Gee, thanks Andrew. Now you've got my wife all stirred up again. "He's trashing Dr Pepper again!" she fumed. "No haggis for Andrew Stuttaford!" I reminded her that if not for you and Papa Goldberg, there are no others in our circles who would dare to eat the thing. "Well, okay," Julie said, "but he has to drink Dr Pepper with it." I wouldn't wish that on anybody; the Macallan will do just fine.

Happy Bobbie Burns Day, y'all. Maybe the Goldbergs can be persuaded to hold a Mardi Gras dinner for Jonah's NYC colleagues. Now that he's no longer vegan, Jonah can come too. We'll have haggis, gumbo, king cake, Abita, Dr Pepper and the Macallan. Luci can masquerade as Marie Laveau. Who says right-wingers aren't multicultural? Oh man, I've got Professor Longhair on my disc player right now...

Here’s a disturbing story from Iraq. Without knowing more of the background it’s impossible to know whether either of these guys were crazy, potential assassins, refugees or defectors with something to say, but shouldn’t the UN inspectors have tried to find out?

Instapundit has more on this.

So far, I have no opinion on the subject. But I got this from Poppa Goldberg:

I insist that the greatest opening line is in the early 18th century play "Chrononhotonthologos" by Henry Carey (who was a "Grub Street" hack who also wrote "Namby Pamby" and "Sally in Our Alley"). The memorable opening line: "Aldiborontiphoscophornio! Where left you Chrononhotonthologos?" (Later in the play, Aldiborontiphoscophornio is at times addressed affectionately as "My dear Phoscophorny." )

Rumors that Hans Blix is headed south to the Lone Star state to investigate reports of a large cache of a sinister substance known as ‘Dr Pepper’ will come as no surprise to many, but should he stop there? Recent postings on the Corner discussing this questionable mess from Texas have produced a response that includes reports of other mysterious concoctions including ‘Mr. Pibb’ and ‘Dr Thunder’. Up in chilly Maine, meanwhile, any criticism of Moxie, a cold ‘drink’ beloved by the really frozen (Ted Williams was a spokesman), is (I have discovered) poorly received.

What’s Moxie? Well, claims made on some of its early labels included the following:

"Contains not a drop of Medicine, Poison, Stimulant or Alcohol. But is a simple sugarcane-like plant grown near the Equator and farther south, was lately accidentally discovered by Lieut. Moxie and has proved itself to be the only harmless nerve food known that can recover brain and nervous exhaustion, loss of manhood, imbecility and helplessness. It has recovered paralysis, softening of the brain, locomotor ataxia, and insanity when caused by nervous exhaustion. It gives a durable solid strength, makes you eat voraciously, takes away the tired, sleepy, listless feeling like magic, removes fatigue from mental and physical over work at once, will not interfere with action of vegetable medicines. "

You may laugh, but Calvin Coolidge was (reportedly) a fan – and did he?

Hey Rod, what's this about a haggis feast? I like the stuff too...

In posting something on the Corner on the new Scottish law that would give crofting 'communities' new rights to purchase the land on which they live, I commented that there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with part of it – giving the crofters the right of first refusal when the land comes up for sale.

One reader disagrees:

“Agreeing to a right of first refusal is a huge "give" in negotiations. The reason is that if …[the] asset [is] subject to a right of first refusal… the universe of potential buyers of the asset [is decreased] -- many won't want to spend the time and money required to negotiate a deal… only to have it taken away by the holder of the right of first refusal. By decreasing the universe of buyers, you decrease…liquidity and quite possibly the market price of [the] asset.”

I think he's right.

Jay has already given NRO readers a splendid selection of great first lines, but here (quoted in the Economist) is an extract from the opening section of Raymond Chandler’s Red Wind that’s too good not to repeat. Chandler is describing the not always positive effect of the Santa Ana wind that blows into LA from time to time:

“Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks.”

Perfect.

Going through security at a West Coast airport this week my harmless-seeming (if battered) shoes once again triggered off the system.

“Metal shanks,” explained a sympathetic screener as he studied these not so lethal pieces of fine English footwear. “Try wearing sneakers when you travel and just pack the regular shoes in your hand baggage”.

