I’ve had some interesting responses to my post on this topic on Friday. Most who wrote seem to favor a fairly strict licensing policy, while one reader notes the following:

“Fortunately, an easy answer to your concern exists: The Ohio voucher statute upheld by the US Supreme Court in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris required participating private schools agree not to discriminate on the basis of race, religion or ethnic background and not to "advocate or foster unlawful behavior or teach hatred of any person or group on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin or religion." (This was cited by Rehnquist, C.J. in his majority opinion.) “

Maybe, but quite how one polices this is a different question altogether.

The Canadian government is, apparently, looking at plans to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana. That's something that's long overdue, but it’s a start. Unfortunately, David Murray, a special assistant in the US Office of National Drug Control Policy has been up to Vancouver to suggest to Canada that it just says no.

According to this report, “Murray said that if Canada moves to decriminalize, more young people will use marijuana, police resources will be strapped, and the most vulnerable minority communities will be the most negatively affected by the increased accessibility.”

The first point might well be true, the second almost certainly is not and, as for the third, well, that’s just plain insulting.

The Chirac implosion continues. His ‘Baghdad bounce’ in the polls was always going to be a trap (how could he back down without destroying the credibility he had won with his new supporters?), but it now appears that he will have to extricate himself from the diplomatic mess he has created against a backdrop of rising unpopularity.

Loser.

“To an imagination of any scope the most far-reaching form of power is not money, it is the command of ideas.” —Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Path of the Law, 10 HARV. L. REV. 457, 478 (1897).

KAREN LECRAFT HENDERSON, Circuit Judge, concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part: I believe the statute before us is unconstitutional in virtually all of its particulars; it breaks faith with the fundamental principle—understood by our nation’s Founding Generation, inscribed in the First Amendment and repeatedly reaffirmed by the United States Supreme Court—that “debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.” New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 270 (1964). My colleagues’ per curiam opinion and their other opinions ignore the statute’s transparent infirmity and leave standing its most pernicious provisions, apparently on the ground that candidatefocused political speech inevitably “corrupts” the individuals to whom it refers. Their reasoning and conclusions treat a First Amendment with which I am not familiar. See Renne v. Geary, 501 U.S. 312, 349 (1991) (Marshall, J., dissenting) (“[T]he prospect that voters might be persuaded by . . . endorsements is not a corruption of the democratic political process; it is the democratic political process.” (emphasis in original)). Further, the opinions are similarly flawed in their dissection of the statute’s dense and interlocking provisions, upholding a portion here and striking down a fragment there until they have drafted legislation the Congress would never have enacted — all in the name of deference to that body.

One does wonder, however, about the privacy of casino records, especially at a time when Las Vegas is running a series of repellant ads whose theme is "Las Vegas: What happens here, stays here."

This (from an article in the March 10 New Yorker by Gary Shteyngart) is too good not to repeat:

“Sorokin is in his mid-forties, and has a broad face, soft eyes, and a chin that ends in a soul patch. He is not a small man, and, dressed in a T-shirt and beach shorts, he lumbers around like the kind of peaceful, intelligent animal that could grace Canadian currency.”

My campaign-finance guru sends me an analysis of the decision from yesterday:

This decision is a pain. It is very BIG, literally. It tackles big issues. It is long. It is coming at a time when people really need settled rules in order to determine how to proceed. Sadly, in this regard, it is also very muddled, as far as I can tell. It contains few fact findings -- and reasoning that is fragmented among three very different perspectives. Now, the Supreme Court, I suspect, is not in much better shape than if they'd just delivered the documents to it and said "Here." But they didn't. Instead they did apply the law to the record, and the result gives the reformers as well as the plaintiffs sort of half-a-loaf.

Specifics: the ability for party committees to continue to use nonfederal funds for party building, voter registration, get out the vote and voter ID helps alot. It permits parties to do what they are suppose to do, and doesn't move this civic activity into the special interest realm (at least not completely).

The electioneering stuff seems like a big step back from the Buckley express advocacy rule, but I haven't been able to get my computer to allow me to READ that part of the decision yet, so I don't want to be real definitive on that question.

… the Rick Hasen election law blog has some decent analysis on the issues raised by this stupid messy opinion. ...he's electionlaw.blogspot.com.

Czech TV seems to have been celebrating the ‘worker’s holiday’ of May 1st in appropriate style, with a 24 hour special dedicated to the joys of Communist TV: Now, that’s what I call a real Twilight Zone marathon.

Amongst the delights:

“On a 1978 visit to Prague, the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev is shown very obviously drunk during a live broadcast of the presentation of medals to party officials. The producer increased the volume of the Czech interpreter's voiceover in an attempt to mask Brezhnev's slurred speech. But there was nothing he could do to conceal the Soviet strongman's swaying or the serial kissing that followed.”

If I remember correctly, the late, unlamented Leonid Ilyich was also responsible for one of the more amusing moments in the history of British journalism. When, some time after the old tyrant's, er, ‘final’ death, it was revealed that a stroke had left Brezhnev incapacitated for his last couple of years, one of the tabloids ran with this headline:

“Russia ruled by red cabbage.”

