Inspired by a poem I read at BLACKFIVE the military blog, I wrote a comment that I was going to leave an empty space at our Christmas dinner table as a reminder of the troops. It would be an inspiration for our prayers for their safety and a symbol of pride for their mission. I am going to do it. I wrote to Jim Vicevich at WTIC radio here in CT and asked if he could spread the idea if he thought it was good. Unlike you guys he responds once in a while to my e-mails. In any event, if one of you thinks that the idea has merit perhaps you could put it in your blog. Mine is too new to have an effect. You people are established.

I am not interested in credit for the idea so take it and do what you will. I just think that it is a simple thing that could bring some focus for those kids over there. They are of an age to be my kids, so it is easier for me than for you young people.

Well, that didn’t take long, did it?

"Leveraging his best-selling memoir, Sen.-elect Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is poised to sign a three-book deal landing him a $1.9 million advance."

…finished in Australia, it seems.

“AN evangelical Christian group incited hatred and severe ridicule of Muslims when it called them demons, liars and terrorists, a tribunal ruled yesterday. In the landmark ruling, Catch the Fire Ministries pastors Daniel Nalliah and Daniel Scot were found guilty of religious vilification, making them the first under Victoria's new race and religion hate laws.”

Now what that group had to say sounds pretty crass to me, but the key point about the right of free speech is that - if it is to mean anything - it must extend to those whose views are not in the mainstream. In Australia, it appears, it no longer does.

Multiculturalism or free speech? You choose. You can’t have both.

Here’s a delightful story from the Saudi dictatorship:

“Jeddah (AsiaNews) – A Saudi citizen converted to Christianity has been arrested and jailed. Emad Alaabadi was taken into custody last November 29, at Hofuf, a town in eastern Saudi Arabia, but the news was reported only a few days ago by the International Christian Concern (ICC), a Washington-based human rights group. AsiaNews local sources have confirmed the report, and also say that he “is not the only Saudi Christian in jail at the moment: there are also others”. According to news obtained by ICC, other Christians – at least 3 or 4 – appear to have been arrested along with Emad.”

Now, I understand perfectly well that – for now – the West still has to have dealings with the repulsive regime that runs 'Saudi' Arabia, but I am at a loss to understand how anyone – let alone anyone professing a strong Christian faith – is willing to treat its representatives as honored guests, sponsors or friends.

And if you think I’m referring to the Bush family, you are right.

Via Viking Pundit.

Thanks for all the emails on one side and the other. I just don't have the energy to re-re-re-re-launch that debate right now in the Corner. Maybe I'll write -- sigh -- another drug war column this week. For the record, I do think Andrew makes some fine points, though I think there are some fine responses to them. As for the view advanced by both he and Jon that heroin potency and/or consumption would decrease from legalization I remain unpersuaded in part because I don't buy the direct comparison to alcohol. I do agree that the comparison of booze to pot works better, which is one of the reasons I'm for decriminalizing pot. I simply doubt you'll ever get me to be in favor of decriminaling heroin. My hope remains that technology will solve the problem of heroin, either by nullifying its addictiveness or by simply creating much, much better and safer drugs which make heroin obsolete. But that's all an argument for another day.

From another reader:

Jonah -

Seems to me a lot of your anti-death penalty folks ought to be asked squarely whether they think "killing" and "murder" mean exactly the same thing.

The Commandment, which English translations usually render as "Thou shalt not kill", says plainly in the Hebrew "Don't murder".

The whole point, it seems to me, is that this compels us to think and pray and debate the distinction.

Your guy who thinks the death penalty is state-sanctioned murder - well, does he think that's what all state-sanctioned killing is ? Like killing a Taliban dude who's aiming his AK right atcha ?

I have no objection to the point of view in the email. Or I should say, i respect the position of this emailer even if I disagree with it. What I was referring to was the argument made by some, including our own Rod Dreher if I recall, that doubt about the guilt of some somehow mitigates the case for executing those about whom there is no doubt. Anyway:

Dear Sir; I consider myself a Libertarian-Conservative and am also a practicing Catholic. You state, "You must defend the right to life of the people who do horrible things like this. And I suspect that will be very, very hard to do in this case. " I don't think so at all. I oppose the Death Penalty, period. I oppose it for Saddam Hussein, I would have opposed it for Adolf Hitler and I will oppose for these people, too. The Death Penalty is state-sanctioned Murder, just as is Abortion. It is wrong, in the "hard" or "easy" cases. I am not one of those who says that the Death Penalty is "unconstitutional," the Fifth Amendment clearly contemplates the Death Penalty, "no person shall be deprived of LIFE, liberty or property..." Nor do I argue that it is cruel and unusual punishment, the Founders envisioned the Death Penalty and at that time the usual method of execution would have been hanging. If hanging wasn't cruel and unusual, then certainly lethal injection is not either. It is not that we CAN NOT execute, but rather that we OUGHT not execute. When one comes from that perspective, it is easy to say, "No this person or group of persons does not merit death." For NO ONE merits death. So, no I have an easy time of stating these people do not deserve the Death Penalty.

Assuming that there is no doubt about the identity of the murderers involved in the baby-snatching case and the evidence is overwhelming, which it already seems to be, I would very much like the anti-death penalty crowd to take up this case. It's all very easy to talk about the problems with the death penalty in the "hard" cases -- i.e. cases where there's some arguable room for doubt about the guilt of the convicted.

But if you're going to say the death penalty is always and everywhere wrong, you must take the hard cases too. You must defend the right to life of the people who do horrible things like this. And I suspect that will be very, very hard to do in this case.

Your first mistake: reading Tom Shales. The rest is commentary.

Top 10 favorite Christmas Carols in the Corner: 10. I'm Dreaming of a Red State Christmas
9. O Christmas Dead Tree!
8. Silent Moyers
7. Do You Here What I Hear? Asparagus Ice Cream!?
6. What Child (not fetus!!!) Is This?
5. Have a Holly (Non) Jihad Christmas
4. The First NR.
3. Jonah to the World
2. Go Tell It On The Corner
1. K-Lo We Have Heard On High

Andrew Sullivan's "Quote of the Day" is from a blogger named John Coleman :

"There is no theocracy in the United States, and we remain one of the freest and most open countries in the globe; but what happens when the party that once promised to guard this freedom transforms into its detractor? In the late 1990s Bill Clinton shifted domestic politics to the right BECAUSE he was a Democrat (and could). What happens when the party of the right leans away from the defense of liberty and toward the despicable martial art of book burning?"

Please. The "book burning" reference is to some Alabama state legislator who apparently wants to ban some books in Alabama. It is upon this thin gruel Mr. Coleman works himself up into a mighty fine lather about Republicans, the conservative movement and its failure to deal with its drift toward book burning (actually the Alabama guy wants to bury the books). Coleman's essay is in turn a response to Michael Totten's "challenge" to conservatives (other than Sullivan) to complain about Conservative nanny-statism. Coleman & Totten both make it sound like no "prominent conservative" has raised any objections to nanny-statism.

Okay, two points: One do I now get to extrapolate from every nutty idea a leftwing state legislator comes up with a new drift of the entire Democratic Party and liberalism generally? Is Maxine Waters the new weathervane of American liberalism. Give me a break. It doesn't take courage to condemn this sort of thing, it takes awareness of it. And, unless your scouring the Guardian for hit-pieces on the American right, you probably missed this whole story.

Second: It's just a fable that conservatives haven't complained about Bush's nanny-statism and expansion of entitlements. To think otherwise indicates that you've been reading too much of the Guardian and too little of National Review or even the Washington Post.

1. Um, this is a bit of a straw man. As you indeed recognize, I'm not claiming that it is "sufficient" to argue that the war on terror is by itself reason to scrap the war on drugs, and I don't think there many on the legalization side who would. There are countless reasons to scrap the war on drugs. Its immensely unhelpful contribution to the war on Islamic extremism is yet another.

2. Actually, opiate producers are legitimate businesses already. That's where prescription opiates come from. My point (and I'd guess Christopher Hitchens' ) is that prohibition has generated something else altogether - a blackmarket trade in opiates. The extraordinary profits that this generates encourages dealers to push their products wherever, whenever and however they can. Legalization which is (conservatives should note) merely a reversion, roughly speaking, to the legal situation that prevailed in the early 20th Century, would stamp out the black market. With that market gone, its perverse incentives would die. As a result, I suspect that consumption would fall, and what consumption there was would be in safer form. Most people simply are not that self-destructive. They weren't a century ago. They aren't now. Sadly, there'd still be some junkies. There will always be junkies, but with a small fraction of the billions in law enforcement dollars saved by the abolition of drug prohibition, there will be plenty of cash to help them. There isn't now.

