Here's the AP version of events.

Derb blew his chance at brownie points when he passed up Kathryn Jean as the title for a anitdotal conservative women's magazine, no? The editor's column could be "Shut Up and Type", or "Would You Look At the Time?"

Have you seen Marie Claire lately? I can't get to the fluff fast enough, speeding past the leftist propaganda -- wait that's also fluff -- that many other women undoubtedly read and accept during their weekly manicures. I wish that there was a way to get women to be better informed about issues, but how could we possibly send NR to everyone? Perhaps it's time to adopt the "Legally Blonde 2" approach and send an NR gift subscription to my old sorority chapter and my nail salon. It couldn't hurt.

Just wanted to let you know that after seeing the note in the Corner about Specter siding against DC school choice, I immediately when and signed up as a volunteer on Pat Toomey's Website. www.pattoomey.org. This is just the last straw. If I'm going to have two Republican Senators representing my state, then I want two Republican Senators (not 1 and 1/4).

Ms. Lopez,

Senator Specter's actions are not unnoticed in the Keystone State. Toomey is running ads on talk radio, hammering the message that we need less RINOs and more conservatives in the Senate. It's a great way to reach the target audience. I think Specter will face a far tougher challenge than anticipated. Toomey will receive my vote and the vote of several family members.

Prescription drugs, increased spending, letting Kennedy write the education bill, etc. are troubling signs. If I wanted Joe Lieberman in office (hawk with liberal domestic agenda), I would have cast a write-in vote. Perhaps if we unseat Specter and put Toomey in the race, the White House will receive the message. The Dems are taking hits in this state over Rendell's tax fest, so they will have to battle the voter's overall perception of Dems in order to win.

I realize Bush wants $200 million to tailor serious coat-tails and lock the Senate for a decade or so. At what cost? What good is a Republican Senator when he refuses to support central principles of the party and/or conservatism?

I'm done venting. Please let the people at NRO that I greatly appreciate their work.

In a decision that outraged state officials and prosecutors, a federal judge has ruled that a lawsuit by a convicted murderer who wants the state to pay for an operation to make him a woman can go forward…

In his decision, [the judge] stressed that other court decisions have concluded that transsexualism can be classified as a "serious medical need," that a treatment plan must be decided by a medical professional and that blanket denial of such a medical evaluation contradicts previous legal precedents.

Kathryn, that’s an interesting letter. There are some in Britain who say that Blair’s performance over here is just another example of the PM telling an audience whatever it wants to hear. That, I think, is far too simplistic. More than that, it’s just wrong. Blair has paid a high political price domestically (at least within his own party) for his stance on Iraq – a crude opportunist would not have done that. He has done what he has done because he thinks it is right.

To understand Blair it is essential to realize that he is not a conventional socialist. Rather he is a reforming ‘liberal’ on the early Twentieth Century model (it’s easy to imagine him as a leftist member of Asquith’s cabinet). Such liberal ‘modernizers’ often lack any sense of history (we see that in many of the constitutional changes that Blair champions in the UK) and are typically unsympathetic to notions of the sovereignty of the nation-state (that can be seen both in Blair’s approach to the EU and, ironically, Iraq). Because such folk regard themselves as acting for the most high-minded of reasons (For example, in Blair’s case he is, unusually for a British politician, explicit in the importance he attaches to his religious faith), they are quite prepared to use the most ruthless means necessary to secure their agenda (thus all the spinning and deception that Brits have come to associate with the man).

Finally, they tend to be economic illiterates – that is the only possible explanation for Blair’s mishandling of the British economy and his rush to sign up for that suicide note better known as the Euro.

So far history has shown that a totalitarian empire collapses 9 years after holding Olympic Games in its capital. Interestingly, it appears that since Germany overdosed (having hosted BOTH Winter and Summer Games in 1936), its collapse was much more violent and abrupt than that of the USSR. Just some mathematical analysis... Actually it all started as I was thinking about Red China being 32 years younger than Soviet Russia and trying to compare modern China with the USSR 32 years ago. The Olympiad emerged as a really striking parallel.

I think this line explains completely to those who have scratched their heads at times (like me) and said, "Is this the same Tony Blair?" why he's behaved the way he has over the last almost 2 years....

"I know out there, there's a guy getting on with his life, perfectly happily, minding his own business, saying to you, the political leaders of this country, "Why me, and why us, and why America?" And the only answer is because destiny put you in this place in history in this moment in time, and the task is yours to do."

And so he's put aside ideology, and, at great personal cost, bucked his peers & allies to be a part of something greater. Truly, I am no fan of many of Blair's policies, but for the man to have the vision to not only recognize this singluar moment in history, but to ACT, makes him a great & moral man.

This is all something far, far beyond politics. If I ever had any doubt about the goodness of the man, that doubt is now gone.

Why can't we have moral & honest liberals like this in OUR country? If the Democrats had just ONE of him, they'd have a hell of a shot.

It's an odd feeling (for me anyway) reading all the praise for a fine speech (and it was a fine speech) by a certain visiting Prime Minister and then realizing that we're talking about, well, Tony Blair, EU stooge, taxer and spender, evil incarnate etc.

Blogger Iain Murray seems to feel the same way about the two Tony Blairs.

As ever, the Iraq venture sounds a lot more sensible when Prime Minister Blair talks about it than when President Bush does...

I have to go to CNN. So I won't be around for a while. But here's a nugget from my syndicated column:

The second explanation has to do with the changing nature of conservative dogma. Or, to be more accurate, the faltering adherence to conservative dogma. For fifty years, it was an article of faith that growth of government was synonymous with loss of liberty. Many conservatives believed that government meddling in the free market put us all on what Friedrich Hayek famously called "The Road to Serfdom," his literary way of saying the slippery slope to communism or fascism. But welfare reform, the collapse of communism and the relative popularity of middle-class entitlements like Social Security and home mortgage interest deductions have caused that dogma to lose much of its oomph. A movement that believes writing checks to old folks is a step toward tyranny is more likely to fight government spending than one that thinks it's merely bad bookkeeping. When you look at it from this perspective, it's fair to say this administration is conservative. But it's also fair to say it favors big government. What will make politics very interesting in the years to come is that "big government conservative" used to be an oxymoron. now it means "compassionate conservative."