I think I'm going to scrap Friday's G-File to write about the Bill Bennett thing on Monday. First question though, do any conservatives out there think this is actually a big deal? I don't mean the politics of it. Obviously this will give plenty of new ammo to Bennett-haters who used to mock only his weight. I mean are any conservatives out there truly, deeply disappointed in the guy?

Karlyn Bowman, who analyzes public opinion for the American Enterprise Institute, has put together a compilation of the results of media polls on homosexuality. The data series for one question casts some light on the controversy about same-sex sodomy laws: "Do you think that homosexual relations between consenting adults should or should not be legal?" As you'd expect, the trend over time is toward greater support for a live-and-let-live policy. The low point for that policy (in Bowman's series) comes in a 1986 Gallup poll, which had people favoring prohibition by 57 to 32 percent. The latest result in the series: In a May 2002 poll, people favored making "homosexual relations" legal by 52-43 percent.

I was surprised at how high the support for prohibition still is. The 43 percent figure cuts both ways. It may make Sen. Santorum's defenders think that his support for sodomy laws does not, by the standards of public opinion, mark him as an "extremist." But it also suggests that those conservatives who oppose sodomy laws but have not said much about the subject--a group that includes myself--are underestimating the usefulness of speaking up against them.

Bowman tells me that a March 2003 Quinnipiac poll asked if people agreed, "in general," with the Supreme Court decision "that allowed states to make homosexual relations illegal." Fifty-seven percent disagreed with the decision, and 38 percent agreed. The polls on the constitutional and the policy question are thus roughly in sync, which is depressing.

is going to be a full-time job for someone at the campaign. You may recall her response to the anonymous White House aide's remark that her husband "looks French": "They'll probably say he's French, he's Jewish... he's a monkey. I just find it sad." Jay Nordlinger commented on her remarks here and here. Wrote Jay: "Whoa, whoa: Jewish? monkey? . . . The Democrats had an actual Jew on the ticket in 2000. I don't recall my party going all brownshirt on him."

Her spokeswoman, Chris Black, has now responded: "She would be shocked that anyone would misconstrue what she said." The story in the Forward continues: "'Ask the people taking offense what they think she meant,' Black added, accusing them of 'trying to distort' Heinz Kerry's meaning and 'making mischief.' As for 'monkey,' it's a term of teasing Heinz Kerry trades with her grandchildren. Think 'Curious George.'" Okay. . . So she's warning people that the Republicans are going to make sweetly teasing remarks about her husband? That's what makes her sad? I think Chris Black is going to deserve a pay raise by the time this campaign is over.

Xavier, rather like the U.N.'s Kofi Annan, thinks everyone should get along as equals, while Magneto, borrowing a page from some in Washington, thinks because mutants are stronger and smarter than anyone else it makes perfect sense that they rule the world.

I know there's probably not a lot of conservatives in the field of movie critics, but the lefty sneers at Rumsfeld & neoconservatism in reviews of the X-Men sequel seem a little over the top.

From the Boston Globe:

"To do away with mutantkind, the administration has acquired the services of William Stryker, a mutant-hunting, liberal-loathing military vet. He's the heavy here, and Brian Cox invests the part with enough hawkish brio to convince you that he's had more than a sip of Rumsfeld punch."

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

"Representing the forces of human bigotry is a new villain - stocky, pockmarked Brian Cox playing former US military scientist Commander Stryker, the kind of extreme-right mutation you might get if you mated a neo-con with the ghost of General Patton."

Could anyone imagine a reviewer writing, "Stryker's militant use of brute force to eliminate the children who he percieves a threat are eerily reminiscent of the heavily-armed troops raiding the Miami household to grab Elian Gonzalez" or even, "Stryker's wildly aggressive use of flashy, heavily-caliber military-style force against a private residence, based on vague, unspecified threats, makes him a clear reflection of a real world danger - he's the Marvel comic book universe's Janet Reno" ?

From a reader in South Carolina. Note: "BSD" is a Derb-readers in-joke.

As I watched the President speak last night and considered the light years
between his appearance in a military setting and how third world
klepto-crats appear in military settings one thought continually kept coming
to my mind: this is a "BSD" moment!

now that the embedded correspondents have returned home, it also appears that we are also going to have "more of the same" when it comes to the reporting on the effort of America's armed forces still in Iraq. Those who now have their quills in barrels of poison ink have the forum. Expect fewer interviews with heroes -- and more criticism of their commander in chief.

From Reuters:

More than 160 foreign artists and intellectuals, including Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez, have come out in defense of Cuba even as many of their peers condemn recent repression on the Communist-run island....U.S. singer Harry Belafonte and U.S. actor Danny Glover are also among the personalities who have signed the two-paragraph declaration "To the Conscience of the World" so far....

"A single power is inflicting grave damage to the norms of understanding, debate and mediation among countries," the declaration says, referring to the United States and the war in Iraq. "At this very moment, a strong campaign of destabilization against a Latin American nation has been unleashed. The harassment against Cuba could serve as a pretext for an invasion," it continues....

