In the portion of the interview read over the phone and later distributed by the campaign, Mr. Schwarzenegger said: "In many ways I admired people — It depends for what. I admired Hitler for instance because he came from being a little man with almost no formal education, up to power. And I admire him for being such a good public speaker and for his way of getting to the people and so on. But I didn't admire him for what he did with it. It is very hard to say who I admired and who are my heroes. And I admired basically people who are powerful people, like Kennedy. Who people listen to and just wait until he comes out with telling them what to do. People like that I admire a lot."

Mr. Butler said the book proposal had erroneously dropped a few words from a quotation attributed to Mr. Schwarzenegger. According to Mr. Butler's reading of the transcript, Mr. Schwarzenegger followed his comments about Hitler's public speaking by adding, "But I didn't admire him for what he did with it." He did not say, "I admire him for being such a good public speaker and for what he did with it," as he was quoted in the book proposal and in early editions of The Times.

Mr. Butler said he could not explain the inaccuracy. "I am amazed that something like that escaped me."

Mr. Butler also read other sentences of the transcript, spoken in Mr. Schwarzenegger's then-imperfect English, that related to the subject. "Yes, in Germany they used power and authority but it was used in the wrong way," Mr. Schwarzenegger said, according to Mr. Butler. "But it was misused on the power. First, it started having, I mean, getting Germany out of the great recession and having everybody jobs and so on and then it was just misused. And they said, let's take this country, and so on." Mr. Schwarzenegger concluded: "That's bad."

Here’s yet another reason why members of the EU’s ‘parliament’ are not the most convincing fighters against corruption:

”With business-class air fares paid and an all-day limousine service on tap, Euro MPs had only to pay for the taxi home after dining out in Brussels’ vaunted restaurants. Now they have eliminated even that small cost. Blithely ignoring charges of "moral corruption", MEPs have voted to give themselves an allowance of up to €50 (£34) a week to cover the cost of getting back to their Brussels pads after the free limousine service ends at 10pm.

From the London Times , and via Samizdata.

The Russians are, apparently, not impressed by the Treaty. The comments by the head of the Russian Academy of Scientists are worth repeating. In his view the only people who would be affected by the abandonment of Kyoto "would be several thousand people who make a living attending conferences on global warming…"

Via Iain Murray.

Remember her? Well, JR Taylor has a charming story in this week’s New York Press

"As Janeane Garofalo tells the story, she’s leaving home for the Howard Dean fundraiser when another woman is standing at the elevator. This woman looks at Garofalo’s Dean button–and another with a peace symbol–and says, "I guess I’m just a proud George Bush Republican." And Garofalo wonders, "Why didn’t she just say, ‘I’m an a-----e?’ [offending letters deleted in the interests of respectability]

The crowd cheers, and–oh, wait. I forgot the most important part. Janeane specifically notes that the woman is just "some dogwalker who doesn’t live in the building." Because, you know, it would be awful for Janeane Garofalo to live in the kind of building that allows Republicans.

There’s nothing elitist about the good leftists gathered for tonight’s Dean fundraiser at Avalon–and what is it about Dean’s NYC machine that keeps embracing blight? Earlier, there was Dean speaking before a backdrop of the graffiti that used to be a plague on this city. Now it’s a fundraiser at the former Limelight, which remains a disaster to both nightlifers and those who live nearby.

Then again, Dean doesn’t live in our building. “

From a reader:

Andrew and Jonah--

I worked as a prosecutor during my last year at law school in Oklahoma. I routinely handled misdemeanor drug cases. It was definitely not the case that personal-use marijuana arrests resulted in jail time. If someone was arrested, of course, they were booked into jail, where they would usually make bail immediately or at least spend the night. Occasionally an indigent defendant would spend a few days in jail if he could not post bond. But as a matter of punishments actually imposed--almost inevitably through plea bargaining--jail time was never even discussed for misdemeanor drug possession. It was usually community service, a drug rehab program, a conditional probation for 90 days or so, and a hefty fine.

Third time (and subsequent) misdemeanor possession automatically accelerated to a felony charge. This was usually pled down to a misdemeanor, perhaps with ten days in jail, perhaps none.

Felony drug crimes, on the other hand, were routinely bargained down to misdemeanor status. So we would see marijuana dealers caught for the first time or even the second time pleading guilty to possession, sometimes serving thirty days in the county jail. Hardcore repeat meth cooks, of which my county busted maybe one a week, could get sentenced to ten years and serve, oh, five or six in the state pen.