We are bound together as never before.

This coming together provides us with unprecedented opportunity but also makes us uniquely vulnerable.

The threat comes because, in another part of the globe, there is shadow and darkness where not all the world is free, where many millions suffer under brutal dictatorship; where a third of our planet lives in a poverty beyond anything even the poorest in our societies can imagine; and where a fanatical strain of religious extremism has arisen, that is a mutation of the true and peaceful faith of Islam and because in the combination of these afflictions, a new and deadly virus has emerged.

The virus is terrorism, whose intent to inflict destruction is unconstrained by human feeling; and whose capacity to inflict it is enlarged by technology.

This is a battle that can't be fought or won only by armies. We are so much more powerful in all conventional ways than the terrorist. Yet even in all our might, we are taught humility. In the end, it is not our power alone that will defeat this evil. Our ultimate weapon is not our guns but our beliefs.

There is a myth. That though we love freedom, others don't, that our attachment to freedom is a product of our culture. That freedom, democracy, human rights, the rule of law are American values or Western values. That Afghan women were content under the lash of the Taliban. That Saddam was beloved by his people. That Milosevic was Serbia's saviour.

Ours are not Western values. They are the universal values of the human spirit and anywhere, any time, ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same. Freedom not tyranny. Democracy not dictatorship. The rule of law not the rule of the secret police.

The spread of freedom is the best security for the free. It is our last line of defence and our first line of attack.

Just as the terrorist seeks to divide humanity in hate, so we have to unify it around an idea and that that idea is liberty.

City commissioners in Miami plan to pass a resolution during their meeting today on behalf of the people of Miami who are in mourning, said City Commissioner Tomas Regalado.

Regalado, a local radio personality, recalled going to the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay in 1990 when Cruz performed there.

"The first thing she wanted to do was go to the fence," Regalado said. "She stuck her hand under the fence and said, `This is the only way I'm touching Cuban soil because I'm never coming back until [Fidel] Castro is gone.' She was our queen -- the only queen we had."

My view on the first half of Blair's speech. Now that he's getting into Kyoto etc, it's a bit of a disappointment. But I guess he needs to do some of this to keep his job.

I wrote a gazillion pieces urging war with Iraq, and never found the time to let the word Niger pass my lips. And, if it had passed, my lips would have said ‘Ny-juh’ and not ‘Nee-zhaire’. But here’s what the President had to say, when he ‘LIED OVER NIGER URANIUM CLAIMS!!!!!!!!!!!’ back in the State of the Union address in January: ‘The British government has learnt that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.’

That’s it: 16 words. Where’s the lie? Though the CIA director George Tenet now says his boys shouldn’t have approved that sentence, Tony Blair is standing by it. The unusual attribution to Her Majesty’s Government might have been because Bush was only mired in all this multilateral justification-shopping as a favour to Blair and his wobbly Cabinet. Or it might have been because of the source: under the rules governing intelligence-sharing, the British were unable to pass the direct evidence on to the Americans because they got it from the French, and the French wouldn’t let them give it to Washington. Niger’s uranium operations are under the supervision of the French Atomic Energy Commission.

But, whether or not that’s true, I repeat: where’s the lie? Why isn’t it merely a good-faith mistake? The anti-war crowd have been wrong on everything, from hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths to environmental catastrophe, from the horrors of the ‘brutal Afghan winter’ — now 22 months behind schedule — to those of the brutal Iraqi summer, which George Galloway was still trying to flog in the Guardian this week: ‘The US and British armies have entered the gates of hell. Soon it will be 100 degrees at midnight in Baghdad, but there will be no respite from the need for full body armour.’ Really? The average overnight low in July (Baghdad’s hottest month) is 77. On Monday night, after an unusually hot day, by 10.30 p.m. it was already down to a pleasant 83. But I would be reluctant to send out email alerts shrieking GALLOWAY LYING OVER IRAQI WEATHER CLAIMS!!!! Could be just an honest mistake.

Always interesting, not alway right.

Smart, smart stuff from the folks at MetaFilter:

Goldberg, like most of his conservative buddies, has a deep contempt for Americans. Conservatives usually hide their contempt, but Jonah is so filled with his ill feelings for the majority of Americans that it leaked out on TV, and now he feels exposed....
Unlike Goldberg and his conservative brethren, I have faith in the intelligence of the American people, who will turn out to vote for Jerry Springer and deliver Ohio to the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004.

I got one vote from this guy. Alas, I'd only be eligible in DC (we still have shadow Senators right?) or NYC and I don't think it'd work out.

Unions won't let old folks plant flowers either.

David Letterman's Top Ten List:

Top Ten Jerry Springer Campaign Promises

10. "Fifty-dollar tax rebate if you have sex with your wife's sister"

9. "All staff dinners will be at D.C.-area Hooters"

8. "Sausages will attack baseball players with bats!"

7. "Repeal restrictive laws against first-cousin marriages"

6. "Amend constitution to include words 'hoochie mama'"

5. "In the summer months, all press conferences are topless"

4. "I'll tell the truth about which legislators have too much junk in the trunk"

3. "Solar powered prostitutes"

2. "C-Span will feature more young people calling each other 'bitch'"

1. "Enough cheap sex to make the Clinton years look like a church social

In other words, the recession ended right around the moment the Florida recount was settled in Bush's favor. Eeenteresting.

UPDATE I'm an idiot and shouldn't post to the Corner while on the phone. Disregard the above. Florida recount was, of course, in 2000. Not 2001.

Cleaning-up the environment is againt union regulations.

If you haven't read Ramesh's article today you should. It appears that the pharmaceutical industry might be trying to bribe pro-life conservative groups into opposing a bill on bogus grounds. And the Traditional Values Coalition may have taken the money. This has all the makings of a very big story and a scandal.

Jonah mentioned Sen. Hatch's bill to liberalize the district's gun laws, which are the strictest in the nation. I was inclined to applaud Hatch, especially since I have had so many occasions to criticize him in the past. But then I talked to Bob Levy, who has been challenging D.C.'s gun laws in court. (I wrote about his efforts in May.) Levy sees Hatch's bill as the NRA's latest attempt to derail his lawsuit. The NRA seems to fear the prospect of a Supreme Court ruling on the Second Amendment. If the bill becomes law, Levy's lawsuit becomes moot--and the Supreme Court loses the opportunity to weigh in.