Fierce criticism of Cuba's moves has come not only from Western government's such as the United States, but also from disillusioned foreign writers and artists, apparently sparking the pro-Cuba drive...At the Thursday rally Castro told critics, particularly on the left, that their words could be used to justify a U.S. invasion. The intellectuals who signed the declaration defending Cuba apparently agree, though they did not specifically express support for Castro's policies.

My name is Tallulah My first rule of thumb I don't say where I'm going Or where I'm coming from I try to leave a little reputation behind me So if you really need to You'll know how to find me.”

Nine Israeli wineries won medallions at the Challenge International du Vin at Bordeaux, France, where wineries from 31 countries submitted some 5000 wines, Israel Radio reports.

Another e-mail worth sharing:

All these people accusing Bush of grandstanding are know-nothing schlubs. Most of what they know about the military they got from watching J.A.G. on TV. I was in the Navy and had occasion to land on the U.S.S. Kennedy once. It was one of the most frightening things I ever did. The pilot literally crashes the plane intentionally on the deck and at the point of impact jams the throttle to full power. A hook grabs a steel cable stretched across the deck and slams the plane down hard stopping it in about 60 feet from a speed of over 120mph. There is this tremendous impact and a huge metallic KA-BLAM!! as the plane comes down. At the same instant your spine is decompressing from hitting the deck the deceleration clobbers you too. The four point restraints cut into your shoulders so hard you wince in pain. As your forehead comes to rest on your chest if feels like your head is going to pop off your shoulders. You then slam back into the seat and immediately look out the window hoping your don't see fire and the flight deck crew running away.
You then say to yourself or out loud, "HOLY-_____!!" and then, depending upon your upbringing, add a religious reference or a profanity to it.
I recall being very happy to get back to my "safe" job; jumping out of helicopters into storm tossed seas at night as a rescue swimmer.
The Secret Service must have gone bananas over this idea and the poor flight crew that flew with the POTUS must have been a nervous wreck knowing that the life of the President was in their hands while they crashed/landed on the carrier. You see, most of the aircraft and crews we lose in the Navy are during carrier take-offs and landings. Here is what the President probably did not know. The very best pilots in flight training get to fly combat jets. The guys who do not finish at the top have to take the remaining flight assignments in the order of their academic standing in flight school. In all likelyhood, the plane he flew in was piloted by a flight crew that did not graduate flight training at the top of their class. Not in the middle of their class either.
Everybody on that carrier gets what the President did. Everybody who ever experienced a carrier landing knows what he did.....What he did was this; He exposed himself to a very dangerous experience to show the troops that he was willing to take risks that they take everyday for low pay. Everybody on that ship got that message. It was meant for them, not us. It was by my measure a damned brave thing to do.

Bush emerged in a green flight suit, carrying his helmet, and shouted to reporters, "Yes, I flew it!" He said he had only steered the plane "straight ahead" and wasn't tempted to try to land it.

Andrea Mitchell commented that the President's connection between an Al-Qaeda cell in Baghdad and the Iraqi regime is shaky at best.

Those we lost were last seen on duty. Their final act on this earth was to fight a great evil, and bring liberty to others. All of you--all in this generation of our military--have taken up the highest calling of history. You are defending your country, and protecting the innocent from harm. And wherever you go, you carry a message of hope--a message that is ancient, and ever new. In the words of the prophet Isaiah: "To the captives, 'Come out,'--and to those in darkness, 'Be free.’”

President Bush on the Lincoln: As of tonight, nearly one-half of al-Qaida's senior operatives have been captured or killed.

Let’s add to this:
From Washington Times this morning:

Terrorist attacks decreased sharply worldwide in 2002 to their lowest level since 1969, the State Department's annual report released yesterday shows, and Secretary of State Colin Powell hailed the war on terrorism for foiling the deadly plots.
"The last time the annual total fell below 200 attacks was in 1969, shortly after the advent of modern terrorism," said Cofer Black, State Department coordinator for counterterrorism.

The Battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September 11th, 2001, and still goes on. That terrible morning, 19 evil men-- the shock troops of a hateful ideology--gave America and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions. They imagined, in the words of one terrorist, that September 11th would be the "beginning of the end of America." By seeking to turn our cities into killing fields, terrorists and their allies believed they could destroy this Nation's resolve, and force our retreat from the world. They have failed.

In the images of falling statues, we have witnessed the arrival of a new era. For a hundred years of war, culminating in the nuclear age, military technology was designed and deployed to inflict casualties on an ever-growing scale. In defeating Nazi Germany and imperial Japan, Allied Forces destroyed entire cities, while enemy leaders who started the conflict were safe until the final days. Military power was used to end a regime by breaking a nation. Today, we have the greater power to free a nation by breaking a dangerous and aggressive regime. With new tactics and precision weapons, we can achieve military objectives without directing violence against civilians. No device of man can remove the tragedy from war. Yet it is a great advance when the guilty have far more to fear from war than the innocent.

