“I am a citizen of Alabama. I did not think the story about the people worshiping around the Ten Commandments monument was a smear. It was an accurate description. I lived in Montgomery when Roy Moore was grandstanding, and let me tell you, the lowest common denominator of Christian representation were on hand to protest (I am a Christian, but find Roy Moore deplorable...also, take note that no local churches organized protest, the protests were done by out of state people) People were throwing themselves down in front of the rock like it was Baal. It was disgraceful.”

Well, I was certainly no fan of Moore’s rock remaining where it did on either legal or aesthetic grounds. If nothing else, it was a prime candidate for wrapping, Christo-style, but permanently.

This is interesting. With the German economy falling deeper and deeper into the mire, Schroeder seems to be swinging further to the left. There was a bout of business-bashing last week, and now there’s this piece of news via The Daily Telegraph:

“Germany is backing a 1970s-style Keynesian to take over the crucial job of chief economist at the European Central Bank, marking a dramatic shift in Berlin's economic thinking and horrifying the guardians of orthodoxy in Frankfurt. The post has been held for the last eight years by Dr Otmar Issing, a monetary hawk who has fought off political pressure for lower interest rates and sought to uphold the low-inflation traditions of the former Bundesbank. Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder now hopes to replace him early next year with Professor Peter Bofinger, the leading advocate of a ''New Deal'' spending blitz to cut unemployment and lift the country out of protracted slump.The government slashed its growth forecast for 2005 yesterday from 1.6pc to 1pc after a week of grim confidence figures from German industry. Morgan Stanley has warned that the country may already be in recession.”

If you’re in a hole…

The Windsors may not be the sharpest knives in the block, but at least they keep their meddling in politics to a minimum. Not so Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, a woman deservedly notorious (yes, yes, ludicrously biased choice of adjective) for her establishment left politics.

Pieter at Peaktalk has a useful post on Beatrix, triggered by the recent appearance of a documentary about her. He seems to be something of an admirer, but with reservations. These comments are worth repeating:

“…Despite her political instincts she remained notably absent during the aftermath of both the Fortuyn and Van Gogh killings. This is somewhat odd as the documentary makers point out that in both cases there was a rare call from Dutch politicians, public and media to let the queen come forward and unify the nation with a speech or other symbolic gesture. In the interviews the queen briefly refers to them as “political murders”, enabling her to duck any elaborate treatment of both assassinations. It’s a clever escape route, the queen does not get involved in politics, but in view of her active engagement in matters of state as well as her very clear concerns over the direction of the society she represents it’s odd that she declined to act on such a traumatic experience. Her visit to an immigrant youth center shortly after Van Gogh’s killing was designed to appease Muslim sentiments rather than native Dutch anxieties and was deemed to be inadequate. She isn’t that quiet on Europe. Together with the current prime-minister she delivers a well-crafted pitch for the European Constitution in the documentary, the former touching on the efficiency of it, while the queen refers to the past-wars and violence that often tore the old continent apart. Her interviewer engages her on this topic and without missing a beat Beatrix points out the dangers of nationalism while underlining the importance of one’s own culture. Read into it what you want, but it was a gentle yet forceful push to encourage Dutch viewers to try and see the benefits of European integration arguing that it could still enable the preservation of their own national culture. To give you some material to reflect on this, picture an American president arguing that nationalism is a bad thing on the eve of an amalgamation with Canada and Mexico. So, in summary the current Dutch monarch has been able to exercise a tremendous amount of influence on areas where in theory she shouldn’t have and in doing that she has used her powers selectively to promote certain causes. It’s hard to accuse her of enforcing a political agenda, but throughout her tenure she has often come out where she and the political leadership felt Dutch public opinion was headed and that was hardly ever on the right of the political center.”

Time to restore the republic, I reckon.

This odd movement spreads like a wildfire. Anyone see last night's Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered?

Maybe we need a Corner TV show?

While George Bush was holding hands down in Texas, this is what his friend’s regime was doing back at home (via MEMRI).

“The Saudi daily Al-Jazirah reported that 40 men, women, and children with Pakistani citizenship were arrested on April 21, 2005 after performing Christian religious rites in an apartment in the Thaharat Al-Badi'a neighborhood in western Riyadh. The arrest was part of a sweeping police operation by the Riyadh District Police, at the order of Riyadh Governor Prince Salman bin Abd Al-'Aziz. The paper reported that the operation came after Saudi religious police – known as the Authority for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice followed and collected information on the activity of the 40, who listened to a proselytizing lecture by a Pakistani minister. The paper also noted that during the police operation, which lasted nearly 10 hours, a cross and a large number of proselytizing books and cassettes were found [in the apartment]. The detainees themselves stated that they had come to listen to lectures by the minister. One of the detainees was a Muslim Pakistani, who acknowledged that he had been influenced by the Christian ideology.The Saudi daily Al-Riyadh said that the detainees had set up a church in the apartment, equipped with crosses, pictures, and statues. Likewise, it was said that during their religious activity, one of them was found praying, as the others present repeated their words, and one of the women arrested was listing the people's confessions and distributing writs of absolution. The Al-Riyadh report included a photo of the detainees and of a large cross and the group which was arrested. A Saudi religious police source explained the reason for the arrest: "These people tried to spread the poison and their beliefs to others, by means of distributing pamphlets and [missionary] publications." He said that all the detainees "had been transferred to the relevant bodies for investigation."

Disgusting.

UPDATE

And there's this:

“A member of Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah's entourage was banned from the prince's trip to Dallas last week after showing up on a no-fly list, federal officials said Tuesday. As is routine with international flights, the Department of Homeland Security checked passenger manifests against terrorist watch lists and no-fly lists 24 hours before Saturday's trip. Homeland Security forwarded the information to the State Department, which denied the delegation member a visa to come to the United States, said an administration official, who did not want to be named.”

What's most revealing about the latter story is what it reveals about the degree of contempt in which the Saudis must hold the President.

Too much grovelling will do that, I suppose.

“French voters would approve the proposed European Union constitution in a referendum next month, the first opinion poll to give a swing in favour since mid-March showed Saturday. The TNS-Sofres-Unilog poll for the RTL radio station indicated 52 percent of decided voters would back the constitution in the May 29 referendum.”

The EU Rota blog has this to say:

“A new poll is out showing the Oui with a slight edge over the Non in the upcoming referendum battle to be held on 29 May. Good news, bad news? Try irrelevant news. It bears repeating, whether a Oui or a Non is the outcome on 29 May, free markets will suffer. The reason? A Oui will require Jacques Chirac to continue his fight against "ultra-liberalism" and his reinforcement of the "social model." A Non will be misread by Chirac as a signal to continue his fight against "ultra-liberalism" and his reinforcement of the "social model." Now that socialist promises have been made by Chirac, and will continue to be made, a Oui or Non is becoming irrelevant in terms of the French economy.”

That’s right, so far as it goes (anyone wanting a taste of the ‘yes’ campaign should check out how often those in favour of the draft ‘constitution’ have taken to using the term ‘Anglo-Saxon’ as a term of abuse), but only so far as it goes. In the sense that a ‘no’ vote will also throw a spanner in the works of the larger EU project, which is, now, basically the creation of permanent social-democratic rule throughtout Europe, it can only be welcomed.

Votez ‘non’.

Matthew Parris on Tony Blair:

“A frantic mix of effrontery and panic characterises Mr Blair’s whole career, as they must with any confidence trickster. He’s been found out and he knows it but he won’t confess and you won’t pin him down.”

Ha ha ha.

Are the Scots ‘foreign’, Jonah? Most definitely. Just ask them – and, yes, it is true that they had a much more self-consciously ‘philosophical’ tradition than the English. So great, for example, was the intellectual influence of the Scottish enlightenment that Voltaire famously announced that it was to Scotland for “all our ideas of civilization.”

The French sage's opinions on Irn Bru and deep-fried Mars Bars remain unknown.

Tim, that’s interesting – and telling - what you say about Strassman. It’s worth noting that the report was inaccurate in one important respect. CBS, as one reader pointed out to me, had another Dan Rather moment: the proposed legislation did not include a ban on books merely because the authors were, horrors, homosexual.

Nevertheless, even if the context of the article was part of a continuing effort to portray all southern conservatives as Neanderthals, what was proposed was idiotic. This report has more:

“If the bill became law, public school textbooks could not present homosexuality as a genetic trait and public libraries couldn't offer books with gay or bisexual characters. When asked about Tennessee Williams' southern classic "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof," Allen said the play probably couldn't be performed by university theater groups. Allen said no state funds should be used to pay for materials that foster homosexuality. He said that would include nonfiction books that suggest homosexuality is acceptable and fiction novels with gay characters. While that would ban books like "Heather has Two Mommies," it could also include classic and popular novels with gay characters such as "The Color Purple," "The Picture of Dorian Gray" and "Brideshead Revisted."

Sigh.

As a recent HLS grad (and, more to the point, sensible human being), I have to agree with Bainbridge's suggestion that HLS Unbound may actually unseat the American Constitution Society as "the least necessary organization in the law school world." But looking at the first issue's offerings, I must note that HLS Unbound could actually fill a useful role as the world's most unintentionally hilarious legal publication.

Never mind Christine Desan's moon-unit investigation of the issue, "Out of the Past: Time and Movement in Making the Present." I highlight instead Kristina Brittenheim's unconscionably funny "In Pursuit of the Gold Star: Diary of a Law Student". It surely is a parody article submitted to HLS Unbound by the editors of the Onion (or, more likely, the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy). Wrap your mind around this gem:

Ultimately, I propose that it is irrelevant whether the stories I tell here are “true,” as in fair or “factually” accurate. I see them through my own set of values and my social location as a white, heterosexual woman. I put the spin of my own brain and heart on them. I admit that right now.

I didn't mean to ignore your earlier question; I've been having technical difficulties all day, and now that I'm back online I'm trying to catch up on email and blogs.

I liked the president's remarks (which I read rather than watched) on Social Security. They may modestly help him.

You may recall that back in January, there was some debate in conservative circles about whether Congress or the president should lead. The last three months have, I think, conclusively shown that Congress is incapable of getting where the president wants it to get on its own. By beginning to outline a plan, the president may encourage some consolidation among Republicans. And by including progressivity in his benefit cuts, he may increase his chances of picking off a Democrat or two.

What's changed over the last few months? The Beltway has over the last few months pronounced reform dead, dead, dead, but the Beltway was basically saying the same thing (albeit with less conviction) in late December. The White House line is that the president has succeeded in persuading the public that Social Security needs to be reformed, and now can move to specifics. So what's changed are the political class's view of Bush's likely success (marginally down), the public's view of the urgency of the problem (up), and Bush's popularity and pull (down). I think Democrats are overconfident that they've already beaten Bush on Social Security--but it will take more than last night to turn things around.

That raises an interesting point for discussion around here. I've met Sullivan and Derb and was enriched by the experience on both counts.

But there are some conservatives I've yet to meet. Among those I would most like to remedy that situation are:

Mark Steyn

Paul Johnson (though as a TV producer I did technically meet him, but never chatted)

John Lukacs

Harvey Mansfield

Margaret Thatcher

Mark Helprin

And then there's a whole slew of conservative folks that I've met but have never really had a good conversation with. But that's a list for another day. Fortunately, I will meet Johnson on the British Isles Cruise.

So long Oscar, so long Walt...

And the justification for this nonsense?

Yup, you guessed it.

"Protecting the hearts and souls and minds of our children."

From a reader:

Jonah,

I have one problem with your idea that Sullivan and Derb are on the same page right now out of sheer Britishness.

