Letter to the editor, Rocky Mountain News:

Recently, a co-worker asked me if I had seen the movie Bowling for Columbine yet, I told her absolutely not! My answer surprised her, given the fact my son, Matthew, was one of the 13 murdered during the deadliest school shooting in our country's history. I explained to her that prior to the public release of the movie the families of the injured and dead were invited by Michael Moore to attend a preview screening. How thoughtful.

Our family and others considered attending because we were genuinely interested in his message to the public regarding gun control and school violence.

However, once we discovered he was going to charge us admission we refrained from doing so.

It's laughable that Moore attempts to portray himself as an anti-establishment liberal who is the voice of the common folk, when in fact he is no better than the greedy capitalists he shuns. Maybe now that he has made millions of dollars off the blood of our children he could toss a DVD or two our way to view.

Ann M. Kechter
Evergreen

“Mount Vernon Associate Director Dennis Pogue said officials would not distill liquor at the site but would explain to visitors how Washington did it back in the late 1700s. As school children ran around on a class trip, Pogue talked about the careful "balancing act" of explaining Washington's life to visitors without promoting alcohol. “

“without promoting alcohol?” a “balancing act?”

Give me a break.

German chancellor Schroeder is a liar. He is also, it seems, a thug. Distressed by the fact that Germans are crossing over into Holland to take advantage of that country’s half-civilized drug laws he wants Holland to change the rules. Like a freshly whipped dog, the Dutch government is coming to heel.

Interestingly, however, the solution it proposes (restricting admission to their coffee shops) is almost certainly illegal under EU law (it’s generally forbidden for an EU member state to discriminate against the citizens of other EU countries).

The famously pro-EU Germany may, it seems, be hoist by its own petard.

Ha ha ha.

Boykin’s remarks (as so far released) were tactless, but their substance gives no other reason for his dismissal (and I write as someone with beliefs that the good general would undoubtedly think would doom me to the Devil's fiery pit). A recent New York Times editorial calling for his dismissal gives an example of the muddled thinking displayed by those who would remove him. Here are some extracts:

“Not only did a high-ranking government official make remarks that espoused a single religious view…”

Since when has that been a disqualification from office?

“…and denigrated others…”

But he didn’t. Yes, he made clear that he was not a follower of Islam (to put it mildly), but his ‘denigration’ was reserved for the terrorists.

“President Bush and all other top officials have said often, and rightly, that the United States is not engaged in a religious war. General Boykin…should not be undermining that policy…”

To repeat, Boykin did not say that he was engaged in a war against Islam, but a war against terrorists, terrorists he considers to be the agents of Satan. Now that’s not my explanation as to bin Laden’s motive, but, given the nature of his crimes, it should be no surprise that someone who is religious sees the evil of the man in those terms. And, as for the US not being engaged in a religious war, that’s only partly true. Of course, America should not declare war on Islam. That would be madness. The US should be looking for allies in the Muslim world, a large proportion of which wants to have nothing to do with Wahhabism's vicious delusion. At the same time, there’s no denying that the war against the US is religiously inspired. The failure to understand the implications of that is one of the major failures of the current administration. America may not be fighting a religious war, but someone is fighting a religious war against America - and the US should respond appropriately.

Sorting out the US Army's chaplaincy problem might be a start.

Those lucky enough to work in the fashion departments of such magazines are deluged with freebies every day, some of them worth a great deal of money. At Vanity Fair, where I worked for 2 1/2 years, I once stumbled across a screwed-up ball of paper outside the office of Elizabeth Saltzman, the magazine's fashion director. "Dear Elizabeth," it began, "a while back, the Diamond Information Center presented you with a diamond solitaire necklace." Others plainly keep the stuff. Earlier this year, the fashion director of another glossy magazine had her wrist slapped when she was caught trying to sell on eBay a couture coat she'd been sent by Chanel. The floor bid was $150,000.

At Christmastime, glossy magazines have to take on extra staffers to deal with the huge volume of free stuff flowing into their offices. In 1996, the CEO of Condé Nast, Steve Florio, received so much booty that he had to hire three Lincoln Town Cars to transport it back to his house. We're talking handmade suits, cases of wine, sets of golf clubs--not your usual tchotchkes. The Lincolns sailed off down Madison Avenue like Spanish galleons packed with treasure. A spokesperson for Condé Nast says that this story, which I had from a closely placed source, is "absolutely untrue."