OK, maybe most people have already worked this out for themselves, but it seemed like good, if aesthetically distressing, advice to pass on to anybody (like me) not smart enough to do so. Just thought I’d mention it.

Want to shout at a President? Don’t do it in Zimbabwe. A new law (the Economist notes) “expressly forbids any denigrating noises or motions being made at the presidential motorcade”.

So that’s why Chirac has invited Mugabe to Paris for talks.

Or was it just more of that ‘Old Continent’ wisdom at work again?

One of the better initiatives of the post-Cold War era has been the establishment of the so-called Nunn-Lugar funds to assist Russia in dismantling or otherwise securing “loose nukes” errant relics of the old Soviet arsenal. A report in this week’s Economist notes that the US spends more on “co-operative threat reduction” in a year than Europeans have over the past ten.

That's just another reminder that, when it comes to really trying to secure the peace, most of today’s European leaders manage to blend the humility of Marie Antoinette with the statecraft of Neville Chamberlain. They are all about words, nothing about deeds.

One of the more revealing responses to Rumsfeld’s jibe about the old and the new Europe was the remark from a French politician that America had much to learn from the wisdom of the old continent.

Ah yes, that would be the continent of the EU – the organization that agreed to abstain when it came to voting on the appointment of Libya to act as the ‘chair’ of the UN’s Human Rights Commission.

The Scottish parliament, a hothouse of class hatred, ethnic resentment and economic illiteracy, has just passed a bill designed to give crofting ‘communities’ (a ‘crofter’ is (very roughly defined) a tenant - traditionally a smallholder or other agricultural worker - on a large Scottish estate) the right of first refusal to buy 'their' land when it comes up for sale. In itself there’s nothing wrong with that – so long as the price is a market price – but what is unacceptable is that, under the new law, the 'community' can compel a sale even when the landlord doesn’t want to sell.

Other provisions will increase the access of hikers, ramblers and other (uninvited) visitors to tens of thousands of acres of privately-owned land.

What is it about the notion of private property that the Scottish parliament doesn’t understand?

I read the items on Haggis in the Corner. It reminds me of "scare foods" when I was a kid - like Limburger cheese, which you weren't supposed to get close to because the smell was overwhelming. Of course it wasn't, it's just that Limburger was one of the few U.S.-made cheeses that resembled authentic European ones. Haggis has been one of these "scare" foods, but it's delicious - and it's very much in the same category as Kishke (stuffed derma). Nearly all Jews love Kishke and so they would love Haggis if they were brave enough to overcome it's dread name. Jewish Kishke is an intestine (the derma) stuffed with beef, lung, rice, and a bunch of herbs and spices. Haggis has much the same but instead of the intestine itself it uses the lung and stomach. There is a great similarity of taste. With Haggis, there can be great ceremony as it has been elevated to a Scottish symbol. With Jews, there is no ceremony with Kishke, beyond the eating of it. Of course, we did contribute the word to the language, and all boxers know what it's like to be hit in the kishkes.

From a reader in the military on the subject of "France":

Jonah,
I'd be willing to forego my tax cut (much as I support it and need it) to give George W. as much money as he needed to go to France, Belgium and Luxembourg, disinter all of our war dead and bring them home where they belong. Except for the remains, which should be treated like the holy relics they are, I would have no problem with him leaving the place looking like the Ypres salient when he was done. Then they could take their environmental claims to the ICC, or they could blow them out their shorts, (either of which would have the same effect.)

On Friday, a very conservative Republican legislator from the Winston-Salem area of North Carolina announced that he was switching parties, to the Democrats, and would vote for the current Democratic Speaker, Jim Black, to continue to lead the North Carolina House. In a Jeffords-like move, now-Democratic Rep. Michael Decker could reverse one of the Republican Party’s pivotal legislative gains in the November elections, as the GOP recaptured a slightly 61-59 majority in a legislative chamber they first won in the 1994 Republican Revolution. Rumors of a high-level legislative post, a job in the Democratic administration of North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley, or at least a boost in Decker’s post-retirement pension as a legislator are among the possible causes of the switch.