All of which to say that A: sentences are unique products of bargaining and context, and aggregated sentencing data is nearly useless for making policy predictions, and B: I am extremely skeptical of the legalization lobby's propagandistic pipe dream of millions of ordinary Americans rotting in prison because the jackbooted thugs kicked in their door and found a dime bag in their medicine cabinet. Most of the people I saw who actually went to jail for drug offenses had messed up seriously enough, and/or often enough that it seemed perfectly reasonable to incarcerate them.

Kind regards,

[Name withheld]

From Reuters:

” Schwarzenegger, under fire for allegations that he once expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler, helped break up a neo-Nazi rally in 1964 when he was a young body-builder, an Austrian magazine reported. In the latest issue of NU magazine, prominent Austrian politician Alfred Gerstl said the then 17-year old Schwarzenegger and fellow body-builders "chased away the Nazis" during a neo-Nazi protest against the anti-fascist director of a teaching academy in Graz, Austria.”

Interesting – and, particularly if the magazine piece was written before the current allegations surfaced, very persuasive.

And then there's this from the Fresh Potatoes blog:

"Documentary Filmmaker George Butler got it wrong, and now admits that he incorrectly quoted Schwarzenegger's comments about Hitler."

Read the whole thing.

”WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two Iraqi scientists were shot in Baghdad after they talked to the U.S.-led team hunting weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and others believe they will be in danger if they collaborate in the search, Washington's chief weapons inspector David Kay said on Friday. Kay, who is directing the WMD hunt as an adviser to the CIA, presented an interim report to U.S. lawmakers this week that said no banned weapons had yet been found.

Some Iraqi scientists have sought relocation in the United States out of fear for the safety of their families, and others who want to stay in Iraq seek security guarantees, Kay told reporters on a conference call. "They believe they are in genuine danger ... if they collaborate with us," he said.

One scientist was "assassinated literally hours after meeting" with a member of the WMD-hunting team, killed by a single shot to the back of his head outside his apartment, Kay said. There were no signs of robbery. Another scientist, who was "really golden for us," was shot six times but survived, he said. Kay declined to name them…..”

Advertising for the night claims: "Anyone who has ever shed a tear during Edelweiss will enjoy this show."

No further comment necessary.

But I wouldn't put that on the front page, either. The story here is that California is in crisis. The electorate understands that; its media don't. It's CNN that, while sniffing that this election is a "circus", runs tedious featurettes on the pornographers, sitcom actors and other fringe candidates. Meanwhile, the public winnowed the 130 runners down to a quartet almost immediately.

Indeed, the only folks obsessed with joke candidates were the media professionals who took ex-London socialite Arianna Huffington's campaign seriously. In last week's debate, Arianna and Arnold bickered constantly. The pundits assured us Arianna had come out on top. The next poll showed her with 0.4 per cent and she withdrew from the race shortly thereafter. So much for media savvy. The only bottom that's an issue in this election is Gray Davis's, and on Tuesday all it will be feeling is the electorate's boot.

From a reader:

As a native Vermonter now living in New Jersey I thought your article in NR was right on target. As far back as I can tell my forebears voted Republican, except my grandfather did vote the Bull Moose ticket. One of my proudest memories was that the real Vermont was one of only two states not to vote for FDR. My great grandfather served in the storied Vermont Brigade during the Civil War. It is sad that a once proud, independent people could be reduced to wards of what is essentially a welfare state. A month ago I visited my mother and saw happy school kids with their backpacks walking on the streets of a small town (Bellows Falls) and realized, sadly, that most of them would have to leave Vermont to find decent jobs. I thought if by some miracle I was elected governor of the state my first priority would be to bring in businesses that were environmentally friendly (to appease the wackos) so those kids would have the option of living and working in Vermont.

The thought comes to mind: What if California is not the future, Vermont is?

P.S. I sent a copy of your article to my brother who still lives there but he is a retired teacher who now doesn't have to worry about a career.

From a reader:

Jonah,

Perhaps we are ALL missing the real argument in the Pot discussion. Whether pot is harmless or not can be debated for years (already has and will be for the rest of my life).

What is really important here is that pot use is colossally stupid.

Not just run-of-the-mill dumb but “wearing a piñata suite on Halloween night thru a Mexican neighborhood” kind of stupid. We all know that prototypical weed-head from High School and none of us ever wanted to live that kind of life.