Hatch's bill comes after previous NRA attempts to stop Levy had failed. Levy finds the timing suspicious. "Why not wait for a court decision?" Levy asks. "The legislative option is always open."

Today's "Jerry Springer Show" topic: "Bad Girls Confess"
Highlights from the 7/14 "Springer" -- "Leavin You Ain't Easy"
Here's how Jerry puts it: "Please meet Michelle, she says her mother's bad habits are not going to rub off on her any longer."
In "Michelle"'s own words: "Jerry I'm here to tell you my mom's a prostitute, she runs an escort service. I've been working with her for the last six months basically because I didn't have the money to raise my two children and I'm here to tell her it's disgraceful."
Guest "Candy" fully nude after being rejected by bouncer Steve: "Jerry, do you want to go home with me?"
Springer: "No, I can't. I got to fly out of town, but otherwise of course."
Guest "Candy": "I'll fly with you."
Springer: "I'll bet you would."
Guest "Gino": "I stopped loving her about 5 years ago Jerry, when I found out she was psycho."
Number of seconds from Jerry's intro to first use of the word prostitute: 16
Number of chairs knocked over: 2.

Assuming the President reads the Washington Post with his morning coffee, he can't be pleased. This has to be the single worst front page of his presidency. Out of seven stories, here are the five non-local articles on page one (my comments are in italics):

'Guerrilla' War Acknowledged
New Commander Cites Problems

Rumsfeld gets taken out at the knees, Bush gets a invigorated "another Vietnam" storyline

Repeal Of D.C. Gun Ban Urged
Hatch Proposes Loosening Limits In Place Since '76

Not what Karl Rove wants the debate to be about.

Tenet Says He Didn't Know About Claim
With sidebars on strained US-British relations and on Bush's political vulnerability.

Iraq's Highway of Constant Hazard
Attackers Leave Trail of Casualties on Baghdad Airport Road

GOP Attorneys General Asked For Corporate Contributions

There is something especially reprehensible, no, evil,about a politician,a Catholic who only months ago had been staunchly pro-life, casually joking about upholding an extra constitutional decision that has effectively transformed millions of unborn babies into the practical equivalent of used tissue paper. And the joke gets laughs.

He absolutely would appoint a homosexual judge to the Supreme Court, Rep. Dennis Kucinich said yesterday during a candidate forum hosted by the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group. He also would appoint "any lesbian, bisexual or transgender person" to the court, Kucinich says.

"Just as long as they'd be willing to uphold Roe v. Wade."

At which point the long-shot presidential candidate ducks his chin and smiles in wily recognition. It is one of those political meta-moments where the pitchman -- in this case the presidential candidate -- gives subtle voice to the obvious: that he is an agent of multiple pitches, catering to multiple constituencies. He's sneaking a nod to abortion rights activists even though he is pitching primarily to gays. His audience -- a lunchtime crowd in the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center -- laughs in acknowledgement of Kucinich's deft pander twofer.

Here are a few points I consider thorny regarding any prance down this primrose path of making marriage harder or stricter by making children the litmus test:
1. Federalism: Who is we? How can “we” make marriage stricter? Any attempt to do so on the federal level is a massive aggrandizement of the federal powers and merely deepens the rut of judicial tyranny by putting more family and cultural issues before the Supreme Court—a thing to be avoided. If the “we” is state communities then you may have something there, but perhaps less than we think.

2. The Western Tradition [and every old dead white guy you tend to praise in your articles: Kirk, Chesterton, Burke, More, Aquinas, Augustine, Cicero, Aristotle, et al.]: Legal culture since the Roman Republic and in speech since Aristotle and certainly in practice since well before the Magna Carta has had a fundamental premise that is ignored by almost everyone in our society except National Review and the few other beacons of conservative thought that pulse in the night of the modern era. It is a premise that makes living according to law preferable to other ways of living (tyranny, oligarchy, straight democracy and all the permutations thereof). Law is designed to recognize routinized human action that is good for man simply and in community. Ergo, marriage law is designed to support churches and synagogues by making marriage a legally beneficial arrangement (taxation, child credits, you name it). It is a mistake to think that the government’s job is to fix marriage. The government’s job is to provide for the free and supportive circumstances in which churches and communities can fix marriage. Don’t use the cold sledgehammer of government where the warm hand of lover, family, friendship, church, and community is needed. But as I said the government can aid in creating the conditions. For instance, (and my libertarian friends may cringe but we are after the same goal here), we could ban pornography. It really isn’t free speech—well maybe the articles are, but I can’t see Playboy surviving in front of the counter—it leads to promiscuity, spousal and child abuse and a host of other harmful-to-marriage behaviors. Or we can oppose entitlement programs (read prescription drugs) that sap the family of money and lead to radical independence from one’s own family, thereby weakening the bonds of family and marriage. Such tactics are far better than preempting the private institutions such as church and family by meddling with marriage itself. Conservatives, libertarians, and even Shinto-Buddhist Eastern culture-loving liberals who watch ancestor-worshipping kung-fu movies should all cringe at the notion of law dictating to marriage and family. Rather it should be the other way around. Direct meddling is a mistake. Law, for conservatives, is a reflection of healthy cultural habits, be they business practices or marriage, and not a tool to re-craft culture in our own image. Therefore, if the government redefines marriage in a way counter-intuitive to most of the private institutions concerned with marriage (e.g. family and church), then you are playing the liberal game even if you do it on the state level. Think of Luke Skywalker before the Emperor: “Take your weapon, strike me down with it, and your journey to the Dark Side will BE COMPLETE! Or Legolas: “But you cannot wield the ring, no one can.”

3. Practical concerns: Let’s face it. You can’t make children the requirement for marriage because of in vitro fertilization and lesbians. If you propose such a policy there will suddenly be thousands of lesbians who, having all quickly agreed in chat rooms beforehand, have “always wanted to have a child but now feel they can’t because of that awful (and arbitrary) new marriage law. We have to win the moral arguments on this one or we lose all the policy ones.

Carnal self-enjoyment decreases chances of prostate cancer. Not since the President swore to punish the one-eyed cleric have I had to show so much restraint in making inappropriate jokes about a serious news story.