3. You're right, of course, that Afghanistan would lose its competitive advantage if the trade in opiates was freed up, but let's be honest, that change is not likely to happen any time soon. We're talking about the real world now, a real world in which prohibitionists have to explain how destroying the Afghans' only source of income is going to win them over to the West.

4. Hitchens is right. Tough talk about crushing the mafia may be fine, and crushing them may be even better (as you say, they are bad guys) but it does nothing to address the effects of the impoverishment that will result from the destruction of a poor country's only cash crop.

We could argue this forever, but I do think that the war on Islamic terror has added a new dimension - and a new urgency - to the debate over drugs. With the exception of a few pieces of crass - and spectacularly dishonest - propaganda, I see no sign at all that this has occurred to the Bush administration. And that failure is, quite simply, unforgiveable.

Woman Slain, Fetus Stolen

Woman arrested, baby returned in bizarre murders

Infant in good health

That's a blessing. Now they need to find the guy who killed her mother and do very bad things to him.

Andrew, I don't want to get into a whole drug war thing late on a Friday (in part because pro-legalization emailers can be dismayingly obnoxious), but a few random quick points:

1. I'm just not persuaded by your mantra: "War on terror or war on drugs? Choose one. You can't fight both." As a general proposition I don't see how it's any different than the countless declarations from liberals along the lines of "War on terror or tax cuts, you can't have both." In other words, I don't think it's sufficient to take a policy you'd want to get rid of anyway and then say the war on terror justifies getting rid of it. I am perfectly willing to concede that the war on terror makes the war on drugs more difficult, and vice versa, but the war on terror makes pretty much all public policies more difficult. That doesn't automatically mean it's not a worthwhile project. Ditto the war on drugs.

2. Now today you do offer something more than the mantra, but even here I'm not sure I see how it makes legalization obviously correct. So, according to you and Hitch, we should legalize heroin because if we did so it would make heroin producers into legitimate business men? Encouraging -- or at the very least not discouraging -- millions of Americans to become dope fiends and smack addicts in order to put warlords out of one lucrative business seems like a pretty odd national security argument to me. If we legalize heroin, should we offer the Afghans preferential treatment in the heroin trade, even if it harms our more deserving American poppy growers? I'm patriotic enough to believe that if you're going to buy H you might as well buy it from the US of A.

3. More seriously, who says Afghanistan wouldn't be hurt by legalization? Surely other nations -- not to mention the biotech and agribusiness industries -- which are now out of the heroin business would jump in once America lifted its trade and legal barriers against the product. Once that happened, presumably the price would drop, even as demand (and potency) increased. This might be good or bad, depending on your point of view, but it wouldn't be a great boon to the average poppy grower in Afghanistan. I don't know a lot about the agricultural issues here, but it seems to me that once poppies become just another crop in the global marketplace, Afghanistan's competitive advantages disappear.

3. Hitchens calls the demand for a ruthless crackdown on the Afghan mafia a "non-sequitur." Maybe this is a wrong proposal, but it's not an illogical one. The warlords and mafia are bad people, regardless of what you think of the drug trade. They murder people. Crushing them would be a good thing.

...picture something that you do not have to imagine--a determined effort by the liberators of Afghanistan to force the country back into warlordism and anarchy. Every day, soldiers acting in our name are burning or spraying Afghanistan's only viable crop.Like many stories in the mainstream media, this dramatic piece of news can appear on the front page only if it is printed upside down. Thus we learned from the New York Times of Dec. 11, in a front-page article bylined by Eric Schmitt, that a secret "assessment" by Lt. Gen. David Barno, the senior American officer in the country, has concluded that poppy cultivation is the main threat to the creation of a decent society, and the main avenue by which former Taliban and al-Qaida forces can hope to return from their crushing defeat. Any attentive reading of the report, however, shows that it is the campaign against poppy cultivation that constitutes the threat. This point was underlined, perhaps coincidentally, by an op-ed essay in the same edition of the Times, written by Afghanistan's tireless and talented finance minister, Ashraf Ghani. "Today," he wrote, "many Afghans believe that it is not drugs, but an ill-conceived war on drugs that threatens their economy and nascent democracy" [my italics]. Ghani went on to point out that a third of Afghanistan's GDP depends on the crop and that "destroying that trade without offering our farmers a genuine alternative livelihood has the potential to undo the embryonic economic gains of the past three years." As he further emphasized, these highly undesirable consequences arise from the control of the trade by a "mafia" with links to Islamic nihilism. Ghani's meticulous analysis promptly broke down with a non-sequitur: a call for more money and force to be spent in combating a "mafia" that, as he has already admitted, commands a decisive part of the rural economy. Nowhere is it even asked what would happen if the trade was legalized and taxed: a measure that would immediately remove it from mafia control and immediately enrich a vast number of Afghan cultivators who currently exist on the margin of survival...

From an economist:

Dear Jonah,

The problem with "is WWII responsible for ending The Great Depression?"
is the question is posed wrong. The question implies there that is SOMETHING responsible and we need to figure out whether it was WWII or something else. But one does not need to find a cause of recessions or depressions ending. They almost always do that themselves and usually quite quickly. The puzzle is not why the depression ended but why it didn't end sooner. Thus the correct question is "what is responsible for the depression not ending in 1933?" The best answer is The New Deal, especially the cartelization of industry it encouraged. The best paper is by Hal Cole and Lee Ohanian “New Deal Policies and the Persistence of the Great Depression: A General Equilibrium Analysis", which is forthcoming in the Journal of Political Economy. It can be downloaded at http://www.econ.ucla.edu/hlcole/HLCresearch.htm.

By the way, I'm actually more interested in this topic than most because of that other thing I'm working on. So if there academics out there who want to join this fray -- for a little while -- I look forward to hearing from ya. From a reader:

Jonah --

You're quite right that the consensus among economists is that the New Deal probably prolonged the Great Depression, through it's ham-handed price controls and attempts at micromanaging the economy. But you're incorrect to state that there's no dispute among economists that WWII is what fixed the Great Depression. Actually, there's a lot of doubt as to whether WWII played an important role in fixing the Depression.

By most accounts the Great Depression is over by about 1934, and the
U.S. economy starts recovering. Then the Federal Reserve, which was
still figuring out how to conduct monetary policy, decided that inflation was a major threat in 1937 and clamped down on the money supply, bringing the very deep recession of 1937-38. After that, the economy started recovering again. Then comes World War II. But if you looks at the trendlines from the recovery in the late 1930s through both the wartime boom and the post-war slump and on inton the late 1940s, it's not at all clear that WWII causes a change in trend.

In addition, the mechanism through which WWII is supposed to have saved
the U.S. economy is not at all clear. Yes, WWII involved massive deficit spending and borrowing, which in a Keynesian model should stimulate an economy. But the late 1940s involves massive reductions in deficit spending, which in a Keynesian model should have collapsed the economy -- and that didn't happen. The ability of the U.S. economy to move from a wartime footing in the early 1940s to booming peacetime economy in the late 1940s with a relatively short post-war recession in between was quite remarkable.

For some academic evidence on the complexities, see the work of Robert Higgs. A nice accessible piece from a few years ago is at . Or for the hard-core, check his article in the March 1992 Journal of Economic History: "Wartime Prosperity? A Reassessment of the U.S. Economy in the 1940s." As Higgs asks at one point, when you think about it a little, is it really plausible that one of the most costly and destructive wars of all time was actually highly beneficial for the U.S. economy?

Getting a lot of email like this:

You missed the biggest argument: it's the world's biggest Ponzi scheme. If a private citizen tried to start something exactly like it, they'd be thrown in jail, and rightly so. It was always called "Old Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance." It isn't insurance in any way, shape or form. There aren't any reserves for claims…

I'm a Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter; I oughta know.

And...

Dear Mr. Goldberg,

What I cannot understand is that no one is applying the historic legal standard for the proper stewardship of money.

Legally, a fiduciary HAS TO INVEST in a diversified portfolio of stocks, bonds as well as other reasonable assets.

He HAS TO DIVERSIFY or he breaks fiduciary law.

This has been conventional wisdom as well as LAW for ages. Exactly why doesn’t anyone ask the Krugman’s of the world why the LEGAL standard for rationally investing money for pension funds, trusts and other types of custodial accounts doesn’t have any bearing on the largest “pension plan” ever?

Is Krugman’s private assets all in treasury bills? Does he think this is prudent? Then why in the world would anyone advocate against doing what a “wise” fiduciary is legally bound to do?

