Cheering news (for once) from Harvard’s usually half-witted School of Public Health. According to this report from MSNBC:

“One of the most popular campaigns to curb alcohol use on campus hasn’t reduced student drinking and may actually have increased it, according to a new report from the Harvard School of Public Health’s College Alcohol Study.”

More depressing, however, to read that:

“First-year students at the University of Virginia reduced their alcohol intake from three drinks a week to one.”

Live a little, guys. I know that old Poe was one of your alumni, but there really is no need to be too worried that you will end up the same way as he did.

NFL Fines Lions $200K Over Coach Search 23 minutes ago By MIKE HOUSEHOLDER, Associated Press Writer DETROIT - Detroit Lions president Matt Millen was fined $200,000 by the NFL on Friday for not interviewing any minority candidates before hiring coach Steve Mariucci.

Prince Bandar dismissed the report's assertions about Saudi involvement in the hijackings.

"The idea that the Saudi government funded, organized or even knew about Sept. 11 is malicious and blatantly false," Prince Bandar said. "There is something wrong with the basic logic of those who spread these spurious charges. Al Qaeda is a cult that is seeking to destroy Saudi Arabia as well as the United States. By what logic would we support a cult that is trying to kill us?"

He added: "In a 900-page report, 28 blanked-out pages are being used by some to malign our country and our people. Rumors, innuendos and untruths have become, when it comes to the kingdom, the order of the day."

I subbed-in for Rich. Great crowd, nice folks, good times. I did mention to the audience that I was worried that Rich's eye infection might have something to do with the fact he's been researching a book on Bill Clinton for over a year. "I hope it's not venereal," I might have said.

To go speak to the Young Americans Foundation fest.

From a reader:

Jonah,

I'm a graduate student studying social cognition at a major research university. I'm a Howard Dean liberal, and probably to the left of the Berkeley people who published that study of conservatism. And, I agree with you that the Berkeley study is shameless BS. I recognize that reasonable people can disagree about any political issue, and I would never try to subvert debate by *defining* those who disagree with me as unreasonable.

In the hands of an honest person, meta-analysis can be a tool to iron out the biases inherent to specific studies. One good example is self-esteem. Despite a general bias in our field toward thinking that self-esteem is important, meta-analysis has suggested that self-esteem is not so important (there's a small correlation between happiness and self-esteem, and little else).

The reason that self-esteem is a good candidate for meta-analysis, and conservatism is a bad candidate, is that self-esteem is well-defined and conservatism is (as you discussed in your article) poorly defined *especially when studying 'conservatism' across nations*. In the minds of Jost, Glasser, etc., a conservative is a conservative is a conservative. This fallacy is natural enough. Social psychology speaks of an outgroup homogeneity effect, whereby people think that the members of their own group (the 'ingroup') are different from each other but that people in an outgroup are similar. E.g., 'there is variability among us gentiles, but jews are all the same.' Or, (to salvage some of my liberal pride) Ann Coulter thinking liberals are all the same. The Berekeley researchers certainly understand outgroup homogeneity, but they obviously couldn't transcend it.

[Name withheld]

If you just can't work today but you can't leave the office either. Maybe I am this site is for you.

From a reader:

Dear Jonah,

I just read your piece on NRO about the Stanford-Berkeley study on conservatism, downloaded the document and read the crucial sections quickly. About myself: I am a social-cognition psychologist (academic) doing research on the situational conditions that increase or decrease stereotyping. I should be analyzing some data right now, but instead I'm writing to you.

The Berkeley authors have started from the work of Adorno in the 1950s on authoritarianism. This work has been heavily criticized, as the authors admit on the first page, as being heavily value-laden. Validity is the chief difficulty with value-laden research and it is not an incidental side issue in research. It is the very foundation.

The authors then go on (page 339) to derogate the traditional personality approach to studying this area and suggest that their approach is that of social-cognition. If this were true, it would be noteworthy. Social cognition is a rigorous, experimental area focusing on the link between thought (schemas, memory, emotion, etc.) and behavior. However, the authors do not in fact use these methods! Instead, they have done a meta-analysis (a correlational study) of a whole bunch of data obtained through the use of scales, each of which is of questionable validity. In short, they have used the same weak methods of the personality approach. That they have used weak methods in a highly sophisticated manner only obscures the fundamental issue of validity. A casual inspection of the actual scale items used will quickly reveal the bias that is obvious to conservatives, but is unquestionable truth to liberals...