Also, yes, I do know that Springer supposedly sometimes faked his shows. But I found this email illuminating nonetheless:

Dear Jonah,

First off, I want to tell you I always enjoy reading your articles. Second, I'll just give you a little insight into the Jerry Springer Show. My wife worked as an intern for the show about 3 or 4 years ago. She quit after her ankle was sprained when it was stepped on by a 300+ lb stripper who she was helping get a pair of nude tights on. Anyway, as I'm sure you know, a good portion of these segements are fake. Many of the guests have never seen each other. Springer trolls the ranks of strippers, prostitutes and wannabe porn stars to act out the story lines that his producer dream up. My wife can watch a show and tell you if the story line is real or fake. However, not all the story lines are fake. My wife had to console women who were brought on the show and torn apart after hearing that their boyfriend was sleeping with their mom, cousin, sister, brother, dog, etc. Springer exploited many a poor woman (and man) who had no idea, you can argue by their own stupidity, what was really going to happen. This man is a disgrace. He attempts to claim he stands for the little guy, the "hick". He's exploited these people on his show to line his pockets with money and now he is trying to exploit them for political gain. Stay on this guy, as he deserves to be outed for the pig he is.

You can see Springer's infomercial etc here.

From a reader:

Dear Jonah,

I just read your Goldberg File on Jerry. That was one damn fine piece of writing. I might add – to hell with Keith Olbermann. I loved the guy when he was doing sports with Dan Patrick on ESPN. There his smarmy a-hole Groucho Marx shtick was amusing – even funny. Apply his act to real issues plus his Mo Dowd-esque Liberalism (snobbery + idiocy -- fairness = Dowdism) and I can barely lay eyes on the man without my blood pressure going up.

I live in Amarillo, Texas -- the land of bona fide hicks. Springer would be run out of this town on a rail. We have a name in between the Sierra Nevada and the Appalachians for the average schmo Springer exploits – “Crank Addict” (sadly enough)....

I guess I agree that there are too many problems with restricting marriage solely to parents. But I think the better point remains intact. If the price for entering the institution were higher, the market, i.e. society, would come up with cheaper mechanisms for those unwilling to pay the price of admission to matrimony.

Many have made the argument that one way of strengthening marriage is to make divorce more difficult and costly. The rise of no-fault divorce, civil marriage and the decline in the belief that getting divorced will send you straight to heck, has made the consequences of divorce far less severe. As a matter of logic, if divorce was made far more difficult and expensive, there would be fewer divorces. But there would also probably be fewer marriages. If people knew this would be a permanent, no-way-out decision, at the margins we'd probably see fewer marriages because the "cost" of getting married would be far greater. In turn, this would result in stronger marriages because only stronger confident couples would take the plunge. I guess one question would be, Are we better off with fewer but healthier marriages or more but weaker ones?

Another question would be, if Kurtz et al are right about homosexual promiscuity being a permanent incompatibility with marriage, we'd probably see quite a few same-sex couples having second thoughts about making the commitment. Anyway, just some food for thought.

From a reader:

Along the lines of your last post, in the 2nd Treatise on Government, Locke suggested that marriage be a contract irrevocable until the youngest child of the marriage is of age. In light of recent studies suggesting that a bad marriage (sans abuse) is better than the best divorce for children, maybe Locke’s suggestion would both improve the lot of children, simplify child support issues, and make people think twice before either marrying or having kids.

From a reader:

As a woman who has been married for almost 9 years and who has no children and no intention of having children, I find the latest argument regarding restricting marriage to only couples with children a bit silly. I agree that children are better off in a home with a loving mother and father. But I do not agree that the sole purpose of marriage is to produce children. Isn't society better off with the stability married couples provide, whether or not they have children? And what are we going to do with those men and women who are infertile? Surely there is an argument to be made against gay marriage without resorting to that old canard "It's for the children."

I know I should ignore the guy, but I'm getting perturbed by the kid glove treatment he's getting from the media. From today's G-File:

No, if you think it's only worth voting if Springer's on the ballot it's not because you like his ideas. It's because you like the man. You like what he represents. Or, you're just bored and think it's all a big joke to send the human incarnation of a burning bag of dog droppings to the U.S. Senate.

A good and sensible editorial from The Washington Post on Bush's troubles.

Over the last few weeks a number of readers have suggested that maybe the answer isn't to "open up" marriage to same-sex couples, but to close it off to a larger number of heterosexuals. The argument takes many forms and I haven't pondered it enough myself, but the basic idea is that if we make the standards for marriage much stricter -- particularly restricting it to couples with children -- we not only preserve the special status of marriage we take away many of the arguments for same sex marriage. In a sense this is what various Churches and synagogues do when they require extensive counseling before marriage. By increasing the costs of marriage thet increase the value of it. I'm not sure I agree entirely, but it's interesting. This reader responding to Charles Murray's post gives a good sense of the idea:

Jonah, I agree with Michael Kinsley changing the legal institution of marriage, but would take it one step further to address some of the moral issues. Since one of the main concerns of pro-marriage folks is the effect on children, (and justifiably so), I propose that the legal, state recognized definition of marriage be restricted to couples that have children. Furthermore, to address the illegitimacy issue, that once a couple gives birth to a child, they are automatically legally married, with all of the attendant responsibilties, whether they like it or not. This would also help address the concerns about monogamy voiced by folks like Stanley Kurtz, because by definition, if you fathered children by more than one woman (without first obtaining a divorce), you would be legally married to both, and therefore a bigamist, and could be punished under the law. Lots of wrinkles to be ironed out, I know, but it seems to me like a solution that increases individual resposibility, doesn't discriminate, promotes accepted morality, and protects children more than the current system. I'd be interested in hearing what you guys think. -Doug Lach

Several readers have told me I should blame Phillip K. Dick for several of the things I blame Spielberg for since, for example, the "precogs" were tortured teens in his original story too. Fair point.

I caught a little of the movie again last night on HBO. Look, I know a lot of people who loved it, but I think the fundamental premise is a bunch of hooey. Just to recap, the film is set in the future in Washington, DC. Tom Cruise basically runs the "Dept. of Pre-Crime." With the aid of some clairvoyant teens, the police can predict murders before they happen and hence stop them. The program has been so successful, premeditated murders simply don't happen in Washington anymore because the murderers know they'll get caught before they do the deed. So the only arrests Cruise and his team make these days are for crimes of passion -- husbands who want to kill their wives in a fit of rage after catching them in flagrante with a lover etc. The obvious controversy/concept is that people are being arrested for crimes they haven't actually committed. Boo hoo, that's wrong etc.