I received this extraordinary personal testimony from a female reader in New Jersey:

"Too bad the author [of The Hours] didn't have access to my mother's 'plight.' Depressed, bored, she left my father, who, on that day, was dressed in a hospital gown, sitting at the kitchen table, bandage on his shaved head, recovering from BRAIN SURGERY. Motive: to find herself - her words. She loaded the bedroom dresser, assisted by her boyfriend, into the moving van. (That's why dad had to wait at the table before he could crawl into bed having just arrived from the hospital.)

"We children, ages, 22, 16 and 12, and our 80 year old grandmother, nursed him back to health for the next year. She felt no remorse. She felt justified in her search to be happy as properly dictated by feminist doctrine.

"The feminist equation seems to be: whatever suffering, inconvenience, mental illness, and abandonment my family members must suffer is WORTH the price of my finding happiness. That's it in a nutshell. 'Cold-hearted bitch' is exactly right. Also try 'devoid of conscience.' 'Shatter the lives of a bunch of innocent children - no problem; the feminists will applaud my courage.'

"My mother also told me, (post divorce), that Dad, suffering from severe headaches, from the undiagnosed brain tumor, 'hadn't wanted to go out dancing anymore, so what was (she) to do.'

"She found someone else, since Dad was tired in the evenings and in pain. Dad went from country-western dancing partner to not-so-fun, work-all-day, tired-at-night provider in 6 months.

"His tumor was the size of a baseball at the base of his brain. His post-surgical eyesight created 32 images, then down to 16, then stabilized at 8. Violent hiccoughs racked his body about every 60 seconds. She knew that while Dad was in intensive care (she visited him twice, during a 2 week stay), I was in the ER having a miscarriage. Nothing was going to prevent her escape to freedom.

"What boggles the mind is that NONE of these details deterred her from her self-righteous path. In her mind: She couldn't help falling in love with someone else. She said this was a 'friendly' divorce. This was just between her and my father. No one else should be hurt by this. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah! Straight out of the pages of the feminist manifesto. She was absolutely delusional."

"The truth is far more wicked than fantasy."

in an online chat on ESPN just minutes ago:

Patrick (Chicago): National Review Online ripped you for your SUV stance. Can you think of something really nasty to say about them?

Gregg Easterbrook: (2:51 PM ET ) Given that no one reads National Review Online, there is no need to respond.

Not funny and not apropos to anything. It's really unfortunate that people like you get to write for the NRO because the legitimacy of their e-zine is lowered by the likes of your "garbage."

As Rod has noted there are lots of conservatives who have liberal environmental views (I honestly don't know if that was a cheap shot to the Crunchy Cons). But I've found that the most enduring misperception on the Right is a tendency among many conservatives to buy into Malthusian scare scenarios about over-population. I say this mostly from my experience of arguing, via email, with some readers over population trends. So I'd be interested in what Jon Adler's experience has been in this regard on the Right. Maybe there's another doom-and-gloom scenario he finds right-wingers particularly suseptible to. My suspicion is that conservatives, generally being more skeptical about immigration issues, tend to lump the two issues together.

Anyway, the simple fact is that birth rates are declining everywhere, not just in the Western industrialized nations, but in the so-called Third World too.Yes some nations are still growing in absolute terms because their total fertility rates are above 2.1 children per woman. But the rate of growth is shrinking across the board. And this means that the most likely scenario is that global population will max-out by mid-century and then begin declining. I bring all of this up because today's Wall Street Jourrnal has an excellent primer on the whole story on page B1. It's not web-able, but if you're interested in this stuff you should definitely check it out.

TOKYO, Jan 24 (Reuters) - The United States has evidence on Iraq's maintenance of weapons of mass destruction, which it will reveal at an "appropriate time," Washington's top arms control diplomat said on Friday.

John Bolton, U.S. Undersecretary of State, said Iraq had been engaged in denial and deception since the Gulf War in 1991.

"We have very convincing evidence that Iraq maintains an extensive programme for the production and weaponisation of weapons of mass destruction," Bolton told a news conference during his third and last stop in a tour of Asia.

"That is information that we have, and I think that, at an appropriate time and in an appropriate way, we will make the case about Iraq's violations," Bolton said.