Admit it--if you saw Clinton (or Gore) pull that type of stunt on the aircraft carrier you would lambaste them for a) abusing their privileges with the military as their personal playground in a time of war, and b) using the military for extremely cynical political gamesmanship. And you would have been right. Bush is not a fighter pilot. He is the CIVILIAN commander-in-chief of the armed forces, not some wanna-be soldier, which is what he clearly looks like here. Can you imagine Presidents Roosevelt, Truman or even Eisenhower doing this? It's beneath the office and beneath the standard of dignity that Bush himself has placed on the administration of the Presidency. Mark this as the GW Bush Jump the Shark Moment--i.e. the point where administration war hubris started to eat away at real geopolitical gains made by this administration. I have generally supported the President in his tackling of very tough national security issues, but this is clearly shameful (and shameless) grandstanding. Not worthy of the most powerful office in the world.

I must dissent. This looks like a stunt designed to generate campaign advertisement footage. Loyal to the core with GWB, except when he engages in cheap marketing.

David Frum says it's going to be the successor to the war on tobacco. David thinks of snobbery as one of the links between these wars.

But I thought that Michael Greve made a smart point to the contrary a few months ago:

"Widespread speculation that the tobacco settlement might generate copycat campaigns against other industries focused on industries that shared tobacco's injury-inducing characteristics and its ill repute, meaning that no New York Times reporter would go near the products--guns, for example, and fast foods. Both industries, however, have suffered only a few wildcatter lawsuits by cities and private plaintiffs. No organized assault has materialized.

"Instead, the litigation industry has zeroed in on financial brokerage houses and pharmaceutical firms--both of which service the intelligentsia, and the latter of which actually save lives. Neither cultural explanations nor product characteristics appear to explain the litigation industry's choice of targets. Nor does the targeted industries' conduct explain that choice. . . . For an explanation, and for a prediction concerning next-on-deck industries, one must look to the political economy of the matter. First, targeted industries will typically be unable to differentiate their products along jurisdictional lines and to control cross-border arbitrage (meaning the unauthorized sale of products from one jurisdiction into another, with much of the proceeds going to middlemen). Second, targeted industries will tend to be highly concentrated. . . .

"The regulatory ambitions imply that the states and the targeted industry as a whole must be able to reach an agreement.

"That ability rises in proportion to industry concentration. At the time of the tobacco settlement, the four major manufacturers supplied 99 percent of the American market. That enormous concentration made it possible to bring the industry to the bargaining table and to monitor the firms' compliance with the agreement. At the other extreme, the fragmentation of the fast food and snack food industry explains why that otherwise vulnerable sector has so far escaped an organized attack. McDonald's and Wendy's can deal and comply. Thousands of smaller competitors do not, and the business is not amenable to entry controls. The litigation industry's attacks on investment and pharmaceutical firms are effectively a bet that those sectors are sufficiently cohesive and concentrated to cut a deal" (footnote omitted).

From the Media Research Center:

Although the Telegraph began reporting on documents showing Galloway’s payoffs on April 22, it’s been blacked out at ABC, CBS, NBC, as well as CNN, NPR, Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report. But the outlets most responsible to follow the money trail to Galloway and other anti-war voices are the outlets who promoted them on American airwaves.

• ABC has publicized Galloway the most on American TV, starting on the February 13, 1991 World News Tonight, as he decried the Allied bombing of Iraq. On the August 12, 2002 World News Tonight, reporter John McWethy reported on his Saddam visit: “Galloway, who vehemently opposes U.S. efforts to overthrow the Iraqi leader, said he found Saddam Hussein to be quote, ‘radiating a Zen-like calm.’”

The January 20, 2003 Nightline featured Galloway (see box), and on February 27, Good Morning America co-host Diane Sawyer highlighted a soundbite of Galloway’s House of Commons remarks as “a wake-up call for me, listening about the view of Americans.” Galloway denounced how “this born again, right-wing, Bible-belting, fundamentalist, Republican administration in the United States wants war.”

• CBS: On the August 14, 2002 Early Show, then-co-host Jane Clayson interviewed Galloway, introducing him as “an outspoken supporter of Hussein.” He protested: “I am an opponent of Saddam Hussein, but an opponent also, of the sanctions that have killed a million Iraqi children and an opponent of the United States’ apparent desire to plunge the Middle East into a new and devastating war.” Clayson asked Galloway if “you feel used in any way” by Saddam, to which he said, “no...not remotely.”

• NBC: On September 24, 2002, an “In Their Own Words” segment on NBC Nightly News spotlighted several British leaders debating Iraq, which included Galloway’s take on Bush: “The British people have seen the President, heard the President, and they think they’re estimating him just about right as not a man that we would want to be at the wheel of the car as we drive along the edge of a cliff with ourselves sitting in the back seat.” On February 26, 2003, Nightly News also used Galloway’s “born-again, right-wing, Bible-belting” crack.

No one faults the networks for featuring arguments from British anti-war leaders as Britain debated the war. But the new bribery revelations show Galloway was a tyrant-paid flack, not a sincere anti-war spokesman. Continued silence suggests journalists care more about protecting what’s left of the anti-war activists’ appeal than they do about investigative journalism in the war’s aftermath. -- Tim Graham

Look, I'm just an old M1 tank guy, but trapping the 4-wire is NOT a perfect landing. That pilot is going to be ribbed forever about almost doing a touch-n-go with the POTUS in an eject seat. It looked great to the unschooled eye, but to the guys who drop tail hooks, it was a grade "D". OTOH, our CinC looks just like another fighter jock. Fit, trim, looked like he was entirely in his element. The right man for the right time.