Heads of government are gathering in Rome in, suitably enough, a Mussolini-era building to discuss yet another product of Europe’s seemingly perpetual obsession with finding alternatives to democracy, Diamond Giscard’s proposed EU ‘constitution.’ The Czech Republic’s reliably awkward new president, the sort-of-Thatcherite Vaclav Klaus, seems set to spoil the party. He’s boycotting the festivities, explaining as follows:

"This is crossing the Rubicon after which there will be no more sovereign states in Europe with fully fledged governments and parliaments which represent legitimate interests of their citizens…Basic matters will be decided by a remote federal government in Brussels, and Czech citizens will be only a tiny particle whose voice and influence will be almost zero."

He’s right – and this constitution is wrong.

Matt Welch thinks my comments are "typically irrelevent" and yet he reads me enough to know that. Oh well.

The National Review, a conservative magazine friendly enough with Bush that it just published a book of his speeches, has insisted for days that the "real story" is why an investigator as unqualified as Wilson was sent to Niger in the first place. "Don't you just love these Democrats," wrote columnist Jonah Goldberg, in a typically irrelevant comment, "fighting for the integrity of the CIA?"

The firemen who went through such hell on 9/11 and the days and weeks that followed have every right to do what they choose when it comes to looking for help in dealing with its aftermath, but it’s not easy to feel very comfortable about this:

“For the past year, more than 140 New York City firefighters, some ailing from their work in the ruins of the World Trade Center, have walked into a seventh-floor medical clinic just two blocks from the former disaster site. Once inside, some have abandoned the medical care and emotional counseling provided to them by their own department's doctors, and all have taken up a treatment regimen devised by L. Ron Hubbard, the late science fiction writer and founder of the Church of Scientology… “

"…People are desperate to feel better," said one fire lieutenant. "As far as I can tell, they'll try anything, even off the beaten track." Another officer, who said he planned to sign up for the regimen in hope of clearing up lung congestion, said: "Right now, I'm at the point I would try a voodoo doctor."

That, I fear, may be just what he is going to do.

Crooked Timber has more.

And since we're picking on Kennedy's, here's an email from Poppa Goldberg:

Good column on ESPN. Rush's big problem, of course, is going to be the drug issue. If he was taking the pills because of excruciating pain, his critics should remember that, for many of these critics, the most revered president of the century, John F. Kennedy, was a walking pharmacopaeia, who spent a lifetime on painkilling drugs, the "feel good" pills given to him by Dr. Max Jacobson, "Dr. Feelgood," of New York. Everybody knew this and knows it, and Kennedy got a free pass for being a drug addict (his wife also was on feelgoods to stay slim). Indeed, part of Kennedy's profile in courage was his withstanding the pain, albeit with huge amounts of drugs.

A senior Saudi Arabian official, now minister for the holy places, stayed at the same hotel as three September 11 hijackers the night before the suicide attacks.

American investigators are trying to make sense of the disclosure that Saleh Ibn Abdul Rahman al-Hussayen, who returned to Saudi Arabia shortly after the attacks, stayed at the Marriott Residence Inn in Herndon, Virginia.

More on Barnett: Your usage was right not only in the colloquial sense, but legally as well. Professor Barnett's very court-centric discussion ignores the essence of hearsay: a speaker (or writer) reporting someone else's words. In or out of court, hearsay is reciting what someone else said, in contrast to direct testimony which is reporting things you have experienced or observed yourself.

The word almost defines itself. Hear-then-say. Our legal system traditionally regards such second-hand information as unreliable. But when a person reports her own direct experience, it's not hearsay.

Thus, when the charges against Arnold went from rumors and whispers to actual accusers who said "Arnold groped me," the accusations were not hearsay, not even in the legal sense. The accusers are reporting their (alleged) personal experience.

Andrew -- I probably agree to a large extent with your main point. But I strongly disagree with the tenor of your parenthetical one.

I know I am a dissident on the drug war around here, but I should say for the record that your reference to "those pesky drug offenders" sounds awfully euphemistic to me. If you mean drug dealers, well a great, great many of them are in fact very bad people. If you mean people who were convicted on drug charges, I also feel compelled to note that a great many of them are awful people too. Lots of drug "offenders" were imprisoned on those charges as a result of plea bargain compromises. There real offenses were more severe and certainly not "victimless" (though I don't believe selling heroin is a "victimless crime" anyway). The notion that the prisons are teeming with non-violent drug offenders is something of a myth. Of course, there are some appalling examples of dumb hippy pot growers languishing in jail (I'm for the decriminalization of pot, by the way), but the suggestion that all those thugs and narcotic pushers are innocuous "drug offenders" is simply false.