Anyway, to make a long story short, Cruise's boss figured out how to rig the system so he could murder someone without getting caught. When Cruise stumbles on this his boss tries to set him up for a murder rap.

Okay, now. When all of this is revealed, they shut down the program entirely. The audience is supposed to understand the rightness and justice of this implicitly. I don't at all.

Some points:

1) Our current system -- which prevents far fewer murders than the one in "Minority Report" -- is far, far, far more vulnerable to corruption of this sort. But we don't simply get rid of it.

2) Spielberg stacks the deck to make the idea of "pre-crime" justice seem more horrible than it is. First of all, he makes the psychic kids into victims. Well, what if they were well-compensated and happy in their work? That doesn't change the fundamental premise at all, but it takes away the emotional spin Spielberg puts on the idea.

3) Another trick Spielberg uses is to leave it unclear what kind of punishment these would-be murderers get. It seems like they get life sentences or some other horrible punishment indistinguishable from the sort one would get for actually committing murder. But why? Surely we wouldn't sentence someone to life in prison for almost killing someone in a crime of passion? Wouldn't we instead offer them something more akin to anger management counseling?

4) The pre-crime system is actually more fair to the "criminals" themselves. Imagine yourself as the would-be murderer. Wouldn't you prefer to be stopped before you made such a terrible mistake? Wouldn't you prefer a lighter sentence for almost killing your wife than a lifetime sentence for actually killing her? Indeed, maybe if you were stopped beforehand you might be able to work out your problems.

5) We know from the movie that murders will indeed go up. Wouldn't this annoy you a great deal if it was your son or wife or brother who was murdered all because we threw away a system was only 99.99% foolproof? Wouldn't you say "fix the system" if you thought it would protect your loved ones?

6) Lastly, the films makes the point that the murderers can actually be given a choice if they are warned of the premonition in time. Well, fine. Let's warn would-be murderers instead of throwing them in prison. Let's put them on probabtion. Whatever. But let's not throw away a system which protects the freedoms of more people better than any other simply because it seems wrong to arrest people before they do wrong.

Like many average IPO investors, Gallagher is hazy on exactly what iBeam or its investment bank was alleged to have done wrong. But he feels he deserves a cut of the settlement anyway.

“I feel I deserve it because, well, I'm not certain why,'' Gallagher said sheepishly. ``Nobody talked me into it, that's for sure. The opportunity was there, and I decided to go for it.''

Charles Murray is in the house!

THE French government, in a bid to turn back the tide of English words in the field of technology, has banned its civil service from using the term "email" instead of its approved French equivalent, the culture minister announced.

All government ministries, websites, publications and documents must now use "courriel"--a shortening of "courrier electronique" (literally: electronic mail)--when they are referring to the messages sent via the internet...

Demonstrators supporting jailed farmers' union leader Jose Bove stopped Tour de France leader Lance Armstrong in his tracks during the 136.4-mile 10th stage to Marseille on Tuesday.

The small group of protestors sat down in the middle of the road as the peloton approached, some 43 miles from the finish in Marseille.

Yes, that great day when (according to) The "Great Schism" between the Western and Eastern churches begins over rival claims of universal pre-eminence. (In 1965, 911 years later, Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras I meet to declare an end to the schism.)

Concludes the report, "U.S. CentCom has searched every known location associated with Speicher. Other than at Hakimiyah prison, where U.S. forces found the initials 'MSS' carved in a cell wall, no significant evidence of his status has been discovered."

Fair enough. ABC has my number. And -- obviously -- I think ABC would never dream of hiring someone from NR, who'd worked as a conservative activist type (Tapper worked for Handgun Control Inc.) as an objective political reporter. Having experience as a professional conservative makes you permanently untrustworthy according to network types like Westin. Having experience as a professional liberal gives you a rich professional background.

Tim - I think Tapper's a good guy all in all and certainly intellectually honest enough to be a reporter for ABC News. If the choice is between folks like Peter Jennings who can't even see their own biases or Tapper who may be biased, but understands where his biases lie, I'll take the Tappers every time.

But what do you expect from Westin? This is a guy who got tongue-tied over whether or not the Pentagon was a legitimate target and whether or not his journalists were really Americans at all.

Jonah, Considering the tone and direction/trend of your recent posts, it can hardly be a surprise that a gay prof would agree with you. I'm also a little shocked that you appear to see the devaluation of marriage or the redefinition of marriage (any twosome) or the need for a special gays only union as remedy for a flawed visitors list. Let's get real, we don't need to reorder society for the benefit of gays. If we have laws or policies that unfairly harm gays than change them. Of course, I could be wrong but I see a trend where we all will sooner or later have to accept the Jerry Springer show as portraying "normal" events and behaviors (note the growing references to "trans-gendered and whatnot).

My response: I've gotten a lot of email like this. All I can say, again, is my position in favor of some form of civil unions is derived partly to avoid outright gay marriage. Yes, I think there's a fairness issue to gays involved too. But I also think that if conservative opponents don't make some concessions -- short of actual gay marriage -- then they will lose entirely. That's my non-partisan analysis.

A gay prof agrees with me.

A reader makes an entirely fair point:

Dear Jonah,

Civil unions would be a good deal easier for some of us to swallow if the status were available to any unmarried pair of human beings who choose it for any reason, such as a middle-aged single woman and her elderly dependent aunt. If gays want the practical benefits of such a union, fine, but I don't see why homosexuality should give them priority over other people with no sexual link who also want the benefits of a unique non-marital partnership. In other words, I'm willing to consider not discriminating against homosexuals, but I'll be damned if I'll discriminate in favor of them.

Best regards,

Name withheld

From a reader:

I would only disagree a little, and it's more of a clarification...I think many gays may indeed 'want' the mile, even if given the 'tangibles' you mentioned. But the average gay person will probably not spend the energy mobilizing for protests, etc afterwards.

