The EU’s ‘common agricultural policy’ is an inefficient protectionist racket with very damaging consequences for the developing world. It’s at least arguable, however, that it’s a policy that benefits France. As a result, proposed reforms of this system have made little headway. Judging by this report, that’s not about to change. France has, it seems, acted (dread word) ‘unilaterally’ and negotiated in bad faith in its latest attempt to protect its farmers from the rigors of the free market. One can only say ‘bien fait’. The CAP may be a misguided and corrupt monstrosity, but, in defending it, France is demonstrating that it is prepared to put its interests (as it sees them) above those of the EU as a whole. Tony Blair should show that he can be equally tough in defending Britain’s national interest. He should reject the EU’s ‘constitution’ now – without further discussion.

He won’t, of course.

The Guardian has a good piece on Nurse Bloomberg’s ban on smoking in bars. The good news? Clothes no longer smell like ashtrays.

The bad?

“The downside is that, without the smoke to disguise it, you can now smell the bars: an unappealing cocktail of sweaty people, stale beer and vomit.”

Just another reminder of how the Nurse is affecting the quality of life in New York City.

It’s not easy to decide which Disney character is the most repellent, but the New Yorker’s Anthony Lane is obviously no fan of Thumper:

“For every Shere Khan in The Jungle Book (a matchless introduction to malign ennui, and one of George Sanders’ finest hours), there was the dire prospect of listening to Thumper in Bambi, whose tapping hind paw made me think longingly of Lapin de Garenne au Saupiquet (“You must collect the blood of the rabbit in a jug,” my cookbook says. Any time.).”

He’s right. But why stop there? That simpering Bambi would be better roasted, carved and surrounded by potatoes, gravy and parsnips. As for relentlessly perky Jiminy Cricket, one four-letter word in response to his cheery chirping:

R-A-I-D.

These days, of course, England is not a country that would impress Ms Chase nearly so much. The level of crime would astonish her – as would the reaction of the authorities, passive in the face of burglary, active only in their efforts to prosecute the householder who uses ‘unreasonable force’ in an attempt to defend property that the state can no longer be bothered to protect.

Writing in a recent issue of the London Spectator Charles Moore suggests an alternative approach to scare criminals away, quoting a technique used by one ‘bloody Brown,’ a neighbor of the 19th Century journalist C.J Apperley:

“His garden had been frequently robbed of much of its choicest fruit, and he, being an old soldier…was one not to be trifled with on such occasions…He applied to a dissecting room in London and obtained the leg of a human being, fresh cut from the body, on which he put a stocking and a shoe, and then suspended it in a man-trap over his garden wall. The act obtained him the sobriquet I have mentioned, but his fruit was afterwards safe.”

There’s a lesson there for us all.

One of life’s pleasures (for me anyway) alongside obituaries, Laphroiag, arguing with Derb, and reruns of the last moments of the late President Caucescu is a visit to a secondhand bookstore, mainly because I never know what it is that I am going to find. I was in Madison, Wisconsin, earlier this week and the fine store on State Street yielded three splendidly obscure treasures for a total of $23. The first was the memoir of a Finn (one Unto Parvilahti) who had spent ten years as a prisoner of the Soviets, the second was a 1939 book (The Soviet Power – The Socialist Sixth of The World) by the late – and unlamented – Rev. Hewlett Johnson, the ‘Red Dean’ of Canterbury (a man who would have got on rather badly with Mr. Parvilahti) and the third was This England, a travel book from 1936.

Hewlett Johnson’s effort was a reminder that the idiocy of ‘progressive’ clergymen has never known any limits and nor has their capacity to crawl to dictators. Here are a few choice examples of his ‘analysis’:

“[The Soviet] programme gripped me from its earliest formulation. Majestic in spirit, practical in detail, scientific in form, Christian in spirit…it is a programme which thinks, not in terms of a privileged class, but in terms of each individual soul…”

And then there’s this (remember this book was written two years after the launch of Stalin’s Great Terror):

“Nothing strikes the visitor to the Soviet Union more forcibly than the absence of fear.”

What’s more, the USSR was such a clean-cut place:

“Sex plays a comparatively small part in Soviet Russia…and everything lascivious or degenerate has been expunged from Soviet public life…”Petting parties” are unknown…”

Well, thank heavens for that.

Mary Ellen Chase’s This England was an altogether more pleasant, if rather rose-tinted, experience. For all the sugar-coating, however, it was difficult to read it and not come to the wistful conclusion that, for all its flaws England was, in many ways, a much nicer society than it is today. What’s more, those who could afford it also knew what made for a proper breakfast:

“Porridge with milk, rarely with cream, fish [kippers, I presume], bacon (or sausage or liver or kidneys or cold ham) and eggs, toast and orange marmalade, tea or coffee, the Times or The Daily Mail, a terse comment upon the weather and then calm, good-natured silence…”

A scepter’d isle indeed.

If, at some time in the late 1930s, a well-known author had given the government a list of writers and other public intellectuals who he thought could not be trusted to counter Nazi propaganda, this would have been regarded as unremarkable and, indeed, rather praiseworthy. No one would still be discussing it decades and decades later. How different it is when the ‘betrayed’ apologists for totalitarianism are communists at the height of the Stalin era.

Here’s a piece on the ‘scandal’ over George Orwell’s decision to give the British government a list of people he thought were pro-communist or worse.

One of the names was, interestingly enough, our old friend Walter Duranty.

From Fox News:

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Documents bearing the seal of Saddam Hussein's secret service were seized early Saturday by U.S. forces during a raid of a Baghdad community hall.

The documents, which were handed over to senior intelligence analysts, mentioned Iraq's nuclear program and may possibly contain information regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (search).

About 50 soldiers from the 1st Armored Division stormed the building at about 1 a.m. after sealing off part of Baghdad's Azamiyah (search) district — a center of support for Saddam's ousted regime. The neighborhood was where Saddam — or someone presenting himself as the Iraqi leader — last appeared in public before the capture of Baghdad on April 9.

Man, oh, Maneshevitz, it would be nice if this leads to huge stockpiles of WMD. But we've been burned on promising stories before, so we'll see.

Not sure what to make of it, but anecdotally interesting:

Jonah:

Is anyone else getting suspicious? I work in the high tech area as an engineer. I socialize with many "working class" people. I attend a church that has a majority of its members working in non-professional fields. Nobody is unemployed and as a matter of fact, nobody can find enough people to fill the available slots where they work.

At my place of employment, our best and least best engineers are leaving for fantastic offers at Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Grumman, etc. At our church, the tradespeople have more work than they can possibly accomplish. My family had to search for over a year to find a builder to execute a renovation at our house. The lead guy on our framing crew said that a few years ago he only hired people with experience. Now, he'll take anyone who is a hard worker. Every fast food place, convenience store, gas station or whatever that I frequent has a "now hiring" sign posted every which way one looks. Something just doesn't add up.

I wonder if you would take one of your columns and analyze the "high" unemployment rate that the Left has latched onto as the only chink in George Bush's armor. I'm suspicious that extended benefits and other government perks haven't caused some folks to just kick back and stop working. I don't have the answer, but as an engineer, when facts just don't go together logically, I get suspicious.