From a reader:

Dear Jonah,

With all due respect, It's pretty easy for you to call Arnold voters hypocrites when there is absolutely no chance you'll be helping us out with our tax bills under Bustamante.

I think the hypocrisy charge is particularly off base since there is no primary in this race. Would I vote Arnold over McClintock in a Republican primary? No way, but that isn't the choice I've been given. You're "sticking with McClintock?" Good for you and your principles, would that be in the D.C. or Maryland primary?

As someone who is going to have to pay for the decisions of California voters out of my own pocket, I reserve the right to decide that Arnold's piggish behavior is in the past. The man apologized to his accusers, he didn't lie under oath and then send his political attack machine out after them.

I wish Bill Simon and Tom McClintock, both good men, were better politicians but they aren't. Your accusation of hypocrisy costs you, umm, hmm...nothing, unless you decide to rebate some of my NRODT subscription as a result.

A Gov Bustamante and a dem legislature would cost me and my family a lot.

Best Regards, but a little ticked off,

[Name withheld]

My response: Frankly I think this guy makes a very, very good point. If I were voting in California, I would have to weigh more variables than I do now. I have two criticisms though: First, I think this reader -- and many, many others on both sides of the spectrum -- make a fundamental mistake when they assert that Bill Clinton's character problems were only on display by the Lewinsky scandal. The fact is Bill Clinton's infidelity was an issue from at least his "60 Minutes" interview onward. And I'm fairly certain Republicans and conservatives alike complained about Clinton's behavior well before they ever heard of Monica. So, yes, Clinton lied under oath and made things worse around the time of Lewinsky scandal, but it's not like that was the first we heard of his woman problems.

Second, I think you can make the case that Schwarzenegger is the best of a bad situation and vote for him without completely conceding that character and womanizing matter. I'm just not hearing many pro-Arnold Republicans do that. Of course, this is a difficult time to start saying he's the hold-your-nose-candidate. But why that should mean I can't make that case is beyond me. After all, as the reader notes, I've got nothing to lose.

From a reader:

The actual conduct in both Clinton's and Schwartzenegger's case is undefensible, I will agree. The character issue for me here is how one responds when the accusations are made. As far as I can tell Arnold is not defending himself by attacking his accusers. With Bill it was always the recipient of his lechery's fault for either enticing him or for being the part of some conspiracy against him. And whereas Bill always denied up until being forced to (sort of) admit otherwise, Arnold came right out and said "where there's smoke...", and fessed up pretty quickly. Arnold also, in my opinion, gave a real apology for his conduct. Clinton never gave a real apology for anything.

MR. KERICK: Thank you. I just -- first, I want to take this opportunity to thank the President for giving me the honor, and allowing me to go to Iraq -- to go to Iraq and help the Iraqi people, give the Iraq people back their country.

And we did so -- and we did so quite quickly, and that continues on a daily basis. Four months ago -- four-and-a-half months ago, when I arrived in Iraq, there were no police -- very few, if any. There were no police stations. There were no cars. There was no electricity. They didn't have telephones, communications, radios. They basically had nothing. They had no equipment. They had no weapons, except for those they had ordered kept on the side. In the last four months, we brought back more than 40,000 police, 450 cars in Baghdad, stood up 35 police stations in Baghdad.

But I know I constantly hear as I come back, I listen to the press, and I listen to some of the public, some of the criticism. And they talk about, it's taking too long. Well, try to stand up 35 police stations in New York City. It would take you about 11 years, depending on who is in the city council. It takes a while. You only have 24 hours in a day. But they have made tremendous progress. The police are working; they're working in conjunction with the military. They are arresting the Fedayeen Saddam and the Baathists.

And I read some of the articles about this, about Dr. Kaye's report today, in my opinion, there was one weapon of mass destruction in Iraq, and it was Saddam Hussein. I visited the mass graves. I watched the videos of the Mukhabarat, the intelligence services, interrogate, torture, abuse and execute people day after day. I watched them tie grenades to the necks of people, or stuff grenades in the pockets of people as they interviewed them, and then detonate those grenades and watch the people disappear. I watched a video of Saddam sitting in an office and allowing two Doberman Pinschers to eat alive a general, a military general because he did not trust his loyalty. There was one weapon of mass destruction -- he's no longer in power. And I think that's what counts today.