British Conservatism (particularly the big-C kind: adherents to the political party) has been, at least since the 1960s, much more at home with many aspects of statism than American conservatism...not to mention the proud self-reliant/leave-me-alone meme these two are working on right now.

Example: I spent a year studying in Britain at the end of the Thatcher era, and would hang out with the campus Young Conservatives from time to time. Getting a good discussion going on privatization of the BBC, or on dismantling/privatizing/radically reforming the National Health Service, was always hard because the very thought of it scandalized them so profoundly.

This is a very long way from what you would expect from, say, a group of YAF-ers.

More seriously, it dawned on me that a main reason Sullivan's explanation of conservatism doesn't quite click is that it is so bloody British (which would also explain why he and Derb are more sympatico in outlook than he realizes). The British constitution, for example, is a very different beast than the American. The philosophical requirements for supporting an unwritten constitution are significantly different than those needed for supporting a written one, particularly the American one. Sullivan's Oakeshottian approach -- which never really caught on America -- is also, obviously, very, very British.

I'm not nearly up to speed enough on the subtler distinctions between British conservatism and American conservatism to go on much longer without thinking and reading more. But I think there's more than a grain of truth here.

The Derb-Sullivan rapprochement continues. Delighted to see it (though technically rapprochement implies that there were cordial relations to begin with, which I don't think is the case).

All I'd suggest to Andrew is that he consider that when his new categories cause him to find new common ground with his nemesis, perhaps it's the new categories that are flawed.

"I remember the Syria brouhaha," Mr. Hutchings said in responding to questions by e-mail. "I was not directly involved in vetting drafts, but I instructed all those working for me NOT to clear on anything they could not verify."

Mr. Hutchings added: "I remember saying specifically that I wanted us to play hardball on this one. I said that if anyone on the policy side chose to give a speech without our clearance, that was O.K. by me - policy makers have a different set of considerations. But if they asked for our clearance, they would get it only if we could verify the intelligence judgments it conveyed. I had no ax to grind with anyone, but we had a professional responsibility to call it as we saw it."

In testimony before the Senate committee on April 11, Mr. Bolton acknowledged that there had been "a lot of disagreements" about his proposed testimony on Syria and that objections from the Central Intelligence Agency and others were among the factors that contributed to his decision to postpone scheduled testimony in July 2003.

The C.I.A. specifically rejected an assertion in a classified section of Mr. Bolton's prepared testimony saying Syria had a biological and chemical weapons program that threatened regional security in the Middle East, intelligence officials have said.

Ultimately Mr. Bolton delivered public testimony on Syria, in September 2003, that was fully cleared by the intelligence agencies.

BBC reports that there's been an outbreak of "Zombism" in Cambodia:

There has been a small outbreak of “zombism” in a small town near the border of Laos in North-Eastern Cambodia.

The culprit was discovered to be mosquitoes native to that region carrying a new strain of Malaria which thus far has a 100 percent mortality rate and kills victims in fewer than 2 days.

After death, this parasite is able to restart the heart of its victim for up to two hours after the initial demise of the person where the individual behaves in extremely violent ways from what is believed to be a combination of brain damage and a chemical released into blood during “resurrection.”

Cambodian officials say that the outbreak has been contained and the public has no need to worry.

General Ary Serey had this to say, "We have obtained samples of this new parasite and plan to learn how it starts the heart and other major organs of the deceased. We intend to use this to increase the quality of life for all."

US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice opposed the plan saying that the Cambodian government holds a great biological weapon and should destroy it immediately. Cambodian officials have yet to comment.

A United Nations team will be dispatched to Cambodia to confirm the safety of biological research in Cambodia.

Me: Is this a parody? Does BBC run parodies after April Fools? Is Zombism real? Isn't this the sort of thing found in the Book of Revelations?

Update: Yes, it must be a parody -- as I suspected. The URL is not a BBC URL. But it looks very convincing when one is reading while on the phone.

Georgia Republicans repeal Jim Crow laws.

Funny how the Dems never thought of that.

That's right folks. You could be like Henry in the snows of Canossa pleading for entry, check in hand, and the suits will merely pour hot lead from the rooftop on you.

[Note: this analogy cannot withstand close inspection]

I slapped together a G-File on Sullivan's Opus trying to focus on one of the themes Ponnuru didn't already address.

Those of you who want to yell at me about it can swing by the Dubliner tonight. I will be the guy using the bartender's garnish tray as a salad bar. "Ooooooo...cocktail onions and lemon wedges...!"

Or Blogline, or Meet the Blogs or whatever that thing's is called. Let me use Judy Woodruff's departure from Inside Politics as an excuse to call it -- i.e. the Blog Street Journal, not IP -- the dumbest feature in television news today. Have you seen it? Some newsettes sit around and read from their screens whenever Judy asks "What's going on with the blogs...right now."

"Well, Judy. A poster on the Daily Kos seems to think Howard Dean is doing a great job. But -- and this is interesting! -- the conservative blog site Little Green Footballs seems to disagree. There's no telling what to make of that Judy. But we'll stay on top of this story as it develops. Back to you Judy."

I'm sure the intrepid screen readers who handle this heavy-lifting are perfectly fine and decent people who are merely going with the best gig presented to them. But I find the whole thing so lame as to be mortifying. It's amazing to me that the network which claims to be taking the high road -- on arguably its most serious show -- goes in for this kind of gimmick. On the other hand, that the entire MSNBC network is this gimmick doesn't surprise me in the slightest.

A month or two ago, I criticized them for seeming to drift to the left. Still good, but not as great as they once were, was my appraisal.

I'm coming around the view that they were just having a bad stretch. Maybe lefty treacle sprout like algae plumes every now and then and ALD -- which kind of serves as water filtration plant for intellectual currents -- simply reflected that for a little while. Or perhaps the unbridled power of the Corner's admonishments forced them to change their ways! Who knows? But it's been pretty good lately.

Boys and girls are different from the get-go. From Scientific American:

On a gray day in mid-January, Lawrence Summers, the president of Harvard University, suggested that innate differences in the build of the male and female brain might be one factor underlying the relative scarcity of women in science. His remarks reignited a debate that has been smoldering for a century, ever since some scientists sizing up the brains of both sexes began using their main finding--that female brains tend to be smaller--to bolster the view that women are intellectually inferior to men.

To date, no one has uncovered any evidence that anatomical disparities might render women incapable of achieving academic distinction in math, physics or engineering. And the brains of men and women have been shown to be quite clearly similar in many ways. Nevertheless, over the past decade investigators have documented an astonishing array of structural, chemical and functional variations in the brains of males and females.

These inequities are not just interesting idiosyncrasies that might explain why more men than women enjoy the Three Stooges. They raise the possibility that we might need to develop sex-specific treatments for a host of conditions, including depression, addiction, schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Furthermore, the differences imply that researchers exploring the structure and function of the brain must take into account the sex of their subjects when analyzing their data--and include both women and men in future studies or risk obtaining misleading results.

Watching a press conference in which both the press and viewers struggled to stifle yawns as the President tried to compete against baseball, sitcoms, polls and pop star contests, all I can think of is how far we've come in just 42 months, from a point when every sentient being on the planet sat on the edge of their seats relishing every expression of this President's response to the worst attack on American soil in history. And what little credit we give him for leading us through that journey, back from the precipice to the relative ho-hum of a present day preoccupied with old-age welfare projections 30 years out.

NRO needs a jet.

From the London Times today:

"Europe, for the Dutch, has lost its allure. Few politicians now call for an ever-closer union. Even fewer see in Brussels a model of efficiency, probity or accountability. The Dutch are to vote on the European constitution three days after the French referendum. Disillusioned with EU bureaucracy, resentful that they pay a disproportionately high share of the EU’s rising costs and fearful of losing their national identity, the Dutch may vote decisively against...Above all, the country is reacting to years of stifling liberal consensus. There is a backlash against the assumptions that The Hague should pay generously for other Europeans, take a lead in development aid or make concessions to a club dominated by larger members determined to have their own way. The Dutch want to concentrate on priorities at home. What they dislike is not the idea of a constitution, but the accretion of more power to an unaccountable Brussels. The Netherlands has the chance to speak for Europe. The Dutch should vote “nee” in the referendum."

Zo is dat.

from someone who is a political scientist:

"Your questioner mixes two questions-- parliamentarism vs. presidentialism and federalism vs. unitary states.

"Federalism has been adopted in many successful ongoing constitutional democracies, including Canada, Australia, Germany, India, and Spain.

"What hasn't been adopted successfully is presidentialism. This is [a result of] both path dependence and selection effects.

"1a. Path dependence: Britain is parliamentary, and lots of the constitutional democracies in the world are former British colonies. Strong royal governors who existed in the 13 colonies in 1776 (standing in for a still-strong Crown at home), and strong republican governors filled their shoes, with a strong independent president following later. But by the time Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, etc., framed their governments, their local administration and the Westminster system in London were parliamentary.

"1b. Path dependence: The [West] German Basic Law has been more influential and more widely-copied in the postwar world than has the US Constitution. And the fact that the U.S. planted parliamentary systems in Germany and Japan probably helped to kill off the thought that even the U.S. thought a separately elected strong president was necessary for constitutional democracies.

"2. Selection effects. Lots of countries have *tried* independently elected strong presidents. And they haven't tended to remain constitutional democracies under that system. The U.S. political culture and underlying political conditions are very robustly republican-democratic-liberal; we could get a lot of institutional things wrong and still end up with a constitutional democracy. But where those things are more fragile, presidents seem to tend to become strongmen and dictators. Presidentialism has been a terrible failure in Latin America when it's been tried-- and it often was, in the 19th century, when the new Latin American republics took on the U.S. Constituion as a model.

"I'm sentimentally attached to presidentialism, and I theoretically like the stronger separation of powers you get with an independently elected executive. But the evidence suggests that the U.S. is unusual in being able to tolerate presidentialism and remain a democracy, and that parliamentarism is much the better bet for new constitutional democracies.

"(But parliamentarism is fully compatible with federalism--Canada, Australia, India, Spain.)"

BTW, I found the joint Pacific Research Institute - AEI publication extremely useful in getting prepared for my talk at U Minn this week. I wrote a column about environmental stuff today (i.e. out tomorrow) but I didn't get a chance to mention it there, so I'm doing it here. Steve Hayward and his colleagues do great work.

Moreover, they are advertising on our site. Look to the top of the page. You could do them, us, and yourself a big favor -- assuming you're interested in such things -- by clicking on the link.

An email opens up a new topic: "The United States has been the world’s greatest inspiration to freedom-lovers and young democracy movements for over 200 years. So why is it that worldwide – including now in Iraq – new democracies overwhelmingly choose the parliamentary form of government, rather than our federalist model? Is it because other nations (particularly smaller ones) don’t have the same rigid patchwork of semi-independent states we have? Or does it have to do with placating ethnic/sectarian concerns by giving them a chance to be part of a governing coalition? Still, the latter concern doesn’t seem like it would be a factor in, say, Israel.

"I have wondered this before, but I thought of it again with today’s news that Iraq has finally formed its new government. If they had followed the American model, they would have had their government in place by mid-February. The parliamentary form of government is certainly more responsive to the electorate, but its inherent instability would seem to make it a poor choice in a place like Iraq where a stronger executive branch could deal more effectively with law and order and keep things on a more consistent and even keel.

"But I’m no poli-sci expert, so please enlighten me (and maybe the Corner readers, as well)."

Wish I could. It's a good question, but I've never seen a satisfactory explanation.

