The snack wars aren’t going away any time soon. Here are details of research purporting to show that “foods which are high in fat and sugar can cause significant changes in brain biochemistry similar to those from drugs such as heroin and cocaine. Once hooked, the researchers say, many people find it almost impossible to switch back to a healthy diet, often leading to obesity.”

Notice the use of conveniently vague words and phrases such as “significant” and “similar to,” but even if we do accept the researchers’ premise that junk food is somehow ‘addictive’ (and I don’t) all that this signifies is that our notions of ‘addiction’ are so vague as to be meaningless. You can prove this by playing a simple word game. Instead of saying that burgers are, say, as addictive as heroin, turn the phrase round to say that heroin is no more addictive than fatty food. Nonsense? Yes.

Peter, don’t be too sure that, for the Germans, the EU is a way of losing their national identity. It’s far better to see it as a (politically correct) way for them to impose their way on the rest of the continent. It beats Stukas and tanks, I suppose, so there has been some progress. The French are pleased to go along with this because they believe that they can manipulate German strength to pursue their own economic and geopolitical agenda.

Here’s something you might find interesting:

”The only possible aim of economic co-operation must be the establishment of the European Economic Community. The decisive conclusion in terms of economic policy is that Europe is not to be what one would call a major area or market…in which the old structural rules of the Anglo-Saxon world economy apply; rather, the European Economic Community must be shaped in accordance with new political criteria and will consequently appear different from the economic structures of the past.”

Those words come from a compendium of papers by the president of the central bank and others (Europaische Wirtschaftgemeinschaft, Heinrich Hunke (ed)) published in Berlin in, ahem, 1942.

Yes, Peter, that is my father. Here's a shameless plug. Your other question (why the British establishment wants to entomb the UK in an ever more federal EU) is harder to answer. Basically – and very briefly - it’s a poisonous blend of motives. The aim behind the EU has long been the establishment of a corporatist economic system across a continent (the relative economic failures of France and Germany have shown that, in an age of increasingly free markets, such a system can’t survive in one country alone). Including the UK in this project will remove an economic (and intellectual) competitor and will be a good revenge on the hated Thatcher. This managed capitalism (and the revenge on the hated Thatcher) has considerable appeal to the British Left (lest there be any doubt - this includes Tony Blair). Remember that the very structure of the EU offers another advantage – it is not subject to any meaningful democratic review. It is thus, for all realistic purposes, irreversible and so is the economic system it will impose. Elections can be so awkward. It’s worth pointing out that such a regime also implies the existence of a large – and well-paid – apparatchik class, and there are many in Britain who rather like the sound of that.

Of course, all this will mean the destruction of Britain that we all once knew – but for the new ‘progressive’ class that will be no loss at all.

And why did the British people vote for this? That’s easy: they were lied to.

As you might have read in papers, seen on TV and heard on radio, the worst medical situation Africa is going through now is that of the spread of HIV/AIDS followed by malaria and other epidemics such as cholera.

Our dispensary loses almost one person monthly due to AIDS and we have very many admitted due to malaria, most hit are the children.

Last month we lost a victim to AIDS, here is his situation: He was first admitted at the general hospital. When the doctors there knew there was no hope for him, they discharged him. His family could not care for him and they brought him to our dispensary. We took care of him until he died. I was happy to have prayed over him and 30 minutes latter he died. May God rest him in His love.

Now we have another patient but he is not yet badly off. Coughing simply keeps wearing him down. He is a father to five children and cares for two grand children including their mothers. He is a mason and gets very small amount of money. What is worse now is that those who must pay him for services he rendered do not want to pay him. He now cannot buy medicine to keep himself alive. Such medicines here cost a fortune: one month’s dose costs $50 (Tanzania shilling 54,000), in a place where average wage is $30 (30,000) per month and bus fare to go to work costs $20 (20,000) per month!

For our dispensary to be able to take care of its patients we need plenty of antibiotics. USA has a plan to assist Africa with medicines and other medical support in this field of AIDS and malaria. We do need plenty of antibiotics. We, as a small dispensary can hardly have access to this USA Plan from here. Is there something we can do together so that we can get these antibiotics!