Why doesn’t anyone argue that Social Security is the only “pension fund” or “trust fund” that is run absolutely contrary to legal doctrine?

I've lost the Columbia College libertarians!

Now here's a serious email:

When you get over attacking liberals maybe you can get around to disccusing some of the details of reforming Social Security. Such as transition costs of 2 trillion, when we have huge deficits. Or how can you trust the Bush administration to administer the reform when they have made a mess of everything they've done, especially in Iraq. And why would any adult listen to your propaganda when you and your ilk were so criminally wrong about WMD.

From a reader:

Jonah,

FDR is dead, but Hoover isn't.
the Dems can't let FDR rest in peace, because they won't let Hoover die. My 83 year old mother-in-law is convinced that she must continue to vote Democratic, or "Hoover times" will return, with GOP zombies rising from the grave to snatch the Social Security check from her hand.

Krugman says that one of the two biggest problems with social security privtatization is that it leaves retirees in poverty. The other problem is that firms will take handling fees for private accounts. Since that is chiefly an efficiency argument rather than a moral one (unless the former Enron advisor thinks it's immoral for firms to charge for services) I am assuming he thinks the tendency of privatized systems to "leave many retirees in poverty" is his chief moral complaint. Fair enough. It's a good complaint.

But here's what I'm missing. The current Social Security system leaves retirees in poverty too. Doesn't it? This is not my field of expertise, but I quickly looked up the stats for poverty among the elderly. It's 14% according to no doubt
Krugman-approved sources . Though the Census Bureau says it's closer to 10% (and twice that for blacks). What the Census bureau also says is that poverty among the elderly has been higher than 10% since they started collecting data. It's gone down steadily since 1959 (where the table I found began) but I doubt Krugman would attribute that trend to Social Security so much as to rising prosperity generally.

Anyway, the point is that if Krugman's big objection to the new system is that it leaves retirees in poverty, why isn't he troubled by the fact that the current system does too? Why doesn't he even mention it? Or, again, am I missing something?

FDR is dead.

From a piece in USA Today about young Democrats asserting themselves in the party:

"This generation is looking for ways to participate because we're tired of losing," says Jamal Simmons, 33, a consultant who has worked for presidential hopeful Wesley Clark and several other Southern candidates.

Isn't this the first vanity of all vanities when it comes to politics: "If I'm more involved, we'll be more likely to win."

Anyway, the real news here is that even 40-somethings in the Democratic Party have to play the "youth" card to make their case. It might be partly true sociologically, but I think it's kind of sad that grown men and women need to play this game in order to be heard. Then again, since the party is run by 1960s types it might work.

FYI - Sam and Harry's is at the nexus of two parallel universes and you and Jonah were not together last night. Your images were an astro-physical projection resulting from an anti-matter convolution on the rim of wormhole (NRO-68432, more commonly know as Buckley's Warp). All this is much too complicated for mere mortals to understand so its best not to get into it, as the vocabulary to describe such an event has not yet been invented. By my calculations you and Jonah were at least six parsecs apart both physically and mentally. Ms. Lopez, you would know all this if you allowed more Star Trek chatter at the corner. On the bright side, if you did understand the foregoing we would have to kill you to keep is a secret, so its best not to delve into matters of the space time continuum to deeply.

Perhaps if David Brock tied himself to a tree again he could bear-bait O'Reilly out into the open.

It's become abundantly clear to me that some folks have taken far too seriously my earlier post of that email from a reader who's subscribing to NR and dropping the Standard over Bill Kristol's column on Rumsfeld. I just thought it was funny. Just to be clear, I think conservatives should read both magazines (but if forced to choose between the two, I think my advice would be obvious. Pay for NR and read the Standard at the local bookstore).

As for the merits of the issue, I think Rumsfeld deserves his share of criticism, as does the whole administration. The administration has already, I think, received well in excess of their share. But hey, they're big boys and big girls. As for Rummy's share, I tend to find today's editorial on NRO very persuasive.

Merry Christmas to you and me, KLO.
I just gave myself NR Digital.
Fa, La, La, La, La....
Hi, Jonah.

I think this is the State of the Union the Democrats actually heard! It certainly would explain a lot.

Note to the Washington Post: This is a parody.

I can't make this work except to have the cats go straight up in the air. But Cosmo likes it anyway.

Update: I figured it out (actually a reader explained it to me). You hit the right-left arrows alternately as you run toward the cat-toss line. My personal best 178. But PLEASE do NOT send me your scores. I still have hundreds of emails somewhere on my computer with readers penguin toss scores.

Okay Megatron has nothing to do with it. But my computer hates Windows Media Player. If yours doesn't and you're nostalgic for 1980s TV Commercials, well then your day is toast.

From a reader:

Dear Mr. Goldberg, I just wanted to let you know that Mr. Kristol's recent (illogical) criticism of Secretary Rumsfeld means that I will not be renewing my Weekly Standard subscription next year and thus I'll soon be changing to National Review instead. This day has been long in coming, especially in so far as I enjoy your writers more than theirs anyway. Just wanted to let you know. Keep up the great work! Best wishes, [name withheld],

“Treasure” is the right word to use for these three collections of children’s literature. Indeed, reading through the National Review treasuries is a happy reminder of the time when children were respected as creatures capable of both real thoughts and real imaginings rather than, as they so much are today, no more than a cohort of small and conventionally attitudinizing adults. Indeed, with the Treasuries in tow, parents and children are both apt to begin anticipating bedtime as a whole new adventure.

Ronald Brownstein in the LA Times writes:

"The generation-long political retreat of Democrats across the South is disintegrating into a rout." Across the thirteen states of the South, Bush carried nearly 85% of all the counties; Bush won 1,124 counties, to Kerry’s 216 (Clinton won more than 650 counties in each of his presidential victories). Bush has become the first candidate since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940 and 1944 to carry more than 1,000 Southern counties twice. "Kerry won fewer Southern counties than any Democratic nominee since the Depression except Walter F. Mondale in 1984 and George S. McGovern in 1972."

Nod to Peter Schramm.

"So this whole Homeland Defense nomination snafu is being spun as a problem within the Bush administration vetting process, isn't it more an indictment of the NY Times, NY Post and NY Daily News? Where the hell were they when this guy was playing all his ethically-challenged games on their turf?"

Matt Yglesias writes:

OFF TO THE RACES. The rich, rich irony of George W. Bush warning Iran and Syria to stop their "meddling" in the internal affairs of Iraq, a country he's invaded, occupied, and whose current prime minister he appointed, is rich and should be savored. More interesting, however, are the similar warnings coming from Iyad Allawi and -- especially -- from Defense Minister Hazim Shalan, like Allawi a secular ex-Baathist Shiite. Most observers think this crowd is going to get beaten in the January elections by Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's United Iraqi Alliance, which is led by parties with ties to the Iranian government....

" by all accounts it's certainly the case that Tehran has built up a substantial intelligence infrastructure in Iraq with unknown capabilities. So far, however, that network seems to have mostly lain dormant -- something Iran will break out to retaliate against a U.S. military strike or if they don't like the direction in which events are headed. You see a certain amount of breathless reporting on this fact, but I don't know what, exactly, people expected would happen. If Iran invades Canada, occupies it for over a year, stations 130,000 troops there, and commences construction on military bases, I would certainly hope that the U.S. would work on building an intelligence network. The notion that we could take over a country sandwiched between Iran and Syria, maintain hostile relations with bost Tehran and Damascus, and expect our regional rivals to accept that with equanimity is pretty absurd. Everyone is "meddling," the United States included -- there's hardly any choice under the circumstances. "

Of course, Yglesias is correct that it's not surprising that Iran and Syria are meddling in Iraq. But why should Yglesias relish the "rich, rich irony" so? Maybe I'm over-reading, but I think a fair interpretation of Yglesias' point is that Bush is a hypocrite and/or a fool for telling these countries to back-off. Indeed, he seems to be implying sans evidence that Bush expected otherwise.

Would it really be better for Bush to be "consistent" and tell Iran and Syria to go ahead and meddle all they like? Keep in mind, if we'd found WMDs in Iraq we'd still have "meddled" in exactly the same way Yglesias describes above. In other words, even if the war had been a huge success according to the (now accepted) standards of success, he would have still been just as open to the charge Yglesias levels. But, under those circumstances, I think people would better understand how petty this complaint is.

This is another example of liberals willfully refusing to grant Bush even the slightest benefit of the doubt when it comes to public diplomacy. What else should Bush do now? What would Kerry have done under the same circumstances if he'd been elected? This is, simply, how the game is played and Yglesias surely knows this. The question is why can't he even acknowledge it?