Another email: "In this context, it might be worth quoting John Adams' 'Thoughts on Government.' Keep in mind that Gordon Wood calls 'Thoughts on Government' 'the most influential work guiding the framers of the new republics.' Adams explicitly connected happiness with virtue:

"'We ought to consider what is the end of government, before we determine which is the best form. Upon this point all speculative politicians will agree, that the happiness of society is the end of government, as all divines and moral philosophers will agree that the happiness of the individual is the end of man. From this principle it will follow, that the form of government which communicates ease, comfort, security, or, in one word, happiness, to the greatest number of persons, and in the greatest degree, is the best.

"'All sober inquirers after truth, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue. Confucius, Zoroaster, Socrates, Mahomet, not to mention authorities really sacred, have agreed in this. If there is a form of government, then, whose principle and foundation is virtue, will not every sober man acknowledge it better calculated to promote the general happiness than any other form?'

"An etext can be found here: http://www.founding.com/library/lbody.cfm?id=139&parent=54

"The bit I quote is at the beginning.

"It has been a couple of years since I read it, but wouldn't we find a
similar opinion in Smith's 'Theory of Moral Sentiments'?"

From a reader:

Subject: You are an idiot!!!

you have to be kidding me!!! This is one of the most juvenile articles ever written!!! Article after article after has been written recounting Bolton's crude Neanderthal treatment of underlings, his abuse of power and his outright disregard for the law and you say:

In other words, all of the "controversy" of the last couple weeks is bogus. It's a kabuki dance. Whether the allegations against Bolton are true or not is almost entirely beside the point, because if a completely unrelated set of facts were not in play, no one would care. In short, this is borking pure and simple.

What's bogus? Carl Ford's testimony!!! Bolton's failure to follow State Department procedure!!! The fact like so many neo conservatives he does let the facts get in the way of anything he wants to do. Bolton is not even a credible critic of the UN. He is childish, self absorbed, sissy!!! I wish there was a real policy argument to have!!! The problem is that the neo conservative viewpoint is devoid of any intellectual thought. But Jonah like all good totalitarians you must perpetuate the lie. You must ignore the facts and keep up the grand illusion regardless of how the rest of us are laughing you.

Ponnuru is one of my favorite reads. He was not on the index; I was astonished!

So . . .

Going by the published formula, I put Ponnuru at 9.2 – about the middle of the pack.

Throughout the judicial obstruction debate, emotions have run high on both sides. This should remind all of us, once again, of the need to return civility to our nation’s capital.

The American people want their elected leaders to work together to find solutions. To them -- doing what’s Republican or Democrat matters far less than doing what’s right for our country.

Let me briefly discuss how we got here.

Never in 214 years -- never in the history of the Senate -- had a judicial nominee with majority support been denied an up-or-down vote…until two years ago.

In the last Congress, the President submitted 34 appeals court nominees to the Senate. A minority of senators denied ten of those nominees -- and threatened to deny another six -- up-or-down votes.

They wouldn’t allow votes, because they knew the nominees would be confirmed and become judges. The nominees had the support of a majority of senators.

Now, in this new Congress, the same minority says it will continue to obstruct votes on judges. And, even worse, if they don’t get their way, they threaten to shut down the Senate and obstruct government itself.

Throughout this debate, we have held firm to a simple principle -- judicial nominees deserve up-or-down votes. Vote for them. Vote against them. But give them the courtesy of a vote.

Yet judicial nominees have not been given that courtesy. They’ve gone 2, 3, even 4 years without a vote. Now 46 seats on the federal bench are vacant -- as case after case and appeal after appeal stack up.

One nominee -- Priscilla Owen -- has served 10 years as a justice on the Texas Supreme court. She won reelection with 84% of the vote in Texas, yet she can’t get the courtesy of a vote to be confirmed by the Senate.

Judicial nominees are being denied. Justice is being denied. The solution is simple -- allow Senators to do their jobs and vote.

In the spirit of civility and with sincere hope for a solution, I make an offer.

This offer will ensure up or down votes on judicial nominees after fair, open, and, some might say, exhaustive debate. It’s a compromise that holds to constitutional principles.

First, never in the history of the Senate had a judicial nominee with majority support been denied an up-or-down vote until two years ago. However, it was not unprecedented either for Republicans or Democrats to block judicial nominees in committee.

Whether on the floor or in committee, judicial obstruction is judicial obstruction. It’s time for judicial obstruction to end no matter which party controls the White House or the Senate.

The judiciary committee will continue to play its essential oversight and investigative roles in the confirmation process. But the committee -- whether controlled by Republicans or Democrats -- will no longer be used to obstruct judicial nominees.

Second, fair and open debate is a hallmark of the Senate. Democrats have expressed their desire for more time to debate judicial nominees. I respect that request and honor it.

When a judicial nominee comes to the floor, we will set aside up to 100 hours to debate that nomination. Then the Senate as a whole will speak with an up-or-down vote.

The Senate operated this way before we began to broadcast debates on television in 1986. This would provide more than enough time for every Senator to speak on a nominee while guaranteeing that nominee the courtesy of a vote.

Third, these proposals will apply only to appeals court and Supreme Court nominees. Judges who serve on these courts have the awesome responsibility of interpreting the Constitution.

So far, only up-or-down votes on appeals court nominees have been denied. I sincerely hope the Senate minority does not intend to escalate its judicial obstruction to potential Supreme Court nominees.

That would be a terrible blow to constitutional principles and to political civility in America. I hope my offer will make it unnecessary for the minority to further escalate its judicial obstruction.

Fourth, the minority of senators who have denied votes on judicial nominees are concerned that their ability to block bills will be curbed. As Majority Leader, I guarantee that power will be protected.

The filibuster -- as it existed before its unprecedented use on judicial nominees in the last Congress -- will remain unchanged.

Senator Reid and I have been talking almost every day on this issue. And I’m hopeful he’ll accept my offer as a solution. It may not be a perfect proposal for either side, but it’s the right proposal for America.

For 70% of the 20th Century, the same party controlled the White House and the Senate. Yet no minority ever denied a judicial nominee with majority support an up-or-down vote until the last Congress.

These minorities showed self-restraint. They treated judicial nominees with fairness. And they respected the Senate’s role in the appointments process -- as designed by the Framers of the Constitution.

Resolving the judicial obstruction debate, for me, isn’t about politics. This is about constitutional principles. It’s about fairness to nominees. It’s about Senators doing their duty and doing what’s right for our country.

Arbitrarily voting on just a few judicial nominees, as some have proposed, will fail to restore the Senate’s 214 year practice of up-or-down votes for all judicial nominees that come to the floor.

Senators have a duty to vote up-or-down on judicial nominees -- confirm them or deny them -- but give them all the courtesy of a vote.

From one of my more regular and hysterical lefy readers:

"This aggressive new strain of right-wing religious
zealotry is actually a throwback to the intolerance
that led to the creation of America in the first
place,"

He's right of course, but don't' let that stop you
from claiming otherwise. What ever works for you. It
goes along with conservative attempts so somehow
attach morality to "the pursuit of happiness".
Honestly, it's hard to fathom how you manage to
re-invent our country's past to fit your vision of
the present.

From a reader:

Jonah,

I'd love for you to look up (and comment on) some of the governing documents
of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and see if John Winthrop and the like
escaped Europe to start a secular government, or one of divine-moral
underpinnings. Or, how about when Roger Williams left Massachusetts and
founded Rhode Island-Providence, Rhode Island, that is (named because he
said it was God's Providence that brought him there). Of course Williams
was more tolerant of religious pluralism, but he still, as founder of a
colony and future state, started the first Baptist church in America.
Wonder if present day New Englanders realize that their founders had more in
common with Jerry Falwell than George Soros?

There are only 12 cylon models.

Shane McGuire

From a reader:

Well it appears that Al Gore has gone to the infamous tactic of taking quotes out of context. It doesn't really matter if Christianity or any religion has degenerated into a political faction because Madison's whole point in Federalist #10 was that we should embrace faction heartily as a necessary part of a large republic. A one-faction rule results when there aren't enough factions in and outside of political parties, since each of those factions resists incursion on its "turf" by other factions. Suppressing factions, no matter how influential, strikes at the core of the American, or indeed any other, democracy. Heck, even the communists are operating in this country without fear of arrest, (until they do something stupid like vandalism ala the McDonald's in France). Cheers

The second interpretation it is. From the speech, as reprinted at
Salon:

Through their words and threats, these Republicans are creating an atmosphere in which judges may well hesitate to exercise their independence for fear of Congressional retribution, or worse.

It is no accident that this assault on the integrity of our constitutional design has been fueled by a small group claiming special knowledge of God's will in American politics. They even claim that those of us who disagree with their point of view are waging war against "people of faith." How dare they?

Long before our founders met in Philadelphia, their forebears first came to these shores to escape oppression at the hands of despots in the old world who mixed religion with politics and claimed dominion over both their pocketbooks and their souls.

This aggressive new strain of right-wing religious zealotry is actually a throwback to the intolerance that led to the creation of America in the first place.

James Madison warned us in Federalist #10 that sometimes, "A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction."

Unfortunately the virulent faction now committed to changing the basic nature of democracy now wields enough political power within the Republican party to have a major influence over who secures the Republican nomination for president in the 2008 election. It appears painfully obvious that some of those who have their eyes on that nomination are falling all over themselves to curry favor with this faction.

They are the ones demanding the destructive constitutional confrontation now pending in the Senate. They are the ones willfully forcing the Senate leadership to drive democracy to the precipice that now lies before us.

I remember a time not too long ago when Senate leaders in both parties saw it as part of their responsibility to protect the Senate against the destructive designs of demagogues who would subordinate the workings of our democracy to their narrow factional agendas.

A reader writes:

Let's give Algore the benefit of the doubt that it was religious intolerance in Europe that led in part to North American colonization, and thus the birth of America. Otherwise, he truly is nuts, and I don't think he is that.

Me: Let's hope so, though even that interpretation isn't so benign -- or sane. Anybody have the full transcript?

"This aggressive new strain of right-wing religious zealotry is actually a throwback to the intolerance that led to the creation of America in the first place," Gore said as many in the audience stood and applauded. The speech was sponsored by the liberal group MoveOn's political action committee.

grade-level requirements to read NRO authors-

using the Gunning-Fog Index*, a sampling from most recent articles:
11.03 Frum (that's 11 years of schooling)
10.94 Murdock
10.60 Ledeen
10.58 Hanson
10.12 Derbyshire
10.11 Novak
9.59 Buckley
8.77 Nordlinger
8.47 Brookhiser
8.44 Coffin
8.00 Seipp
7.90 Blyth
7.82 Kudlow
7.62 Lopez
7.07 O'Bierne
6.91 Goldberg
6.64 Lowry
6.52 York
6.32 Stuttaford

*The following is the algorithm to determine the Gunning-Fog index.

* Calculate the average number of words you use per sentence.
* Calculate the percentage of difficult words in the sample (words with three or more syllables).
* Add the totals together, and multiply the sum by 0.4.
* Algorithm: (average_words_sentence +
number_words_three_syllables_plus) * 0.4

The result is your Gunning-Fog index, which is a rough measure of how many years of schooling it would take someone to understand the content.

The lower the number, the more understandable the content will be to your visitors. Results over seventeen are reported as seventeen, where seventeen is considered post-graduate level.

from this website

From all the bad arguments this guy makes re my piece in USA Today:

JG, I read your aticle in the USA today and you are way off base if you dont mind me saying. Just because the tech., ideologies, and terraain are different, one could not make an analogy betwwen the 2 wars. They are alot more similiar than they are different thats for sure. Just to name a few: 1. Both McNamara and Bush repeatdly lied about how well the wars were going. Everyone knows that is it complete chaos overthere now.