Two observations. First, as I've said before, the Department of Motor Vehicles is too often a p.r. disaster for race relations and for liberals generally. The average suburban white probably has very little interaction with the welfare-state services provided by their local city governments. Perhaps the only physical interaction they have, aside from perhaps jury duty, is at the DMV. When the staff at the DMV is rude, incompetent or just plain uncaring, that is the impression suburban residents get of the whole system. That's bad news. The fact that these employees often tend to be African-American in major cities, only compounds the prejudices of suburban whites. (Of course, Patty and Selma are the perfect poster-women for white DMV workers).

Second, I was standing next to an black guy in a track suit on the line at the DMV yesterday and we were making small talk. As we endured the snail's pace of the line to pay off tickets and fines, he pointed to the tellers and said, "Look at this! I ain't never seen people take such a longtime to take someone else's money. This is the only place in the world where people are slow at taking money." I thought it was an excellent point.

According to the prepublicity, the latest book - Living History: the Bulk Order of the Phoenix - would see Hillary rise from the ashes yet again, step out of Billy's shadow and prepare to take Housewhites back from the evil usurper Lord W Bush (as fans know, the W stands for Woldemort, but by tradition the name is never said). But instead it's mostly hundreds of pages about who Hillary sat by at the many school dinners she's attended, with a brief passage about when Billy told her about Moaning Monica. According to the book, after spending the summer golfing with Uncle Vernon Jordan, he admits to Hillary that, although he did play quidditch, he never put his bludger in the golden snitch. Hillary thinks this is a lot of hufflepuff and, although he doesn't die, Billy finds himself under an impediment curse which means that for the rest of the book he hardly gets to take his wand out at all and Uncle Vernon starts calling him Nearly Headless Bill.

<
When we turned off the highway suddenly there were teenage boys along both sides of the street about every 20 feet or so, all holding large American flags on long flag poles, and again with their hands on their hearts. We thought at first it was the Boy Scouts or 4H Club or something, but it continued -- for two and a half miles. Hundreds of young people, standing silently on the side of the road with flags. At one point we passed an elementary school, and all the children were outside, shoulder to shoulder holding flags -- kindergartners, handicapped, teachers, staff, everyone. Some held signs of love and support. Then came teenage girls and younger boys, all holding flags. Then adults. Then families. All standing silently on the side of the road. No one spoke, not even the very young children. The last few turns found people crowded together holding flags or with their hands on their hearts. Some were on horseback.

The military presence -- at least two generals, a fist full of colonels, and representatives from every branch of the service, plus the color guard which attended James, and some who served with him -- was very impressive and respectful, but the love and pride from this community who had lost one of their own was the most amazing thing I've ever been privileged to witness.>>

What they seek is not simply a comfortable life and social acceptance. They already have much of that. What they want is 100-percent complete acceptance. Many social conservatives in America believe there is a God and a Holy Spirit and a Bible that condemns homosexuality as an abomination, and they will not be defeated.

The problem is that no one outside a few ragtag religious-right groups is really fighting the tide you cite. Most conservatives do not. The GOP certainly does not. It is considered censorship to fight Hollywood, and religious discrimination to fight it in Washington. But the real "culture war" on this issue is person by person, endangered soul by endangered soul.

Don't be so pessimistic. The last great wave of gay activism was followed by the conservative takeover of 1994. A wave of gay-marriage activism in the United States could be yet another wave of political disaster for the Democratic Party. But it won't be if we wave white flags. Now is the not the time to go wobbly!

I'm off to the DMV

The Dems should know that Brett Kavanagh was hardly a rabid anti-Clintonite. Matter of fact, when I did a book review for the Wall Street Journal, a review which helped debunk the idea that Vince Foster's body was moved, etc.... in other words, one that supported the basic story of where and why the poor man committed suicide (okay, I bashed the Clintons on other matters during my book review, but not on that basic fact of this sad episode, and not on matters I discussed with Mr. Kavanagh), the main person who walked me through the public evidence and the Starr report (with full authorization from his superiors), and thus who cleared up some of the anti-Clinton conspiracy theories (to the benefit of the Clintons), was Brett Kavanagh. The Wash Post's portrayal of Kavanagh as a part of the "vast right wing conspiracy" is thus just not accurate; I found him a helpful, fact-based, careful attorney. I assume his legal philosophy leans right, because the Bush administration seems to be considering him for a judgeship. But while on the Starr team dealing with me at least, he sure as heck gave no evidence of any ulterior agenda. He seems like a man of deep integrity.

A bunch of people have sent me links to this story which seems to be spreading like a rash among the far lefty websites. It is extremely odd in format and style. But the gist of it seems to be that poor Cynthia McKinney never said Bush had prior knowledge of 9/11. The author, Greg Palast, seems to be saying that some damning "quote" by McKinney accusing Bush of advanced knowledge of 9/11 was "made up." He writes: "The 'quote' from McKinney is a complete fabrication. A whopper, a fabulous fib, a fake, a flim-flam. Just freakin’ made up." But he never actually prints the quote. So, here's the quote I have in mind from the Washington Post account about her interview on Pacifica Radio:

We know there were numerous warnings of the events to come on September 11th. . . . What did this administration know and when did it know it, about the events of September 11th? Who else knew, and why did they not warn the innocent people of New York who were needlessly murdered? . . . What do they have to hide?

Palast seems to be saying this quote was either misinterpreted or was never uttered by McKinney in the first place. I don't have time to wade through transcripts over at Pacifica Radio, but if he's saying she never said this, I don't understand why Cynthia McKinney didn't flatly deny she ever said it. Instead, she seemed to be conceding she said it when she issued a backpeddling statement in response to her comments: "I am not aware of any evidence showing that President Bush or members of his administration have personally profited from the attacks of 9-11. A complete investigation might reveal that to be the case."

Now, correct me if I'm wrong but if the quote was a complete fabrication, even a loonybird like McKinney would say so rather that issue a statement like that.

So, I assume Palast is asserting that the above quote doesn't mean what many rational people think it means. If that's the case, fine. But you can't say McKinney has been the subject of disinformation campaign which includes outright journalistic fraud.

In short, unless I'm missing something, stop sending me this article because I think it is weird, unpersuasive and in no way changes my mind on the subject of Ms. McKinney's enduring asininity.

I should add something. While we welcome, love and appreciate the contributions and subscriptions, there's something else some of you can do: Advertise. If you work for -- or own -- a firm which you think might benefit from advertising on one of the best and best-read sites of its kind, you could help yourself and us (and the country, and the world and the Universe, and the multiverse!) at the same time. Contact Jim Fowler and tell him Jonah Goldberg sent ya.

From a reader:

Before the recent discussion about Keynes in the corner, I didn't know he was gay (I guess I missed that chapter in gender studies). But I find myself ruminating on the other possible implications. For one, it certainly creates all sorts of innuendo surrounding Richard Nixon's famous declaration that "We are all Keynesians now."