If you can help in any of these matters, please contact Father Steven via email at: smosha@EaglePark.org

Fr. S. Mosha

Let’s leave sex and sexual relationships out of the picture. Let’s say that the amendment has passed and the Connecticut legislature has enacted a law granting some of the legal incidents of marriage to any couple. Under this law, a friend and you (or two friends and you) can co-sign each other’s loans, or whatever, if you choose this arrangement. (A thoughtful post by Justin Katz suggested this example to me—unfortunately, I can’t find the link right now.) Would the amendment bar this law? Or prevent a court from giving it effect? I don’t see how. The amendment’s wording suggests that states can, by statute, confer some of the legal incidents of marriage on unmarried couples (or groups); and that courts may construe statutes to confer those benefits.

Let’s take another example. The Michigan legislature decides to permit only married couples to co-sign each other’s loans. The state may have other sorts of domestic partnerships, but this isn’t part of the package. Under the amendment, the court may not construe the law reserving this benefit to married people (i.e., implicitly defining it as one of the legal incidents of marriage) as though it applied to unmarried people. That is to say: Whatever the state has decided, legislatively, to reserve to marriage, the courts may not extend beyond marriage. That leaves state legislatures with a lot of running room.

If one takes seriously the legal threat that the amendment’s supporters do—that without the amendment, the courts will impose same-sex marriage—the amendment leaves states with more running room than they’ll otherwise have.

Here again is the language of the amendment: “Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.” On Andrew and Eugene’s reading, the word “require” is excess verbiage. They read the second sentence as though it were equivalent to the following: “Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to confer marital status or the legal incidents thereof upon unmarried couples or groups.”

Indeed, their reading makes even the “construed” bit pointless. Why not just say “Neither the state nor the federal government may confer marital status or the legal incidents thereof upon unmarried couples or groups”? The answer: because that’s not what the amendment is intended to do (although, of course, many supporters of the amendment may well wish that political circumstances were such that they could enact a more far-reaching amendment).

On Thursday, I claimed that Andrew Sullivan had misunderstood the Federal Marriage Amendment. Eugene Volokh and he say that I’m the one who doesn’t get it.

All of us agree that the amendment would ban a state from adopting same-sex marriage—democratically or by judicial fiat.

I said that the amendment would not bar a state legislature from enacting civil unions, but only block any future replays of Vermont, in which a court essentially ordered a legislature to enact them. (Eugene and Andrew don’t bring this point up specifically, but I should have qualified that statement: It depends on the contours of the “civil unions” in question. The amendment would block democratically-adopted civil unions if those civil unions were marriages in all but name.)

Andrew and Eugene argue that the FMA would prohibit legislatures from creating any type of civil unions, recognizing domestic partnerships, or even making employers provide same-sex partners with the same benefits that go to married couples. I disagree.

Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., this week slammed American Civil Rights Coalition head Ward Connerly and demanded the anti-affirmative action conservative quit his efforts to overturn a University of Michigan diversity policy. In a Wednesday letter, Dingell warns Connerly to "go home and stay there," arguing Michigan has "no need for itinerant publicity seekers, non-resident troublemakers or self-aggrandizing out-of-state agitators. You have created enough mischief in your own state [California] to last a lifetime." The blistering attack comes on the heels of a Supreme Court ruling upholding the University of Michigan rule, which allows the law school to make student body diversity a consideration in its admissions policies. Connerly was vaulted to national prominence among conservatives when he opposed the University of California's affirmative action policies in the late 1990s, breaking ranks with other black business and political leaders in the state.