2. We were fighting for an unjust cause thousands of miles away in which we dont belong. I dont want my son dieing to give Iraqi's clean water.

3. Both instances involved our armies bogged down in a quagmire

4. No exit strategy.

5. The Iraq's dont want us there and neither did the South Vietnamese

6. An incompetent South Vietnamese and Iraqi army.

7.Most Americans think they were both mistakes.

8. Both leaders lied to get us into the war: Gulf of Tonkin, WMD

9. N. Vietnam and Saddam were no threat to the US

It is what it is.
I could go on all day but I would not waste your time and my time. I am wondering if you bias comes into play being Jewish since Israel had much to gain from getting rid of Saddam.

By the way comparing the Vietnam war and the Sp.-Am war was a good point to an extent

[namee withheld]

The Honorable Thad Cochran
Chairman, Committee on Appropriations
United States Senate
Washington, D.C.

Dear Chairman Cochran:

We are writing to express our concern regarding Senate Amendment 399 that was adopted by unanimous consent during recent debate over the emergency supplemental appropriations bill (H.R. 1268). This amendment prohibits any additional funds from being spent on the Independent Counsel investigation of Henry Cisneros, former Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. If the language from this amendment is enacted into law, there is the risk that the final report on this investigation will not be released. Given the extraordinary amount of time and public funds that have already been expended on this matter, we do not believe that the Cisneros investigation should be prematurely terminated before its final findings are made public.

We understand that many people have very strong feelings about the propriety of the Independent Counsel itself. We also understand that others have concerns about the use of taxpayer dollars to fund these types of investigations. We share these same concerns.

The Independent Counsel, which began its investigation in May 1995, was appointed to investigate false statements by Mr. Cisneros to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. However, according to myriad news reports, the scope of the Independent Counsel¹s investigation later included both the Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service. According to one of the judges overseeing the Independent Counsel, the investigation was ³an apparently wide-ranging probe of government officials who mightŠhave sought to shield Mr. Cisneros.² If there is any truth to the charge that Mr. Cisneros was shielded by any federal official or department, both the Congress and the public deserve to know.

Accordingly, we respectfully urge you to not include any language regarding the Independent Counsel investigation of Mr. Cisneros in the final conference agreement for H.R. 1268.

Sincerely,

Tom Coburn

Mostly positive responses so far. A sampling of pro and con emails:

No! No glossaries!

Let them google their puzzlement over basic vocabulary terms such as "borking". Let them search the NRO archives for references to volcano lancing and try to understand if it be humor.

We cannot learn if we do not study.

Regards,

A Mean, Old, Conservative,

Jonah,

Making a Wiki for NRO is genius! It took me a while to catch up with a lot
of the running jokes when I started visiting NRO in 2002, so I feel for
those who are just coming in now - with all the new running jokes thanks to
The Corner!

May I suggest, however, that you have some sort of safeguard in it. When
you've had it up long enough to identify some of your best contributors,
make them moderators so that malicious liberals can't sabotage the project.
Just a thought.

I just got this email:

Hi Jonah, I am fairly new to politics: I only really started paying attention during the last election because there was so much at stake. This email is a cry for help- now that I am an NRO junkie I need help with all the technical terms like "Borking" and what volcano lancing lasers are for- is it a metaphor or are we talking actual volcano lancing? Now I know I'm incredibly ignorant- but I can't be the only one who could use some details. How about this: You could put up a sort of glossary on NRO of all the vital things a good conservative should know. We need Ramesh to explain the tricky bits, the Derb to explain what he said, and you to keep it funny. How about it? It would be a huge service, and a great running gag.

Me: Maybe this is crazy of me. But since I know for a fact no one at NRO wants to be assigned the job of actually writing an NRO glossay, maybe we should use a wiki to create an ongoing NRO glossary or NROpedia? I have no idea if I'm using Wiki in the absolutely correct way. But I think this could be a pretty cool innovation in web journalism and interactivity. Over time, it could evolve into a pretty useful document, with explanations of not just jokes and phrases we use around here, but whole concepts, biographies etc.

I will ponder more but I think there's real potential here.

Continuing the discussion from yesterday, an email:

"1. Why did Jefferson replace 'property' with 'pursuit of happiness'? Historians usually attribute the alteration to a widespread awareness that 'property' was a colonial euphemism for 'slavery.' Had the Continental Congress proclaimed the purpose of government the preservation of life, liberty, and slavery, the document would have lost something of its rhetorical force, no?

"2. More seriously, I think [Andrew] Sullivan is widely off the mark in suggesting that the Founders were indifferent to the government's role in cultivating virtue. To a one, they subscribed to the logic of classic republicanism, which held that liberty could only be maintained by a virtuous people. (It held as a corollary that the only reliable means of safeguarding virtue was the cultivation of religious piety, but that's another matter for another time.) They believed that local governments were best positioned to cultivate the moral sentiments necessary for republican governance, but they weren't averse to seeing the national legislature take on the task within its proper domain -- specifically, in the federal territories. Recall, for example, Article 3 of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which stipulated that 'Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.'

"There's a lot more to say about this; I could go on for pages and pages. Suffice it to say, I think that Sullivan's interpretation can't bear the weight of overwhelming historical evidence to the contrary."

RP: This is all very interesting, as was the discussion yesterday, and I thank the correspondent. I think that the bit there about religion and morality "being necessary. . . to the happiness of mankind" gets you part of the way (but only part of the way) to an answer to my original questions--which were, again, whether we can identify a particular view of "happiness" among the Founders and whether that view included a moral component (whether, that is, they regarded happiness not just as satisfaction but as something closer to justified satisfaction).

Kathryn - on the opposing page from Elaine's piece is my own humble contribution on the 30th anniversary of the end of Vietnam.

The reviews are in! From a reader:

That was perhaps the dumbest thing you have ever linked. Made even dumber by misspelling Los Angeles in the credits. Made even more head-scratchingly unfathomable by making me wonder what role the "Los Angleles Sheriff's Department" had in the making of the movie, and why. Thanks!

One of the lessons from last year that too many American Catholics still don’t want to face is that it’s OK to be Catholic in today’s public square as long as we don’t try to live our beliefs too seriously; as long as we’re suitably embarrassed by all those “primitive” Catholic teachings; as long as we shut up about abortion and other sensitive moral issues and allow ourselves to be tutored in the ways of “polite” secular culture by experts who have little or no respect for the Christian faith that guides our lives.

The reason Pope Benedict XVI will get no media honeymoon is simple. It’s the same reason he instantly won the hearts of committed Catholics, worried the lukewarm and angered the proud and disaffected. He actually believes that what Jesus Christ and His Church teach is true, and that the soul of the world depends on the Church’s faithful witness.

Someone has made a film about what happens when you shoot scuba tanks with a rifle. I hope the academy is paying attention.

Was the scene in Jaws accurate? You find out.

Derb - I think it was a technically very well-made movie. I also hate it.

Did we really need all of the class war nonsense? The real story about some of the world's most fabulously wealthy and powerful men willingly sinking to their deaths was almost ignored in favor of all that treacle and cliche. Bleh.

Should analysts accept the point of view of narrow interest groups as valid expressions of national interest, when an administration appears to endorse them?

On Cuba, senior and mid-level policymakers have barely concealed in the past the fact that a relatively small constituency is the most intense promoter of the “pressure cooker” approach of maintaining the economic embargo, isolating Havana internationally, and promoting internal upheaval. One past Coordinator for Cuban Affairs at the State Department would answer challenges to the government’s policy, in open forum, with the answer, “Cuba is first and foremost a domestic political matter.” You do not have to be a cynic to see a link between Cuba policy, Florida elections, and campaign finances. Most observers judge that the chance is extremely slim that explosive change on the island—the sectoral interest—would result in stability and democracy—the national interest. But that view continues to underpin the inter-pretation of our national interests in Cuba.

Professor Bainbridge has been debating various libertarians (and the occasional liberal) about this topic. Everyone involved seems to share the premise that Senate Democrats are applying an abortion litmus test that excludes nominees who either think that Roe was a mistake, think that abortion is immoral, or think that it should be illegal--and are applying this test even to nominees who swear that as appeals-court judges they would adhere to Roe as a precedent. Everyone seems to agree that this test has the effect of ruling out traditionalist Christians--as Bainbridge puts it, it has a "disparate impact" on Catholics.

Bainbridge, as I read him, is not saying that the Senate Democrats are motivated by any special hostility or "bigotry" toward Catholics. As long as Republicans avoid saying that--or, worse, saying that Democrats are against "people of faith" generally--I don't see what the problem is. The fact that the Democrats' litmus test excludes faithful Catholics and evangelicals is a reason to reconsider the wisdom of the test. And to say that the Democrats have a litmus test that excludes faithful Catholics and evangelicals strikes me as fair game, not least because it is true.

Washington, D.C.—In a correction and apology broadcast yesterday, National Public Radio admitted that it falsely accused Mark Levin, author of the New York Times bestseller, Men in Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America (Regnery 2005) of advocating violence against judges in a recent broadcast of the NPR program, “Day to Day.”

“We have a correction [that] concerns a conversation we aired on April 5 about denunciations of the judiciary by certain conservatives in the wake of the Terry Schiavo case. After noting that a U.S. senator had explicitly linked violence against judges to judicial activism, we then turned to a critique of a book by Mark Levin, called Men in Black. We want to make clear that Mr. Levin’s book does not discuss either violence against judges or the Terry Schiavo case, and we regret any error or confusion that resulted from our story that day.”

Once again, it seems the irrefutable wisdom of "if it's not Scottish, it's crap" has been confirmed. Iain Murray writes:

Chaps, It's my understanding that Jefferson took the concept from Scottish philosopher Lord Kames, whose work Principles of Morality in National Religion included the passage, "People have an innate sense of right and wrong. When they act virtuously, they increase the general happiness of mankind. Thus, the pursuit of virtue and morality is the pursuit of happiness." My notes tell me Jefferson underlined this passage. So Andrew is wrong, again, it seems...

Iain

About last night, from my host:

Jonah,

At about 8 AM this morning I recieved a very worried and distraught phone
call from [The Guy Who Failed To Pick Me Up] - "Gilles, I fell asleep!"

I sincerely apologize that we didn't get you a ride to the airport this
morning. I hope you were able to sort it out without too much inconvenience.
Please let me know if you had to incur any additional expense and we'll
reimburse you.

[TGWFTPMU] is quite horrified he dropped the ball. Maybe this could be used to
help further shame him out of law school.... :-)

Also, last night was awesome. You were everything we wanted you to be. I
thought the speech was great, and it was almost eery how you hit each and
every one of CFACT's issues, hit it with the right take, the right remedy,
and did it as if you'd sat next our founder on the flight over.

And at the Big 10, it was great to watch people walk away just awed that they
shared a pitcher of beer with Jonah Goldberg and James Lilleks. (Brought to
you by CFACT of course!)

Last night was fantastic and a great way for us to end the year. I hope this
morning didn't suck too bad, because I'm guessing we'll want you back.

Sincerely,

Bill Gilles
CFACT
bgilles@cfactcampus.org

Augustine over at RedState disagrees with my article yesterday. He thinks, first, that the administration should have been quicker to enforce the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, and second, that the president ought to spend more time and effort making the case against abortion. I don't have strong objections to either point. But I do think my point that pro-lifers need to make a sober assessment of the political constraints on pro-life politicians is stronger than Augustine allows.