It's an interesting argument, I've been pondering something similar too for a while. Though I think it would open up all sorts of unintended consequences too. Anyway, here's an interesting take from Gideon's Blog.

All this chat about Hayek is the perfect excuse (particularly as I am stuck in a near deserted hotel in the middle of nowhere) to tell my only story about the great man. It was some time in the late 1970s and the venue was (appropriately or inappropriately enough) the Keynes Auditorium (or Hall, or something like that) in Cambridge. Hayek was the speaker and most of the audience, stuck in the orthodoxies of that era, was either astonished, appalled or both.

At the end of his talk (which was, needless to say, quite brilliant) Hayek bravely asked for questions. Brimming with indignation and bubbling with bile, one man rose to his feet and asked “that’s all very well, Professor Hayek, but don’t you believe it is possible to have an egalitarian society.”

“Oh yes, “ replied Hayek, “you can have an egalitarian society – but only at the lowest possible level.”

Good point from a reader:

Jonah, It seem somebody, liberals presumably, is re-writing the guidelines about the sanctity of marriage. On one hand, they're claiming that a man and a woman who shack up together can live just as securely, and raise children just as well, as a married couple, and therefore they should not be looked down upon because they're sharing a bed without a pair of wedding rings. On the other hand, the liberals claim that a marriage between a man and a man, and a woman and a woman, is a sign that gays are committed to a stable, monogomous relationships, and hence can become part of the American family. "It's a beautiful thing," they say. So...which is it? Is marriage an archaic tradition whose time has passed only when a man and woman want to skip the altar and hit the sack? Or is it a "beautiful thing" only when it helps legitamize a man shacking up with a man and making booty-call sound less Sodom- and Gomorrah-like?

This guy hits all the right buttons:

Mr.Goldberg,

A few months ago, you floated the idea of making an anti-communist alarm clock along the lines of the Batman & Robin alarm clock from your youth (that alarm clock was a few years before my time.) I suggested that one could wake up to a song called Alger Hiss Was Guilty, sung to the tune of "You Don't Win Friends With Salad." [A taunting tune sung by Homer and the rest of the Simpsons to tease Lisa for her vegetarianism] I thought you might like to know that the song works with the Rosenbergs as well. "The Rosenbergs Were Guilty, The Rosenbergs Were Guilty etc..."

Regards,

[Name withheld]

P.S.

If the donation drive is still running next week (a pay week for me,) count on my contribution. I have a dentist bill to pay this week.

As you may have noticed, Rich has been a bit absent lately because he's crashing on his book. I thought only we at NRO were mad at him. But apparently he's been neglecting his cat too, judging by the look on its face.

You may have noticed, I've stayed out of much of the Corner badinage over the issue of gay marriage. I am sympathetic to all -- or almost all -- of the arguments made by Frum, Kurtz, Derbyshire and others. I’m also sympathetic to Stuttaford (and Andrew Sullivan). On the one hand, I'm perfectly willing to accept the possibility that if we legalized gay marriage it would turn out to be an unmitigated disaster. Of course, as with so many cultural disasters, the odds are it would unfold so slowly few people would recognize its causes. We'd probably just redefine disaster as another form of success as we do so often when the culture goes to hell.

But I guess the only question I have for the conservative opponents of gay marriage -- and I count myself among them, I suppose -- is: What do they propose to do about gays? Let's assume gays aren’t going anywhere. Let's assume that whether it's nurture or nature or both, there's nothing we could do culturally or medically or otherwise to change the fact that out-of-the-closet-gays are a permanent fixture of human reality for centuries to come. What then do they propose? If their answer to the permanence of homosexuality is "nothing," that's certainly ideologically defensible. Inactivism should always be the first instinct of the conservative.

But if we take Stanley at his word that homosexual promiscuity is as bad as he seems to think it is, what cultural signals should we send to discourage it? After all such promiscuity is bad for the unmarried too, right? Certainly encouraging gays to enter stable relationships would curb such behavior. As a matter of politics – cultural and democratic – it just strikes me as impractical not to have an alternative social institution on offer for gays if, as a society, we are going to deny them access to the institution of marriage. If marriage is off-limits, is it such a horrendous compromise to change the laws so as to allow gays to share assets and entitlements with their partners? What is wrong with permitting private contracts to deal with such things as visitation rights to hospitals and all of the other “rights” currently denied to couples who cannot marry? Yes, I think government should give social space to the institution of marriage, but why should government forbid private contracts between private citizens. If a single man wants to designate another man who is not a blood relative as the beneficiary of his social security death benefits why should the government stand in the way?

In short, while I’m tempermentally sympathetic to “do nothing” proposals, this seems like one of those cases where you can’t beat something with nothing. I’ve come out in favor of civil unions of one kind or another, not because I’m excited about it, but because I don’t see how there’s any other option in the long run.

To: klopez@nationalreview.com

Subject: Renewed and gave a gift. And if you keep it up, I guess I will have to donate again.

Thanks Carl

The Prowler reports that Hillary's Senate office is requiring -- "encouraging" -- groups to buy her book in bulk if they want her to speak at their events.

It should be no shocker that I agree totally with Roger about the Rosenbergs. But Roger, you might have missed this piece in last Sunday's NYT Week in Review section where the paper lets the Rosenberg's kids make the most sympathetic case for their parents. If memory serves this is not the first time the Times has played this game. They also did a fawning profile of Alger Hiss' son. The technique is very clever because it allows the author to be more sympathetic to traitors out of deference to their children and the reader goes along with it.

Japan has been mired in a deflationary depression for 10 years, and has been priming the pump furiously, to no obvious effect.

The Keynesian National Recovery Act and other New Deal legislation did little or nothing to end the Great Depression, and may have prolonged it. What the WPA and the like did accomplish was charitable (it put people to work and thereby kept them from hunger) and psychological (it told people someone was doing something for them, and thereby kept political stability). But the New Deal did not bring economic recovery. What finally brought about a solid and sustained economic recovery in the 1950s was the revival of global trade after WWII.

If you buy into the basic assumptions of monetarist and/or supply-side economics, you can't also buy into Keynesian economics. They are mutually exclusive. Monetarists believe that inflation and deflation are purely monetary phenomena. Supply-siders think what drives growth in the long term is the marginal return on invested capital. Keynesians think that what drives both inflation and growth is “aggregate demand” which they think the government can manipulate through deficit spending and/or running a surplus. If growth is low and inflation low, a Keynesian would say that government should spend more to increase aggregate demand. A supply-sider would say that this will actually decrease growth because the increased spending will require raises in taxes or in borrowing (which implies hikes in future taxes, which would be discounted back to the present by the market), which in turn would reduce the marginal return on invested capital. And further, a supply-sider would say, this deficit spending would increase inflation because, by reducing returns on investment, it would encourage consumption over investment. With an uptick in inflation and a drop in real growth, you could get a rise in nominal growth, which would look like a recovery to debtors and other folks at the bottom of the economic barrel, but for the economy as a whole you'd have a net loss.