Carole L. Bandy, Ph.D.
Assoc. Prof. of Psychology
Norwich University

E.J. Dionne is a marvelous guy who writes excellent books, but his newspaper columns often fall short. His column on school vouchers is a case in point. In the Washington Post he writes:

The debate over school vouchers usually brings out the worst in both of our political parties.

This is a long-running theme of Dionne’s. In “Why Americans Hate Politics” Dionne argued, often convincingly, that both major parties offered mostly “false choices” to voters. A pox on both their houses.

But in his column, Dionne offers his own false choices.

Republicans refuse to face the core problem these children confront. The quality of teachers and curriculums is much higher in wealthy suburban public schools than it is in poor, inner-city public schools. In a country where the overwhelming majority of children attend public schools, vouchers do nothing to rectify this injustice…

We need to spend money to upgrade the quality of teaching in our poorest schools and to demand accountability from teachers to make sure the money produces results. If conservatives were willing to invest seriously in our inner-city public schools in exchange for a comprehensive test of vouchers, I'd take the deal. I'm not holding my breath.

This is a false choice. As the Wall Street Journal’s Bill McGurn has demonstrated in his superb columns on choice, the correlation between dollars and educational quality simply doesn’t exist. It’s not to say money can’t be important. Of course it can be. But money is only one part of what matters to a child’s education. Either way, most conservatives would gladly advocate a spike – even a significant spike -- in state funding for education provided the funds were immediately turned over to parents to decide what they want to do with it.

I am speaking literally.

But what I find simply galling is Kusnet's assertion that Irving Kristol's comments about liberals being too soft on communism was "farfetched." Although, not to sound too Clintonian, but since Kusnet says Bill's comments about Gephardt are "just as far farfetched" as his father's comments about 1950s liberals maybe this all depends on the meaning of "farfetched." If Kusnet merely means "fair and reasonable" then maybe this isn't a big deal. But, I assume he's saying that Irving Kristol was wrong to suggest liberals were insufficiently anti-Communist. And if that's the case, Kusnet's higher than a moonbat. Of course, there were good and patriotic liberal anti-Communists in the 1950s (contrary to what some on the Right are saying today), but to suggest Kristol wasn't on to something is simply historical revisionism for the sake of a few cheap partisan points and a few cheap shots about nepotism.

As I mentioned yesterday , Bill Kristol's column in the Washington Post contained an allusion to his father's most famous quote. In response, David Kusnet offers a particularly snide attack on Kristol at the American Prospect's site. He criticizes Kristol for attacking Gephardt and for using his "daddy's" formulation. He writes:

...[T]he younger Kristol's hint that Gephardt is soft on terrorists and rogue states is as farfetched as his father's claim that earlier generations of liberals were soft on communism. After all, Gephardt helped draft the bipartisan congressional resolution authorizing military action in Iraq; he also supported the administration's actions against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Gephardt has paid dearly for this, losing many potential supporters who might have been drawn to his progressive policies on economics, trade and health care but see him as too bound to George W. Bush, not too soft on Saddam Hussein.

I don't mind Kusnet defending Gephardt. Kusnet's a labor guy and what else would you expect from him in the American Prospect? But then again, I do remember that Harold Meyerson -- the Prospect's Editor-at-Large -- offered a slightly different take on Gephardt's allegedly heroic and principled support of the war. Meyerson wrote in the Washington Post just this week that Gephardt's reasons for supporting the war had less to do with principle than Kusnet would have us believe. Meyerson wrote :

If anyone has personified the failure of the Democratic establishment to provide the party with a distinct profile during the Bush presidency, it's Gephardt. As House Democratic leader, Gephardt clung to Bush's Iraq policy until it all but unraveled over the past month. Gephardt's endorsement last fall of the administration's war resolution effectively derailed a bipartisan effort in the Senate to require the White House to win more international backing.