Here's the Rolling Stone story about "bug chasers," a subculture of gay men who actively try to become infected with HIV. These people are beyond sick. This stuff is raw, ugly evil. "Carlos," a New York bug chaser, tells the reporter that his hobby is "about freedom." Later, he says that if he finds out that he's carrying the virus, he might become a "gift giver," the term for one who passes on the virus to someone who doesn't have it: "If I know that [my sexual partner is] negative and I'm f--king him, it sort of gets me off. I'm murdering him in a sense, killing him slowly, and that's sort of, as sick as it sounds, exciting to me."

There are 40,000 new HIV infections each year. Nearly a million Americans are believed to be living with HIV and/or AIDS. It costs between $10,000 and $15,000 a year to treat each one. How much will the taxpayer be willing to spend to treat and research a cure for AIDS when you have people like these scumbags running around? They should be locked up like the murderers they are. If they were going around making a game of spreading typhoid or smallpox, we'd deal harshly with them, strictly as a public health measure.

A gay friend of mine recently had an HIV scare after doing something he ought not to have been doing with a man who, as it turns out, was HIV+ but lied about it so my friend would go to bed with him. Now, my friend ought not to have taken the foolish chance he did, and he knows that now; he had the hell scared out of him, and has sobered up. Still, as far as I'm concerned, this HIV+ guy tried to kill my friend as surely as if he'd have put cyanide in his food. I wish this evil SOB were in jail.

Oriana Fallaci, whose most recent best-selling book I wrote about here, is not worried about Muslim extremists killing her. In this feisty interview, she says the death threats don't bother her:

"It’s my temperament. When you have been born in a war like me, living in a war as a child, when you have been in wars as a war correspondent all your life—trust me! You develop a form of fatalism; you are always ready to die. And when you love your own freedom as much as I do, you don’t bend to the fear to be killed, because otherwise you do nothing—you go under the bed and you stay hidden 24 hours."

"The point is not winning or losing," she said. "Of course, I want to win. The point is to fight well with dignity. The point is, if you die, to die on your feet, standing up. If you tell me, ‘Fallaci, why do you fight so much? The Muslims are going to win and they’re going to kill you,’ I answer to you, ‘F**k you—I shall die on my feet.’"

One of the first things my father ever told me was: If a man comes to your door and delivers haggis uninvited -- and you don't know who it's from -- don't eat it. But hey, that's just how we do things in the Goldberg household.

The Sun
sums up the Ritter story with the following headline: "Traitor now a paedophile." And here are the first few sentences:

A RENEGADE weapons inspector who embraced Saddam’s vile regime has been exposed as a child sex pervert.

Scott Ritter, 41, has TWICE been caught by cops as he waited to meet schoolgirls he lured in internet chat rooms.

He wanted one of the girls, who was 16, to watch him commit a sordid sex act. The other girl was just 14.

Sicko Ritter, a married dad-of-two, has been branded a traitor in the US for spouting pro-Iraq views.

On the Left defending Iraq's "sovereignty":

It's peculiar to listen to lefties make "sovereignty" a sacrosanct issue, so that it is sinful to attack the "sovereign" state of Iraq. Without going into the merits of it, historically the Left has been against the concept of sovereignty. This is what broke up the Second International at the outset of WWI, in which the socialist parties had been expected to be "international" in the sense that Marx and Bakunin (a leader in the 2nd International) made the case that the working classes in France and Germany had more in common with each other than with their respective states. To the chagrin of the traditionalist Lefties, the socialist parties sided with their respective nation-states, rather than with the international workingclass movement. One of the very few socialist parties to uphold the anti-sovereign position was Lenin's Bolsheviks.

If I had to describe with one phrase the motivation of an SUV buyer from my experience, I would borrow “Be Prepared” from the Boy Scouts. Consistently, our market research told us that SUV owners know that they may never use many of the features and attributes of their vehicles, but that they want them anyway, just in case.

Jonah, I don't believe anybody wants to see innocent people die for crimes they didn't commit. I simply believe folks on your side, in good faith, simply don't take seriously enough the prospect of the state killing innocents.