Augustine writes, "The reality is that, as countless polls have indicated, the country is more and more open to the arguments of the pro-life cause.
There's a reason why Hillary Clinton is testing out pro-life rhetoric. And there is simply no evidence that a frank discussion of pro-life issues — in reasoned, careful, and compassionate terms — does anything but help conservatives and their candidates.

"I would argue, in fact, that this has been the President's greatest failing. Forget the more public matters, such as the dominance of pro-choicers in his Cabinet and as speakers at the RNC convention. It is indisputable that the President has personally on several occasions used the excuse that the cultural climate in America has not moved to a point where they will accept a ban on abortion--an excuse which is at best cowardly, at worst a crass political maneuver--yet the simple fact, based again on numerous polls, is that the current law is far less restrictive than what most Americans would tolerate."

I don't agree with Augustine's reading of the polls. It is true (and has long been true) that a small majority of the public will answer yes when asked if abortion should be banned with exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother. It is also true (and has long been true) that large majorities favor prohibitions on second- and third-trimester abortions. Majorities or near-majorities say abortion is murder.

But if you ask the question differently--if you ask, for example, if abortion should be "between a woman and her doctor"--you get pro-choice results. And you also get majority support for Roe (especially when Roe is misdescribed in the polling question, but that's another story). The percentage of people who consider themselves pro-life is lower than the percentage who support a general ban on abortion.

There are a variety of ways to make sense of this data, but I think it is reasonable to make two assumptions. The first is that some people who hold pro-life views hesitate to call themselves pro-lifers because they associate the movement with zealotry and extremism. The second is that people don't like to think or hear about abortion. (That's one reason pro-choicers rarely use the word.) Only a small number of voters consider abortion one of their top issues (most of them are pro-life). The general public is simply not looking for officeholders who present abortion--stopping it or keeping it--as one of their top priorities. Take the special election in the 22nd district of California in 1998. It's hard to believe that a majority of voters there favor partial-birth abortion. But when the Republican candidate was seen as making the race turn on the issue, the public reaction was highly negative.

Hillary Clinton's remarks reflect a real pro-life advantage in public opinion, and especially in voting intensity. But they also reflect the imperative that she not be seen as a pro-choice crusader. The lesson of her remarks is not that pro-lifers can be seen as crusaders themselves.

More Augustine: "And even if you doubt all of those polls, the question becomes: what is the permanent standard for the President on abortion? Is it expecting him and his Administration to work in a dedicated, sustained manner to stop abortion? Or is it an expectation that they will only undertake what they think 'our culture' and 'political realities' will tolerate?"

I think the standard should be somewhere between doing the bare minimum to keep pro-lifers in the Republican camp and doing so much that you make it impossible to create and sustain a pro-life political majority. If the House voted on a Human Life Amendment today, it would get less than 100 votes--and there would be fewer pro-lifers in the next Congress. I think Augustine understands that I don't like a lot of the phenomena I'm describing--but again, they can't be wished away.

Ramesh - I'm sure you'll get lots of responses to your question more thoughtful than this -- which really isn't an attempt at answering your question.

But don't you have to start with Locke's second treatise which used the phrase "life, liberty and the pursuit of property" (or something close to that, I'm quoting from memory). Why did Jefferson switch the words? My own personal view was always that while the pursuit of property (in the Lockean sense) is necessary for a liberal regime it is not sufficient for a moral -- i.e. healthy -- society. I guess I agree with Charles Murray. "Happiness" obviously includes the pursuit of property but it includes something more -- I think, an acknowledgment of something larger and more transcendent which must include notions of a decent life. Obviously, Jefferson didn't use "virtue" instead of "happiness" for a reason but, like you, I don't know what that reason was.

The White House is providing detailed rebuttals to any allegations Republican senators find troubling. Bush is also looking to make the debate over Bolton about reforming the United Nations, not Bolton's temperament, and working with Senate Republicans to produce a vote count this week showing there are enough votes to approve the nominee on the floor.

A "nose count that demonstrates majority support for Bolton ensures that any Democratic effort to drag heels again in committee is just struggling against the inevitable," said a senior Senate GOP aide. This marks the first time the GOP has threatened to circumvent opposition to Bolton on the Foreign Relations Committee, which would lessen the impact of having one or more Republicans on the panel oppose Bolton.

The other day I said I'd respond to Sullivan's opus after I read it (I still haven't; forgot to bring it on plane). Ramesh sent me a note asking if I'd mind if he went first as he'd already read it. I said, sure no problem, free country etc.

I come back to find he methodically unrolled his entire ginsu knife set -- complete with that curved-bladed thingamajig no one knows how to use -- and dissected the piece like a lab frog. What's left for me? The punctuation? The kerning? Jeepers.

I had a really fine time at UMN. CFact -- a campus conservative environmental group -- was a fine host. My talk seemed well received. People laughed at the appropriate spots (at Ithaca earlier this month when I gave a talk about diversity I felt like I should stop every now and then and say "these are the jokes people") and asked a lot of thoughtful questions. What was particularly interesting was that while the relatively smallish room was packed, NRO readers and folks who saw a mention on Powerline outnumbered students by -- I'd guess -- five to one. I shudder to imagine what the room would have been like if only students attended.

I also shudder to think what I will do to the kid from CFact who was supposed to drive me to the airport this morning but slept through his alarm leaving me stranded -- should I ever encounter him again.

A major highpoint was meeting and having beers with James Lileks who joined a bunch of students and NRO readers at some bar -- I believe called Big 10. We cornerd a few tables and had a fine time talking all things blogish, conservative, family life and whatnot. Lileks is not only a very, very nice and smart guy, but I can also report he's literally half the man I am.

Update I now see that Lileks has already -- and very kindly -- recounted the events of last night. He leaves out that he was as greeted like Aragorn at the Prancing Pony Inn at the Big Ten. But again, very good dude.

Former Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, who was accused of being overly affectionate in public with his then-running mate, Sen. John Edwards, while on the 2004 campaign trail, was one of the first to note the steamy display between Mr. Bush and Prince Abdullah.

“John and I looked pretty gay, I’ll admit, but not as gay as these two,” said Mr. Kerry. “I was like, get a room!”

Almost every investigator in the office has a talisman to ward off the ghosts that haunt the workday. For Gillespie, it's a Christmas card from the mother of a 3-month-old boy who had been raped by his uncle, thanking Gillespie and encouraging him to keep going even when he wants to give up. Gillespie tells a bit of the child's story, then swivels his chair to face the window when his eyes begin to well up. He turns back, recomposed.

"I look at that sometimes," he says simply. "It makes me feel good."

I am a single mom who works for a company on the verge of liquidation. My required union dues take the equivalent of a Mercedes car payment out of every paycheck. So of course I sent in my $750 and flew out to N.Y. for the first NRO fundraiser [of the year]….the weather: abominable, the evening: priceless…. At the N.Y. fundraiser there were 70 of us 'guests' and yet it was truly an intimate cocktail party atmosphere. Better that we imagined. The NRO/Corner Editors are even taller, smarter, better looking, funnier and more charming and verbose than they are on The Corner. Atlanta area fans/readers, you won't have one regret about spending $500 to 'hang out' with your NR friends.

"Resuming the Wednesday general audiences," he went on, "I wish to speak of the name I chose on becoming bishop of Rome and pastor of the universal Church. I chose to call myself Benedict XVI ideally as a link to the venerated Pontiff, Benedict XV, who guided the Church through the turbulent times of the First World War. He was a true and courageous prophet of peace who struggled strenuously and bravely, first to avoid the drama of war and then to limit its terrible consequences. In his footsteps I place my ministry, in the service of reconciliation and harmony between peoples, profoundly convinced that the great good of peace is above all a gift of God, a fragile and precious gift to be invoked, safeguarded and constructed, day after day and with everyone's contribution.

"The name Benedict also evokes the extraordinary figure of the great 'patriarch of western monasticism,' St. Benedict of Norcia, co-patron of Europe with Cyril and Methodius. The progressive expansion of the Benedictine Order which he founded exercised an enormous influence on the spread of Christianity throughout the European continent. For this reason, St. Benedict is much venerated in Germany, and especially in Bavaria, my own land of origin; he constitutes a fundamental point of reference for the unity of Europe and a powerful call to the irrefutable Christian roots of European culture and civilization."

In the coming days, I hope changing the Senate's rules won't be necessary, but Senator Frist will be fully justified in doing so if he believes he has exhausted every effort at compromise. Of course, there is an easier solution to the impasse: Democrats can stop playing their obstruction game and let President Bush's judicial nominees receive what they are entitled to: an up-or-down vote on the floor of the world's greatest deliberative body.

Now me, when I see the "first post of the day" I get supremely irritated. But there's no accounting for taste. You should poll the readers of The Corner and ask what they think of this ritual. I can imagine others, like me, getting angry, but I'm curious how many people leap for joy when a favorite pundit battles the odds and emerges as the victorious FIRST POSTER OF THE DAY!

There must be millions.

Tom DeLay
Corrupt.
Fanatical.
Un-American.
In Trouble.

then moves on to the usual broadsides against “fundamentalists” and an attempt to claim Ronald Reagan for the “conservatives of doubt.” (Christie Todd Whitman, I’ll give him.)

“Advocates for government restraint cannot, in good conscience, keep supporting a party that believes in its own God-given mission to change people’s souls.” I’ve got to start reading those platforms more carefully—I somehow missed that.

He closes with what I don't think he intends to be a smear but will surely be taken as such by many: “If we are fighting such a conservatism of faith abroad--and that is the core of the war on Islamist terrorism--then why should it be so hard to confront it in much milder forms at home?” But Sullivan has at least as much in common with the Islamists as religious conservatives do. Like the Islamists, he thinks that belief in an objective moral order is incompatible with freedom. They’re wrong.

“Is this conservatism [of doubt] philosophically strong enough to endure? Rich Lowry of National Review recently argued that it is not: ‘The secularist view misses that freedom is grounded in truths, in the God-given dignity of man as a rational creature and in our fundamental equality. This is why the pope could say, “God created us to be free.” If the idea of freedom is detached from these truths, it has no secure ground, because the strong will inevitably attempt to dominate the weak unless checked by moral truths (see slavery or segregation or communism).’ Without Christianity, Lowry argues, the rights of the individual will be trampled. But what if Lowry's fellow citizen is an atheist? How can the atheist be persuaded to consent to truths that are only solidly grounded in a faith he doesn't share? And what happens when even those who share the same faith disagree profoundly on its moral and political consequences? Lowry seems to forget that men of Christian faith strongly opposed and backed slavery and segregation—and used Biblical texts to do so.

“The defense of human freedom offered by conservatives of doubt, on the other hand, is founded on more accessible and less contentious arguments. Such conservatives can point to the Constitution itself as the basis of U.S. political life, and its Enlightenment concept of freedom as sturdy enough without extra-Constitutional theology. . . . They can point to the astonishing success and durability of the U.S. experiment to buttress the notion that the Constitution is a much more stable defense of human equality than that inherent in any religion. The Constitution itself has far wider support among citizens than any theological argument. To put it another way: You don't need an actual religion when you already have a workable civil version in place” (emphasis in original).

Lowry had pointed out that the campaigns against slavery and segregation had a religious character. How would a conservative of doubt, who doesn’t believe in moral truth but sees some unexplained obligation to the Constitution, have responded to those evils? The conservative of doubt in the 1850s couldn’t have pointed to the Constitution to condemn slavery, since the Constitution allowed it. The conservative of doubt in 1952 could have pointed to the Fourteenth Amendment—but there were plenty of people making the case that the amendment was compatible with segregation (and the courts agreed). If noting disagreement among Christians on matters of moral import is a decisive objection to Lowry, then disagreement among people who claim to support the Constitution must be a decisive objection to Sullivan as well. The arguments against slavery and segregation could never have been made except by people who believed that moral truth was accessible to the human mind.