Was the whole effort triggered by an inquiry from the OVP or not?

Wilson says yes. And presumably he's basing this on some knowledge of the situation. Nick Kristof said the same thing in his June 13th column in the Times, though it's possible that Wilson was his source. But if there's a factual dispute here, let's find out. Is Wilson's description of the OVP's involvement accurate? In particular, did the OVP get Wilson's eventual report? I think this is something a good investigative reporter with juice should be able to resolve for us pretty quickly. So, again, let's find out.

An email from the baseball crank:

Two thoughts. First of all, the WSJ piece shows how difficult it would be to prove criminal knowledge of covert status to get a conviction. But the standard for getting an indictment is . . . well, let's just say that it can be done. I have a lot of respect for Patrick Fitzgerald, but it would not be too difficult for him to find a way to indict the relevant government officials if he wanted to, given that it appears that they probably were national security people with pretty high-level security clearances. If the evidence is indeed as elusive as suggested, I suspect Fitzgerald is torn between the desire to do the right thing and the power to be an overzealous "indict first, evidence later" prosecutor, and wants to cover all his bases before he stands down.

Second, note that Marshall is big on denouncing the effort to expose how Wilson got picked for the Niger trip. But take a little trip in the Wayback Machine to July 8, 2003:

The most interesting bit of reporting I've seen today on the White House's concession about the fraudulence of the Niger-uranium documents comes at the tail end of a wire story from Reuters ...
A U.S. intelligence official said [Joseph] Wilson was sent to investigate the Niger reports by mid-level CIA officers, not by top-level Bush administration officials. There is no record of his report being flagged to top level officials, the intelligence official said.

"He is placing far greater significance on his visit than anyone in the U.S. government at the time it was made," the official said, referring to Wilson's New York Times article.
The message here seems pretty clear: Joseph who? Wilson, this 'intelligence official' is saying, is some small-time operator who got sent to Niger by some mid-level functionaries at the CIA. All the people who counted had no idea he'd even gone on his trip. And they certainly didn't know about his vaunted report.

Now, I wouldn't be being very straight with you if I didn't start by saying that I don't find this claim particularly credible. But could this be true?

Let's run through what we know.

Wilson has said repeatedly that he was sent to Niger because, as he wrote in the Times, "Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report."

Now, note the difference in what's being said here. No one, let alone Wilson, has claimed that any "top-level Bush administration officials" sent him on his investigatory trip. What he and others have said is that CIA officials sent him out, because they were following up on a request from the Office of the Vice President (OVP) to look into the Niger-uranium allegations.

So to start with you can say that the 'intelligence official's' statement amounts to a sort of non-denial denial. But what about the broader question? Was the whole effort triggered by an inquiry from the OVP or not?

Wilson says yes. And presumably he's basing this on some knowledge of the situation. Nick Kristof said the same thing in his June 13th column in the Times, though it's possible that Wilson was his source. But if there's a factual dispute here, let's find out. Is Wilson's description of the OVP's involvement accurate? In particular, did the OVP get Wilson's eventual report? I think this is something a good investigative reporter with juice should be able to resolve for us pretty quickly. So, again, let's find out.

* * *

So I don't think dumping on Wilson, which seems to be the White House's preferred strategy now, is going to cut it. But in each of these cases, let's find out. If Wilson and Thielmann are fibbing let's expose them. And if their superiors are playing fast and loose with the truth, let's find that out too. Let the chips fall where they may.
By now, of course, you know who said all this: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2003_07_06.php#000999

KLo, Remember the footage of Babe Ruth pointing to the right field stands with his bat, just before hitting a home run there? You have done the blogger equivalent by predicting that McCain's...comments about Rumsfeld would land him on the Today Show the next morning. In fact, it was the first story mentioned as the show opened.

As Khomeini himself put it: "Islam makes it incumbent on all adult males, provided they are not disabled or incapacitated, to prepare themselves for the conquest of countries so that the writ of Islam is obeyed in every country in the world....But those who study Islamic Holy War will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world."

The goal of this conquest would be to establish the hegemony of Islamic law. As Khomeini put it: "What is the good of us [i.e., the mullahs] asking for the hand of a thief to be severed or an adulteress to be stoned to death when all we can do is recommend such punishments, having no power to implement them?"

Khomeini accordingly delivered notorious rebuke to the Islam-is-a-religion-of-peace crowd: "Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those [who say this] are witless. Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all! Does this mean that Muslims should sit back until they are devoured by [the unbelievers]? Islam says: Kill them, put them to the sword and scatter [their armies].... Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to Paradise, which can be opened only for the Holy Warriors! There are hundreds of other [Qur'anic] psalms and Hadiths [sayings of the Prophet] urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all this mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim."

There are smart, principled conservatives on both sides of the debate over whether the Senate rules on filibustering judges should be changed--as there are on all sides of the related debates over how and when the rules should be changed if they are to be changed. NR is opposed to changing the rules, at least in the near term.

Here's an email response from one smart supporter of a rules change: "It's not clear to me why the George Will-National Review unilateral, preemptive disarmament strategy helps us convince Dems to play nice. . . . [I]t just serves to embolden them, and it makes the President less likely to nominate somebody we'd all cheer."

Will's argument is a little different from NR's. He is worried that changing the rules would put Republicans at a disadvantage if they are in the minority in the future. NR didn't comment on that idea, but I think this concern is overstated. Republicans are not going to filibuster Democratic judges--especially not now that they have locked themselves into the position that filibusters of judges are wrong in principle. And Republicans shouldn't count on a future Democratic majority's leaving the filibuster rules alone if Republicans let them filibuster now.

NR's argument, on the other hand, is that Democrats are unlikely to "play nice" on Supreme Court nominations, but that a filibuster of one would be likely to backfire on Democrats. Which might make them more likely to play nice in any nominations following the first one to the Supreme Court. As for the president, I'm reasonably confident at the moment that he wants to nominate a strong conservative.

"I've recently read the relevant parts of a biography of Fortas written many years ago that includes a variety of citations to contemporary sources indicating that Griffin etc. were running a filibuster. They acknowledged it. Everyone knew it. It was part of the political conversation at the time. If we Republicans are going to say that, say, [Janice Rogers] Brown suffered due to a filibuster after 6 hours of floor debate, then certainly the same is true of Fortas after 4. And back then, a vote against cloture wasn't necessarily a vote against the nominee. Some opposed cloture on principle b/c they wanted unlimited debate.

"This majoritarian argument has some appeal . . . but it doesn't square . . . with the contemporary argument about what was happening."

Your "P.S." in the Corner made me smile because it reminded me of this quote from Krusty the Clown...: "And this ends Krusty's non-denominational holiday fun fest. So have a Merry Christmas, a Happy Chanukah, a Kwazy Kwanzaa, a Tip Top Tet, and a solemn, eventful Ramadan. Now, over to my god, our sponsors."

Anyway, thank you for all you do. NRO keeps me going some days. And have a Merry Christmas.

Dem ranks...not. From Editor and Publisher:

NEW YORK A new Gallup poll shows that the public values “values” less than November exit polls suggested, but another survey from the same outfit released today shows a historic surge in Republican party affiliation.

In Gallup's latest poll this month, those identifying themselves as Republicans jumped to 37% of the public, with Democrats now clearly trailing with 32%.

Democrats have long held more party members than Republicans. During the Clinton years, the bulge was about 5% to 6%. As recently as late-October of this year the Democratic edge was 37% to 34%.

Gallup noted today: “Post-election shifts in partisanship after presidential elections or midterm congressional elections are not routine, but are also not uncommon.”

Another Gallup poll also released today showed that, contrary to many press reports, “values” ranked well behind the war in Iraq, terrorism and the economy as a prime concern of Americans.

You may recall that last July, the Washington Post broke a story that Valerie Plame had pushed Joe "Which Camera is Mine?" Wilson, her husband, for the job of envoy to Africa on the whole yellow cake uranium thing. This was back when Marshall was promising a huge, massive, story that would shake the granite foundations of Western Civilization any day now. Whatever happened with that anyway?

The significance of the allegation that Plame boosted her husband was that it undercut the allegation that the White House had outed Plame as payback and supported the notion that the White House was merely trying to explain the existential hackiness of Joe Wilson.

Marshall wrote:

"There's no 'challenging the bona fides of a political opponent' exception to the law in question. While Plame's alleged role may have some political traction, it's legally irrelevant. Government officials are not allowed to disclose the identity of covert intelligence agents, whether they feel like they have a good reason or not."

I responded that I would trust someone else's legal analysis on the whole matter. You can read what else I wrote I wrote here, what Marshall wrote here, and a good summary of the larger legal context here.