Once their basic financial and practical concerns (which many 'anti-gay-marriage' people find reasonable) are met, it becomes that much harder to mobilize public sympathy for the next step. They would begin to sound 'whiny' to most Americans.

I’m not going to get into my whole anti-slippery slope thing again, but I think opponents of gay marriage sometimes misunderstand that occasionally giving in a little prevents giving in a lot. Consider feminists today. There was a time when their arguments galvanized millions of ordinary Americans. Today, feminism is something of a joke – at least when it’s identified as feminism – because the issues groups like NOW yap about are so distant from the lives and desires of ordinary women. The Equal Rights Amendment failed precisely because most women felt they’d won what they needed to win – the vote, anti-discrimination laws etc. The same, to some extent, holds true for blacks. Black activists today whine about reparations and state flags because the major legal and political victories have been won already.

Judging from many of the gays I’ve talked to or heard from, the demand for marriage is less strong than the demand for the tangible things they want: social security benefits, hospital visitation, health insurance etc. etc. I understand the argument that conceding these items would be giving gays an inch when their hell-bent on taking a mile. But I’m not at all sure it’s true that all that many of them want the mile. As we’ve learned from the presidencies of both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, co-opting some of the agenda of the opposition more often takes the wind out of the sales of the opposition. Opponents of gay marriage want to concede nothing. I think that’s misguided on public policy grounds (see below). And, in political terms it keeps the pro-gay marriage coalition unified. Just something to think about.

Over the last few weeks, I've gotten hundreds upon hundreds of emails on gay marriage, civil unions etc. (and I'm not excited about getting any more of them). I've read pieces by Stan Kurtz, Derbyshire and everybody else. Personally, I'm increasingly sympathetic to a constitutional amendment, though I haven't made up my mind about the FMA. All of that said, I just read this post over at Andrew Sullivan which strongly suggests the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America are -- or were -- opposed to any of the constituent benefits of civil unions.

Now, I understand the arguments against civil unions and gay marriage. But frankly, I'm appalled at the idea that the state can tell me that I can't have whoever I want visit me on my deathbed. Forget about homosexuality, if I had no family but my best friend was still alive, I would be furious at the idea that the state would or could prevent him from visiting me. Going further, I simply don’t understand why the law should forbid me from designating whomever I want to benefit or handle my estate. I think there are any number of these marriage benefits which have less to do with "rewarding" marriage and have more to do with simple convenience on the part of bureaucrats.

On the same page, E. J. Dionne Jr. has an op-ed claiming that Paul Bremer's desire for all Iraqi citizens to benefit from Iraq's oil wealth is "socialist." Not that that's a bad thing. Hostility to socialism is "ideological claptrap" that we wisely ignore. Medicare and Social Security are "socialist" programs, after all.

Actually, Dionne's characterization is an overstatement. But hey, fine with me: Let's not complain the next time a Republican backbencher or conservative direct-mail piece warns of creeping socialism in America.

As for Iraqi oil: Dionne says that the American equivalent of Bremer's idea would be to take "all the profits from the oil industry--or, perhaps, the entire energy sector--and split[] them up among all Americans. Bremer is operating here in teh tradition of the legendary Louisiana populist Huey Long..." The analogy would work just fine, if America's energy sector had previously been nationalized. In the world we actually inhabit, the idea of giving Iraqis shares, preferably tradable, has been talked up more by conservatives and libertarians than by progressives. Glenn Reynolds is no socialist.

Apparently Keith Olbermann said this last night to Jerry Springer: (Thanks to the guys at MRC.):

"Jonah Goldberg of the National Review said on CNN that you would bring 'slack-jawed yokels, hicks, weirdos, pervs, and what-not' -- and apart from considering the source there, at what point did we stop letting yokels, hicks, weirdos, pervs and what-not vote. I mean, we let Jonah Goldberg vote."

Goodbye Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
You cast the first stone into a river of lies
A double minded man who shoulda never tried
Goodbye Newt you big fat fruit
Go back to Georgia and play your skinny skin flute
Goodbye Ken Deathstar
You can't shine a light when you hyde from your own shadow
Your lizardly molestigation is
Just a crutch for pale political pyromania
Burning America in a cast of stagnation
But that cast cracked when we turned our votes in... [End of Daddy's too-indulgent reproduction]

Subject: Stratego????

Let me say that I love The Corner. You guys are [great]. But Stratego? Novels about math problems? Endless discussions of Star Wars, Star Trek, LOTR, and Twilight Zone Marathons?

To paraphrase one of my favorite Twilight Zones. "Next stop, Nerd Central. Next stop. Nerd Central."

Bill Carroll PIN

Derb - You're on. But I do not need your charity! The Riemann hypothesis cannot save you!

By the way, look what I just found!

Ramesh - I agree with you on Safire. Too often he brags that he's taking a contrarian position because it is contrarian. This is not only profoundly juvenile it is staggeringly egocentric -- "the whole world says X, so I will say not X solely because I am Bill Safire not because I have a good reason." He calls himself a "libertarian conservative," it seems, whenever he wants to cloak the fact he's just a moderate Republican with some vestige of principle. When faced with the choice of making a hard hitting observation or a useless pun, he will more times than not opt for the pun.

As for the Times not having a conservative, I always thought Andrew Sullivan would have been the obvious choice for the Times. He's conservative, but he's also gay which seems to be more important to the Times. He's Catholic, and hence a threefer, but he disagrees with the Church on homosexuality and he defends his pro-life position with being anti-death penalty.

Of course the only problem is that they hate each other.

Simply because I can't imagine there will be another opening anytime soon, I must get something off my chest: I think Stratego is one of the greatest board games ever invented. Obviously, it doesn't rank in the top tier with such timeless classics as chess, Monopoly and Scrabble (and please, let us not have a long discussion of chess -- a game I love but despise reading about). But Stratego definitely deserves high placement in the second tier. It is certainly better than Life and I would argue it is even be better than Risk, since Risk is too dependent on dice.

More proof the Jenin massacre wasn't a massacre. (Reg Req'd) From the Jerusalem Post:

In a study to be released next month by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and provided exclusively to The Jerusalem Post, Palestinian sources confirm that at least 34 Palestinian armed terrorists were killed fighting in the battle for the Jenin Refugee Camp.