“Even when conservatives of doubt disagree with others’ moral convictions, they recognize that, in a free, pluralist society, those other views deserve a hearing. So a conservative who believes abortion is always immoral can reconcile herself to a polity in which abortion is still legal, if regulated. Putting government power unequivocally on the side of one view of morality—especially in extremely controversial areas—must always be balanced against the rights and views of citizens who dissent. And, precisely because complete government neutrality may be impossible on these issues, government should tread as lightly as possible. The key in areas of doubt is to do as little harm as possible. Which often means, with respect to government power, doing as little as possible.”

This just makes no sense. What’s that “So” doing there? Because alternative views deserve a hearing—something, by the way, that most “conservatives of faith” would agree with—those views must be allowed to prevail? And doesn’t the reason that something is held to be immoral matter? A person who believes adultery is always immoral should be able to reconcile herself to (or even enthusiastically support) a polity in which it is legal. She may not be able to reconcile herself to the killing of innocent human beings, and she shouldn’t. We do not, on account of “pluralism,” generally allow people to make their own decisions about who they can kill. There was a time when the morality of slavery was an “extremely controversial” area. Government power was eventually put unequivocally on the side of one view of morality. The fact that many people disagreed—and expressed themselves rather emphatically—was not (and should not have been) held to be a decisive reason for the government to refrain from acting.

“The alternative philosophical tradition begins in precise opposition to the new conservatives’ confidence in faith and reason as direct, accessible routes to universal truth. The conservatism of doubt asks how anyone can be sure that his view of what is moral or good is actually true. Conservatives of doubt note that even the most dogmatic of institutions, such as the Catholic or Mormon churches, have changed their views over many centuries, and that, even within such institutions, there is considerable debate about difficult moral issues. They understand that significant critiques of human reason—Nietzsche, anyone?—have rendered the philosophical quest for self-evident truth even more precarious in the modern world. Such conservatives are not nihilists or devotees of what Pope Benedict XVI has called ‘the dictatorship of relativism.’ They merely believe that the purported choice between moral absolutism and complete relativism, between God and moral anarchy, is a phony one. Their alternative is a skeptical, careful, prudential approach to all moral questions—and suspicion of anyone claiming to hold the absolute truth. Since such an approach rarely provides a simple answer persuasive to everyone within a democratic society, we live with moral and cultural pluralism.”

Here is where things start to go seriously awry. In a way, this passage represents a step forward for Sullivan, since he is making it fairly clear that his quarrel is not with “fundamentalist” religion so much as it is with reason and truth (although, as you can guess, fundamentalism will make a re-appearance in the essay). It isn’t terribly persuasive: To conclude from the existence of disagreement that there is no certain truth is simply an error. Moreover, the pope has not offered a “choice between moral absolutism and complete relativism.” The only person conjuring up that choice, in order to reject it showily, is Sullivan himself. And as the rest of the essay goes on to demonstrate, Sullivan’s view of a “skeptical, careful, prudential approach to all moral questions” turns out to be a view that reaches his preferred positions on all controversial moral issues. It is not at all obvious that his views are any less “absolutist” than contrary views.

Sullivan writes, “In Bush's case, paternalism isn't a metaphor. It's a commitment worth trillions of dollars of other people's money. The single most influential architect of this conservatism, Karl Rove, sees this as a virtue, not a problem. In a recent speech to conservative activists, according to John Heilemann of New York magazine, ‘Rove rejected the party's “reactionary” and “pessimistic” past, in which it stood idly by while “liberals were setting the pace of change and had the visionary goals.” Now, he went on, the GOP has seized the “mantle of idealism,” dedicating itself to “putting government on the side of progress and reform, modernization and greater freedom.”’ The model for Rove's conservatism, in other words, is liberalism. The difference is merely how government directs its vast power, and for whom.” I don’t think Rove’s comments can bear the interpretive weight that Sullivan (following Heilemann) places on them.

Some liberals may well believe that to seize “the mantle of idealism” and to put government on the side of reform require bigger government—but the quote does not make it at all clear that Rove agrees. When conservatives changed the emphasis of their pitch for welfare reform from the money it wasted to the lives it marred, they were seizing the “mantle of idealism” without coming out for bigger government. Seizing “the mantle of idealism” was an important part of Ronald Reagan’s contribution to American conservatism, and it didn’t stop him from regarding himself as a foe of big government.

comes when Sullivan is talking about the use, by “conservatives of faith,” of government “to promote certain activities. . . and to deter others”: “Bush has added another twist to this philosophy, seeking not only to expand government programs from the top down, but from the bottom up, by incorporating new mechanisms that give citizens more choice. Hence Health Savings Accounts in Medicare and personal accounts within Social Security. If that actually means more government borrowing and spending, so be it. If government must be expanded to give more people a sense of ‘ownership’ within government programs, fine. This is what remains of conservatism’s old belief in individual freedom. The new conservatism of faith has substituted real choice in a free market for regulated choice within an ever-expanding welfare state.”

When Sullivan talks about contemporary conservatism, he’s generally talking about Bush. The fact that the No Child Left Behind Act was a bipartisan bill—House Republicans were five times more likely to vote against it than House Democrats—does not stop him from saying that the act reflects modern conservatism. That’s not an illegitimate move. But it bears keeping in mind here, because it isn’t true that Bush takes a “so be it” attitude on increased spending for Health Savings Accounts and personal accounts within Social Security. Bush does not concede that the Social Security accounts mean a long-term increase in spending or borrowing; the administration has been talking about pairing the accounts with cuts in future benefits. Nor does Bush concede that a tax cut—which is what the health savings account is—is “spending.”

I think it is unreasonable to regard health savings accounts or Social Security accounts as expansions of the welfare state. Both measures are anti-statist in themselves, and may have broader anti-statist effects down the line (which is part of why some conservatives, including me, support them). They are part of a strategy for limiting government in an era where direct limits are extremely difficult to enact. This passage is a small part of Sullivan’s essay, but I think it is an important wrong turn in his analysis. Because if you get this wrong, you misunderstand the impact of Bush’s project on conservatism.

The Bush Administration is heavily lobbying House and Senate conferees on the defense supplemental appropriations bill to pass it with the “Real ID” ban on illegal immigrant obtaining drivers’ licenses. This from a White House letter sent yesterday to House Appropriations Committee chairman Jerry Lewis:

The Administration strongly urges the conferees to include the Real ID Act of 2005 in the final version of the bill. This important legislation will strengthen the ability of the United States to protect against terrorist entry into and activities within the United States. In particular, the legislation tightens procedures for non-citizen entry into and presence in the United States, facilitates the building of physical barriers where appropriate to protect U.S. borders, and facilitates the strengthening of State standards for the security and integrity of drivers' licenses. The Administration has some concerns with the House-passed version of the bill and will work with the conferees to make sure these concerns are addressed. The Administration also supports provisions in the Senate version of the bill that would exempt returning seasonal, documented workers from current visa caps.

Never charged with violating House rules, DeLay has skirted the edge, warned by the Ethics Committee on four separate occasions.

A new allegation has emerged in recent days that Bolton, in the midst of the Iraq war, delayed efforts to provide military funding for Baltic and Central European countries that were to join NATO, because they had not signed agreements exempting U.S. military personnel from prosecution at the controversial new International Criminal Court. Some of the countries wanted training to assist in their deployments in Iraq.

But the description of Bolton's role in the matter differs greatly, depending on the bureaucratic perspective.

One set of current and former officials said Bolton opposed providing the funding until the countries signed what were known as the Article 98 agreements, even after a decision had been made to grant the countries a waiver. A second group of officials, including a former Defense Department official, said Bolton fully complied and in the end approved the funds. They said the Pentagon put up the obstacles.

Armitage said yesterday that he saw nothing wrong with Bolton's actions on the funding.

"I didn't consider this unusual at all," he said. "Different fiefdoms at State often had different positions, and the deputy secretary resolved them. It was part and parcel of daily life."

Hundreds of Minutemen and other immigration-control activists are in Washington through tomorrow, lobbying Congress and expressing their opposition to amnesty proposals from the president and others. The effort has been spearheaded by San Diego radio talk show host Roger Hedgecock and he's lined up a lot of other hosts to do one of those "talk radio row" things here, where people do their various shows all together in the same place. And other talkers who didn't come to Washington are nevertheless focusing on immigration this week (I just did a show with WRKO in Boston).

The presence of so many conservative radio talkers points to the GOP's conundrum on immigration, as layed out by David Frum and others: The party's base hates the president's stance on immigration, and this threatens to sunder the Republican coalition. I remain amazed that the instinct for self-preservation among the big-business and libertarian elements within the party is still so weak that don't understand their stake in controlling and reducing immigration.

Mexico City's socialist mayor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, beat the rap yesterday and is back on the job. This is important because he is expected to run for president next year and win--if he's on the ballot. The legal dispute was a contrived attempt by his political opponents to prevent that from happening, and it appears to have failed spectacularly, with nearly 1 million supporters marching on Sunday and federal prosecutor dropping the charges against him.

What this means is that come next summer, President Bush will lose his compadre, Vicente Fox, and instead have to deal with the candidate of the Party of Democratic Revolution (PRD in Spanish), a sort of Hugo Chavez-lite. Among other things, this is not a guy who's going to cooperate with the president on a guestworker program. He's also likely to push expanded dual citizenship for people of Mexican origin in the United States, since so many immigrants here are supporters of the socialist PRD.

From a reader. One of many:

Jonah -- when I saw the picture of the president and Prince Abdullah holding hands, I thought of Kang and Kodos, disguised as Bill Clinton and Bob Dole during the 1996 campaign, walking down the street hand-in-hand.

From the episode (click here: http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/GuidePageServlet/showid-146/epid-1439/):

Clinton Aide (closely resembling George Stephanopoulos): "People are becoming a bit confused by the way you and your opponent are... well... constantly holding hands."

Alien Dole: "We are merely exchanging long protein strings. If you can think of a simpler way, I'd like to hear it."

Just another Simpsons reference that I'm sure 96 other people have already emailed to you. Cheers.

Some people need to get humor injections. Of course I'm joking around about the hand-holding stuff. Readers who think I'm saying it's illegitimate for gay men to hold hands, readers who think I'm being a Western jingoist know-nothing and all the rest need to lighten up. The point Byron was making had nothing to do with men-qua-men holding hands and everything to do with Bush holding the hand of a Saudi ruler (the mention of the second inaugural should have been a tip-off). And my points were made with such glaring jokiness I'm embarrassed to even feel the need to clarify my position (though I too highlighted the theocratic potentate objection at the end).

Take a deep breath.

Lots of readers are saying it's just a custom in the Arab world for men to hold hands. From a guide to such things:

"Touching, long handshakes, grasped elbows, even walking hand in hand by two males is common place in the Arab world. A considerable number of Arabs touch more between the same sex, to show liking--not sex. They hold hands, hug each other, kiss if close friends. As Arab customs and behavior condones the outward display of affection between male friends, one may see Arab men, even officials and military officers, holding hands as they walk together or otherwise converse with one another. If an individual Arab does not touch you, he does not like you--or he may be trying to restrain himself because you are not used to being touched. A full body embrace, accompanied with hugging, should not be initiated until you are sure that the Arab is a close friend. If the Arab initiates it, participate and consider yourself honored and/or accepted. Contact between the opposite sex in public is considered close to obscene"

I was, in fact, aware of this.

