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?

There's a lot to dislike in this left-wing screed on the subject, but easily the most contemptible line is this parenthetical one: "The clear interest of [conservative evangelical groups] in promoting religion among inmates has helped create a strange-bedfellowship with leftist prisoners' rights groups" on the prison-rape issue. Conservative evangelicals can't be legitimately against prison rape. They can't even have been awakened to the issue by their work with prisoners. No, they've got an ulterior motive.

The authors also assert that to fight prison rape we would have to take up rehabilitation and "abandon the purely retributive and incapacitative function of prisons." Well, obviously. It's a good thing they don't waste our time making an argument for this view.

HARRIS: Any part of that surprise you?

MCGINLEY: No, it's nice to be riding their coat tails for one more year. It's fantastic to follow a winner like that.

LEON HARRIS: ... But I've got to talk to you, first of all, about the Buddy Walks. You're going to be participating in an awareness program that has basically been very successful since 1995. How long have you been involved with these Buddy Walks?

MCGINLEY: A couple of years ago, my son, Max, who is six now, was born with Down syndrome. When some of his challenges cleared up, I got involved with the National Down Syndrome Society. One thing we've done together is the Buddy Walk which is a day of empowerment, inclusion, and advocacy for children with special needs, primarily children with Down syndrome.

And we have 185 walks every year. Almost 220,000 people are going to come out and walk with us. We're going to have one in New York on the 18th up in Central Park. And we just couldn't be more excited about it. It's just a thrilling day of love and inclusion.

And look, when you have a child who was born with special needs, it's very confusing and disconcerting and you really don't know which end is up and you feel like you're from Mars and you did something wrong. It turns out that God blessed you with a really special package. And how to take care of that child is the real challenge.

And at the National Down Syndrome Society, there's a fantastic Web site to go to, an unbelievable resource, called www.BuddyWalk.org. And there's so much information there that I can't encourage parents of children with special needs enough to check in there.

HARRIS: Good deal. I want to make sure we mention that Web site one more time before we get out of here.

How many other cities are having these walks?

MCGINLEY: We have 185 throughout the year. And October is Down Syndrome Awareness Month. And so it's just a great initiative to raise money for local education programs, and advocacy groups for children with Down syndrome.

HARRIS: You know, don't you think, though, a lot -- well, you tell me. How much progress do you think has been made in raising awareness about it since 1995? We're seeing characters on television shows. You notice it happens now, people don't react. People don't really freak out when they see that sort of thing.

MCGINLEY: No, absolutely. Look, the progress that's been made for all people with special needs and challenges is just profound. And children with Down syndrome are -- you've got to remember, when you and I were growing up, their life expectancy of a child with these challenges was about 25 because they were institutionalized immediately.

And now they find love and an inclusion in a community and society that's encouraging them and trying to elevate them to be whatever they want. And are able to be.

HARRIS: Well, listen...

MCGINLEY: What an amazing thing to be able to say about children with those kind of challenges.

HARRIS: Amen, brother. You're right about that. I agree with you 100 percent.

1. "On the night of Sept. 10, 2001, Hussayen stayed at a...hotel that also housed three of the Saudi hijackers who would slam an aircraft into the Pentagon the next day, though there is no evidence that he had contact with them."

2. "After the [9/11] attack, an FBI agent interviewed hotel guests, including Hussayen and his wife, but did not get very far.According to court testimony from FBI agent Gneckow earlier this year, the interview was cut short when Hussayen "feigned a seizure, prompting the agents to take him to a hospital, where the attending physicians found nothing wrong with him." The agent recommended that Hussayen "should not be allowed to leave until a follow-up interview could occur," Gneckow told the court. But "her recommendation, for whatever reason, was not complied with," he said. On Sept. 19, the day air travel resumed, Hussayen and his wife took off for Saudi Arabia."

3. Shortly thereafter, Hussayen was "named a minister of the Saudi government and put in charge of the Grand Mosque and the Prophet's Mosque, "a position that involves him in the administrative affairs of the kingdom"

Now, stories like this can be enough to make anyone reach for the aluminium headgear, but they would lose a lot of their power if people felt that the administration was being as straight with us as it can (there is always going to be a need for some secrecy) about this country's relationship with the Saudis. Releasing those 28 pages from the 9/11 report (or giving a good reason why they cannot be released) would be a start.