I understand, probably more than anyone, what a threat Iraq was and the people that threatened Iraq was. I was beneath the towers on September 11th when they fell. And I -- again, I just -- I want to thank the President for the honor in allowing me to go there, because I lost 23 people. I wear this -- this memorial band for the 23 I lost. They were defending the freedom of our country. I got to go on their behalf to Iraq, to bring freedom to Iraq and take one less threat away from us in this country. So, Mr. President

Look: I understand that there are major differences between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bill Clinton. One was a private citizen and movie star. The other was a career politician and government official who thought such careers should preclude one from living like a movie star. Also, Bill Clinton was accused of harrassing -- and raping -- women while a public servant. Schwarzenegger has been accused of nothing more than being a "playful" pig. Also, Schwarzenegger is running for Governor, not President and therefor btoth his judgement and his character are less important for various reasons.

Nevertheless, many Republicans and Democrats strike me as awful hypocrites on the Schwarzenegger "issue." Republicans said that character matters about Bill Clinton. Democrats said that character doesn't matter. Feminists even absolved groping of employees! (Remember Steinhem's "one grope rule") Surely, fondling a subordinate uninvited is worse than kneading a waitress.

Anyway, now Republicans say character doesn't matter and, once again, Democrats are saying it does. Why can't we stick to our scripts? I'm certainly sticking with McClintock.

And if not, why not?

"Despite promises (or threats) in the new law [which is primarily concerned with gathering statistical data on the topic] to take prison officials or state governments to task for failure to stop rape and assault, the real cause probably lies in a more mundane and intractable reality: Inmates will attack inmates if enough of them live in sufficient proximity, with insufficient internal security, for long enough periods of time. That means that while Congress funds lots of studies, we already know that the key variables are really the sheer rates of incarceration in the United States, the density of prison housing, the number and quality of staff, and the abandonment of any meaningful attempts at rehabilitation. If it is honest, the new DOJ commission created by the law will suggest what we already know is necessary: that we lower incarceration rates, reduce the prisoner-to-space ratio, train huge numbers of new guards to protect prisoners, and abandon the purely retributive and incapacitative function of prisons. But there is no political will for such changes, which is perhaps why we fund studies of the obvious in the first place. The truth is that the United States has essentially accepted violence—and particularly brutal sexual violence—as an inevitable consequence of incarcerating criminals."

Unfortunately, that is true - and that acceptance is, quite simply, barbaric.

The story is long, detailed and explosive. It was almost certainly edited at multiple levels and vetted by the Times' attorneys. Knowing the kind of bureaucracy that can be at work at a major newspaper, I suspect that the piece only now has cleared all those hurdles. [And]...I think Schwarzenegger is helped as much as he is hurt by the timing. The campaign has prepared the world for the possibility of late charges of a personal nature....

The journalistic art of ranking candidates strikes me as a foolish exercise. What I can offer is an image of the next pope. He may be non-Italian, possibly from South America or Africa. He will be expected to travel, and he will very likely be an older man. The cardinals I've spoken with don't seem to relish the idea of another young pope ruling the church for decades. Still, nobody really knows.

Catholic teaching maintains that the Holy Spirit (through the conclave) selects the next pope. Since the spirit has undoubtedly made the selection already, why not leave the outcome to him.

"[I]t's one thing for vague rumors to circulate, another for the L. A. Times to publish dates, descriptions, and, in several cases, the names of victims. What was once hearsay is now fact."

So, if these tales turn out to be true, is Rush a hypocrite? I don't listen to his show enough to know for sure, but from what I have seen quoted today, it seems that, on the question of drugs, he is. Now, no-one is perfect and what we sometimes call 'hypocrisy' is no more than a lapse, the occasional failure to live up to the standards that we proclaim. As I said, no-one is perfect. While 'addiction' is a concept that is abused even more than the drugs that are supposed to cause it, it's easy to see how a temporary 'lapse' into drug use can become a habit. Nevertheless, it's impossible to read some of Limbaugh's earlier comments on drugs without - at the very least - lifting an eyebrow.

The larger problem will be if he returns to his earlier stance. Limbaugh can be 'anti-drugs', sure, (there are, for example, many former alcoholics who are opposed to the demon drink) but if he were to argue that drug 'abusers' should be jailed, he's going to face one very awkward question.

So why weren't you?