However, we have customs here too. Dudes rarely hold hands, and when they do it's usually because they're cops and one cop couldn't complete his rooftop leap across an alley while chasing a perp and his partner has to grab his hand to pull him up. Also acceptable is when your buddy has been shot by a Columbian drug lord and you hold his hand as you promise to look out for his wife and kids and you vow to exact revenge on Mendoza and his entire organization. When life flickers out of your buddy's eyes, you may continue to hold his hand as you shout heavenward "Mendozzzaaaaaaa!" at the top of your lungs. But most times men rarely hold hands. Even Butch and Sundance grabbed an ammo belt rather than hold hands when they jumped off the cliffside. I have searched the manual and there seems to be no exception for holding the hand of a theocratic Islamic potentate. But I may not have gotten the latest monthly supplements.

From a reader:

Jonah,

For some time now my friends and I have slowly been realizing that we are living in a very special time. A confluence of events has lead to this (most importantly the massive success of The Lord of the Rings movies). Hollywood has discovered the massive purchase power that is nerdom. As a fellow nerd, I am surprised you are not on top of this story. It officially kicks off April 29, and who knows it may wind up lasting much longer than a year. And by now I know you are asking “What happens April 29?” Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy debuts and Mac’s new operating system ships. You know as well as anyone that “42” has long been a sort of password to let someone know that you are in the presence of another nerd. This is the Holy Grail for nerdom. Then this weekend, on Sunday, Family Guy re-debuts on Fox. Again Nerd heaven. Then of course, the big one for you, and for oh so many, Episode Three, which I admit I was not very excited about, but as zero hour approaches, I begin to feel drawn to it, (I am a nerd after all). I will be there at midnight to see it. Then this summer, we have Batman Begins, which again I’m not excited about but as time comes I will get so. We also have Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We have another Harry Potter book in July and another movie in November (which isn’t for everyone, but still falls under nerdiness) And our favorite son, Peter Jackson, is making a remake of King Kong, which we feel obligated to call nerdy because he’s involved. War of the Worlds by Steven Spielberg comes out in June. And then the capper, this December, the Chronicles of Narnia. I’m sure I am missing some events that all of nerdom will be angry at me for forgetting. But we must seize the moment as nerds to let people know about us and our ways, and invite them to join us.

We must spread the news; The Year of the Nerd has arrived.

From a reader:

Jonah: I'm gay and I find the photo disturbing. Almost as disturbing as I find male synchronized diving.

From a reader:

Gnosticism is really a feature of Star Wars, since the Jedi are the elite keepers of esoteric knowledge and powers inaccessible to the hoi poloi. Battlestar Galactica, on the other hand, owed its philosophical and religious overtones (such as they were) to Mormonism (thirteenth tribe, wagon train trekking to find a new promised land, rule by a council of patriarchs, occasional contact with angelic beings quoting Joseph Smith, etc.)

Since not that many people seemed impressed by the trivia tidbit that Al Pacino was an office boy at Commentary, maybe some of you would like to know that Bill Laimbeer was a Sleestak.

Update: Oh and several readers have insisted I mention that Will Ferrell played Federal Wildlife "Marshal Willenholly" in "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back."

• For example, the Times quotes a September 25, 2002 email from Thomas Fingar, the No. 2 official in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, to Westermann in which Fingar “deplored ... the toll inflicted on Mr. Westermann by Mr. Bolton and Mr. Fleitz.” Fingar was responding to an email from Westermann two days earlier complaining that the both Bolton and Fleitz were “impugning” his integrity.

But the Times failed to note Fingar’s February 12, 2002 email to John Bolton apologizing for the behavior of Westermann. The day before Fleitz has asked Westermann to gain clearance for a speech Bolton planned on delivering in May 2002 by forwarding draft language on Cuba to the CIA for approval. But Westermann sent the language along with his own memo opposing the language. Fingar wrote:

I looked at what my guy sent to the IC and that won’t happen again ... Choice of the phrase ‘does not concur’ was entirely inappropriate; none of the underlying intelligence comes from INR and we have no role whatsoever in determining how you or any policymaker says what you want to say beyond suggesting alternatives that we think might be cleared more readily than what has been drafted if time is of the essence and the drafter asks for such advice.

• Also not published in the Times piece was an email Frederick Fleitz received the same day from another government official again related to the behavior of Westermann:

Fred: In my opinion, INR violated both State and IC protocol, big time. INR speaks to the IC on behalf of State, so the IC must presume that, when it receives an INC communication, INR is speaking on behalf of State.

Confronted with a Seventh Floor position with which INR disagreed, INR had two choices: a) submit the language in question to CIA without comment, or b) appeal the Seventh Floor decision without referring it outside The Building.

• Finally, when Westermann informed Fleitz that he had the sent the memo to the CIA he did not mention that he had sent his own memo with it.

Westermann to Fleitz, February 12, 2002, 4:23 PM:

Fred: I sent your memo intact to CIA for coordination through the IC for cleared language. I added citations so they could reference the intel.

Christian.

Fleitz to Westermann, February 12, 2002, 4:25 PM:

Christian—

CIA says INR disputed the language Mr. Bolton wants to use and offered alternative language. Please bring my memo and this memo to T. Thanks, Fred Fleitz.

And, in Westermann’s March 29, 2005 email to Thomas Fingar, Westermann discussed the person who “leaked” information that apparently he wanted to withhold from Fleitz and Bolton.

This was the correspondence as I was attempting to get the memo readied to go to WINPAC’s demarche coordinator, [redacted], who then leaked back to Fred that I had sent in his request as an official INR action but that INR had dissented and offered alternative language.

From a reader:

Jonah,

I had a professor Schlie(pronounced SHLEE) in grad school who, instead of using a textbook, handed out stacks of photocopied articles to read each week. The stacks were so thick (over 4 inches) that one time we had to get them from the trunk of his car in the parking lot. The reading material became known among students as the “Schlie-Stack.”

When I tell this anecdote, only about 10% of the listeners ever get it. I get so frustrated, I want to shoot somebody with my mini-slingshot-crossbow.

Color me GEEK.

Here's an idea for some intrepid blogger or fellow NROnik: What would be the constitutional history of the last couple decades if Robert Bork had been confirmed? That would mean Kennedy wasn't. It also might mean Souter wasn't -- since the need for stealth nominees might not have materialized.

What decisions would have worked the other way? A couple readers say Roe would have been overturned in 1992. I think it'd be a great piece for someone with a serious understanding of the Court to write. It'd probably have interesting lessons for liberals conservatives alike, with liberals saying "shhweeeooooo" and conservatives saying "dang."

Now that it's so close, I've started my training regimen. Just last night I ate 15 of those pickled eggs I always see at biker bars. Then I read Whittacker Chambers' Witness aloud while doing a shot of bourbon everytime I encountered a dualistic metaphor -- light versus dark, good versus evil, etc. Tonight I'm going to learn how to ask Why Does Bologna Reject the Grinder? in latin and look for gnostic falacies in Battlestar Galactica.

Seveal readers are making the passionate case that Borking helped the Dems more than it hurt. They make a good case, basically relying on the fact that we got stuck with Souter and Kennedy.

Good point and I will reconsider.

In the meantime, Borking didn't help the image of the Democratic Party. It made them look cowardly (because borking -- at least in its original incarnation -- is cowardly). But the elevation of the personal to the political has not helped Democrats. The Bork (and Thomas) precedents made Clinton's private life fair game in ways that it might not have been were it not for that precedent. We forget how many of Clinton's nominees were blocked or damaged by a similar standard. We also don't know how many more leftwing nominees there might have been without the fear that closets would be opened. Also keep in mind that the Democrats are the minority party in both houses now. Obviously, this wasn't directly caused by the Bork episode. But the Bork episode did represent a real turning point for the Democratic Party. The special interests stopped being back seat drivers and actually grabbed the wheel. The Congressional Party increasingly came to look like hysterical fearmongers.

That said, I guess at the end of the day, I'd still rather have had Bork on the Supreme Court instead of Kennedy. I'll keep pondering.

From a reader:

Just once I would love to read a headline that says:

"Crime Rate Soars Despite Falling Prison Population"

I want to see it to hear the potential explanations.

At least Fox Butterfield got the day off:

Crime rate down, but prison population on the rise

"As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in the world and the measure of everything, the world began to lose its human dimension, and man began to lose control of it."

Cardinal Ratzinger? Nope. Vaclav Havel.

The veteran actor who in the midst of an outstanding career returned to over-acting school so he could learn to yell all of his lines except when he looks like he's about to fall asleep turns 65 today.

Still it's nice to know a former office boy for Commentary magazine has made good. No, I'm not making that up.

The New York Times turns on Couric: "...lately her image has grown downright scary: America's girl next door has morphed into the mercurial diva down the hall. At the first sound of her peremptory voice and clickety stiletto heels, people dart behind doors and douse the lights."

A distinguished Scottish journalist writes in to defend the nightmare cholula and haggis combo, sipping, no doubt, a whisky and coke as he does so:

“While adding hot sauce to the great chieftain of the pudden race may be unorthodox, it is not a crazy notion. Indeed, good haggis has a peppery spiciness that could be pleasantly enhanced by a dash of hot sauce.”

Then things turn ugly (“Haggis is splendidly versatile. I have in the past made haggis ravioli and served it to general approval”) and defensive (“It's odd that andouille sausages, sweetbreads and other less than immediately appealling treats should be afforded great respect, while the poor old haggis is treated as a macabre joke”) and culminate, naturally, with old Mr. Burns (no, Jonah, not that one):

“Is there that owre his French ragout/Or olio that wad staw a sow?Or fricassee wad mak her spew/Wi perfect sconner/Looks down wi sneering, scornfu view/On sic a dinner?

“..Ye Pow'rs, wha mak mankind your care/And dish them out their bill o fare/Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware/That jaups in luggies/But, if ye wish her gratefu prayer/Gie her a Haggis!”

There's nothing I could possibly add to that – not even cholula sauce.

Interesting email:

I don't necessarily disagree that Kristof's article was a bit of a muddle, but I also don't know about this "insistence" on the left that children of interracial marriages - like, um, me - must be identified as black. What I've seen, among the folks in my generation that I've spoken with - including my sister and 2 cousins, also interracial (my Mom has fun stories about the grandparents reaction to her and her sister both marrying black men back in the sixties) - tend to self-identify as black. I get the sense in younger kids that that may have changed, though not all that much. You may not like the "one drop" notion - I certainly don't - but spend your childhood on segregated playgrounds and you learn that looking different gets you, well, pegged. I don't wish to suggest any sort of bitterness or political dudgeon about life 25 years or so ago; it was what it was. But I also don't give a fig what the left, or the right, expect me to be. I am who I am. But I think of myself as black, however much my upbringing and subsequent life have been, largely, in the white world. And, yes, much of the world I know still exists in black and white. Again, not an especially angry point, just something of a reality.

Anyway, enough about me - I also wanted to observe about Guess Who that
I agree that Kristof's point is something of a miss - but I think the
bigger point is that the 67 film was about a father and a mother's
reaction to their daughter's interracial marriage. It's hard to
imagine Guess Who's Coming to Dinner without Katharine Hepburn (or, for
that matter, the rather confrontational voice of the daughter, played
by Katharine Houghton). Quick - who are the women in Guess Who? Does
it even matter? Doesn't it say something about the changing times - or
something, at least, about work for women in Hollywood - that a movie
with strong roles for men and women becomes a male dominated
slapstick-y comedy piece where race is, really, window dressing? And
is that really an improvement? I'm not saying I have an answer, but
it's at least partly the reason I skipped Guess Who - I don't think
it's necessary to trash a classic on the way to a remake.