Considering the despondency of this article's tone, may I make a suggestion? I agree with your cultural weather report, 100% chance of rain here and sunny skies in Sodom, however, that does not mean that some rear guard actions--no pun was intended until now--should be left undone. For instance, call them gay unions not gay marriages. At least allow for some culturally recognized distinction between sterile coitus and a life-producing family even if both are legally sanctioned side by side. Besides that, marriage comes from the Latin "marita" which means a woman provided with a husband. A verbal distinction can be a powerful one to sow seeds for later campaigns in the culture war. Also, by privatizing marriage you divorce marriage from the interests of the state, and Jefferson was very emphatic, as with all our founders, that a state that does not support the family and see its protection as a tantamount goal is not a state worth protecting. If you privatize, or if politicians and just citizens roll over and take a coward's comfort in knowing that their religious institutions will soon be forced to disengage from the public sphere, you agree to let the state consider the family as simply another competing interest on par with the NAMBLA and the Teamsters Union. Please keep fighting on this front. I would hate to see the conservative movement win every battle but the war.

Uh, yeah, [a Tenet resignation] would [be bad]. Intelligence is an art, not a science. A lot of it is educated guesses, based on the best, though incomplete information available. Firing Tenet over botching this SOTU line would add more caution, more ass-covering, more bureaucratic inertia and bring down the morale that he's spent his tenure rebuilding. Unless there's a dynamo replacement candidate to replace him, it's best to keep a guy who's got a very solid, trusted, personal relationship with W. and who has some successes to go with his failures (Khalid Sheik Mohammad, the company's role in taking down the Taliban, catching some of the top 55 Iraqi leaders, etc.).

One other thing--throughout much of the 90s, nobody in Washington was all that interested in al-Qaeda. Certainly not the Clinton White House, very few folks of either party on the Hill, China, the Balkans & trade were the big foreign policy issues. The Agency responds to the needs of policymakers, it can't force them to focus on an issue that they don't want to. Almost everybody in Washington dropped the ball on bin Laden; the agency was made a big scapegoat for 9/11.

Keep it in the family - and out of the hands of government. That was the Florida Supreme Court's decision Thursday as it ruled the state cannot mandate parental involvement when young women want abortions.

Since this is Ohio day on the corner I would like to point something out to Jerry Springer's campaign. If he thinks that drawing the unemployed couch potato vote will swing next year's senate election he should think again. In last year's governor's race we saw that not even the power of Star Trek was able to dent the GOP's control of the state (every major state office is held by a Republican along with both senate seats) . Tim Hagen, the Democratic candidate for Governor, was totally unable to capitalize on his wife being Star Trek Voyager's Captain Janeway. Now it seems to me that the average Trekkie has a little more ambition (conventions and all) than the average unemployed Springer fan. Hagan was even running against the insainly unelectable Bob Taft. Then again maybe Springer is more of a motivator than I give him credit. One question though, has anyone (besides Jonah) thought to question if Jerry is doing this solely for the publicity? He's facing an opponent who's very popular, twice elected to the Governor's office and easily won his first senate race. Not a very winable race. His motives HAVE to be drawn into question. He hasn't even lived in the state for a decade. I think George Voinovich is safe unless someone is able to convince Jim Tressel to run against him. If that were the case Voinovich would have as much chance of winning as San Diego State does this fall in Ohio Stadium. But that's another story for another day.

They could have used a number of other examples of people who don't/didn't give up:the holdouts at the Alamo;the troops at Valley Forge;the abolitionists;the 82nd Airborne at Bastogne;the survivors of the Bataan Death March;even Nelson Mandela. But noooo, if you believe it might be a good idea that the parents of a 14 year old girl be notified before she has an abortion,then you're akin to a suicide bomber.

[Y]ou should know that the Blade is an unequivocal supporter of the Palestinian cause. The reference to Hamas in that abortion editorial is simply an example of the way liberals throw around the label of the bad guys du jour without really understanding whether it's appropriate.

From a man at the scene.

This is not for the squeamish. It's PG, I suppose, but be afraid, very afraid.

Yet those opposed to abortion, like the Hamas organization in the Middle East, never give up. And, imbued with fanatic zeal, they probably won’t. This means that today’s young women, and tomorrow’s, can’t afford to take yesterday’s gains for granted.

Stewart: "It is incredible to think that [Liberia's Charles Taylor] could stay in power that long and actually even win elections while he's hacking people to bits."

Snow: "Well he's a typical politician where he promised not to hack people to bits. He got elected and then he started breaking his campaign promises."