There was supposedly a method in this madness: By taking the war issue off the table, Gephardt argued, the Democrats could turn the midterm election campaign to questions of domestic policy, presumably their strong suit. We'll never know if this could have worked, because Gephardt and his fellow congressional leaders never developed a domestic message.

To millions of die-hard Democrats, it looked as if their party had sacrificed its principles on the altar of pragmatism and then had nothing pragmatic to offer. Neither conscience nor opportunism was given its due, and the rank-and-file was mightily indignant.

Hmmmm. It seems to me that Kusnet's Golden Boy -- according to Meyerson, not me -- was at least in part willing to send American boys and girls into harm's way in order to advance a narrow political agenda. Perhaps Gephardt is indeed a bit more fickle on issues of war and security than Kusnet would have us believe.

You gotta love the heart of those Cubans trying to flee Castro's thug regime. From the Miami Herald:

Over the past four decades, Cubans desperate to reach the United States have crossed the perilous Florida Straits in just about anything that floats: Surfboards. Inner tubes. Homemade rafts.

But it's hard to top the latest entrant in the maritime scramble: a 1951 Chevy flatbed truck.

The green truck, tires still on, was mounted on a pontoon made of 55-gallon drums. The makeshift vessel even sported a propeller, attached to the truck's drive shaft.

What’s a little less lovely is the U.S. government’s response.

Ingenuity, however, didn't translate to success. The U.S. Coast Guard took the dozen Cubans aboard the truck back to the island last weekend.

I was one of the pilots launched on the night of August 3, 1964 from the USS Ticonderoga (CVA-14) for air support to the USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy... We reported upon debriefing that we saw no torpedo boats, but there was a very good reason for that. We had been launched without flares and had no way to provide light on the water.

The night was black with an overcast. We descended to approximately 500', but at night under an overcast and without flares, visibility is zero. A pilot without light can't see one inch beyond his canopy.

We were being vectored by a radar operator. He could see our aircraft, and he could see targets on the water. We were vectored to a surface target, but without flares we could not see it. I know for certain there were targets on the water, but like the WMD in Iraq, we could not visually find them.

Who would send small surface boats with limited range into a US Navy destroyer formation? Only North Vietnam could do that. No one else was within the range of small surface boats. North Vietnam, unless their military commanders were insane, would not send unarmed small boats into a US Navy destroyer formation the night after they had been attacked by torpedo boats.

I don't care what any inquiry reports. I will always know there were small boats on the surface that night, and I will always be convinced they were armed and intended an attack.

What seems to have escaped the skittish senators is that, regardless of what these nominees believe personally, as constitutionalists and strict constructionists they recognize that their role as federal judges is to apply the Constitution and the law as they find it--no matter how contrary it may be to their personal belief system. It is judicial activism, whether on the left or the right, that is cause for concern, and the nominees under suspicion are opposed to it.

Will be a columnist for the New York Times! That's just great news. I am a big fan of David's. It is great, great news and I am very happy for him and the conservative movement that he's on board at the Times. May he prosper and do good and -- dear God -- may he not "grow" too much in that rarefied soil!

It may be important for you to say not to neglect your studies! The lefties act like classes come second. There is the danger of overstating the global significance of little fights that rarely make the papers, when you could be sharpening your saw for truly important battles if you make it to NRO and other outfits so vital on the national scene ...

I saw your bleg on the corner, and a relatively obscure (at least in the minds of many current college students) but very important victory came out of Michigan in the early 1990's. Michigan's speech code was one of the most restrictive in the country. Students could be punished for almost any non-PC speech (of course, PC was in its infancy with DeSouza's book just hitting the racks). The one example I recall was that a student who laughed at a joke about a fellow classmate who stuttered was a "harasser."

Anyway, it really is a victory for conservative activism. Wesley Wynne, who was then a graduate student at Michigan, sued the University, claiming that the speech code violated his first amendment rights. Win was a Teaching Assistant and wanted to cover some sociological studies that could be construed to prove that women were inferior to men in some respects. (he didn't endorse them, but only wanted to discuss their merits).