I know - an angry black man and a feminist. What a cliche. :) But I
do still love your work, much of the time. And you're dead-on about
Uhura and Kirk.

In his first attempt to win round the French on the constitution referendum, crooked Jacques debated a bunch of 18-30 year olds.

He lost.

Now he’s aiming at a younger age group.

It doesn’t look as if it is going well.

A reader followed one of the links to the story I posted earlier about the numbskull Angel. Here’s what he found:

“Noelle finally chose to go diaperless and looked to traditional cultures for inspiration. "How I longed for a simple, dirt-floored, baby-friendly hut like that of a Yequana family," he wrote.”

Haven’t we all?

A dissenter writes in:

“Many, many years ago, whilst I early in my commissioned career as a naval officer (I was previously enlisted), I was conducting an inspection of our pre-BRAC submarine base in Holy Loch, Scotland. We occasioned to dine at a unpretentious pub on the fringe of the base and upon hearing of my earlier, unsullied stint as a non-commissioned officer, the publican, a retired Royal Navy enlisted man himself, offered the best fare they had—Scotch Eggs and Ale. I stupidly tried to match him on both counts and lost, tragically. I cannot recall I time, short of a gunshot wound to the low belly suffered in a hunting accident, that I felt worse for the experience.”

This grumbling gourmet goes on, however, to confess that still eats Scotch Eggs once a year on Burns’ night followed by haggis and cholula hot sauce.

Haggis and cholula hot sauce.

Think about that for a moment, and once the retching and nausea have passed, take time to understand that that astonishing revelation could in itself be enough to trigger hundreds, maybe thousands, of learned articles about the globalization of culture.

Then continue retching.

For fans of the Grim Reaper's sports pages, there's been another classic obituary from the Daily Telegraph. Here's an extract, but read the whole thing.

“The 10th Earl of Shaftesbury, whose death aged 66 was confirmed yesterday, demonstrated the dangers of the possession of inherited wealth coupled with a weakness for women and Champagne… It was said, after his mysterious disappearance from a Cannes nightclub, that the 10th Earl, like Gladstone, had been devoting himself to helping vulnerable young girls working in nightspots on the French Riviera to start new lives. But as the mystery deepened, it seemed that his interest was more than merely philanthropic. Indeed, Lord Shaftesbury had always exhibited a weakness for exotic women. At Eton he had famously penned an article for the college magazine in which he described English debutantes as "round-shouldered, unsophisticated garglers of pink champagne". His subsequent amorous career was notable for his avoidance of the species… [After the collapse of his second marriage in] 2000 he embarked on a string of short-lived and expensive love affairs with younger women distinguished by their exotic looks and equally colourful past histories. He became a familiar figure in some of the loucher nightspots on the French Riviera, where he cut a curious figure in leather trousers, pink shirts and large red-and-black spectacles; he was notable for his habit of flashing his money around as he bought drinks for a succession of nubile female companions.”

Splendid.

Sterner sorts will note that he came to an unfortunate end.

Britain’s state broadcaster is, yet again, showing its true colours:

”The BBC was last night plunged into a damaging general election row after it admitted equipping three hecklers with microphones and sending them into a campaign meeting addressed by Michael Howard, the Conservative leader. The Tories have made an official protest after the hecklers, who were given the microphones by producers, were caught at a party event in the North West last week. Guy Black, the party's head of communications, wrote in a letter to Helen Boaden, the BBC's director of news, that the hecklers began shouting slogans that were "distracting and clearly hostile to the Conservative Party". These included "Michael Howard is a liar", "You can't trust the Tories" and "You can only trust Tony Blair". Mr Black's strongly-worded letter accused the BBC of staging the event "to generate a false news story and dramatise coverage. . . intended to embarrass or ridicule the leader of the Conservative Party". The letter said that BBC staff were guilty of "serious misconduct". At least one of the hecklers was seen again at a Tory event in the North East, Mr Black added. Last night, the BBC claimed that the exercise was part of a "completely legitimate programme about the history and art of political heckling" and said that other parties' meetings were being "observed". However, The Telegraph has established that none of Tony Blair's meetings was infiltrated or disrupted in similar fashion.”

Painfully predictable stuff, made even more painful that taxpayers are picking up the tab.

It’s worth remembering that displays of such bias are, relatively speaking, much more important in the UK than in the US. Free speech restrictions in Britain (they make McCain-Feingold-Bush look like a hymn of praise to the First Amendment) mean that there are fewer sources of alternative information out there for voters, and the BBC has, therefore, a disproportionate influence.

Oh and this line is absurd:

The latest "Guess Who" is about a white man in love with a black woman, and that's a comfortable old archetype from days when slave owners inflicted themselves on slave women.

"...comfortable old archetype from days when slave owners inflicted themselves on slave women."

Oh come on! I haven't seen the movie, but I've seen enough of the previews. First, it's a comedy. That in and of itself is a huge step forward in that everyone can laugh at what was once a real taboo.

Second, I'm sure someone will correct me if I've misread the tea leaves, but my sense is the whole movie is an endless series of jokes about a successful black guy -- played by Bernie Mack -- bullying his white would-be son-in-law -- played by Ashton Kutcher. Here's one of the two quotes from IMDB from the movie:

Theresa (daughter): I was just showing Simon around the house.

Simon Green (Kutcher): You have a very nice house, Mrs. Jones.

Marilyn (black mom): Thank you. You can call me Marilyn.

Simon Green: You too, Mr. Jones.

Percy (Bernie Mac): You can call me Mr. Jones.

Is that really the archetype from slavery days? Puh-leeze.

Nick Kristoff makes the strategic error of writing something offbeat today. The whole column is about how we need to have more interracial love affairs on the big screen. Maybe we do, maybe we don't. Who knows? But his discussion seems to omit entirely the 1970s, 80s and 90s. I mean Jungle Fever was over a decade ago, right? There's also no mention of Save the Last Dance. Plus how you can talk about interracial canoodling without mentioning Star Trek's notorious Kirk-Uhuru lip-lock is beyond me (several Southern stations dropped the show when they did it. Muckling with green chicks was no problem though).

Moreover, while I agree that the rate of interracial marriage is an important and revealing statistic about race-relations, a more heroic approach would be to question the left's insistence that any product of a white-black interracial union must be black. It is, as Stephen Thernstrom noted long ago, the most bizarre reiteration of the old racist one-drop rule in "progressive" clothing.

Regular readers will remember the saga of Submission, the movie attacking Islamic violence against women. Its director, Theo van Gogh, was murdered by a Muslim fanatic outraged by van Gogh’s opinions. Van Gogh’s collaborator, the Somali-born Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali, remains in hiding.

An Italian Member of the EU’s ‘parliament’ (he’s from the Northern League, a populist party that is (or is not; I’ve lost track) in coalition with Berlusconi (who is, or is not, Italy’s prime minister; I’ve lost track) has been trying to get Submission shown at that parliament. For reasons that are unclear to me (copyright, perhaps?), the owner of the rights to the film objected, but the MEP persisted.

Then another part of the parliament’s apparat, an Ulster Unionist MEP by the name of Nicholson, intervened to stop the film being shown citing the producer’s objections and, well, this:

“The controversial nature of the film is apt to provoke disturbances of the public order within the Parliament and might even put the essential long-term EP security interests at stake".

Good grief, this ‘parliament’ is so craven that if it had been the Reichstag in 1933 it would have burned itself down.

Elaib of the excellent ‘England Expects’ blog has more. Check out too what he has to say about AP coverage of this contretemps.

Sweden's Margot Wallstrom, the EU’s commissioner for Institutional Relations and Communications Strategy is notable mainly for a blog that is, as numerous eurosceptics have discovered, good for hours of brutal fun in a pulling-the-wings-off-a-fly sort of way.

Now, if this account from Expressen can be believed it seems that this squeaky-clean moralizing bore may be joining the numerous ranks of EU Commissioners with a touch of murkiness in their past. The source of her problem lies in Sweden’s system of state funding for political parties. I’m not entirely clear of all the details of this system, but it appears that the more members a party could sign up, the greater the subsidy. It’s now alleged that Sweden’s Social Democrats indulged in a little jiggery-pokery with those numbers back in the 1970s, swelling the ranks with a ‘dead soul’ or two, three or fifty, thereby defrauding the already hard-pressed Swedish taxpayer. It’s now alleged that la Reine Margot may have had a hand in such dealings.

Quizzed on this, Wallstrom’s press spokesman said that Margot had no comment. Margot, most conveniently, was “travelling.”

In an unusual burst of investigative journalism I contacted a reliable -and very smart - source in Sweden. He gave me additional background information about the allegation, including the delightful detail that an apparatchik in the Stockholm Social Democratic Youth League had reportedly enrolled at least one ludicrously overqualified individual into the ranks of those phantom Nordic leftists.

A dog.

The dog’s name was, apparently, Engels.

Tom Friedman ran a piece endorsing Tony Blair in the New York Times Friday. Well, Friedman has a right to his opinions – however misguided (Blair’s rule has been characterized by incompetence, bullying and dishonesty, and needs to come to a rapid conclusion) but, when it comes to the hard data, he ought to get a few facts right.

Let’s take some examples.

In the course of his article, Friedman writes about how Blair’s supposed improvements to the National Health Service (largely illusory to those luckless enough to be its patients) and other ‘reforms’ have been achieved with ‘few’ tax increases, something that will be news to the luckless British taxpayer.

Here, Tom, are a few numbers (via the London Times):

“Britain is not yet a decisively high-tax country, but it is on a path heading back that way. For most of the previous decade, tax as a percentage of national income hovered in a range between about 33 per cent and 37 per cent. By the start of this decade, however, the tax burden had climbed into the high thirties, as Gordon Brown increased taxes by a total of £26 billion to finance a rapid expansion of state spending. Today, the Chancellor’s projections envisage the Government’s revenues, as measured by current receipts, rising to 40.5 per cent by 2008, and remaining there to mark the highest tax burden for more than two decades. These figures, of course, do not take into account any post-election tax rises, which most independent economists believe will be needed to curb a large structural deficit in public spending.”

It’s worth noting that many of these tax increases have been by stealth, most notoriously the decision to abolish tax credits on dividends received by pension funds, a technical change that few Brits understood at the time, but which has now devastated the once healthy British pensions system.

Oh yes, Tom, as for all those jobs you were talking about, consider this:

“Since 1999-00 Britain's public sector has been expanding rapidly. Overall public spending increased by 25.5 per cent in real terms between 1999-00 and 2004-05. It is planned to increase by 44 per cent between 1999-00 and 2009-10…one in four jobs are now in the public sector, with one in three women employed by the Government. Half of all new jobs created since 1997 have been in the public sector, a rate of increase twice that of the whole economy. In total, 861,231 additional public sector jobs were created between the summer of 1997 and the autumn of 2004, taking the total to 6,906,922.”

And on the government debt, Tom, Labour is now behaving with the sort of fiscal irresponsibility that we would expect from, oh, the GOP. According to S&P, the national debt is rising rapidly from 34 percent of GDP today to an estimated 150 percent by 2050. It’s worth noting that S&P’s numbers exclude an additional USD 100 billion of dodgy off-balance sheet financing (the Private Finance Initiatives) organized by Blair’s ‘deft’ (your words, not mine) Chancellor of the Exchequer, the vindictive, and more than a little loopy, class warrior, Gordon Brown.

Now it is true that the British economy has performed well since 1997, but with the exception of one genuinely good – and daring – reform (the decision to grant independence to the Bank of England), this has been despite Tony Blair’s government (which has added an enormous regulatory burden to industry), not because of it.

Throw him out.