Of course, you can also not buy into ANY economic theory, and simply conclude that economics is a branch of psychology, and therefore whatever works works. This was basically the Clinton/Rubin economic stance: don't worry about the theory, just do what the markets seem to want and all will be well. That works fine until the market decides that you really have figured out how to ensure permanent low-inflation growth, at which point you'll have a speculative blow-off and a deflationary crash. Which is what just happened to us. This is the Austrian “malinvestment” thesis of where depressions come from--the market periodically “overinvests” after which there's a deflationary recession to work off the excess capacity thus created - and the standard critique from economists is that it isn't an economic theory (why should the market “overinvest” sometimes but not other times?) but a psychological one. Which is true. But that doesn't disprove the theory.

Kathryn, If you were keeping this drive going until you got me to sign up, then it worked. As a university professor who is late on a book deadline, but can't bear the thought of not reading every word on NRO and in the Corner, you think I'd exhibit better judgement than adding to my required reading. I hope you're proud of yourself. Rich Erickson

Yes, it's a metaphor. This has been my term of choice for people -- like Krugman -- who get hysterical about stuff they imagine to be a big deal rather than stuff that is actually a big deal. In fact, whenever my daughter is in her crib and pulls the bottom of her outfit over her head, my wife and I say "she's pulling a Krugman."

Derb -- Yes, I agree. In the race to discuss the gay angle I think both of us cut some corners. I agree that Keynesianism isn't as awful as conservatives (including myself in those posts) sometimes make it sound. And, I should have been more clear about Hayek. The Road to Serfdom wasn't an explicitly anti-Keynesian treatise. But, Keynes and Hayek were legendary mortal intellectual enemies in 1930s Britain (though they were quite friendly socially). It was Hayek's "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money," written in 1936 which was the real -- and winning -- anti-Keynesian broadside, not the Road to Serfdom. My point about the RtS was that it was a foundational book of the modern right and its author was opposed to Keynes for reasons which have absolutely nothing to do with who could quote Oscar Wilde verbatim. Indeed, all of this underscores the point that Krugman, once again, has his dress over his head about a completely made-up issue.

UPDATE: See post above: "I'M AN IDIOT"

KLo,

Haven't checked the Corner for a few days, and just got done reading three days worth of blegging. Then, to top it off, I read Jonah's opening day bleg, and am still wiping away the tears.

As an NRO freeloader for the past year, founder of the Flying Monkeys chapter at work, and a Corner addict, I am proud to say that I can add to the list NRODT-subscriber . I have a few demands, however:

1) The institution of an intermittent "culture column" by Jonah's couch.
2) A 1:1 posting parity of Star Trek blurbs for every mention of the NY Yankees in the Corner.
3) The diversion of some fraction of my subscription fee towards an "on location" series of columns on beach erosion in the Bahamas by the Derb. I'm sure that he can come up with an appropriate equation to determine his cut...

Brad Sweet Washington, DC

The problem with Mr. Levin pointing a finger of accusation at the Bush administration is that he's also pointing three fingers at himself. You see, Mr. Levin also serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and has for some time. Presumably, he knows something about Iraq's weapons programs. So, when he repeatedly insisted that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, was he "shading intelligence information" or did he "exaggerate or overstate . . . intelligence information?"

Well, I finally did it: subscribed to NRODT. I actually intended to just make a donation to NRO but never found the right link. Thanks for all the wonderful work you guys do.

Derb - I hear you. In fact, Ramesh tells me that The Economist was fond of making much the same point for quite a while (that is, people without kids wouldn't define the "long run" as terminating with their own funeral). But, surely the long-standing, empirically-tested, deep and profound rightwing objection to Keynesian economics would endure even if Keynes were not gay. After all the modern American conservative movement was arguably launched by the publication of Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom." And, I'm pretty sure Hayek's famous objections to Keynesianism weren't based on the fact that they could replace one of the Village People with a Keynes impersonator. The fact that Keynes was gay might be relevant as to why he held the views he did. But they have nothing to do with why free-market conservatives think he was wrong. I mean, are homosexual conservatives slightly more sympathetic to priming the pump than non homosexual conservatives? Okay, that might sound like a bad choice of words, but you get my drift.

I just finished reading Glenn Reynolds' (AKA InstaPundit's) excellent piece on what makes for a good blog. He also raises the point about the anonymity of leftwing blogs I just referenced below. I agree with Glenn's point about how anonymity can drain the energy and personality from such sites (and I agree with him about his kind words for the Corner). But I think he misses another point. When these guys take potshots without signing their names to them, it comes across as profoundly weasily. When last I read Tapped, it had an angry intern feel to it more than an "institutional" feel.

Anyway, I do think it's an interesting question: Why do these leftwing and liberal magazines and sites refuse to put their names where their mouths are?

My buddy Nick Schulz (editor TechCentralStation) is reading Paul Krugman's old book Peddling Propserity. He discovered that according to Krugman conservatives dislike Keynesian economics in part because he was gay. From page 33:

"Why do conservatives hate Keynesian economics? Part of the answer is that they dislike Keynes the man - aesthete, homosexual, and member of the dread Bloomsbury group. Indeed, the historian Gertrude Himmelfarb, attacking Virginia Woolf and her friends, has been explicit in tying the rejection of Keynesian economics to the Republican concern for family values: 'There is a discernible affinity between the Bloomsbury ethos, which put a premium on immediate and present satisfactions, and Keynesian economics, which is based entirely on the short run and precludes any long-term judgments...'"

I just love this. Does Krugman really think that if Keynes was a real he-man National Review would have loved The Great Society? I'm a big fan of Himmelfarb's but she's hardly a major contributor to conservative thinking on economics and her conservative phase post-dates rightwing dislike of Keynes by a long while. I mean, Marx and Stalin were straight, right?

I finally opened up the wallet and pulled out the credit card. When all seemed lost during the month of March with the liberal news media saying our country had lost a war (before it really began), murdered millions of Iraqis (before we even got to Iraq) was quagmired (when it hardly even rains in Iraq) and were in it for the oil...your website was the fountain of truth. Thanks for your great reporting.

I know, I know you're tired of this stuff from K-Lo. But not from me! From a reader:

I was a freeloading daily reader of NRO for a little over a year. This past Christmas I finally ordered a NRODT subscription--not for myself though. I'm something of a liberal and I didn't want my name to show up on any wacky right-wing mailing lists so I gave the subscription to my conservative step dad. Our family dinner conversations are now more partisan than ever! Thank you National Review for bringing my family closer together.

I admit sour grapes play a part of my increasing peevishness toward Romensko . He poses as some sort of quasi-official clearing house for "media industry news, commentary, and memos." But he seems to think media criticism from the Right is somehow illegtimate. I never really noticed or cared until Andrew Sullivan started making a stink about it. But when I wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal defending the media blitz in the wake of the Columbia disaster, Romenesko didn't link to it -- even though he'd been linking to all sorts of other pieces on the subject, including from tiny papers and the like. I thought it was a pretty unconventional take on the whole thing and you don't often see conservatives defending the establishment media during a feeding frenzy. Anyway, nada from him. Then this week OpinionJournal ran my review of the Alterman book and, again, radio silence. Since then a bunch of people have sending me emails about how he's little more than a clipping service for the establishment, gitchy-goo, eat-your-spinach journalism crowd. I haven't paid enough attention to judge that in the past, but I'm certainly coming to the same conclusion.