Well, it looks like I found the legal analysis I was looking for this. Bruce Sanford and David Rifkin wrote a piece in yesterday's Wall Street Journal arguing that the law most certainly doesn't apply to cases such as Novak's. Here's an extended quote because it's behind a registration firewall:

In all of this, far too little attention has been paid to the law that is driving Mr. Fitzgerald's inquiry. Nearly all discussion of the Plame investigation has instead mechanically assumed, without any critical thinking, that a crime was committed when "two senior administration officials," in Mr. Novak's words, disclosed to him in July 2003 that Ms. Plame was a CIA "operative."

In fact, the most powerful reason why journalists should not be jailed for failing to cooperate with Mr. Fitzgerald's grand jury is because Mr. Fitzgerald has no crime to investigate.

The Plame inquiry is justified, we're told, by the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which Congress passed because our intelligence community was apoplectic over Mr. Agee's "outing" during the 1970s of CIA covert agents stationed abroad to purposefully disrupt the agency's operations. The bill probably should have been called the "Get Philip Agee" Act.

The law requires a prosecutor to show that a person has disclosed information that identifies a "covert agent" (not an "operative") while actually knowing that the agent has been undercover within the last five years in a foreign country and that the disclosed information would expose the agent. For a person who had no classified access to the outed agent's identity, the law provides the additional hurdle of proving a pattern of exposing agents with the belief that such actions would harm the government's spying capabilities.

As a practical matter, this high degree of proof of willfulness or intentionality would be almost impossible to find in any circumstances other than in a Philip Agee clone (and maybe not even him). To interpret the statute more broadly would flout the longstanding American jurisprudential tradition of narrowly construing criminal laws, especially those that encroach upon free-speech values.

The legislative history of the law could not make its narrow purpose more clear. The "principal thrust of this [statute] has been to make criminal those disclosures which represent a conscious and pernicious effort to identify and expose agents with the intent to impair or impede the foreign intelligence activities of the United States by such actions," reads the Senate report. Legislators emphasized that they crafted the bill to "exclude the possibility that casual discussion, political debate, [or] the journalistic pursuit of a story on intelligence . . . will be chilled."

The statute was thus not intended to target executive branch officials who make disclosures -- whether carelessly, out of personal or bureaucratic animus, or in pursuit of an important foreign-policy objective -- while talking about national security matters with reporters. Indeed, even if Congress wanted to criminalize -- which it in fact emphatically did not -- executive branch release for policy reasons of a particular type of intelligence information, such a regulatory scheme would have serious separation of powers problems. The act was also not supposed to entangle reporters in a net of prison sentences, either as recipients of leaks or as disclosers in their own right.

Yet here we are with a special prosecutor on the loose and in pursuit of jail terms for journalists regarding a dissemination of information which was relevant to the central foreign-policy question of our times -- i.e., did the U.S. embark on its invasion of Iraq with a reasonable if mistaken belief that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction?

Indeed, the piece seems like such a complete slam dunk I am fairly shocked that we've gotten to where we are now. I'm also surprised, from a quick scanning of the usual blogs, that it received little notince. I know Bruce Sanford a little bit, by the way, and he's no partisan rightwinger. From what I can tell he's a liberal Democrat and I know that he's among the half dozen most respected first amendment lawyers in the country. Regardless, I'd be interested in knowing if Rivkin and Sanford are off base here since, again, I'm no lawyer. Moreover, even though Marshall has an off-putting habit of ignoring direct criticism, it would be nice to hear from him. Does he really think that the law is being used correctly? Does he still believe that outing an operative under the circumstances Sanford and Rivkin describe should be considered a crime under the statute in question? Are Sanford and Rivkin properly describing the circumstances? Inquiring minds want to know.

In Terrebonne Parish, La., an organization is petitioning to add ''Merry Christmas" to the red-lighted ''Seasons Greetings" sign on the main government building, and is selling yard signs that read, ''We believe in God. Merry Christmas."

When hospital administrators and physicians send the message that it is never OK to eat certain fatty foods, they harm their credibility. Most people understand that a doughnut every now and then is not, in itself, a serious health threat. Health care professionals would better serve the public by reminding us of the need to view sweets as an occasional supplement to a healthy diet and exercise regimen. They could also remind us how much exercise it would take to burn off a single doughnut — or a grande latte, for that matter. Physicians are supposed to help us make healthy decisions, not make those decisions for us.

"First of all you can defrost. [KJL: Uh, it was 18 in Manhattan earlier this morning, I'm game.] Second we'll pronounce your last name correctly. [KJL: Just don't tell me I pronounce it wrong--very possible.]

Cuba's most senior US diplomat says he has been warned by the government of serious consequences unless he takes down Christmas decorations in Havana.

James Cason says he will not remove the display at the American interests section, which includes a reference to 75 dissidents jailed last year....Cuba has twice told US diplomats to remove all decorations immediately.

The chairman of the Committee for Justice writes, with regard to the Ornstein column I mentioned earlier: "Never before in history had there been a true filibuster (i.e. permanent, minority blockage) of a judicial nominee until 2003. A single failed cloture vote, for procedural reasons or to extend debate, does not a filibuster make. Historically, failed cloture votes on judicial nominations have always been followed by successful cloture votes and majority confirmation votes. The one exception is Abe Fortas, whose nomination was pulled after a single cloture vote – four days in – failed with 45 votes, indicating Fortas lacked majority support. The cloture vote functioned as a test vote to avoid subjecting Fortas (and President Johnson) to humiliating final rejection. Fortas’ bipartisan opponents signaled willingness to proceed to an up or down floor vote if necessary.

"To repeat: the current Democrat judicial filibusters are the first permanent denial of cloture to nominees with majority Senate support. They are unprecedented.

"Ornstein quotes Sen. Robert Griffin from the time, but somehow misses his most salient words: '[T]hus far, there have been only four days of Senate debate on this very important, historic issue. . . . [A] filibuster, by any ordinary definition, is not now in progress.' And: 'An examination of the Congressional Record . . . clearly reveals that the will of the majority was not frustrated. . . . On the basis of the Record, then, it is ridiculous to say that the will of a majority in the Senate has been frustrated.'

"Regardless, if Ornstein – and Senate Democrats – wish the Fortas case to be their standard, fine: I’m sure on contentious nominees the majority would be glad to allow one cloture vote and four days of debate."

Incredible.

“The dead poor sheep farmers on Sicily at the turn of the century argued that America must be heaven on earth as emigrated family members relayed messages of having meat for dinner everyday. That was a mouthwatering experience for people who could enjoy that privilege maybe once in a lifetime. You can argue that particular instinct to be ‘ordinary’ or ‘superficial’ like so many do here, but it is way beyond me to look down on it. America is hated because it embodies the hope of people that yearn for a better life, to have meat everyday, but also to believe in the God they choose, or not. To say what you want without being persecuted. To be a woman without a veil, with the right to vote, free expression and adultery, without being stoned."

It is impossible to read those words, and others that you can see up on the site, without being proufoundly moved - and remembering that Theo van Gogh was murdered for his opinions. Slaughtered for speaking his mind. In Europe. In 2004.

I suppose we should be grateful that in Britain, by contrast, Tony Blair only wants to lock dissenters up.

Esquire will be happy to send a copy of Mr. Buckley's article to anyone requesting it. (Please write to Peter Martin, Esquire Magazine, 1790 Broadway, 13th floor, New York, NY 10019.)

In every state but three in 1960, you had a choice between Kennedy and Nixon (sometimes with a few minor-party candidates), and popular votes were counted as usual. In Louisiana and Mississippi, there was a three-way race: Kennedy, Nixon, or "uncommitted." In Louisiana, Kennedy won, and in Mississippi, "uncommitted" won--but in both cases, people could vote for Kennedy (or Nixon) if they wanted, and their votes were recorded as Kennedy (or Nixon) votes. So there was no funny business in either of those states.

The problem occurs in Alabama. There, only two slates of electors were on the ballot (again excluding minor parties): One uncommitted and one for Nixon. "Uncommitted" won by 324,000 to 238,000, and of Alabama's 11 electors, 6 voted for Byrd and 5 for Kennedy. So technically, Rakove [the Stanford history professor] is right--these 324,000 votes are usually counted as Kennedy votes, when in fact they were "uncommitted" votes. And since Kennedy won the election by only 120,000, you can call him a minority president.