The question you and I were asked to respond to was: Is the Death Penalty Unjust? I couldn't say "yes, always and everywhere," because I don't believe that (perhaps Kathryn could have founded a conservative who does, but she asked me to do this debate thing with you, so I took the opposing side in the only way I could). I do believe that the d.p., like war, should be seen at best as a necessary evil. My view is that if we can protect society reasonably without using the d.p., then we should choose life, and mercy, even though a murderer deserves to die. It's all a matter of degree for me, though.

Remember, a jury convicts a man for capital crime when they are convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that he is guilty. Yet we've seen cases in which the man wasn't guilty at all; the jury, in presumed good faith, erred. They thought they had proved that he and he alone had done it. But he hadn't.

What it comes down to for me is I don't trust the government enough to yield it any more power over life and death than it has to have. I can imagine a time and conditions under which the d.p. might be necessary. We don't live in that time now.

Andrew Sullivan yesterday quoted a Boston Globe columnist who wrote, "The editor of a sizable newspaper told me recently that he decided the racial makeup of four new hires - two minorities, a white woman, and a white male - before reviewing a single applicant." Andrew commented: "Isn't that illegal? And if a leading editor is enforcing illegal racist hiring policies, shouldn't a journalist tell us who he or she is? Or are liberal editors above the law?"

A similar thing happened to me. I can't tell you the newspaper involved, because it could get innocent people there who were honest with me fired. I was interested in a position at the Bugle (we'll call it), also a sizable newspaper. My clips and resume was greeted with sincere enthusiasm by the section editors, who told me arranging a job interview would be simply a formality. Suddenly I didn't hear from the Bugle for a long, long time. I was told by a highly-placed source within the Bugle's management that my status as a white male hurt me with the top editors, that the paper was looking to hire a minority.

Not sure if I believed this, I communicated with the (white male) managing editor, and told him I'd be willing to fly to his city at my own expense if he'd at least grant me an interview. He refused, and wouldn't give a reason. I knew something was up. I later discovered from a sympathetic source inside the paper that the Bugle had done the same thing to another white male candidate for a job -- they told him point-blank that he was the most qualified of all applicants, but that he would have to wait for them to do a national search for a female and/or racial minority candidate first.

Anyway, journalism jobs are so scarce that people in the biz don't want to taint themselves by making trouble. But one of these days, these racist liberal bastards are going to face a discrimination lawsuit from a white guy who only wants a fair shake at a job, and is being denied it because of his sex and/or the color of his skin.

DC authorities are going to attempt to count the homeless today. Which got me thinking. Why not tag them like wildlife? 1...2...3...4...5...6....7...8...9...10. Okay now that your initial righteous indignation has died down. Think about it. Every winter untold numbers of homeless die because the police cannot find them on sub zero nights. Every year we have absurd debates on how many of them there are. Tagging the homeless with small, GPS-loaded, markers would enable us to keep an honest count and it would allow police to zero in on them on nights when they are in danger of freezing to death. Some homeless want to stay on the street when it's cold, but at least now the police could give them a choice.

I admit there are problems. Many homeless people are nuts and already believe the government has implanted chips in them. Well, to them I say, "What's one more?" Other homeless are inclined to criminal activity (indeed by definition almost all of them are loiterers) and they would not want the government monitoring them. But arguing that you want to be free to commit crimes is not a great argument. Indeed, we could present the homeless with a choice: wear the tag and take a few bucks for your troubles or be put into a shelter. We could call them "homeless licenses."

And there are added benefits. First, it would make the lives of the homeless a lot more interesting, adding drama and excitement to otherwise dreary lives. Second, such a policy might help us find the CHUDS, Mole people, etc.

In response to all the email: No, no, no. I wasn't suggesting -- or didn't mean to -- that the Iraqis have control of local police departments in the US. Rather, I meant that people with unusual sexual appetites are often great candidates for being turned into intellgence assets by foreign governments (this was one of the main arguments against allowing homosexuals in the government -- back when being a homosexual carried a lot more social stigma). All I meant was that if Ritter likes little girls, that might be a vulnerability the Iraqis could have exploited. I don't really buy this theory since I've spent exactly 109 seconds thinking about it. But people have been wondering for quite a while what exactly could explain Ritter's about-face. That's all.