You just can't conceive of how much we love this guy. He commands an unprecedented amount of loyalty and respect among the armed forces. He not only walks the walk, he gets the trap (Navy talk). We don't think of him as a stud; he is so much more than that. He is the guy you hang with in the flight room, the guy you hunker down in the bunker with. He is the commander that is the first on the field and the last off. He is the guy you kneel down and pray with prior to putting your life on the line one more time. He is much more than a stud, he is a fighter jock. There are few in all of the armed forces who wouldn't march into Hell for him.

The Jews greatest gift to America is pastrami.Also note the important sidebar on the best places to get the most sensuous of cured meats

This was too cool! I was sitting in my downtown office in a mid-day stupor and was shook by a thunderous roar. Sixteen F-16 fighters returning direct from Iraq for a Colorado homecoming! Too bad they didn't fly a quick "buzz" sortie to Boulder and back.

MEMRI has a translation of the alleged letter from Saddam up; here's an excerpt:

Saddam had no property registered in his own name and I challenge anyone to prove that the palaces were not registered in the name of the Iraqi state. I abandoned them long ago and went to live in a small house.

Forget everything and resist occupation. The sinful error begins when there are priorities other than the occupier and his expulsion. Remember that they aspire to bring in the conflicting parties so that your Iraq will remain weak, so they can plunder it as they have been doing.

From the NY SUN:

"I experienced a living hell there during the seven years that I was there. The ordeal at that time was to such an extent that even today I am not sure whether I am alive or merely dreaming," says Ms. Lee’s testimony,an advance copy of which was obtained byThe New York Sun.

Perhaps the most dramatic part of her account involves the treatment of pregnant women. They "were unconditionally forced to abort because the unborn baby was also considered a criminal by law," Ms. Lee’s testimony says.

"Women in their 8 th or 9 th month of pregnancy had salt solutions injected into their wombs to induce abortion," her testimony says. "In spite of these brutal efforts, some babies were born alive, in which case the prison guards mercilessly killed the infants by squeezing their necks in front of their mothers. The dead babies were taken away for biological tests. If a mother pleaded for the life of her baby, she was publicly executed under the charge of ‘impure ideology.’"

As some readers may recall, in my "Canines to the Rescue" article I noted that dogs and the British are Americas two greatest allies in the war on terror. I meant this as no slight to the British -- or to Dogs. Now, compare Cosmo's earlier post about the Germans fleeing in terror from the squirrel menace and compare it to this story about the Brits doing what must be done. Was I right or what?

From a reader:

Once again, you've been suckered by Maureen Dowd to waste your time commenting on her in the corner...hear me now and believe me later, the primary reason she files those columns is to anger people who don't share Dowd's Queen Noor/Amanpour worldview.

Also, NR/NRO braintrust in general cuts Friedman way too much slack, particularly when he mails in today's column...the "Saddam letter" device is not amusing, The "Iraq = Yugoslavia in waiting" theme has been beaten to death, and the flippant "don't make the same mistakes I have" language at the end insults my intelligence. Don't worry, Tom, Bush won't make the same "mistakes" (oppressing/wasting/torturing people is a "mistake"?) Saddam did because he's not a megalomaniacal Stalinist thug/dictator.

Apparently, while I was attending to other matters, Cosmo the Wonderdog posted another item about squirrels. Any number of readers have alerted me to this tidbit:

Squirrel expert Walter Koenig from the German Park Authority said: "The squirrel may have regarded her shoes as a rival, as they are very territorial at this time of year, or it may just have been protecting a store of nuts."

I had to explain to Cosmo that Koenig was on something called Star Trek. Cosmo remembered the show vaguely, particularly his almost Klingon reaction to the whole concept of tribbles. When I told Coz that Koenig played a character named Chekov who constantly claimed every scientific breakthrough was a Russian "inwention," he seemed less than shocked.

Maureen Dowd writes the usual snarky column today. She even has some interesting tidbits, like Richard Perle dressing down Hans Blix. But then she offers this bit of geopolitical analysis:

Afghanistan offers cautionary lessons. It was the abandonment by the U.S. after Afghanistan's war in 1989 with the Soviet Union that stoked the fury of Al Qaeda. The regime of the American puppet Hamid Karzai is still perilously fragile.

Maybe it all depends on the meaning of "stoked." But at face value this sounds 100% wrong. Al Quaeda was never mad at us for leaving Afghanistan it was mad at us for not leaving Saudi Arabia.

From Jonathan Foreman, from Baghdad:

Soldiers of all ranks have been told that if they are found with any souvenir items when the MPs go through their bags before departure, the result will be criminal charges against individuals, and the collective punishment of whole units by keeping them in the Gulf region.

The Joes understand why they have to hand in the pistols many of them picked up here. Mostly brand-new Sig-Sauers, Glocks and Berettas, the pistols were stacked in their thousands in buildings maintained by Uday Hussein. They seem to have been stockpiled as gifts (pistols imply power and status in Iraqi culture) because they were stored with antique and gold-plated weapons.