Of course, if you want to be super technical, in Alabama and many other states, no one voted for either candidate but rather for electors for that candidate. Yes, this is an exceedingly minor quibble, and if the 11 Alabama electors had cast their votes for Kennedy, no one would object to counting the popular votes as Kennedy votes too. If only one elector had defected, as happened in Oklahoma, they would still have been counted as Kennedy votes. But since 6 of the Alabama electors voted for Byrd [the Virginia Dixiecrat], the question arises as to who should get credit for the 324,000 popular votes.

If you want to boost JFK's total, you call them Kennedy votes and say the 6 electors were faithless, like the Oklahoma guy. If you want to boost Nixon, you say the "uncommitted" votes were for nobody and the Nixon votes were for Nixon. This would leave Nixon with a popular-vote majority of about 200,000….But you can still make a plausible case for counting those votes as Kennedy votes. And if you object that Kennedy's name did not appear on the ballot in Alabama, well, neither did Nixon's. So to be consistent, you would have to take away his 238,000 votes, and Kennedy squeaks ahead again.

Now the margin for Kennedy nationally has long been said to have been about 113,000 votes nationally (the Clerk of the House gave him a margin of 119,000 in April 1961, but the lower figure is accepted today). What we would have to know in order to say that Kennedy actually received fewer votes nationwide than Nixon--and we simply cannot know it--is that at least 113,000 Alabama voters, or more than one-third of those voting Democratic, went to the polls and pulled the lever for the entire slate of eleven Democratic presidential electors while thinking "I want Byrd" (or at least "I don't want Kennedy") rather than "I want Kennedy."

Since Alabama then, as now, used the winner-take-all method of allocating electors to candidates--the party winning the popular-vote plurality having all its electors seated in the college--there was only one way for either Kennedy voters or Byrd voters to get even one electoral vote out of the eleven the state had to cast, and that was to vote for the whole party ticket of electors, whether any presidential candidate's name was on the ballot or not.

We know only that the six Alabama electors who had made no pledge to Kennedy voted for Byrd--probably their intent all along….Is it possible that more than 113,000 Alabama Democratic voters wanted Byrd over Kennedy? Yes. Do we know that for sure? No way….

However, what was true of essentially single-faith societies is not true in today's multicultural Western Europe. Unless one believes the ecumenicist nonsense that all religions are, at root, the same, the uncomfortable fact is that one person's faith is another person's blasphemy. For all the happytalk about 'people of the book' , what a Christian believes about Jesus will to a Muslim be something akin to blasphemy, and vice versa. Throw Judaism, let alone Hinduism or any of the many other religions now practised in Britain into the mix and, well, you get the picture. Under these circumstances, unless the UK is to ban proselytizing, and open, frank debate between faiths, a ban on blasphemy makes no intellectual sense whatsoever.

As for the comments of Iqbal Sacranie, you link to, for disingenuousness and dishonesty they take some beating. An overwhelming sense of nausea makes it difficult to go through the whole thing, but these words alone should sound alarm bells enough:

"We can make a critical distinction between the substance and form of free speech. The law need not infringe on the substance but can assist to moderate the form."

When I want my free speech "moderated", Mr. Sacranie, I'll let you know.

Even when a Santa - who has cleared criminal checks - can be found in his house, the setup does not necessarily inspire misty-eyed nostalgia. At the St. Elli Shopping Center in Llanelli, Wales, Santa's lap is off limits; children now sit on a bench next to him, a move aimed at appeasing jittery parents, corporations and Santa himself.

But that's not all. The frosted glass that decorated the house last year was scraped off to provide better sight lines so a newly installed camera can record Santa's every move. 'It's peace of mind for the parents and for Santa,' said Gilmore Jones, the manager of St. Elli Shopping Center. 'Things happen. We didn't mean to be drastic, nothing of the sort.'

Santa's house is still popular, and the children do not mind the camera at all, he said. 'They think it's a cracking idea,' Mr. Jones said. On second thought, he added, wistfully, 'People have said it's sad, but they can understand why it's done.'

Up north in Scotland, Santa has confronted bigger problems. Every year for decades Santa Claus has ridden down every single street in Clackmannanshire, collecting money for charity. Two years ago, though, he and his elves were set upon by an expletive-shouting gang of 40 teenage thugs who hurled stones, some as big as potatoes.

'We had to kill the lights and music and speed out of the area,' Douglas Richmond, one of the elves, told the BBC. 'We had to get away as fast as we could. Someone could have had an eye out.'

So spooked was Santa that last year's event was canceled. This year Santa is staying put at one location in each village of Clackmannanshire while an unmarked police car is parked conspicuously nearby. The charity collection, sponsored by the social club the Round Table, has been sidelined."

It may be time to rescue NRO from blue-state hell in Manhattan. K-Lo's posts about not driving X-miles for lumber are so (dare I say it?) Noo Yawk, which is in turn so blue state. David Letterman used to shift the Home Office, from whence the Top Ten List emerged, from place to place, and he favored sites like Nebraska or Oklahoma (red state ground zero!) I know you all (an Okie-ism) will never actually leave the dreary prison of Manhattan, but honestly, having NR originate there is something like publishing abstinence literature at Hugh Hefner's mansion . . . a decided mismatch. Perchance a little symbolic home-officing in Oklahoma City or Tulsa or Lincoln or Topeka would be balm for the soul. And then we'll all pop over to Home Depot and test tractor mowers for spring!

Herbert M. Hazelkorn, DDS, PhD Herbert M. Hazelkorn, of Glencoe, Illinois, left us on December 7, 2004, of a broken heart at the recent passing of his wife of 35 years, Bobby, exacerbated by a broken spirit arising from the results of the Presidential election. Born March 14, 1924 in Brooklyn, NY, Herb graduated from the University of Illinois at Navy Pier, then U of I Dental School, and after retirement from 40 years in dentistry, he earned his doctorate in Public Health at U of I. Herb, a former Naval officer, was an internationally known public and political activist. His sister Dorothy, his first wife Ila, and his second wife Bobby, predeceased him. He is survived by his twin brother Jules (wife Joyce and daughter Arlene); daughter Ellen Byrne (husband Eric and daughters Ila and Lisa); son Bud Hazelkorn (daughter Sadie); brother-in-law Seymour; stepdaughters Terry Rosenberg (husband Steve and children Alex, Ben and Abbey), Denise Skyler (fiance Jerome Russ and Denise's daughter Jennifer), and Marcy Lowenstein (son Harrison). Friends and family are invited to an informal celebration of Herb's life on Saturday evening December 11, from 7:00-9:00 pm at 10 Lakewood Drive, Glencoe, IL. Family and friends are also welcome at the home of Jules and Joyce Hazelkorn in the afternoon and evening of Sunday December 12 at 3555 Summit Ave, Highland Park, IL. A formal memorial service will be planned for the spring of 2005. For further information please call Bruce Bloom at 847-529-6888. In lieu of flowers or other donations, contributions may be sent to the Bobby and Herb Hazelkorn Fund for Early Cancer Detection at Goldman Philanthropic Partnerships, 155 N. Pfingsten Road, Suite 109, Deerfield, IL (or on-line at www.4Cures.com).

Dear Ms. Friend,
Imagine being confined to a cell for 17 hours a day, and having little or no access to reading, writing, or learning -- or talks with friends.
Imagine that the Bible is the only reading material you are given. When there is a copy of a magazine, imagine that you have to share it with 699* other women.
Now imagine receiving your own personal copy of Ms. magazine, and knowing that more will come.
You can make this happen with a tax deductible gift to the Ms. Magazine Prison and Domestic Violence Shelter Program, a fund dedicated to creating a link with women in prison and women who have reached the safety of a shelter but rarely have access to supportive books and magazines.
Whatever you celebrate in this season -- Christmas or Kwanzaa, Diwali, Ramadan, Chanukah or the Winter Solstice -- reach out in the spirit of giving that is universal. Just click here and you can extend the sisterhood, support, facts, creativity, humor and community that the women's movement has brought to you: https://feminist.org/donations/ms/prisons_121004.asp
In fact, Ms. has always done its best to provide free magazines to individual women in prisons and shelters who requested it, but only in the last few years have we been able to get the official permissions necessary to create an organized initiative.
Our current resources allow us to just skim the surface. Of the tens of thousands of women in prisons in the U.S., Ms. is reaching only 15,430. Of the more than 1,800 domestic violence shelters nationwide, Ms. is sent to 467. Please help us to empower and inspire more women in 2005 by making a tax-deductible donation today: https://feminist.org/donations/ms/prisons_121004.asp
Let me tell you a story about the origin of this dream of sending Ms. behind bars and into shelters.
Years ago I met an elegant African American woman in her late thirties who told me that she had first read Ms. in prison. She had been convicted of prostitution, and after reading a few issues of Ms., she began to wonder why she was serving time, yet her pimp and customers were not. She went to the prison library to find law books, only to be told that in her state, men's prisons had law libraries but women's did not. She organized other women prisoners to protest.
When law books arrived, she began researching questions for herself and other prisoners; questions of unequal justice, child custody, and others. After her release, she found a clerical job at a women's law firm, and went on to finish high school and attend college at night. "Now I'm a lawyer," she said. "I thought you just might like to know."
I will never forget that woman. She gave me the greatest gift of all: the feeling of making a difference. I want to share this gift with you by asking you to join me in sending Ms. as a portable friend to places where women have few friends and few resources. https://feminist.org/donations/ms/prisons_121004.asp
We'll be publishing letters of response from women who are reached by this program. Help make their voices heard. They will be a gift to you.
In sisterhood,
Gloria Steinem
*An actual number from the Virginia Correctional Center librarian.