In the meantime, why was an individual with links to an extreme form of Islam and who (allegedly) feigned illness during an FBI interview (presumably to avoid further questioning) allowed to leave the country with no further questions being asked - and within only a few days of the worst terrorist attack in US history? Seems odd to me, but perhaps the tin-foil isn't working.

Readers keep asking me if I made a mistake listing Tom Robbins in today's G-File as a crapweasel. I didn't. You may have forgotten this interview.

I find it hard to come to the conclusion that what Limbaugh said was racist. But I find it much easier to conclude that what he said was dumb. From what I understand -- and I haven't been a close football fan since the late 80s -- McNabb is much less of the affirmative action baby Limbaugh's analysis would suggest. That doesn't mean Limbaugh's comments are outrageous, but if you're going to bring race into one of the very few areas in public life today where merit and colorblindedness are pretty much the rule, you should really have a clear-cut case. Teams have stuck with underperforming white QBs before without white privilege being the issue, presumably -- the shortage of black QBs notwithstanding -- a black quarterback can be given an extra chance without white guilt being the motivation.

Again, I don't follow the sports beat enough to say whether Rush's comments about the media in particular are right, but I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case. And how that comment could be construed as obviously racist is beyond me. After all commentators on the left, right and middle have partially attributed the success, popularity or favorable media treatment of all sorts of people -- Colin Powell, Clarence Thomas, Jesse Jackson -- to race plenty of times. The taboo here wasn't about race alone, it was about sports and race. Because in the athletic realm both the left and the right believe the standard is merit. To suggest otherwise, as Rush sort of did, is to sully one of the few areas normally free of such stuff.

As for the Democrats feeding on all of this: What else do you expect from the party of opportunism?

"Therapy Culture, subtitled Cultivating vulnerability in an uncertain age, argues that contemporary society encourages people to feel traumatised and depressed by experiences hitherto regarded as routine. Children as young as four are regarded as legitimate objects of therapeutic intervention; we are informed that every stage in life involves such grave risks as to require counselling. ..His argument is not the familiar one that the once stoical British have become emotionally incontinent under New Labour. It is broader and more disturbing than that. The therapeutic ethos, says Furedi, is attempting to impose a new conformity through the management of people's emotions, by inciting them to feel powerless and ill."

Will the counselors need counselling?

"The September 11 terrorist attacks had awoken the world to the gravity of the situation in Afghanistan, he told Labour delegates. As a result, Afghanistan witnessed "in a magnificent way the cooperation of civilisations," he said.

He added: "A poor, deeply believing Muslim country, a traditional country, was receiving help from the rest of the world, from a different religion, different values.

"The Afghan people joined hands with them to free themselves and by that the rest of humanity from the tyranny of terrorism. This was for me the cooperation of mankind together for the sake of humanity."

Mr Karzai continued: "The result of that cooperation today for Afghanistan is that we have now had a government for two years. We are liberated. We have political freedom. We have freedom of the media. We have, only in Kabul, 80 newspapers printing and all critical of us."

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As the world now knows, Wilson is married to Valerie Wilson, nee Plame. She is his third wife. She is 40, slim, blonde and the mother of their 3-year-old twins. In the photos in his office, she has the looks of a film star.

"She is really quite amazing," Wilson said. "We were just discussing today who would play her in the movie," he cracked.

THAT BUSH

The poor people dove down in Dumpsters for stuff
But The Rich, in his palace, cried "I don't have enough!
"What to do? Who to call? What button to push?
"I know! The red one that summons That Bush!"

So The Rich pushed the button, a bell chimed "Clang! Clang!"
And up popped That Bush! And That Bush said, "You rang?"

"That Bush," said The Rich, "I don't have enough money.
"But the poor have some pennies — I don't think that's funny!
"They have what I want! And it gives me a rash!
"So run down to the town and steal all their cash!"

"Whatever you say," said That Bush with a smirk,
"You deserve a reward for all your hard work."
So he put on his flight suit and straightened his collar.
"I'm off now to bring you some widow's last dollar!"

(a little further on in the story)

"Why?" asked the little girl, "Why, That Bush, why?
"Why were the things you said all a big lie?
You lied to the people again and again
You blamed nine-eleven on Saddam Hussein
You said that Iraq would be happy we came
Instead the Iraqis are cursing our name!"