I just had to tell you I subscribed to NRODT for my Dad last week. I have been a proud subscriber for some month now and determined that it was really rather silly to cut up my copy of NRODT to send him my favorite articles from New York to Texas so we can discuss them over the phone. So now we are both subscribers. He turned me on to NRO more than a year ago and we have great fun seeing who can get to the articles first to load up the others email box with the ones that move us. We are both big fans. Keep up the good work.

Just because I've been incommunicado doesn't mean I'm not totally down with the whole ringing the dinner bell for the sweet grub of shmundo (you know, frogskins, greenbacks, scratch, dinero, moolah etc). We're all deeply grateful for your support so far, but if you were holding out until I started shaking the tin cup at you in the Corner, well your wait is over! Like they used to say in the Jiffy Lube commercial, "Time to Change the Oil." No wait, that's not right. I mean, like they used to say in the Jiffy Lube Commercial: "Do it Now!"

Join the Women for a Free Iran, as we show our solidarity with the Iranian women.

Friday June 20th
9:00 AM
In front of the State Department
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520

We will tie veils together to show our support for the women in Iran living under political oppression.

The $20 subscription is for 12 issues - which isn't annual, it's semi-annual, as the magazine is bi-weekly. Several times (I'm sure I remember this from before) you've posted on the Corner responses from new subscribers saying the annual cost is a steal at under $20.

Granted, at $40 it's still a steal, but I'd much prefer if you could post a clarification on the Corner...it almost seems like you're letting the misconception persist. I know you wouldn't take money under false pretenses...

The barrage of requests worked and I have subscribed to NRODT -- after giving my mother a subscription for her birthday.

The guilt was too much for me. Every other post (or so it seemed) about subscribing or donating had my guilt level rising. Reading NRO for over two years and agreeing with your writers has convinced me that I'm a conservative (I had never given it much thought).

VDH, Jonah and Cosmos are my favorites. It definitely helps pass the time at work.

NRO is to weblogs and conservative articles, what google, amazon and dell are to their industries.

Keep up the good work.

I'm feeling kind of guilty cause I don't have much money to give, but I live on NRO and milk duds. I've got a subscription and got my mom a subscription and got my best friend to get a subscription.

So I came up with a brilliant idea!!!!

I got my lawfirm to let me subscribe for the firm. Coming soon to a law office waiting room near you - National Review to compete with the Economist and People Magazine.

Excellent. You can too. Get a subscription for your office or your doctor's office or your lawyer's office or your local library (my mom funds the subscription for her local library in Louisiana).

NRODT has just hit the uber commie beaches of Santa Cruz. Please send it in an unlabeled plain brown envelope, otherwise I will be forced to attend a hate speech diversity re-education camp.

You need to advise potential subscribers that you are offering a 4-issue free trial and the annual cost is a steal at just under 20 bucks. If I had been aware of that, I might have ordered sooner.

Still trying to pay for all the McDonald's food consumed at Dreher's going-away party.
Give enough money and Marmite and Star Trek will seriously totally finally be banned from the Corner forever.
It will help support the demise of the Axis of Evil Squirrels.
Marmite ain't cheap!
Without it, we'd have to actually work while at work.
So that today’s children will have NRO and NRODT in the future.
Stuttafordorama on the weekends.
Because you can't spell "No Rodhams in the Oval Office" without 'NRO'
It takes a village to run a website.
Because without NRO commentary on the need for the previous tax breaks, you wouldn't have the money to give in the first place.

OK Kathryn, I took the plunge and bought a NRODT sub. I come from a long line of very conservative, America loving Democrats although as a career Naval aviator (now retired) I have long since switched party affiliation as they moved way left. I just wanted you to know I am no longer reading NRO for free as part of a New Deal subsidy provided by my fellow readers, but am now part of the solution. Looking forward to a long, intellectually stimulating relationship.

For all its faults, the San Francisco Chronicle has excellent coverage of food and wine, as one would expect in the world capital of hedonism. Today's Chronicle food section contains a valentine to Marmite.

A couple of e-mail correspondents have asked me to clarify my views on the free-association argument for a constitutional right to sodomy, which I mentioned here yesterday in connection with an op-ed by Clint Bolick. I suppose that it’s worth doing, especially as Andrew Sullivan has labeled Bolick’s as “the principled conservative argument.” (This looks like carelessness on Sullivan’s part: He can’t really mean that all principled conservatives have to judge this constitutional claim sound.) In short, by saying that Bolick’s latest argument for constitutional protection was stronger than his previous arguments, I didn’t mean to suggest that it was actually strong.

Bolick argues that two men having sex with each other are involved in a kind of “expressive association” that should be protected from state interference in the same way that the right of the Boy Scouts to determine their own rules should be protected. The gay men should be protected from the state’s moral judgment of homosexuality, just as the Scouts should be protected from the state’s moral judgment of discrimination against gays. But a right to free association need not protect all behaviors in which the people associating engage. If the Scouts had a rule that everyone at their gatherings had to smoke dope, the Court would not have to protect them from prosecution in order to stay consistent. Freedom of association is best understood as a claim to be able to include or exclude whoever you want from an organization. (Not that the Supreme Court has held in favor of that freedom expressed that generally, or that it should: I am inclined to think that the Scouts should have lost their case.)

Also, isn’t a brothel equally an association? I suspect that Bolick would not mind much if the Court were to rule that laws against prostitution had to go, but if what he’s going for is a broad principle of consent as the only permissible legal standard for the legal regulation of sex—and possibly of other things as well—he should level with his fellow citizens.

As I’ve said before, I think the Texas legislature should repeal the law against same-sex sodomy when it next convenes. But the Court ought not to do the legislature's job.

No, don't worry, this isn't about campaign finance "reform" or our much needed fund raising drive (hint, hint). It's just that once at least once a day I'll get an email, usually via my syndicated column account, accusing me of being a shill for the Bush administration. That's fine and part of the job. What's annoying is how so many people think I make money from Bush being in office. Somehow they think that having a rich Republican in the White House makes all Republicans richer. The truth is almost the complete reverse. If Howard Dean were elected president, I'd probably be able to pay off my mortgage a couple years early. Ditto if Gore had been elected. Similarly, the Nation seems to be thriving as an opposition tract now that Bush is in office. Criticizing the powers that be is always more lucrative than defending them in my business. In a sense, it's a nice little tribute to the sincerity of conservative and liberal journalists that we advocate against our interests most of the time.

Why, with all this pleading, can I not lose in my mind a mental image of NRO writers toiling away in a manner similar to the accountants in Monty Python's "Crimson Permanent Assurance" (the short at the beginning of "The Meaning of Life")?

I visit NRO probably 20 times a day and am responsible for getting others hooked as well. I credit NRO with renewing my interest in politics and helping me decide where I stand on the important issues of the day. You can't beat the staff - I have never met them, but they are like family, in a strange, "cyber" kind of way. I even named my son after Jonah Goldberg. Thanks, NRO, for being there for me.

