to see us as friends anymore,' one soldier, recently returned from Afghanistan, told The Observer.”

Needless to say, the US drug warriors (to whom the war on Islamic terror is evidently of very secondary importance) don’t see things that way:

“'We believe that if there is a heroin poppy that needs to be eradicated, we shouldn't be picking and choosing, we shouldn't be waiting for an alternative revenue stream to become available,' Robert Charles, the Assistant Secretary of State for international narcotics, told a Congress committee recently.”

Talk about digging a deeper hole.

If it is felt necessary to do something about Afghan opium production, a much better policy would be for the US/UN to buy up the crop (bought direct from the farmers, it wouldn’t be expensive), and then either destroy it or use those naughty poppies for ‘legitimate’ pharmaceutical use. Doing so would put money into the local economy and disrupt the narco-trade. The current policy, by contrast, will end in disaster.

Reliable Sources is now over. But the satellite signals from that broadcast are heading off into space where an adaptive race lacking its own rich culture will use that show as a template for a whole new society based upon the principles of my punditry. So, I got that going for me.

Which is nice...

The United States has lost the war in Iraq, and that's a good thing.

I don't mean that the loss of American and Iraqi lives is to be celebrated. The death and destruction are numbingly tragic, and the suffering in Iraq is hard for most of us in the United States to comprehend. The tragedy is compounded because these deaths haven't protected Americans or brought freedom to Iraqis — they have come in the quest to extend the American empire in this so-called "new American century."

So, as a U.S. citizen, I welcome the U.S. defeat, for a simple reason: It isn't the defeat of the United States — its people or their ideals — but of that empire. And it's essential the American empire be defeated and dismantled.

The fact the Bush administration says we are fighting for freedom and democracy (having long ago abandoned fictions about weapons of mass destruction and terrorist ties) does not make it so. We must look at the reality, no matter how painful. The people of Iraq are better off without Saddam Hussein's despised regime, but that does not prove our benevolent intentions nor guarantee the United States will work to bring meaningful democracy to Iraq.

Throughout history, our support for democracies has depended on their support for U.S. policy. When democratic governments follow an independent course, they typically end up as targets of U.S. power, military or economic. Ask Venezuela's Hugo Chavez or Haiti's Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

In Iraq, the Bush administration invaded not to liberate but to extend and deepen U.S. domination. When Bush says, "We have no territorial ambitions; we don't seek an empire," he tells a half-truth. The United States doesn't want to absorb Iraq nor take direct possession of its oil. That's not the way of empire today — it's about control over the flow of oil and oil profits, not ownership.

In a world that runs on oil, the nation that controls the flow of oil has great strategic power. U.S. policymakers want leverage over the economies of its competitors — Western Europe, Japan and China — which are more dependent on Middle Eastern oil. Hence the longstanding U.S. policy of support for reactionary regimes (Saudi Arabia), dictatorships (Iran under the Shah) and regional military surrogates (Israel), aimed at maintaining control.

The Bush administration has invested money and lives in making Iraq a platform from which the United States can project power — from permanent U.S. bases, officials hope. That requires not the liberation of Iraq, but its subordination. But most Iraqis don't want to be subordinated, which is why the United States in some sense lost the war the day it invaded. One lesson of contemporary history is that occupying armies generate resistance that, inevitably, prevails over imperial power.

Most Iraqis are glad Saddam is gone, and most want the United States gone. When we admit defeat and pull out — not if, but when — the fate of Iraqis depends in part on whether the United States (1) makes good on legal and moral obligations to pay reparations, and (2) allows international institutions to aid in creating a truly sovereign Iraq.

We shouldn't expect politicians to do either without pressure. An anti-empire movement — the joining of antiwar forces with the movement to reject corporate globalization — must create that pressure. Failure will add to the suffering in Iraq and more clearly mark the United States as a rogue state and an impediment to a just and peaceful world.

So, I'm glad for the U.S. military defeat in Iraq, but with no joy in my heart. We should all carry a profound sense of sadness at where decisions made by U.S. policy-makers — not just the gang in power today, but a string of Republican and Democratic administrations — have left us and the Iraqis. But that sadness should not keep us from pursuing the most courageous act of citizenship in the United States today: Pledging to dismantle the American empire....

K-Lo: I don't know if you were watching the Army-Navy game or if they showed the halftime show, but when the President changed sides from Army to Navy at the half, a spontaneous chant of "Four more years" rose up from the midshipmen. I can't be sure but I think it spread around the entire stadium. It was probably the biggest assemblage of supporters since, and perhaps including, the convention. Maybe it was inappropriate given our office, but it certainly felt good.

To revert to a topic we touched on a few days ago. Is atheism compatible with conservatism?

Wise words from a reader:

“My own take, as an atheist, is that it is eminently possible. My movement rightward was a direct result of reflection and experience, namely regarding human nature, and did not involve an embrace of religion, although my respect for religion has gone up greatly. Conservatism, as I see it, is ultimately about acknowledging and respecting the lessons of experience in shaping and preserving the social, political, and economic institutions that make a society “work.” This acknowledges the role that Theism has played, without requiring one to actually be a theist.”

Indeed.

Mrs. Clinton's high unfavorability ratings may help explain why a discussion has begun among her advisers over whether she should skip a Senate re-election campaign in 2006 and instead focus all her energies on a race for the White House.

The most obvious challenge that Mrs. Clinton faces in running for both jobs is a compressed political calendar that leaves her very little room to maneuver: The Iowa presidential caucuses are held just 14 months after Election Day in 2006.

If Mrs. Clinton stuck to the schedule that John Kerry followed during this presidential election cycle, she would have to give a clear indication of her desire to run for the presidency a mere month after her Senate race was over.

But that seems unlikely, some political analysts say, because the timing would be awkward.

Yet some people close to Mrs. Clinton maintain that the tight calendar should not be a problem because she is such a big celebrity, and any presidential campaign she embarks upon would instantly attract a huge amount of attention.

But other Democrats and independent political strategists say that her celebrity is a double-edged sword: While Mrs. Clinton does indeed enjoy a level of name recognition other politicians crave, she has earned a reputation that, fairly or not, makes her a polarizing figure among moderate swing voters, an important bloc nationally.

The wealthy, ignorant thugs who make up the core of the ‘anti-globalization’ movement are not, it seems, content to confine themselves to robbing the rest of the world of its hopes of a prosperous future. They like a little theft in the here and now.

From the Independent:

“Italian anti-globalisation activists helped themselves to a gourmet meal, leaving nothing but a thank you note telling the restaurant owner he was the victim of "collateral damage" in their fight against war and poverty.”

It seems that Europe is, at last, waking up to the evil that state-sanctioned multiculturalism has allowed to flourish in that continent.

From the London Times:

“A few days ago, pop celebrities joined 2,000 people in a march through Marseilles denouncing violence against women, particularly in the immigrant-dominated housing estates. The protest against Islamic “obscurantism” and the “fundamentalism that imprisons women” was led by a group of Muslim women who call themselves Ni Putes ni Soumises (Neither Whores nor Submissive).”

And there’s much more.

Also encouraging, signs that people are beginning to notice that “Islamophobia” is a bogus notion, a gimcrack confection cooked up to stifle debate, disagreement and century after century of progress.