"Well, little girl," said That Bush with a grin,
"You must understand the position I'm in.
"We can't let Iraqis achieve self-reliance
"That would cost Halliburton some valuable clients.
"You see I understood that there must be a war
"That's why the Supreme Court picked me over Gore
"So I sent forth the children of workers who toil
"Because, after all, it IS just about oil!"

Phil writes: "I'd write it up with illustrations and try to publish it, but the liberals would probably assume that I was really making fun of Bush rather than making fun of how they do so, and they'd make me a hero, and I couldn't take that."

The current tumult on the Hill over Bush's $87 Billion request simply proves -- to me at least -- what I've been thinking all along. Bush should have asked for a lot more money for Iraq. Bush famously rejects the notion of "negotiating with himself" on tax cuts, i.e. cutting his requests before the opposition even asks, and that's what he should have done here. Because any number Bush picked would have been deemed too high by the Democrats and other critics. If he'd asked for $50 billion or $150 billion the response would have been identical. Sure, you might say that $87 was the exact amount needed. All the better, Bush could have come in under budget.

Arianna Huffington campaign website, September 30, 2003: "Arianna Shifts Campaign to Defeat the Recall, Arnold and Prop 54."

Tuesday morning: 'White House officials' under attack for releasing the name of someone who may or not have been a covert CIA agent.

Tuesday afternoon: White House announces that it will not declassify those 28 mysterious (Saudi! Saudi!) pages in the 9/11 report.

Hopefully, the Plame blame game will not uncover any wrongdoing, but if it does, it will be difficult for the administration to resist the complaint that it discloses what it shouldn't and doesn't disclose what it should.

Sometimes (only sometimes) it's possible to feel a little nostalgia for the days of Robert Rubin. What is it exactly that the administration hopes to achieve with its current efforts to persuade the Chinese and the Japanese to let their currencies rise against the dollar? The weekend before last, comments, at the G7 summit on the need for the greater currency "flexibility" (apparently included in the final communiqué at US insistence) were widely, despite some confused attempts to muddy the waters, seen as a clear message to Peking and Tokyo to change course. Now, reinforcing that impression, Reuters is reporting that on September 12, Treasury Secretary Snow wrote Senators saying that he wanted China to move to a more flexible exchange rate policy "now." The President stepped into the fray today in Chicago with the ludicrous comment that China should adopt "a monetary policy that's fair."

This is nonsense for any number of reasons (for example, as Bruce Bartlett has pointed out on NRO, a number of economists believe that an unshackled Yuan might actually fall), likely to be ineffective (in a very public snub to the White House the Bank of Japan intervened in the markets to push the Yen down today) and could actually be counterproductive. Like it or not, the US is running a very substantial current account deficit, and, like it or not, that current account deficit is very substantially funded by dollar/dollar securities purchases by the Japanese and Chinese central banks. Longer term considerations will probably mean that Japan and China will continue to do this despite dollar depreciation, but, not one imagines, suicidally so. Asking them to buy dollars at the same time as they are being told to let the dollar fall would be a tough sell at the best of times and this is not the best of times. At the very least the Japanese and Chinese would expect higher interest rates on their dollar investments, and that means higher interest rates for everyone here in the US, a steep price indeed to protect a few favored exporters, and far more damaging to the economy than a weak Japanese or Chinese currency.

Secretary Snow needs to start talking about something else.

I’ve been debating Jonathan Chait over at The New Republic about whether Bush hatred is justified, or at least rational. Chait had the last word, and I declined to prolong the debate. But I can’t resist making one small point. In the course of our debate we disagreed about whose tax cuts were bigger, the incumbent’s or Ronald Reagan’s. I said Reagan’s were bigger, in support of my point that Bush is not the rampaging right-winger Chait makes him out to be. Chait said that Bill Gale and Peter Orszag of the Brookings Institution had established that Bush’s tax cut was larger than Reagan’s as a share of GDP “if you allow for some technical corrections.”