Stanley, I hate to revert (so to speak) to promiscuity again, but I don’t think that it works to claim that (male) homosexuals are more promiscuous than their heterosexual counterparts because of the absence of the restraining influence of women and from that to argue that the mere existence of homosexual civil unions would threaten the monogamous ideal of heterosexual marriage.

To raise just one objection, I cannot imagine the circumstances in which a husband would successfully convince his wife that an ‘open’ marriage was acceptable simply on the grounds that Bert and Ernie next door (yes, it’s true!) have an ‘open’ civil union. If the nature of heterosexual marriage were to be changed by legally recognized homosexual unions that supposedly put less of a premium on fidelity than their straight equivalents, women would, by definition, have to agree. Why would they? Blogger Justin Katz (who has plenty to interesting comments on this controversy - much of it at odds with my own viewpoint) comments “it isn’t the slip of paper used for a marriage certificate that encourages men to “settle down,” it’s the women whom they marry.” Yes, and a change in the law to permit homosexual unions would be unlikely to change that.

Lets also take another look at the numbers. If we agree that 2-3 percent of Americans are homosexual and that only a (relatively) small percentage of that population would want to get ‘married’, we would then be looking at a small percentage of that tiny percentage that would believe it acceptable to fool around. That’s not going to threaten the existence of an institution (heterosexual marriage) that has survived for thousands of years despite a great deal of (heterosexual) fooling around.

Trying to read too much, too fast perhaps. But wouldn't an animated movie called "Finding NRO" be a nifty project for the talented readership to undertake?

Who cares about the tin-foil hats? 31 (the anniversary number), 23 (the 6th month and the 17th day added), and 17 are all prime numbers.

What does Derb say?

Isn't it a bit, well, odd, that you chose the 31st Anniversary of the Watergate Break-in to begin? What will the tin-foil-hats say?

I have just subscribed to NRODT because of your drive. I read NRO everyday and felt I needed to contribute. This brings me to my true point. I have purchased one ticket in the multi state lottery here in Illinois (I realize its an idiot tax - but I'm quite the idiot). The prize is 140,000,000. If I win the lottery, I pledge to give $1,000 dollars a month every month for the next two years to NRO. So I ask you and your cohorts to cross their fingers for me.

In his NRO column yesterday, Jonah fretted that right-wingers both for and against federal regulation of spam were ignoring the centrality of culture. The pro-regulation people had too much faith in the feds, the antis in the free market. He writes, "Most socially unacceptable behavior is not solved by government action or pure self-interested, free-market consumer choice. It's solved by social pressure: shaming people, refusing to deal with them in polite company, encouraging boycotts, creating formal or informal associations which refuse to do business with certain individuals." He concludes, "If the Right comes around to the position that only the government has the authority or the ability to solve a real social problem and that a real social problem is defined as any problem the government can solve, then we are in big trouble. It would signal that conservatives have given up on trying to improve the culture and uphold the authority of tradition. In short, it means that conservatives will have given up on conservatism."

I agree with Jonah's concluding point, but have two qualifications. 1) What's the application to spam? I think it highly unlikely that we are going to shame them into not spamming. Judging from what's in my inbox, these people are immune to shame. I suppose if you ran into someone at a cocktail party who said he spammed for a living, you could walk away. But generally "shaming" implies sterner stuff.

2) I wouldn't make too sharp a distinction between the market and the culture; in fact, I'm not sure I would think about "the free market" as an institution so much as what people do when their property rights are respected. Sometimes, the way to mobilize cultural pressures is to use the free market. Boycotts are a form of free-market behavior (a point Jonah slides past by positing that such behavior has to be "self interested," and in a narrow way at that). Or take the policy prescription Charles Murray outlined a dozen years ago on how to win the drug war. He advocated making it easier for people to discriminate against drug users in both housing and employment markets, and suggested that drugs also be legalized. In other words, he sought to replace state coercion with less formal social pressures that might, in practice, be tougher on drug users. My point is not that this is a good or a bad idea--it's that it would clearly be both pro-free-market and a "cultural" response to drug use.

I'm a daily NRO communicant, and once a day isn't enough for The Corner--I look in every time I log on. It keeps me in tune with the blogosphere.

NRO is my homepage. I cannot even finish the morning papers anymore because I'm too eager to see what Jay Nordlinger, David Frum, Victor Davis Hanson, and the rest have served up. It's a banquet.

NRO has compensated for my own parental failure. Jonah, Derb, Ramesh, Rich, and the rest of The Corner crowd have convinced my sons that conservatives are hip, funny and smart. Michael Ledeen, Victor Davis Hanson, and Jim Robbins have made sure that I have two reliable hawks flying the coop. Now, if only they could both bring home girls who remind me of Kathryn Lopez. . .

How do you spell indispensible? N-R-O.

I never miss a day on NRO, unless I'm without web access -- and then I catch up on my return. I'm an NRODT subscriber/enjoyer, but NRO gives me a daily dose of the best analysis, commentary, and wit available. Jonah Goldberg, VDH, Michael Ledeen, Jay Nordlinger, John Derbyshire, Stanley Kurtz, David Frum, Byron York, Dave Konig, John O'Sullivan, David Pryce-Jones, AND MORE! And all FREE to non-donors. This is conservative "e-vangelism" (to use an old Apple Computer phrase) at its best. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Wow, and I was thinking "Maybe I might have a few bucks for a tiny donation." Turns out I had the beer money cash to subscribe. So I did. You're absolutely right: I feel better already. I've been reading NRO for about a year to procrastinate and grabbed NRODT whenever I could swipe it from the internship. Absolutely love both, though I'll admit a preference for NRO: the only place I can laugh out loud but still get that erudite evil conservative feeling when I'm reading a column. Plus, a Jewish frontman? The clincher.

Like the other guy said, keep up the great work!

Everyone,

I have subscribed to NRODT after years of sponging off the hard work of others (kind of like a teenager). I stop at The Corner maybe a dozen times a day, keeping me from doing any real work. Where else can I get a couple of British ex-pats, a talking couch, a rabid Yankees fan (who hasn't said much lately, hmmm...) and one frazzled den mother? Tell me, keeping all these boys straight, it's like herding cats, isn't it?

Tell the large editor, er... I mean Editor-at-Large to keep up the good work, Stanley to keep posting in threes and Derb never to do anything like that "Gini coefficient" again.

Thanks,

Michael Mulholland
Manchester, NH
(Still tax free!!)

With all due respect, I feel I must point out that Messrs. Derbyshire and Brookhiser--and their spouses--were hardly the target audience. My wife and I saw the movie with our 7-year old son, and it sure seemed like all the small-fry in the theater were well-entertained.

So, there. Harumph.

Considering these are individuals who were trained and ready to commit suicide, albeit at the same time killing hundreds of innocents, it should come as no surprise that some wanted to kill themselves. We should only be grateful, that when they attempted suicide no one else was harmed. Instead the blame America first NYTimes writes it up as if it was some terrible injustice. A better headline might have read, "suicide killer attempts suicide, no one else harmed."