The total number of Palestinian causalities in the battle was 52, a sharp contrast from the claims of Palestinian propaganda professionals who have openly stated that thousands had died.

Ramesh - I agree that the Nagourney piece was almost a caricature of Times-myopia. But I would also add two more points. First, as you've written yourself regarding the Patriot Act, virtually everything the Democrats say about Ashcroft's policies is partly, largely or entirely untrue. There is very little substance to the "lost liberties" rhetoric, but the press has simply swallowed the meme whole. In fact, I'm amazed the Democrats have the chutzpah to denounce Bush for not doing enough to make America safer -- John Kerry has started asking "Are you more secure than you were 3 years ago?" -- when at the same time they denounce the one cabinet official who's done more than anyone, with the possible exclusion of Rumsfeld, to thwart terrorist attacks on the United States. Relatedly, Ashcroft has been by far the most effective cabinet official in terms of working with foreign law enforcement and intelligence agencies, but we never read about that.

Second, Ashcroft's SOB status may not hurt Bush with as many Democrats as Democratic strategists and the Times think. Many swing voters may in fact like the idea that Bush has a pitbull running law enforcement. Better to be too aggressive than not aggressive enough on such issues. So long as Bush can carve out the image as the compassionate conservative (I still hate that label) who has to keep his top cop on a tight leash, it's not at all clear to me that Ashcroft isn't a an asset with lots of Americans, not just the conservative base.

Stanley Kurtz praised his article on the Standard's website. I thought he got a number of things right. I think he got my own work wrong.

Bockhorn calls my article in the latest issue of NR "defeatist" on gay marriage (and I assume that's how Maggie Gallagher viewed it as well). That is not an unreasonable characterization, I suppose: I do offer reasons for thinking that resisting gay marriage will be extremely difficult. Bockhorn does not dispute these reasons, and indeed seems to agree with them. He proceeds to write as though I were calling for social conservatives to surrender. This is not true. I didn't call for anything.

My article was a neutral, descriptive account of the politics of gay marriage. A social conservative who reads it may decide to quit the fight against gay marriage as hopeless. Or he may decide to throw himself into the fight because gay marriage is closer to happening than he had previously realized. If he chooses this second course, he will be going into the fight with open eyes. (There is, of course, a third option: He may decide my analysis is incorrect.)

It is a little rich, in any case, for a Weekly Standard writer to be complaining that conservatives are not doing enough to fight gay marriage. Did anyone at the Standard, either in print or on the web, make the constitutional case for upholding sodomy laws before the Lawrence case was decided? Did anyone at the Standard, either in print or on the web, criticize the constitutional reasoning of the Supreme Court once it was decided? Has the Standard run anything on the decision's implications for gay marriage other than Bockhorn's article? I believe that the answer to all of these questions is no. Bockhorn challenges conservatives to support the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment. The Standard has mentioned that proposal once, in an article in Oct. 2002, and never endorsed it editorially. If folks at the Standard want conservatives to engage on the issue of gay marriage, they could always try doing so themselves.

This is a great slide show in support of the men and women in uniform. It runs a little long, but it's hard to avoid a lump in your throat if you watch it. I predict it will be sent around the web a lot in the next few weeks.

Over the weekend, Adam Nagourney had an article in the New York Times about the Ashcroft-bashing that has become a staple of Democratic presidential candidates' oratory. To read the article, you would think that John Ashcroft is the most loathed man in America. That is, in fact, how Nagourney ends the piece. "'I think he might be the most loathed man in America,' said Janos Marton, 20, a Dartmouth student who pressed Mr. Edwards on the subject of Mr. Ashcroft's civil liberties record at a town hall meeting the other night. 'The way he is undermining civil liberties is disgraceful.'"

We also learn that Ashcroft is "an unpopular figure." A "Republican strategist" is quoted anonymously to the effect that Ashcroft is a political liability for the president: "None of those Democrats can beat George Bush, but John Ashcroft can." (That's a nice line, almost Grover Norquist-like in its quotability.)

Nagourney continues, "But a senior political adviser to Mr. Bush argued that no matter how unpopular Mr. Ashcroft might be, he would not hurt the president."

Enough already. It's quite clear that Ashcroft is unpopular with Democrats (and libertarians). But--and I know this will come as a shock to the Times--many, many Americans are not Democrats. Last month, Harris Interactive found that 54 percent of respondents rated Ashcroft's job performance positively, only 32 percent negatively. Gray Davis would kill for those numbers. Ashcroft is more popular than Hillary Clinton (barely), Al Gore, Ted Kennedy, Joe Lieberman, or John Kerry.

Matthews: "Clarence, what struck me, a couple of events this week. Horrible events. We graduate seven police over there, Iraqi police, guys all dressed up in their uniforms ready to go out and work and keep the streets safe, shot right, blown up right there in the middle of their graduation ceremony. A G.I. goes into a university campus to get a Coke somewhere, shot like this. [Points finger to his head] Just melts into the crowd. What is your make, what is your take on this?"

Page: "And the, and the week before that, another G.I. shot while buying a DVD. Well, it sounds like deja vu all over again, but I don't want to..."

Matthews: "Where, from where?"

Page: "Well, Vietnam. You know it's, you don't know where the front is. It's a police action and that means you're constantly under fire. The big problem here is that, that we've made American uniforms the target now for the antipathy of various factions. As long as we are perceived as being very, essentially alone, although it is something of a coalition. But we're not really working with a number of other countries or with Arab countries there as well. Then, then we're gonna be the targets, bearing the burden of, of most of this struggle and it's hard."

Allied Headquarters, 1812

Gentlemen:

Whilst marching to Portugal to a position which commands the approach to Madrid and the French forces, my officers have been diligently complying with your requests which have been sent by H.M. ship from London to Lisbon and then by dispatch rider to our headquarters.

We have enumerated our saddles, bridles, tents and tent poles, and all manner of sundry items for which His Majesty's Government holds me accountable. I have dispatched reports on the character, wit, and spleen of every officer. Each item and every farthing has been accounted for, with two regrettable exceptions for which I beg your indulgence.

Unfortunately the sum of one shilling and ninepence remains unaccounted for in one infantry battalion's petty cash and there has been a hideous confusion as to the number of jars of raspberry jam issued to one cavalry regiment during a sandstorm in western Spain. This reprehensive carelessness may be related to the pressure of circumstance since we are at war with France, a fact which maycome as a bit of a surprise to you gentlemen in Whitehall.