In response, I noted that I doubted I’d agree with this duo’s technical assumptions—I’ve criticized Orszag’s work before. In his final entry to the debate, Chait explained what the “technical corrections” were. There were two. First, Chait and company exclude 45 percent of Reagan’s tax cut from consideration! That’s some technical correction. Reagan’s tax cut indexed tax brackets for inflation. In the 1970s, people were taxed on the basis of inflationary gains in income even though their real income hadn’t risen. For Chait, the 45 percent of the tax cut that was devoted to ending that practice need not be counted as a tax cut because it “merely offset natural revenue growth from inflation.” Second, the cost of Reagan’s 1981 tax cut should, in Chait’s view, be considered only after taking account of the 1982 tax hike that partly undid it.

I think that the second “correction” is illegitimate given the context in which I brought up this issue. (Chait had said that Reagan was more moderate than Bush insofar as Reagan had partly undid his tax cut. I acknowledged Reagan’s zigzag, but said that his initial tax cut was much larger than Bush’s. Chait’s technical correction essentially concedes rather than refutes my point.) But my real argument is with Chait’s first correction.

The size of Reagan’s tax cut should be measured by what taxes would have been without his bill, compared to what they were with his bill. Excluding half of the tax cut is unfair. I have advocated a strengthening of indexing. The tax brackets should go up most years to reflect both inflation and real income growth. Otherwise average tax rates climb automatically. If my bill were to become law, projected revenues over the next decade would drop by (roughly) a kazillion dollars. I would of course be able to say that the tax cut “merely offset natural revenue growth” and was thus not a tax cut at all. But somehow I doubt that Chait would buy that argument.

Chait has the nerve to say that I've been "acting as Bush's defense lawyer." It's better than being a crooked DA.

From a reader:

Any bets that if (when?) the Do-Not-Call list is allowed to be implemented, George Bush will be blamed by Democrats for causing "the loss of millions of high-tech telecommunications jobs?"

To my college buddy, Andreas Benno Kollegger, for being one of the inventors of something I do not understand according to the US Patent Office.

Note: None of you should actually care about this, but he is an old friend of mine.

A while back the New Republic zinged National Review for running ads for Ann Coulter's book. I don't want to get into all that, except I think it was certainly fair comment for a magazine like TNR to make. However, I do think it's amusing that TNR runs a big juicy ad for Saudi Arabia in its current issue. Admittedly, there's no indication of corporate endorsement of the Wahhabi State, they don't say "The Editors of the New Republic Bring You Saudi Arabia" or anything like that. But, then again, whether you are a huge fan of Coulter's or an implaccable critic, I think I'm on solid ground when I say, "Sirs, I know Ann Coulter. I've worked with Ann Coulter. And, my friends, Saudi Arabia is no Ann Coulter." I mean the New Republic has time and again -- rightly -- denounced the Saudis for their anti-Semitism, their exportation of terror, their treatment of women, their undermining of democracy in the region, their duplicitous alliance with the United Sates, their role in fomenting al Qaeda etc. And while I find much to disagree with in Ann's writings from time to time, even her alleged crimes fall far short of Saudi Arabia's.

Or let me put it another way, when Coulter castrates people, it's merely rhetorical.

I need to see more than what's out there to think this is anything like the big deal the press and the Democrats are making it out to be. I'm all in favor of having the Justice Department investigate. I'm all in favor of firing whoever did the leaking, if he or she did as the reports suggest. But it sounds like the leaker is dropping in rank and importance as is the transgression. Wilson's wife is a desk jockey and much of the Washington cocktail circuit knew that already.

It seems to me that the energy driving this is A) Obvious Democratic opportunism and scandal-hunger B) Media opportunism as this is the first Bush "scandal" that isn't manufactured outside the White House (could someone explain what Bush did wrong on Enron again?) C) A burning desire to flesh out a fleshless storyline that the Bush White House clamps down on "dissenters" D) An even more burning desire to make Karl Rove into the Sid Blumenthal of this administration.

Which brings us to another issue: comparisons between this administration and the last. First of all, Rove is not Blumenthal for several reasons but the most important is that Rove's got real power. Blumenthal was a Tolkieneque Wormtongue at best and more likely a slipper-carrier. On the larger front, I will be able to take only so much sermonizing from liberals over this scandal considering the fact that the last White House knowingly filed false criminal charges against inconvenient employees (the Travel Office), invented new privileges and abused old ones to stonewall at ever turn (Bush is commanding full cooperating), and generally accused critics of every form of bad faith imaginable.