[Pat O'Brien,] the former sportscaster and current "Access Hollywood" host [was on Hardball last night] to blow kisses at Arnold Schwarzenegger, the potential next governor of California. O'Brien called Arnold a "Reagan Republican," and then when sub-host Mike Barnicle said Schwarzenegger was pro-choice and pro-gay marriage, O'Brien said that yes, like most of the California Republicans, Arnold started as a Reagan Republican and has, yes, "evolved."

Ok, I did it. I Subscribed to NRODT. It says a lot about you that while I routinely withstand week-long beg-a-thons from NPR, I succumbed to your shameless plea for support on the first day.

Keep up the good work. Your website is invaluable, and I look forward to reading the more extensive coverage in your magazine.

Read Jonah's missive begging for money. Laughed out loud, getting strange looks from my co-workers. Hit the PayPal button. Renewed my place in the VRWC. Felt good about myself. It's going to be a lovely day.

Now - why did I donate, really? Simple. In my younger years, I would read NR as I came across it, but never got around to subscribing. Later, when I found myself working in a large (and left-wing) chain bookstore, I began reading NR regularly as a sort of samizdat corrective to the Marxist-communitarian claptrap surrounding me. Then, with the advent of a new job (and much more congenial political atmosphere), I discovered NRO and found myself intrigued by the wit, wisdom and sheer joy expressed by so many of your writers. Finally, with a wave of guilt washing over me, I took the plunge and subscribed to NRODT for the first time.

NR and NRODT are like the best sort of friends: chatty, informative, witty and thoughtful. To have people like that in your lives is a blessing; to have them online and in print at your fingertips is a delight. Thank you for everything.

Finally, I finally subscribed to NRODT, and it feels like a huge burden has been lifted from my shoulders. I can take a breath of fresh air, smile, and have a great day. Sorry I have held out for so long.

Can't wait to get the next issue.

I pay for my daily coffee--so why not pay for a daily dose of NRO--great writers, topical columns, and a gourmet alternative to the pablum in the Boston Globe.

Readers seem to be evenly split on yesterday's column, at least judging from the email. About half loved it, about half said blech. I kind of like it when I get these reactions because it means that I still have a diverse readership which expects different things from me. Maybe I'm just a rosy scenario kind of guy.

Andrew Sullivan writes:

STILL PLAYING THE GAME: Here's an interesting nugget that tells you a lot about Hillary Rodham Clinton. Her book contains many inflammatory charges about various political and judicial figures. In particular, Chief Justice Rehnquist is portrayed as a political hack rather than a principled justice. Fair enough. It's a free country. Rehnquist wisely decided not to comment on the smears. But what's remarkable is that Hillary herself, when contacted by the Washington Post, "declined to be interviewed about the political content of her book." Huh? There she goes again. Even now, as a Senator in her own right, Hillary still pulls the First Lady schtick to avoid a political fight. Yet the book is highly political. It's not some anodine memoir of private life. It's a tough piece of political rhetoric. Yet she won't allow the press or others to challenge her on the politics of it. She still thinks she's above it all. Perhaps she always will.

Now I caught this on Saturday when it originally appeared. Not only was I first, I think I was more right. Andrew ascribes Hillary's refusal to discuss the political views in her book to egotism and arrogance. That, in my opinion, is too generous an interpretation because it assumes some level of good faith on her part. I think in her perfect world, Hillary would love to rail against her enemies, real and perceived. It's not arrogance which stops her, it's cynicism. She understands that the only way a majority of Americas will see her in a somewhat favorable light is if she plays the role of dignified-but-victimized-wife. She denies that she's merely a wife, and yet when it comes time to market herself she refuses to be anything else.

And I should say that if Barbara Walters and Katie Couric and the other journalists who interviewed her agreed to any ground rules which said the political stuff is off-limits for discussion, then they are nothing more than shills for the Hillary PR machine. And, to be honest, I don't understand why the media watchdog journalists didn't pounce on this issue the second that Washington Post article came out.

I agree with Ramesh, obviously. But I think someone who understands the economics of all this -- like Ramesh -- could do a really good piece on how income inequality is something of a myth. Oh, I guess the numbers are right generally speaking. But the numbers tell less and less of the story. One hundred years ago, or even fifty, monetary wealth was a huge indicator of physical well-being. Removed from farms and rural life, the ability to feed yourself depended largely, if not entirely, on the money in your pocket. Major tools for improving or sustaining your life -- education, transportation, comfortable housing, clean water, etc -- cost a great deal of money. Today, very little of this is true. Food is astoundingly cheap and obesity, not hunger, is the chief nutritional problem for the poor. The typical "poor" American, according to the government's numbers, has a car, air conditioning, a refridgerator, a stove, a VCR and a color TV. Here's how Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation summarized the situation for NR a few years ago:

"These facts are gleaned from the government's own surveys of the living conditions of the poor. The surveys indicate that most poor Americans today are better housed, better fed, and own more property than average Americans throughout most of the century. Today, expenditures per person among the poorest fifth of households equal those of the average household in the early 1970s (adjusted for inflation)."

So, in other words, income inequality defined as the relative proportion of disposable income as distributed among the population may be increasing, but equality of well-being is increasing even more quickly.

Let me put it this way: In a world where the poorest people live like millionaires, would it really be so terrible if the richest people were trillionaires? We ain't there yet obviously, but I sometime suspect those who denounce income inequality today would still be denouncing it under those circumstances too.

That the administration is guided by Leo Strauss is now one of those things that significant sections of the press take as a given. Here's Jonathan Kaplan in The Hill: "Each presidency has its intellectual darlings. Keynesian economists dominated the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations; Reagan sought out economists Milton Friedman and Martin Feldstein; and Clinton sought out such civic-minded professors as Harvard’s Robert Putnam (author of Bowling Alone) and Henry Louis ‘Skip’ Gates Jr. The Bush White House, however, is partial to followers of the late Leo Strauss, a political philosopher at the University of Chicago who is Putnam’s alter ego, said Harvey Mansfield, a Harvard philosopher who follows Strauss’s philosophy."

I think Mansfield is having fun, speaking between the lines, with Kaplan. "The clearest proof of Straussian thought in the Bush lexicon is the use of the words 'regime' and 'regime change,' said Mansfield. 'Those are big words, a concept you get in Plato and Aristotle … use the word in that meaning that getting rid of Saddam ... [means] getting rid of all accompaniments to his regime and gives you the ability to introduce a democratic way of life, a wholesale change,' Mansfield added" (ellipses and brackets in original). Three observations here: 1) Lots and lots and lots of non-Straussians use the words "regime" and "change," sometimes in combination; 2) I would wager that there are more people in the Bush administration who are familiar with the works of Friedman that there are who are familiar with Strauss; and 3) It was charitable of Kaplan to pass over the topic of the first Bush administration's favored intellectuals in silence.

Rand Beers, who had a job fighting terrorism at the NSC, quit over his disagreements with the Bush administration and went to work for John Kerry. A Washington Post profile today leaves you thinking that this action was admirable, in its way. But it also leaves you guessing about the substance of his disagreements.