This brings me to my present purpose, which is to request elucidation of my instructions from His Majesty's Government, so that I may better understand why I am dragging an army over these barren plains. I construe that perforce it must be one of two alternative duties, as given below. I shall pursue either one with the best of my ability, but I cannot do both.

1. To train an army of uniformed British clerks in Spain for the benefit of the accountant and copy boys in London or, perchance,

2. To see to it that the forces of Napoleon are driven out of Spain.

Your most obedient servant,

Wellington

Lots of readers have inquired what my wife and I think about the Bush Administration's surrender on Title IX. For the record, my lovely bride is back working at the Justice Department -- though she's physically working from home most of the time. Still, that precludes her from commenting publicly on the the White House's complete and total sell-out on Title IX (my characterization, not hers). But since I've read her book, Tilting the Playing Field , I can certainly say that the decision is a major disappointment. It shows two things: First, it shows that feminist groups and a pliant media have successfully defined this debate to deny reality entirely. Any change in Title IX whatsoever, we were told, would "turn back the clock" and result in girls' soccer games being cancelled everywhere. This was all a huge lie. Title IX is
not responsible for the vast, vast majority of the gains its boosters claim and it is responsible for a large amount of almost entirely needless damage on college campuses.

The second thing it shows is that this administration is in full campaign mode. Because it was afraid of being mau-maued on even modest changes to Title IX, they decided to simply surrender entirely. It's a shame. It may not be as big a deal as surrendering on Medicare or affirmative action, but it's all part of the same pattern.

Palestinian mob attacks a researcher who found that Palestinians don't want to live in Israel. (Link via Drudge).

AIDS is a peaceful virus.

Howard Kurtz has a good piece on how the networks are starting to sweat the fall out from the Rick Bragg story. Networks give far, far, far less credit to their staffers than newspapers do. For the record, Jeff Jarvis and I both made this point a long time ago.

As much as I love to celebrate our growing numbers, one of the numbers I don't like thinking about too much is the 3,516 emails in my inbox. For those of you who have written, I apologize for not getting back to you, but please know that I am reading your ideas and your stories, and we're all inspired by them.

Critics on the left and right have called TIA an attempt to impose Big Brother on Americans. The program would use advanced data-mining tools and a mammoth database to find patterns of terrorist activities in electronic data trails left behind by everyday life.

The Bush administration is (AP reports) appealing a federal court ruling blocking the investigation and punishment of doctors who recommend marijuana to their patients. The source of the controversy is a policy put in place by the Clinton administration (yes, this is a piece of bipartisan stupidity) that would require such doctors to lose their federal prescription licenses. This is, of course, nonsense – and cruel nonsense at that. Remember that we are not talking here about doctors who actually ‘prescribe’ (or otherwise procure) pot for their patients. Rather, what is being penalized here is the giving of medical advice – something that doctors are meant to do. If the Feds think that such advice is negligent, they should say so, but on that topic they seem curiously silent.

The ruling that has caused the trouble comes from the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco (usually, bad guys, I seem to recall, but never mind) which held that doctors should be able to give advice to their patients without fear of sanction. The should only be punished if they actually help their patients obtain the drug. Until the moment that pot is – as it should be – legalized, that seems like a fair compromise. The Justice Department should be ashamed of itself.

This beggars belief and it will probably end up beggaring a great deal more than that.

Via blogger Iain Murray, who is not impressed.

Peter, a British reader writes to remind me of another reason that so much of the British establishment signed up for the EU – the Americans wanted them to. Throughout the Cold War years it was widely believed (not incorrectly) that a more united (western) Europe would be a better bulwark against the Soviets. The tragedy on Washington’s part was the failure to realize that after 1989-91 the strategic equation had changed. There was no Soviet threat and the EU itself was rapidly mutating into the far more malevolent and often explicitly anti-American entity that we see today. Despite that, the US continued to encourage a ‘united Europe’ until at least last year (For example, George Bush made a nauseating speech on the topic in, I think Berlin).

It was a classic failure of imagination on the State Department’s part roughly akin to the inability to realize (after the first Gulf War) that the assumptions that justified the need for a special relationship with ‘Saudi’ Arabia had ceased to exist.

[The European constitution would be] a dream come true for British left-wingers; with a single stroke of a pen, the EU constitution would implement virtually their entire agenda on British soil. Britain's leftists would gain powerful allies from the Left on the Continent (where socialism and other left-wing ideologies are much stronger politically). And there won't be a damn thing that Britain's conservatives could do about it, short of a full-blown revolution, once that constitution is adopted.

So, if you're a leftist, it makes perfect sense. I think we've lost sight of Tony Blair's true ideology in all the Iraqi war hubbub. Blair's support for the Iraq war was an aberration; his true heart lies with the Continent's Left."

More evidence that the food fight is going to be around for a while – editorials like this patronizing piece of preaching on July 10th from the New York Times. It was prompted by Kraft’s insulting – and self-destructive - decision to give its customers less value for money (the food giant is threatening to reduce the portion sizes contained in single-serving packages):

“An industry that has prospered by selling high-fat, high-calorie or sugary foods in ever larger quantities will probably be loath to deviate too much from a proven path to profits. But any smart chief executive will feel the increasing pressure from public health officials to combat obesity and will heed recent warnings from Wall Street that big food companies with a high percentage of unhealthy products face major legal and financial risks. If the companies are really serious about refashioning and downsizing their products, they can give a major boost to the global fight against obesity.”

Let’s go through this one more time. Food companies should serve their customers what their customers want. How much those people choose to eat is up to them, not the food companies, not the regulators, not the legislators and especially not the trial lawyers.

Noam Chomsky, the philosopher-cretin of today's left, on Vaclav Havel's first US speech (in February 1990):

A "shameful performance" and an "embarassingly silly and morally repugnant Sunday School sermon."

Quoted in a letter to this month's Reason magazine.

Seen in San Francisco on Friday – a man wearing a coat with the slogan “Selenium causes AIDS, Alzheimers.”

Unorthodox? Perhaps.

He was holding a poster reading “Kucinich for President.”

Nuts, certainly.