So yes, by all means investigate what I predict will be a very minor story. But let's not pretend the Republic is in danger.

The staggering reverberations of NR Digital continues to ripple through the culture. Like the dinosaurs of yore who were felled by a mighty asteroid, the ripples of NRD's crash into the staid paper-product landscape continue to topple the antedeluvian institutions of old media! As reported in today's Washington Times.

Okay actually, it's just a nice piece, but that's how I'm spinning it to the suits.

In the event that a woman is admitted to a hospital’s emergency room and is not accompanied by a man, she is to be held at the hospital in specially designated rooms to prevent her escape.

The mother is to be placed under surveillance in the hospital until a man comes forward and takes responsibility for the well-being of mother and child.

If no one comes to claim responsibility for the woman, she is to be transferred to one of the Kingdom’s social service providers after the local police have been notified.

Four days a week I have to take a train to Harvard Square in Cambridge, each day I am accosted by some shiftless pseudo-intellectual who wants me to pay for a copy of the "Revolutionary Worker" newspaper. This past Thursday I had all 91 pages of my NR Digital with me, I told the shiftless fool that I would gladly pay for a copy of his rag if he would be willing to take my 91 pages of brilliant writing. He of course declined, but I don't think he will be bothering me anymore.

ZAHN: Do you believe your wife's life is in any increased danger as a result of this?

WILSON: Well, I don't know.

We've always thought about this in the context of what is compromised in terms of national security, what operations, what agents, what networks that have been put in place during her career. That was the focus of our thinking. I will tell you that, increasingly, people are asking that question. And I'm going to have to think about it. But I'm not -- we have not been the recipients of aany general threats or even -- or specific threats.

ZAHN: So you're not sure whether you fear for her safety, when you say it's something you have to think through?

WILSON: Well, I'm certainly concerned about her safety, but it's -- we had not thought about it in those terms at this point. We had thought about it more in terms of the violation to our own national security.

..In Iraq. After only 745 years. As the Guardian reveals, they have a rather refreshing view of today’s military food:

”Food in the "chow hall" of the division's headquarters, in a large camp by the ruins of Babylon on the banks of the river Euphrates, is a little too heavy on vegetables and salad for the Mongolian troops.

"It is mostly American and European food. It is not too bad but we like a little more meat," said the captain. Rations of dried beef strips have been sent out, along with portions of dried milk.

"Everybody loves those," said Captain Sukhbaator Togtmol, 28, a medic with the unit.""

Who needs Atkins when you've got Genghis Khan?

David Frum's piece offers a very nice recap on the death of Edward Said. Here's my own take on "Orientalism."

Cliff May's piece is very good. I've got a few thoughts on it. First, I think Cliff is right when he suggests that Joe Wilson's trip to Niger was fishy all along and that perhaps Wilson's wife's job at the CIA explains some of that fishiness. Wilson was either lying or wrong when he said Dick Cheney sent him to Africa. Regardless, unless there's more to the defense of the White House leaker other than that it was common knowledge among those in the know that she worked for the CIA, I don't think he (or she) is off the hook. Also, I am sure CIA bureaucratic politics partially explain why this has become so high stakes so quickly, but that doesn't absolve the leaker either.

On a different point, Cliff writes "Mr. Wilson is now saying (on C-SPAN this morning, for example) that he opposed military action in Iraq because he didn't believe Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and he foresaw the possibility of a difficult occupation. In fact, prior to the U.S. invasion, Mr. Wilson told ABC's Dave Marash that if American troops were sent into Iraq, Saddam might "use a biological weapon in a battle that we might have. For example, if we're taking Baghdad or we're trying to take, in ground-to-ground, hand-to-hand combat."

I wish we'd see more of this kind of gotchya. I seem to recall so many people making the case that we shouldn't invade Iraq because he would use weapons of mass destruction and now everyone says we shouldn't have invaded because we knew he didn't have any all along. Well, which is it?

Email from a "10th-generation New Hampshireman" in response to my NRODT piece, subject "You nailed Vermont.":

When I was a boy in the 1960's, we regarded Vermont as a similar state and friendly rival. It is now a foreign country (Belgium, perhaps), and your article captures a good deal of why this is. It has given me much to think about.