"I am sick and tired of people who call you unpatriotic if you debate this administration's policies," Clinton shouted as the crowd screamed its approval. "We are Americans. We have the right to participate and debate any administration." [This accompanying picture on the Hartford Courant's website begins to give you the idea.]

It is one convenience store away from the extremely well-secured American embassy. It is owned by two Israeli/American brothers--Assaf and Gil and caters almost exclusively to American expats--tourists, long term residents, embassy staff and even American forces ages 18-80 (literally). Assaf plays the blues in a band called Southbound Train, a band that has given many of us who have spent time in Israel a desperately needed taste of home. He is also a consummate bartender in the "Sam Malone" style.

They throw one heck of a Fourth of July party.

Mike's Place started in Jerusalem where it was the bar of choice amongst a generation of American kids spending their junior year abroad at the Hebrew University. Mike's was one of the only bars to have survived the horrible blow that the Jerusalem (and Israeli) hospitality industry has encountered since the intifada started. Their expansion to a second Tel Aviv location on the beach at a time when there are almost no new bar openings defied conventional wisdom, but was a natural as many of us "seculars" find ourselves spending more time in Tel Aviv.

Do any of you out there know the Talking Heads song "Heaven"?...well that is Mike's Place...everyone knows you, they're always playing your favorite song, but in the end nothing really happens--and that's precisely what is so great.

I really don't know what to say... so many people I know (myself included) have had so may great times there. People have met their wives there. It's the only place where you can see a yeshiva student from LA, an African-American soldier, and an Israeli just back from Thailand sharing a stage belting the lyrics to Sweet Home Alabama "where the skies are so blue." Mike's had become a really important and unique part of the thriving and important live music scene in Tel Aviv that keeps many of us grounded. Hebrew not spoken here, yet frequented by Israelis who love the Americans that hang out there and American culture.

I wish I could have waxed more eloquent for your readers, but at this point I'm still waiting to go through that inevitable wince we all get when we first see that the names of the victims have been released. I just hope my buddies are OK.…

I don't want to make any accusations about why this bomb went off here and why now. But whoever bombed it knew exactly what this place was and what kind of people were in it. It should give Americans pause to think.

Along those lines, I remember shortly after Bush came into office, a shocking number of liberal C-Span callers believed the economy slowed down because Bush didn't have a "plan" for the economy as Clinton did. "Clinton focused on the economy! Bush doesn't care about the economy!" I always liked this sort of formulation because it assumes that economics is actually a settled science and if politicians cared enough about the economy it would grow. After all Clinton not only made "grow" a transitive verb, he grew the economy.

What's so amusing about this is the confluence of ignorances -- about economics and politics -- it reveals: First, the idea that if the president keeps his hands on the wheel of the economy and doesn't get distracted it will go where he wants it to go; Second, the idea that there are presidents who wouldn't do this if it were so.

The Iraqi lawyer who helped free Jessica Lynch is coming to America.

This might offend some. I think it's very funny.

Various techno-types have done the math and concluded that I live in a huge mansion. Why? Because an airport wireless base station beams for 150-200 feet and if I need two in one house....well you get it. Alas, the problem isn't distance. The kitchen (where many of you must know I do some of my best work) was built as an add-on to the house twenty years ago. That's where our deck is as well. This means that area is blocked by a thick brick wall. Sorry to burst anyone's bubble.

From a reader:

Hi Jonah,

Just to add my little tidbit: in the Talmud there is a throwaway reference to a great Jewish sage who argued with a rabbi about the accuracy of his calculation of the earth's circumference (this sort of thing was taken very seriously in the diaspora because it was related to the calculation of the new moon, and hence the Jewish calendar and observance of holidays.) Don't remember when that part was written, but the whole of the Talmud was codified by the 5th century, so there's a group of people who were in no doubt as to the shape of the earth at least a millennium before Columbus.

From a reader:

I justed wanted to say thanks for posting those readers emails. NRO is by far the best website/blog I've ever seen. Where else could a post about D&D become a highly enlightening and far more interesting discussion than I ever had in any history class, about Columbus, the shape of the earth, ancient societies, etc. Thanks. NRO and the Corner rock.

From a reader:

Jonah, Did you happen to see the report about blogs on PBS' News Hour w/ Jim Leher lastnight? Like a lot of PBS reporting, it was very well done & interesting. However, I kept watching it, calmly waiting for them to mention NRO's Corner. They never did. They went on & on about Andy Sullivan (which I enjoy) and Instapundit. They also covered about 3 or 4 Left-leaning web logs that I cant remember. All the reporting I've seen on the new media of running blogs, always leaves NRO off the list.

From a reader:

Dear Jonah,

I'll try to be brief, but your corner post raises several interesting points.

First of all, you are correct that for most of European history it was thought that civilization was declining, and the scolarship of the past was looked upon as a golden age. There are however some caveats. First, the gap between the educated, and the uneducated was huge. As early as 200 BC the educated Greeks knew the world was a sphere. It was even measured to a very high degree of accuracy. Atomic theory, the heliocentric solar system, viral disease theory, all these were postulated and debated by the Greeks. The vast majority of the people never had a clue about them. Egyptians laid out the pyramids with incredible precision, but their methods of geometry were wizardry to the common man. Knowledge was power, and was guarded jealously. Look at the Masons. An organization that started as a trade guild to fix employment conditions and membership (the first closed shop) survives to this day as a secret organization. Most people who were "uneducated" however probably knew more about the few acres where they lived and farmed than we can imagine. They would have known every plant species, it's uses, what it meant to the soil, when it blossomed, etc. Different people needed to know different things for different reasons.