Stewart: "That was Dukakis' big trouble in the election. Real quick, why do you think Bush has raised so much money when this is probably the weakest Democratic field in God knows how many years?"

Snow: "Well that's one of the reasons. Washington is the one place where you can't take friendship personally. People who have been backing Democrats for years are saying 'We've got to get our name on George W. Bush's contributor list.' So they are throwing money at the president. He's got the best fundraising machine in the business."

Jon Stewart: "Fox News right now is like double the other networks. You're crushing everybody. Are the Christmas bonus's going to be Yachts and some of the Krugerrands from Saddam's castle."

Snow: "We're all going to get homes the size of O'Reilly's ego. Palaces for everybody!"

Stewart: "You just made yourself a tough Christmas Party moment my friend. Why has it been so successful? Is it because you actually take a stand, have a point of view. I mean the other networks like MSNBC, lets face facts, they don't deserve all of those letters."

Snow: "There are a couple things. Number one is it's brash, the look is better. One difference with Fox is we like our jobs."

Andrew Sullivan and Eugene Volokh have both responded to my post yesterday about the meaning of the Federal Marriage Amendment (although not to my post about the Defense of Marriage Act). Their posts are not only very civil; they put me on a first-name basis. Is this some blogosphere thing? Anyway, I'll try to respond to Andrew and Eugene later today. First I've got to get up to speed on immigration and prescription drugs for some other things I'm doing.

Also, be sure to check out Eugene's post on an outrageous judicial decision in Nevada.

A new book debunks some Galileo mythology, though the New York Times doesn't buy it. I covered much of this ground here last January.

Byron York's piece is very good too.

Okay,I confess I'm a bit disappointed that I'm the only who is really amused by this whole Jerry Springer thing. But here's the Toledo Blade story on his campaign, in case some of you are interested.

My humble column.

I was too harsh. This is probably more annoying. This has to be close to the most annoying site ever. But
www.mostannoyingwebpage.com is definitively the most annoying web page. In fact, it is so annoying, I implore you not to click "yes" to enter it. Seriously, don't go there. I'm only showing you the link on the chance that you might want to annoy your friends. But if you're curious at least make sure you save all your documents before clicking yes because I had to force-quit to get out of the page. Lastly, if you do go there, DO NOT email me saying you're angry at me because I gave you full notice how annoying it is. And yet, I know some of you will go there because you cannot deny your curious natures.

UPDATEA reader says he thinks there's a virus at MostAnnoyingWepage.com. I guess that just makes it even more annoying. So be careful.
RE-UPDATEIt's not a virus! It's just really annoying -- as I suspected!

I report, you decide.

Interesting storyon how CNN brags that it has richer and more upscale viewers than Fox. What I find intertesting about it is how, if true, such a fact undermines one of the central assumptions of the media-critic left (which includes Al Gore). This crowd is always insinuating that Fox News is the tool of corporate and Republican interests. And yet, Fox is more popular among the "little guys" -- you know the people, not the powerful. If you keep in mind that Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, O'Reilly etc represent the victory of the Republican Party to be every much as populist (not always a good thing) as the Democrats you can decipher a great deal of the grumpiness and confusion of liberals who shriek about "right wing media."

The Primate of Nigeria

Caused utter hysteria

With arguments impassable

Against gays in chasuble.

Andrew Sullivan reprints the text of the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment: "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups." He then says, "Note how the states are effectively barred from providing anything that resembles marriage or any of the 'legal incidents thereof.' It's an attempt not only to reverse any state that wants to have same-sex marriage but to invalidate all domestic partnership laws, any state-provided benefits, or any support for same-sex couples anywhere anyhow. It's a massive power-grab from the states, in an area where states have always had constitutional authority."

There may be sound arguments against the FMA. But Sullivan's claim is ridiculous. What does he suppose the words "be construed to require" are doing in the amendment? The amendment is aimed to prevent a judge (or executive-branch official) from inferring same-sex marriage or same-sex marriage-lite from a state or federal law. It precludes a state's adoption of gay marriage (that's the first sentence). It precludes a judge's imposition of civil unions (that's part of the second sentence). It does not preclude a state legislature or popular referendum from creating civil unions or whatnot. That is, incidentally, one reason the amendment is controversial on the social Right.