Reporter Lauren Blumenfeld writes: "The focus on Iraq has robbed domestic security of manpower, brainpower and money, he said. The Iraq war created fissures in the United States' counterterrorism alliances, he said, and could breed a new generation of al Qaeda recruits. Many of his government colleagues, he said, thought Iraq was an 'ill-conceived and poorly executed strategy.'"

But in the very next line, we learn that Beers "did not oppose the war but thought it should have been fought with a broader coalition." So if we had France on board, nobody would be moved to join al Qaeda? If we had France on board, we would have freed up tons of manpower and brainpower to fight al Qaeda? It would have made an ill-conceived strategy smart? It sounds like Beers is trying to have it every which way. He's certainly found the right candidate.

Will not be coming to NYC. He will remain in the DC metro area in an undiclosed location.

I am posting this in the hope that it will discourage more email making this same point:

I'm sure you've received quite a few replies on this, but one more couldn't hurt.

At the end of Reloaded, the Architect reveals to Neo that Zion has been destroyed six separate times. Due to the systemic anomaly (Neo is the anomaly), human are gradually freed from the Matrix. At first, only a few are freed, but eventually there is a snowball effect as more and more humans free themselves from the Matrix.

The Machines feel there is a "critical mass" which, when reached, action must be taken. Once 250,000 humans are freed of the Matrix, they destroy Zion in order to halt the snowball effect.

Because the Matrix is not mathematically perfect and humans are inherently flawed creatures, he implies that some humans will always be trying to wake up from it, and a tiny minority succeed. Zion seems to be the method of controlling those humans who are awakened from the Matrix.

Whether or not Zion is simply a matrix within a matrix is a matter of debate. But the solid point is that 250,000 humans are the most the Machines allow to be freed at one time. Once that number is reached, they wipe them out and start again. So, every hundred years or so, 250,000 humans are killed while tens of millions continue to live unaffected and unaware of the Matrix.

Hope that helps.

The former Iraqi Representative to the UN now believes the Iraqi people should have toppled Saddam and that he's always been against mass-murder. Isn't that special.

Where everyone else is, remains a mystery.

FYI: I'm going to be around intermittently over the next day or two. I'm heading to NYC with the rugrat to visit the grandparents and to attend a meeting at NRHQ (Zion for you Matrix-deluded NRO fans). (Strange) G-File is coming and I'll be poking my head into the Corner when I can.

Actor who played Othello and Blacula (but not the Blunch Black of Blotre Blame) has died.

Since I'm on an air-my-movie-grievances kick, there's are a few things that've been bothering me about the Matrix Reloaded. I figure anyone who hasn't seen it by now doesn't care that much about spoilers. But if you do, skip this post.

Now, we're told by the old dude (the Keeper of the Matrix or whatever his official title is) that humanity has been destroyed a number of times. And at each renewal, a small handful of breeding stock is preserved to repopulate the ranks of humanity. Fine, fine. But how is it that after every regeneration of humanity there are still black people and Asian people and white people? If you're going to breed a population of hundreds of thousands or millions from a base of a couple dozen people, isn't that going to be impossible?

Oh, and by the way, I've always thought the using humans as energy thing was absurd logically which is why I think the apocalyptic world of Zion is just as fake as the Matrix itself and the series will end with them discovering the real world still exists and is pretty nice (kind of like Logan's Run). They dropped a hint along these lines when Neo stopped those robot killer things toward the end of Reloaded.

I can remain silent no longer. I watched Meet the Parents for the umpteenth time last night. It's a great movie, even though it still gives me the willies (I first saw it right before I met my prospective father-in-law for the first time).

Anyway, can we all now admit that Ben Stiller's girlfriend behaved terribly throughout the movie? I mean she kept getting him into terrible situations and then expected him to lighten up and relax. She told him to go borrow her brother's underwear, to find Jinxie the cat, etc. She never told him she was engaged and then acted as if it was no big deal. Not to use technical jargon, but she was way uncool.

It wasn't until Andrew Sullivan pointed it out a while ago, that I learned media blogger Jim Romenesko seems to be blind to conservative media criticism. It'll be interesting to see if he thinks my Alterman review is worth linking since he believes Alterman is so worthy of his attention.

My review of his book for the American Enterprise has been reprinted (repixalated) at OpinionJournal.com.

John, so far as I recall, just about the only naturally monogamous creature is a rather dull type of vole. In fact, it’s quite reasonable to speculate that the institution of marriage evolved as a control mechanism to restrain the disruptive effects of heterosexual promiscuity. While there does seem to be evidence of a greater tendency to promiscuity among male homosexuals (this discussion over at the Volokhs would suggest that the data is less clear cut than is usually thought), that’s not really my point, although it does raise the rather intriguing question as to whether you might have fewer reservations about lesbian ‘marriages’.

What I’m arguing is that the absence of any legally recognized form of homosexual union means that we cannot really compare like with like when it comes to contrasting heterosexual and homosexual (mis)behavior. Indeed, it’s important to recognize that homosexuality itself was only recently (and imperfectly – check out the great sodomy debate) made legal. Fifty years ago homosexuality was outlaw conduct – that’s not the most conducive environment for developing more socially responsible forms of behavior.

Looking at this problem from a different angle, a number of readers have written in (almost always courteously – contrary to the usual slurs thrown in the direction of the ‘religious right’) challenging my assumption that economic obstacles (such as the death tax issue) are as important as I suggest. Well, I’m mulling this over, but it’s worth saying now that this is not an argument that can be made with any conviction by anyone who argued that the tax system's ‘marriage penalty’ discouraged couples from wandering down the aisle.

More on this to follow, I’m sure (unless Kathryn shuts us down), but not until tomorrow. Rather appropriately, I’m off on a trip to, ahem, Canada.

Here’s a BBC poll on ‘the greatest American’. Currently, Homer Simpson leads with 47% of the vote, Abraham Lincoln is coming in second with, ahem, 9.5%. George Washington (4.6%) is eclipsed by Mr. T (7.8%) and Bob Dylan (5.2%).

You know what you have to do.

Late last week, the World Health Organization released guidelines under its new 'tobacco control' convention. Amongst the proposed rules – a ban on “misleading” names including terms such as “light” and “mild”.

This, surely, is a cue for the return of Death Cigarettes, a brand that used to be marketed in the UK complete with a black pack and a skull and crossbones logo.

Back, obviously, from France, Alec Baldwin is the narrator on a documentary being shown on the Discovery Channel. Its title? Walking With Cavemen.

And that’s all I’m going to say on this topic.

This week’s Economist has a good survey of the Nordic region that includes this old, and accurate, joke about the Finns and their dislike of unnecessary chatter:

“An old Finnish joke has two men sitting in a sauna, drinking beer. “Cheers!” says one, raising his glass. An hour and a few refills later, he raises his glass again and repeats: “Cheers!” Another hour on, and he breaks the silence yet again: “Cheers!”

The second man is speechless with anger, but eventually brings himself to reply: “are we here to drink or to talk?”