I would like to briefly expand two points: Because there is no manufacturing, little development, and less large retail, the bobos have not only overwhelmed the culture of old Vermonters, they have prevented them from escaping their low incomes. If a Vermonter doesn't live close enough to the NY or NH border to work across state lines, his vocational options are sharply limited. The nighttime population of VT is nearly 10% larger than its daytime population. Because of Vermont's Wal-Mart hatred, the poor pay higher prices for their goods as well, either by buying locally or by driving to NH. It's a tough place to be in construction trades, for example. Even the subsidized dairy farming is no way to make a living. The farmers are not subsidized to wealth, but to getting by. There will be no getting ahead for them. And because putting houses on the land is so difficult, it is even difficult for the farmer to cash in and get out. It is a serfdom imposed by exiles from New York and Philadelphia, who really like to see dairy farms on their drive home. The phenomenon is not unknown in NH, but we hold it in check much better. We like development; our dairy farmers sell at a higher price and retire.

The colonialization by Flatlanders is very similar to what the original colonists did to the Indians. There were some battles in New England, but not wholesale slaughter. After our diseases wiped out 90% of the natives, the remaining Indians were kept impovershed by land use laws: the English considered that you did not own the land unless you fenced it and "improved" it. America's first restrictive zoning laws, and it had the same effect as the 1970 legislation in VT. The natives saw the writing on the wall and moved out. So this group of bobos is unknowingly reenacting what they consider to be one of the most shameful chapters of American history. Invaders have moved in with their "superior culture," and if the Vermonters won't change, they can live marginally or leave.

I work at a hospital in Concord NH that gets its medical staff by contract from Dartmouth Medical School. A lot of these folks live in VT, or did until recently, and all came from outside. They don't believe they have changed VT but have blended into it. If you encounter this attitude, try the question "How many New Yorkers do you know living in an old VT farmhouse?" They will think at first that the number is small. Six months later they will admit to discovering it is large.

Jon - Total agreement here about Kazan. He would be more widely recognized as one of the greatest directors in the history of film were it not for the fact that so many in Hollywood have soft spots for Communists and mental-misfires about what anti-Communism was about. His influence on the profession of acting was greater than any other director's. Actor Karl Malden once told the New York Times, "Twenty-one actors who worked in his films were nominated for Oscars, and nine won Oscars."

My only quibble is that Kazan's "A Face in the Crowd" is not only better than "On the Waterfront" it is arguably the best political movie I know of.

I've only now finished Josh Muravchik's dissection of the neocon conspiracy buffoonery that overcame so many otherwise intelligent people in recent times. It's on the web at Commentary's web site, but for a fee.

It is an amazingly well done piece, much better than my own three part opus on the subject, I hate to say, though mine gave more historical background. Here's something I didn't know. The 1996 "paper" allegedly prepared by influential neocons which advocated the toppling of Iraq for Israel's sake, was not a paper at all. Rather, it was merely little more than the collected minutes from a conference. From Murachik's piece, discussing how the BBC misused the "report":

The BBC claimed to have found a smoking gun one that others have pounced on as well. Bradshaw "In 1996, a group of neocons wrote a report intended as advice for incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benny [sic] Netanyahu. It called for ... removing Saddam Hussein from power, an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right." Perle and Douglas Feith, the latter now a high official in Bush's Defense Department, were among those who had "contributed" to this paper.

Yet even if the BBC had characterized the document accurately, it would not imply what the BBC (and not the BBC alone) suggested it did. The Americans whose names appeared on the paper had long sought Saddam's ouster, an objective that was already, in 1996, the declared policy of the Clinton administration. It would thus make more sense to say that, in preparing a paper for Netanyahu, they were trying to influence Israeli policy on behalf of American interests than the other way around. Indeed, most Israeli officials at that time viewed Iran, the sponsor of Hizballah and Hamas, as a more pressing threat to their country than Iraq, and (then as later) would have preferred that it be given priority in any campaign against terrorism.

To make matters worse, the BBC fundamentally misrepresented the nature of the document. Contrary to Bradshaw's claim, no "group of neocons" had written it. Rather, it was the work of a rapporteur summarizing the deliberations of a conference, and was clearly identified as such. The names affixed to it were listed as attendees and not as endorsers, much less authors.