The real arrogance of our time is that we somehow think ourselves more clever than these "uneducated" people of the past. They were genetically the same, with the same brain power that we have. In fact, most of them would probably be far more resourceful, have better memories, be better at problem solving, etc than we, because they relied on their brain power rather than the internet and reference books. My favorite example is the "Ancient Astronaut" theory of the pyramids. That there is no way the Egyptians could have been clever enough to figure out how to make all those straight lines, and move all those huge blocks. One simple question, why not? Since we have machinery and earth movers, we can't imagine doing without them, so we project our inability to solve these problems onto them.

I don't know if he's right, but I love this sort of stuff. From a reader:

Ah, Jonah. I wonder how many times you'll hear this today?

Your dragon blog contained the line

Similarly, for millennia, the logical position, given the evidence at the time, was that the earth was flat."

Actually this is quite untrue.

Eratosthenes calculated the diameter of the globe over 200 years before Christ (he also invented the first brute force method of finding prime numbers, the Sieve of Eratosthenes). He succeeded within about 3% or so,
iirc.

And before him, others had proved conclusively that the Earth must be a globe.

Here's one reason why. People who live on coastlines see evidence of the world as a globe all the time. Were the earth flat, a boat leaving would look smaller and smaller, and a boat arriving would look larger and larger, but you'd always see the whole boat. What you actually see is the tips of the masts when it's first in sight, and as the boat approaches, you see it not just larger but more of it, eventually all the way down to the waterline.

The men on the boat see something similar in mountainous country -- the tops of the mountains are visible long before the coastline, even when the shore is much closer than the mountains. The only way to explain this phenomenon is to understand that the earth is a ball.

Lunar eclipses -- there's one this week, I think -- also offer proof of a globe.

The "everyone thought the Earth was flat" business seems to come out of popular American lore about Columbus. It is what was used to explain the resistance to his voyage. The actual resistance came from the fact that education people *knew* the Earth was a ball, and new very closely how big a ball. Columbus has recalculated the size and came up with something less than half the size of the real earth., which is why he thought he could reach India and China buy sailing west. People who understood the math knew it was far too long to go that way.

This is why we're called the Americas -- Columbus came back claiming to have made it to the Indies; Vespucci immediately realized he'd found a new landmass or landmasses, and made the map to show so.

In a remarkable irony, I think I recall that during the voyage Columbus kept two logs, one private where he kept his real navigation and the other available to the mates with phonied up numbers to reassure them about the progress of the voyage. If I recall correctly, it turns out his fudged figures were far more accurate than his private logs when it came to recording his position.

Have a fun day with this one....

That's the good news. The bad news is that the BBC stinks. From their report:

Saudi Arabia is home to some of Islam's holiest sites and the deployment of US forces there was seen as a historic betrayal by many Islamists, notably Osama Bin Laden.

It is one of the main reasons given by the Saudi-born dissident - blamed by Washington for the 11 September attacks - to justify violence against the United States and its allies.

"Dissident"? "Blamed by Washington"? Sigh.

Some German scientists think so.

From a reader:

Too funny. My brother and I played the game maybe 5 times, and read all the books, both modules and guidebooks (Legends & Lore, about the different pantheons of gods, was a favorite) probably 100 times. There was something about playing "pretend" with our friends that wasn't very appealing. Imagination, however, with the books, was a wholely different story.

My brother destroyed the game for many when he decided that it was perfectly legal for him to just "combine" all swords he found into one weapon...So a sword +1+1+1+3+4 Firebrand Vorpal Holy Avenger Sword of Badassedness was the final result, allowing him to basically destroy the planet if he happened to stick it in the ground.

We still have all the books, in good condition but for broken spines. They were interesting reading time and time again. Don't know why, but they were. I admit that when I'm at my parent's house, I've cracked them open and given them another read. They're still great.

From a reader:

Jonah have you ever noticed that Clintons foreign policy was very similar to the GI Joe TV series. He exchanged a lot of ordnance, no one was ever killed. Cobra Commander was still alive and plotting to take over the world. There seemed always to be a reason to attack, but it never accomplished much. Adid, Hussein...just a thought.

Great article in the Science section of the NYT on dragons today. (I found it through Andrew Sullivan). As a former reader of Dragon magazine, D&D guy (I liked the Dungeons and Dragons books more than I liked playing the game, btw) and creator of the not-so-acclaimed public television documentary Gargoyles: Guardians of the Gate ("What gate?" you ask. "Exactly," I answer with a smirk) I like to think I have some dragon cred (not to be confused with dragon scat which I've kept preserved in my refridgerator ever since I found somee in Central Park when I was six).