Long story short, Wynne won and Michigan's speech code was truck down. The ruling started a domino effect, and Universities across the country substantially reworked their speech codes.

Turns out I will be speaking to them after all. Our fearless leader had to cancel at the last minute and so I'm filling-in. Not sure of the time. Have no idea what I'll say. Still, I wonder if Cosmo is responsible somehow for this turn of events.

WFB has some great stuff in his address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 19, 1968: "The sea is the creature which, at the margin, can drown the sailor. But however tempestuous, however arbitrary, however sullen the sea can be- however much like an editor [or America-hating professor]- the sea maintains its basic integrity; and if the sailor observes the rules, if he maintains his guard, if he propitiates the elements, he is permitted to survive and the experience is sublime."

I was cc'd on this letter to Derb who may be too humble to post it himself:

Jonah is indeed correct about the meaning of "Bacon number." I think the Bacon number has to have been derived from the concept of "Erdos number" (http://www.oakland.edu/~grossman/erdoshp.html), which is decades old and quantifies one's collaboration with Prof. Paul Erdos. However exciting your movie career is (and it is, very), some of us are more interested in your Erdos Number.

I would suspect that any person with an Erdos number and a Bacon number each under five might border on the ultimate in coolness.

From a reader:

Mr. Goldberg,

As a recent recipient of a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, things like this idiotic Berkeley study make me absolutely cringe (one would hope that habituation would take effect eventually). I can tell you, having only recently been released from this academic environment, that there are no other quarters in which liberalism is so predominant, and conservatism is indeed viewed as synonymous with "mean-spirited, homophobic, misogynist, hate-mongering troglodyte."

What is especially galling about this is that one could easily argue that through the very fabric of liberalism is woven faulty thinking ("cognitive distortion" to use the jargon), including, but not limited to, what is referred to as "emotional reasoning." This error is marked by a propensity to make decisions based upon one's emotions, rather than logic and reason ("I feel this way, therefore it must be true.") See well-meaning but cripplingly ineffective social programs whose propogation would appear to be justified only by the warm "feelings" it fosters in the hearts of its sponsors.

A second example: "Operant conditioning." This unambiguous concept refers to the mechanism by which desired behaviors are reinforced, while those deemed undesirable are either ignored or punished. I'm not calling for the application of electric shock to anyone's genitals, but how about a reduction in the payment ("reinforcing") of individuals displaying shiftless, slothful behavior (unless that's what we want to see more of...or it makes us feel good about ourselves) or, for that matter, of despotic (Saudi Arabia) or idiotic (most of Europe) regimes who don't exactly have our best interests at heart.

I could go on about "cognitive dissonance" theory and the refusal of some to admit that Clinton ever did anything wrong, or "projection" (a less mainstream term these days) and Terry McAuliffe's recent statement that "this may be the first time in recent history that a president knowingly misled the American people during the State of the Union address," but I'm getting dizzy.

Please know that not all psychologists are pointy-headed liberal academics. I always look forward to your column...keep up the good work.

Another thoughtful reader response on the recall:

MSNBC's Matthews, to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ): "When asked about the killing of Saddam Hussein's sons the other day, Howard Dean, the candidate for president said, quote: 'It's a victory for the Iraqi people but it doesn't have any effect on whether we should or shouldn't have had a war. I think, in general, the ends do not justify the means.' Your thoughts, Senator?"

McCain replies: "I am astonished. A lot of people have compared me with Governor Dean. I could not disagree with him more to say that the ends doesn't justify the means. The ends were the eradication of two psychotic murdering rapists, and the means were through legitimate use of the American military helped out by some excellent information that they gained. How in the world someone could in any way think this end was not justified by anything which was the removal of two odious characters, frankly, is beyond me. And I think, frankly, Mr. Dean does the nation a great disservice when he doesn't recognize how wonderful an event this is and how important it is to the morale of the troops that these guys are gone. I mean, our troops serving in Iraq."

McCain, on if Dean is catering to the left or "tone deaf": "I don't know which it is, but I think even the far left, people who did not support the war, are glad that these two thugs, these two, you know, adjectives, I don't know enough adjectives that are not four letters, frankly, that describe these two guys. I think even the far left are glad that they're gone. My god, this guy, you know the things he's done. They're well documented. Both of them."