To the extent that what proponents say about the amendment is evidence about its meaning, that also points toward my interpretation and not Sullivan's.

From the AP story on Springer's race and his campaign-launching informercial:

The infomercial focuses on a comment by National Review commentator Jonah Goldberg on a Sunday morning CNN talk show several months ago.

In his remark, Goldberg warned of new people brought to the polls by Springer including "slack-jawed yokels, hicks, weirdos, pervs and whatnots."

The infomercial offers that quote on a T-shirt and inserted into a signed photograph of Springer next to a sign for Hicksville, Ohio, in Defiance County in northwest Ohio. In the program, Springer refers to the quote and talks about wanting to reach out to "regular folks ... who weren't born with a silver spoon in your mouth."

I've been getting calls and emails from reporters in Ohio. Apparently Jerry Springer uses a quote from me in his new informercial which he released at a news conference today. The quote, which I offered on CNN, is: "If Jerry Springer shows up, he'll bring all these new people to the polls. They will be slack-jawed yokels, hicks, weirdos, pervs and whatnot." Now, what is super-exciting is that he's apparently made T-Shirts with that quote on them as part of his campaign! I must get one.

Anyway, for the record, I completely stand by my comments.

While every single person supporting Jerry Springer may not be a perv, weirdo or slack-jawed yokel, I am at a complete loss to understand how this country's politics would be enriched by massive voter turnout by people who consider Jerry Springer to be their dashboard saint. Voter turnout is not a good in itself, no matter what populists and demogogues claim. Springer says he'll be bringing new voters to the polls. Well, okay. But if these people couldn't be bothered to vote until Springer encouraged them to, maybe we were better off without them in the first place. Leave Springer's audience out of it for a moment; I don't think it's a given that a surge in voting by Klansmen, black racists, pimps, or strippers-who-sleep-with-their-brothers would improve America's politics demonstrably. And I don't think we really need a Senator who sees nothing wrong with giving such people a nationally televised forum.

More to the point, I find it hilarious that Springer -- who has made a fortune off of his exploitation of damaged and deviant people -- thinks I'm the elitist (though I have no problem with being one). But I'm working from the assumption that most Ohio residents are smart enough to see through his schtick. While he actually thinks they're dumb enough to fall for it. So once again he's looking to exploit the little guy for his own career.

From a reader:

Mr. Goldberg

As a college perfesser myself, your comments about the wimpishness of college authorities rang true. I think of the Dean in 'Ghostbusters' who, while throwing Bill Murray out of his lab, accuses him of treating science as a "dodge". The scene always struck me as wildly unrealistic. Not because academia isn't full of scamsters; it is! But because no dean these days would have the cojones to accuse one of his faculty of intellectual dishonesty or incompetence. He would have had to wait 'til the scandal stank so high that he had to fire the guy for, say, sexual harassment.

No one here is ever allowed to judge another colleague's ideas on their merits.

Research into alleviating post-traumatic stress has thrown up a worrying side effect. The drugs that work also numb feelings of guilt - raising the spectre not only of a pill to make soldiers amoral killing machines, but of thieves, rapists and murderers who feel no remorse

What drives me nuts about stories like this -- all too common alas -- is that whenever the school or some other liberal institution gets in hot water, they condemn the transgression on purely pragmatic grounds. Remember the feminists who were outraged Clinton didn't use a condom with his intern? Or remember the administrators at the San Francisco Art Institute who objected to a disgusting "class" involving a gay sex show in which all sorts of repugnant stuff took place, including the free exchange of each others fecal matter? The school opposed the class because it was unsanitary (See my "In Defense of Bob Jones University"). So in this case the administrators are peeved with the professor who told kids to write emails saying "kill the president, kill the president" because it put students at risk. Fine, fine. That's one reason it's stupid. But can't the school's vice president also say that the intended idea behind the project was idiotic and without merit too?