One of the little appreciated facts about 1960 is that Nixon got more votes than Kennedy. The figures that appear in standard reference works are 34,226,731 for Kennedy and 34,108,157 for Nixon, but the Kennedy total includes 324,050 votes for an unpledged slate of Democratic electors in Alabama, where Kennedy’s name was not on the ballot. His actual vote total was 205,476 less than Nixon’s.

In answer to Mr. Derbyshire's bleg, it appears that JF Neal and John Neal are indeed one and the same.

All Mr. Derbyshire needed to do was consult the website of the Waterboro (Maine) Public Library (wouldn't that have been your first research stop?) to find out, that John Neal (Aug. 23, 1793 - Jun. 20, 1876) was an American writer and author of many works including Brother John. He spent 1823-27 in England where he wrote a series of columns for Blackwood's Magazine, which work was "considered the first effort to chronicle and explain American literature and was reprinted as American Writers in 1937. "

Mr. Neal also taught boxing at Bowdoin College. But perhaps the most endearing Neal story (to me anyway), is that he, "at 79 years old, is noted for throwing a defiant cigar-smoking passenger off a street car."

Washington, D.C. --Congressman Steve King (IA-05) has been chosen to lead a prominent conservative Republican forum on Capitol Hill during the 109th Congress.

King will serve as chairman of the Conservative Opportunity Society, a 22-year-old organization that provided the common ground on which conservative Republican House members planned the revolution that ultimately captured majority control of the House in 1994.

King will join the ranks of former speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, who along with Republican "young Turk" conservatives, envisioned a forum for conservative House members to discuss and debate issues facing the country and develop legislative responses and tactics to lead Republicans out of decades of minority status. Years later, the "Contract With America" emerged as the watchword for the successful 1994 campaign that installed a GOP majority in the House for the first time in 40 years.

"The Conservative Opportunity Society is the core of the new face of American conservatism," Congressman King said. "The recent election just shows us how important traditional American conservative values are to this country, and this historical and important group of lawmakers will continue to lead the modern conservative movement."

King represents the Fifth Congressional District of Iowa. In January, he will begin his second term in the U.S. House. Since his election to Congress in 2002, King has emerged as a leading conservative. He is a frequent guest of nationally syndicated news and talk shows.

A number of people have written about the possibility she will move to Bush's right on the subject (not terribly hard to do). Here's an email about it:

"Hillary has done very little to move in our direction re immigration but this could be major if she moves further. Promising to 'end illegal immigration as we know it' could be a key ad of 2008.

"I've been thinking that it is about time that liberal Dems wake up and smell the coffee on immigration. Substantially reducing immigration levels would be a great issue for them. Supporters could include:

1. Environmentalists, for obvious reasons
2. Labor union that finally realize that having more potential members is worthless if immigrants increase competition at the lower end of the income spectrum, thereby making it more difficult to organize.
3. Blacks, who will become a smaller share of the population if immigration trends continue.
4. Hispanics already here who have to compete with new workers added via even more immigration.

"The problem will be with the up-scale social liberals, but they are more concerned with being able to kill babies and Hillary is golden on that issue."

Pianin, perhaps the Washington Post's most biased reporter, had a Daschle-legacy article in yesterday's paper. You will not be surprised to see the reference to "the Republicans' three-year campaign to portray Daschle as unpatriotic." Nor will you be surprised that the existence of this campaign is presented as objective truth rather than Democratic spin. Republicans are not given a chance to deny the charge. Daschle turns out to be a sweet, moderate, accomplished public servant.

What was surprising was this sentence: "Daschle and Lott believed that conservative House Republicans had gone too far by impeaching the president for essentially lying about his affair in a civil proceeding, and they worked successfully behind the scenes to avert a conviction." Lott didn't say that at the time; nor has he said it since. Pianin seems to have gotten actual news here without realizing it--he doesn't play the comment up. But what's all this about behind-the-scenes work to avert a conviction? Everyone knew that the votes weren't there for conviction. How much work had to be done?

Men with children favored the president on the question of agreement on cultural direction by nearly 60 percentage points (Bush 77, Kerry 18), while men without kids slightly favored Mr. Kerry (Bush 37, Kerry 43). The pattern among women still strongly favors President Bush, but the differences are smaller -- a 25 percent advantage for the president among women with kids and a statistical tie among those without children.

Many analysts, including myself, assumed that the "values voters" popularized in this election were mothers with kids, concerned about the increasing moral relativism and cultural coarseness in the world around them. These data support that idea. Yet men with kids are even more divided and intense on the issue -- a less-understood pattern.

While the conventional wisdom focused on "security moms" and their passion for protecting their kids from everything from threats to physical safety to moral degradation, dads overwhelmingly had the same concerns and felt even more convinced that Mr. Bush would lead the culture in the right direction.

As he admits, Hitler's Pope (1999), his biography of Pope Pius XII, lacked balance. “I would now argue,” he says, “in the light of the debates and evidence following Hitler's Pope, that Pius XII had so little scope of action that it is impossible to judge the motives for his silence during the war, while Rome was under the heel of Mussolini and later occupied by the Germans.”

If the Americans need to increase their support for diplomatic efforts, Europeans must prove to the Iranians that severe political and economic consequences will result if Iran does not renounce the nuclear weapons option. In the event that diplomacy fails and Iran decides not to abandon its efforts to develop nuclear weapons, Europeans should be ready for alternative courses of action, including going to the U.N. Security Council, and they should repeatedly stress their willingness to act. The transatlantic community should not be trying to force a confrontation with Iran, but we must not fear one if that's what is necessary to prevent the introduction of another nuclear weapons program into the combustible Middle East.

Fat chance
The District-based WMAL radio is leading a fund-raising drive on behalf of Fisher House, which, explains talk-show host Michael Graham, assists "the wives, children and parents who have wounded loved ones receiving treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Bethesda Naval Hospital or Malcolm Grow Medical at Andrews Air Force base."
Mr. Graham offered that explanation in a letter to a potential big donor — or, rather, a big potential donor: documentary filmmaker Michael Moore.
"America's soldiers have been very good to you," Mr. Graham writes in an open letter to Mr. Moore. "Most of them don't like you, but they're prepared to die attempting to protect you from terrorism so that you can continue to crank out your profitable propaganda.
"They've done all this for you. I'm writing to give you the opportunity to do something for them. ...
"The message of your books and films is that the American soldier is a victim. The soldiers I've spoken with at Fisher House vehemently disagree with you, as do the majority of my active-duty military listeners. However, we all agree that the soldiers who have been the victims of Iraqi terrorist violence ... deserve our support.
"Therefore, I am writing to challenge you to give back just a small portion of the money you have earned as a critic of their mission. Your film 'Fahrenheit 9/11' has grossed around $150 million. Our entire goal for the Fisher House this holiday season is a tiny percentage of that amount. ...
"If you feel, however, that the money can be better spent on yet another trip to France, nobody will be surprised.
"You can send your check made out to the Fisher House Foundation, care of 630 WMAL, 4400 Jenifer Street NW, Washington, DC 20015."

Did you see the Fritz Hollings piece on 60 minutes? The only reason I watched was because I thought someone would finally call him in his segregationist past. Surely Mike Wallace, the "relentless" "bulldog" of CBS News will level his famous "piercing glare" and why then-Governor Hollings told Eisenhower that minorities had no right to demonstrate outside segregationist lunch counters.

Here's what we got:

Wallace: "Condoleeza Rice?"

Hollings: "She needs to go back to teaching Russian or whatever."

Wallace: "Ha!"

Cripes, it was like watching Larry King.

I'm sorry but that guy was an idiot.

Were I the doctor I'd have simply decided the guys injuries were clouding his thinking, sedated him and saved what I could of the finger, ring be damned.