More McCain: "I hope that Mr. Dean will retract that statement and make it very clear that the world, America, and most importantly, the Iraqi people, are far better off with these two guys gone and their father should be next."

I was in an opera (yes, an opera) with Luciano Pavarotti when I was a kid, and since his Bacon Number is 2, I believe that mine is three -- if operas count.

The G-File is up. My apologies for the length and tardiness. I was in rant mode and I had to edit it back to its still unforgiveable length.

Derb -- Maybe this will save you 8 trillion emails, though I doubt it. A Bacon number -- I'm fairly certain -- is the number of degrees it takes to link you to a Kevin Bacon movie. I'm too busy to do it myself, but my guess is someone out there will figure it out for you.

That reminds me, I wrote a syndicated column the other day defending John Ashcroft and expressing sincere bewilderment at the intensity of anti-Ashcroft views. I encouraged readers to send me concrete examples of what he's done wrong as AG. I was astounded by how many people listed his in-office prayer meetings as an example. I'm open to the idea that prayer meetings in government offices might be a bad idea, though I personally don't see anything wrong with it so long as they're handled properly. But even if they're terrible things, what's the linkage to peoples' lives? How does it affect anything? After all, when Bill Clinton was defiling an intern -- and vice versa -- the standard mantra from the left was "Who does it hurt?" Well, if you think consensual sex between an intern and the President doesn't hurt anybody I need to know why you think consensual prayer hurts people.

From a reader:

"Reminds me of the People's Front of Judea and their hatred of being confused with the Judean People's Front."

I wonder how many people noticed Kristol's presumably deliberate allusion to his dad in his op-ed piece. Kristol writes:

"There are plenty of legitimate grounds to criticize the Bush administration's foreign policy. But the American people, whatever their doubts about aspects of Bush's foreign policy, know that Bush is serious about fighting terrorists and terrorist states that mean America harm. About Bush's Democratic critics, they know no such thing.

This tracks perhaps the most controversial thing his father ever wrote -- given the time he wrote it. As a junior editor of Commentary in 1952, Irving Kristol wrote an article for that magazine, "Civil Liberties' 1952: A Study in Confusion." Pere Kristol made this observation -- which has new relevance these days by the way -- about the reigning anti-McCarthy hysteria:

"Perhaps it is a calamitous error to believe that because a vulgar demagogue lashes out at both communism and liberalism as identical, it is necessary to protect communism in order to defend liberalism. This way of putting the matter will surely shock liberals, who are convinced it is only they who truly understand communism and who thoughtfully oppose it. They are nonetheless mistaken, and it is a mistake on which McCarthyism waxes fat. For there is one thing that the American people know about Sen. McCarthy: he, like them, is unequivocally anti-Communist. About the spokesmen for American liberalism, they feel they know no such thing. And with some justification."

Today a conservative administration is close to asserting that whatever the facts turn out to be regarding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the enforcement of U.N. resolutions was a sufficient reason for war. If so, war was waged to strengthen the United Nations as author and enforcer of international norms of behavior.

He manages to cram a lot of stuff into a small space, so there's room to quibble at the omissions. But all and all I think he nails it. Republicans are doing great, conservatives are taking a terrible beating. I'd be curious to now what some of the other Cornerites think.

“I wasn't thrilled about serving my country in Vietnam in '68 and '69 but I did it, it was my duty and I am proud I did. I am not thrilled about this (recall), it is not a lot of fun but I do not shirk from the fight.”

Ribbing aside, I am a fan of both organizations, particularly the Foundation folks. But when folks at the Young Americans Foundation get peeved at being called YAF, I really have no sympathy. The two groups have similar missions, similar philosophies, similar fans etc. I know there are plenty of inside baseball differences between the two groups which are very significant to people close to them. But if you were inclined to be upset at being mis-identified as YAF why in the world would you choose the same initials for your group? It's like someone starting a communications company called American Telephone and Text and being furious whenever someone calls it AT&T. Just my two cents.