The article covers a lot of territory explaining where the nearly universal dragon myth comes from. An anthropologist says its a quasi-Jungian thing where our simian brains conflate the predators we feared most -- pythons, birds, and big cats -- into a single giant critter. Plus there's a lot of stuff about how we simply deduced from the remains of dinosaurs and large whales that dragons must have either been or around or still be around. The only thing I don't like about the article is the whiff of progressivist modernist arrogance. The author seems to think it was unreasonable for people to assume that dragons were ever real. I think that's bizarre.

If you saw the skull of a tricerotops or T-rex or the skeleton of a flying dinosaur and you had no way to carbon date it, why wouldn't you assume it was a dragon? If you'd seen snakes and small lizards and the occassional tail splashes of Blue whales, would it really be so absurd to assume that such creatures were possible? Elephantine creatures were well-chronicled in tribal lores around the world and sailors reported seeing some very weird stuff abroad. Moreover, ancient texts, did not necessarily seem ancient in the Middle Ages. It's only recently that most humans believe that our Ages of Genius lie in the future rather than in the past. A thousand years ago, the greatest scientists imagineable had been dead for a thousand years. In other words, if you were applying the scientific method and the best scholarship as best you knew it, the logical position to take was the dragons were real. Similarly, for millennia, the logical position, given the evidence at the time, was that the earth was flat. Sometimes we moderns look back on the past with this assumption that everyone should have known what causes disease or fire, they should have known that dragon were fairy tales. The arrogance of this is astounding when you think about it -- and dangerous because it assumes that the wisdom of the past has nothing to offer us today. "If they didn't know dragons were fake," modernists reason, "why should we care about their philosophy?" My answer, as longtime readers of the G-File should remember, lies in one of my favorite definitions of conservatism; the idea that human nature has no history.

Besides, this cuts both ways. I remember reading somewhere that people in the West believed panda bears (they're not really bears) were fictional creatures like unicorns until the 19th century.

If you don't like scenes of urban violence or if you don't have windows media player or if cussing isn't your thing don't click this.

I recently made a donation to "The Corner" and have since noticed that it is getting less and less. I realize that somedays are slow but shouldn't there be more updates? Today is a perfect example.

The G-File is up.

In the wake of the Santorum flap, I don’t see how a book could possibly be more timely than, The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice, by Philip Jenkins. This book comes with strong recommendations on the cover from George Weigel, William Donohue, and NRO’s own Michael Novak. I have not read the entire book yet, but moving into it, I am very impressed and excited. Certainly, Jenkins talks about the larger pattern that we’ve seen in the Santorum controversy--an alliance between media elites and gay activists that denies fair play to traditional Catholics, and effectively devolves into anti-religious prejudice.

Jenkins’s book is a must read. There are chapters on anti-Catholic bigotry by feminists, gay activists, and the national media. Then there’s a special chapter on the outrageous media treatment of the Church scandal. Jenkins is particularly good at exposing media double-standards. A little while back the media puffed up a few mostly unconfirmed incidents into a supposed epidemic of violence against black Churches. But the same media downplayed or refused to condemn a massive, coordinated, and intentional campaign of violence against Catholic Churches by gay activists. This example gives only the barest idea of all the material covered by Jenkins. This is quite a book. (Anyone out there from the Conservative Book Club? This one belongs on the list.)

Between the account of intense bias against conservative Protestants in “Our Secularist Democratic Party,” the powerful account of leftist anti-Catholicism and the rise of leftist anti-Semitism in the wake of 9/11, we can see that the left, for all its claims of tolerance, is actually the font of a new wave of bigotry in this country--bigotry against traditional religion.

Whenever a storyline reaches the saturation point, inevitably the "contrarian" stuff starts coming out. That's how I took Rod's pro-French musings recently. That's how I view this as well. Eventually, we will return to the equilibrium where the French are our friends -- but friends we make fun of because they think they're so great.

From Reuters:

BERLIN (Reuters) - A 73-year-old man who used an air raid siren to stun his wife into submission has had it confiscated by German police.

"My wife never lets me get a word in edgeways," the man identified as Vladimir R. told Mannheim police. "So I crank up the siren and let it rip for a few minutes. It works every time. Afterwards, it's real quiet again."

Here is a jaw-dropping story that perfectly captures the New York Times view of the world. It's an appreciation of an educated and accomplished 70-year-old woman who, three years ago, decided she was missing out on life, and decided to sleep with as many men as she could in the time she had left. After living unhappily for years, Jane Juska, the Septuagenarian Sexpot, decided to remake herself. "It took years of psychoanalysis, dieting and exercise to take control of herself again, shaking off the lingering effects of a Puritanical small-town Ohio childhood in the process."

Having come back to the Times version of reality, Jane became -- what's the word? -- a slut. She's decided that so many women focus on their grandchildren to take their minds off the fact that they haven't done anything (in her view) with their lives. And a tramp's life has been a pleasant surprise to Jane: "I had no hope of it turning out to be anything like this," she said. "I expected to be murdered, or made sad at the very least."

Murdered? How nice for Jane that she's decided to live like a whore, but hasn't (yet) died like one. Go get 'em, girlfriend! The Times loves ya! (By the way, readers, you can write me now at rdreher@dallasnews.com).