The ring, no matter how sentimental its value, could be replaced. The finger cannot.

I agree that this is a silly law for a major city to enact. However, I applaud efforts of theaters to handle problems such as this on their own. I live in Rochester, NY, and there is at least one theater I know of in the area that has banned children under 18 after 7pm unless accompanied by an adult. I recently graduated from college, so I am not far removed from that age. But still, I have often been annoyed by teenagers who thing the movie theater is their playground. I suppose the point of this email is that this is an issue where it is unnecessary for government to get involved. Theaters can effectively solve these problems on their own.

As someone who has lived in major cities her entire adult life, I have to applaud this law. Trying to see an evening movie targeted at adults in a major metropolitan theatre is a misery. Infants aren't the only problem. The problem is more often with older children. I've been in countless movies where a group of 2-3 single women are accompanied by 6-8 children from the ages of 5-10. The "adults" will sit together in one section of the seats with the children sitting in another area. This guarantees countless back and forth during the movies with both verbal shout outs of "ma" and constant running up and down the isles. Any lawmaker who thinks an underage movie clerk or usher will refuse service to these patrons without the force of law, or threat of stiff fines to the owners, has been seeing all their movies at home.

While the Derb swoons over Zhang Ziyi, I’d like to thank the reader who sent in this encouraging information about Dagmara Dominiczyk, the ‘diamonds’ actress we were discussing here on the Corner not so long ago :

“The daughter of a Polish Solidarity movement leader who was jailed for over a year due to his promotion of social and political freedom, screen beauty Dagmara Dominczyk was primed early in life for the themes of film that would provide the stunning actress with her big-screen breakthrough… Devoting his life to the cause of freedom after his own father met an untimely demise at the hands of communists, Dagmara's father and her family were exiled to New York following her father's release, when the future actress was a mere seven years old…Opting to focus on more thought-provoking films rather than cotton-candy cut-and-paste comedies, Dominczyk hopes to one day utilize her fame to return to Poland and give back to the community and support system that helped her family to survive in their darkest years.”

The reader (who clearly loooves this woman) has this to say:

"Gorgeous and solid anti-communist credentials. No, it doesn’t get any better than that."

Who could possibly disagree?

Let's think back to people in 1900 in, say, New York. If they worried about people in 2000, what would they worry about? Probably: Where would people get enough horses? And what would they do about all the horses**t? Horse pollution was bad in 1900, think how much worse it would be a century later, with so many more people riding horses?

But of course, within a few years, nobody rode horses except for sport. And in 2000, France was getting 80% its power from an energy source that was unknown in 1900. Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Japan were getting more than 30% from this source, unknown in 1900. Remember, people in 1900 didn't know what an atom was. They didn't know its structure. They also didn't know what a radio was, or an airport, or a movie, or a television, or a computer, or a cell phone, or a jet, an antibiotic, a rocket, a satellite, an MRI, ICU, IUD, IBM, IRA, ERA, EEG, EPA, IRS, DOD, PCP, HTML, internet. interferon, instant replay, remote sensing, remote control, speed dialing, gene therapy, gene splicing, genes, spot welding, heat-seeking, bipolar, prozac, leotards, lap dancing, email, tape recorder, CDs, airbags, plastic explosive, plastic, robots, cars, liposuction, transduction, superconduction, dish antennas, step aerobics, smoothies, twelve-step, ultrasound, nylon, rayon, teflon, fiber optics, carpal tunnel, laser surgery, laparoscopy, corneal transplant, kidney transplant, AIDS . . . None of this would have meant anything to a person in the year 1900. They wouldn't know what you are talking about.

Now. You tell me you can predict the world of 2100.

K-lo,

Shockingly, a new low was reached by Michael Moore recently. He was received a Big in 2004 Award on VH1's specious year-end awards show. (I'm not sure when this happened -- I am presently watching a rebroadcast.) His category was "Big Boat Rocker," and Mikey beat out somewhat-less-dishonest filmmaker Morgan Spurlock and, bizarrely, Hurricane Ivan.

Sharon Stone presented Moore his award after a glowing (and shrieking) introduction. Moore stepped on the podium to a standing ovation, not surprising for the young/hip Hollywood/music crowd in attendance. (I could, however, make out some boos and jeering.)

Then during his speech, in a moment of pure unrivaled Moore arrogance, he compared himself... to Rosa Parks!

I wasn't Tivoing, sadly, or I would give you a transcript, but he basically said that his message is that democracy isn't a spectator sport, and Rosa Parks started the civil rights movement by refusing to sit in the back of the bus. Ergo, making millions off of fallacious muck-raking is his version of Ms. Parks brave and quiet protest.

Unbelievable.

The rules they learned in the orientation session on ethics? "Ridiculous," he says. "Crazy." He can fly his wife home from Washington with frequent-flier miles, but not to Washington. He can dine with a lobbyist, but only once. "Just think about it," he says. "I'm 56 years of age. I've had three jobs, raised three kids. If somebody can buy my vote for a dinner, I shouldn't be here in the first place.

Feeling weary and, she said, "jerked around," Ms. Gold let her paid subscription to Match.com expire, and she has turned to real-life singles mixers for professionals. "I think I just burned out," she said. "It's kind of like communism. On paper, it's a perfect system."

No matter what the censors may accomplish elsewhere, the pop culture revolution since Kinsey's era is in little jeopardy: in a nation of "Desperate Housewives," "Too Darn Hot" has become the national anthem. A movie like "Kinsey" will do just fine; the more protests, the more publicity and the larger the box office. But if Hollywood will always survive, off-screen Americans are being damaged by the cultural war over sex that is being played out in real life. You see that when struggling kids are denied the same information about sexuality that was kept from their antecedents in the pre-Kinsey era; you see that when pharmacists in more and more states enforce their own "moral values" by refusing to fill women's contraceptive prescriptions and do so with the tacit or official approval of local officials; you see it when basic information that might prevent the spread of lethal diseases is suppressed by the government because it favors political pandering over scientific fact.

Beinart aspires to change the Democratic base so that it will accept a presidential candidate who espouses 1947 liberalism -- someone for whom anti-totalitarianism is the organizing imperative of politics.

But how do you begin reforming a base polluted by the Michael Moore-MoveOn.org faction?

Moore says "there is no terrorist threat" -- that terrorism is a threat no greater than traffic accidents.

MoveOn says that "large portions of the Bill of Rights" have been "nullified" -- presumably, then, the federal judiciary also has been nullified.

When Moore sat in Jimmy Carter's box at the 2004 Democratic convention, voters drew conclusions about the party's sobriety.

Liberalism's problem with the Moore-MoveOn faction is similar to conservatism's 1960s embarrassment from the claimed kinship of the John Birch Society, whose leader called President Dwight D. Eisenhower a Kremlin agent.

The reason that Moore is hostile to U.S. power is that he despises the American people from whom the power arises. Moore's assertion that America "is known for bringing sadness and misery to places around the globe" is a corollary of Kuttnerism, the doctrine that "middle America" is viciously ignorant.

Beinart is bravely trying to do for liberalism what another magazine editor -- the National Review's William Buckley -- did for conservatism by excommunicating the Birchers from the conservative movement. But Buckley's task was easier than Beinart's will be because the Birchers were never remotely as central to the Republican base as the Moore-MoveOn faction is to the Democratic base.

From your 12/11 post on the corner that linked to the article on Bush's weight:

"The nearly 6-foot (3-meter) Bush weighed 194 pounds at his last physical in August 2003."

He's not overweight at all. 3 meters?!! According to them the President is approximately 10 feet tall! 10 feet, 194 lbs sounds like a beanpole to me.

I was wrong. As a number of disappointed readers have told me – there is no Hardee’s in Queens. It’s in Larchmont. Even further.

This account from a reader in Georgia does suggest that the trip to the, gasp, burbs might be worth it:

“Y'all poor damyankees -- every county seat in the south boasts a Hardee’s. It is the most likely "downtown" fastfood joint, and for years has been mainly known for having the best fastfood biscuits for breakfast. They came out with a "Lo-Carb Breakfast bowl" in mid-summer -- a heaping bowl of scrambled eggs, cheeses, bacon, ham, and sausage -- "With only 6 carbs!" But we Southerners who love breakfast aren't really into fad diets, so Hardees added a biscuit and drenched the whole thing with gravy, and now the revised "Deluxe Breakfast Bowl" is a big seller.”

And as for the New York Times’ editorial, here’s another reader's perspective:

“Funny that I can't find a single instance on the NY Times site that lists the calorie or fat count for any of their recipes or of any of the dishes they review from major restaurants.”