The April 21 issue of Time magazine featured its list of the "25 Most Influential" people of 1997. According to Time, if you're a millionaire and you help conservatives, you're contributing to the breakdown of society. If you're a billionaire who gives solely to liberal causes, you're seen as a savior.

On one page Time profiled Richard Scaife, whom the magazine labeled a "Conservative Agitator." His bio began: "If conservative thinkers like Bill Bennett and Paul Weyrich are the brainpower behind the resurgent American right, the horsepower comes from Richard Mellon Scaife. For close to four decades, the 64-year-old Pennsylvanian has used his millions to back anti-liberal ideas and their proponents." Later, Time added: "He controls the Sarah Scaife Foundation, which helps subsidize rabidly anti-Clinton magazines as well as conservative social-policy projects." If Scaife is considered a "conservative agitator," it would follow that George Soros would be tagged a "liberal agitator," but Time's subhead labeled him a "philanthropist." Soros' bio read: "And he has been stirring controversy by directing his dollars to an array of hot-button political causes tied to his personal ideal of an 'open society' and by writing an iconoclastic critique of free-market capitalism." Among the projects promoted by this "philanthropist," Time noted: "$1 million to help pass initiatives in California and Arizona last year that legalized medicinal use of marijuana," and "$50 million for a fund to help legal immigrants" overcome welfare reform.

This is a mishmash of e-mails on the Jindal race. Part might be quotes directly from a news story, but which parts those are, I'm not sure:

The latest poll numbers on the race for governor are out and it shows the race is closer than ever. A new Southern Media Poll shows if the election were held today (Thursday October 23rd), Blanco would earn 43% of the vote, Jindal 41%.

"The votes right now are split down the middle and it's a very close election. They like both candidates and it looks like this thing could go down to the wire," said pollster Bernie Pinsonat.

With the margin of error factored in, both candidates are running about even. Plus they both enjoy very high favorability ratings. When it comes to female voters - a demographic where Blanco plans to do well - only 29% of white females are supporting Blanco, while 50% are for Jindal. Among the African American community, 73% of black females plan to vote for Blanco, whereas 11% are for Jindal.

"Jindal has cut her off from that advantage. He's doing well with white females and males. So the female advantage isn't showing up with whites at this time," said Pinsonat. "Now it boils down to the one that gets their voters out will probably win this election."

Pinsonat predicts that many voters may not be inspired to head to the polls, since there's no one to vote against this time around. Election day is Saturday November 15th.

Also on the poll, both have high favorability. So that means that Kathleen can be reasonably good campaigner and still have a good edge in the election.

[I'm told] prominent black LA lawyers now leaning towards Jindal. "And further, the black vote that is most likely to vote is professionals and middleclass folks who are most likely to flirt with Jindal.

Interesting."

William Saletan argues that the phrase "partial-birth abortion" is false and misleading. He writes, "If you haven't been following the debate closely, it's easy to walk away with the impression that the 'delivery' is a nearly full-term birth." But many "partial-birth abortions," he observes, occur earlier in pregnancy, when the fetus would not be likely to survive outside the mother. This is not "the appointed hour of birth." And the fetus is just that: not a baby, not an "infant" (as the president says), not a "child. . . who would otherwise be born alive" (Sen. Santorum).

Fine: It's a fetus, not an infant or a teenager. But the entity in question is alive. In a partial-birth abortion, it is partially delivered. It is partially removed from the womb. It is, in other words, partially born. Senator Santorum's remark may not be true, but that is only because the alternative to a partial-birth abortion would often be another kind of abortion. The fact that the entity, if delivered, would be unlikely to survive long does not mean that it was not born. (Babies born at the "appointed hour" for a birth, rather than an abortion, sometimes die soon afterward, without anyone's denying they had been born.)

Supporters of the ban on partial-birth abortion should not say or imply that they are talking exclusively about late-term abortions. Senator Frist did that in a quote that Saletan identifies. But the media's favored alternative to the phrase "partial-birth abortion"--a "rare kind of late-term abortion procedure"--is much more misleading.

Saletan concludes by noting a poll that showed 70 percent of Americans backing a ban. "I'd like to know how many of the people who answered that question understood exactly what they were being asked about," he writes. I'd like to know the same thing about the people who say they're "for" Roe v. Wade. (We can exclude Gregg Easterbrook, if he was polled.)

Snow and Global Warming

By Brian McCabe on October 23, 2003

NH Public Radio Web Site

On the heels of the decision not to participate in the Iowa caucuses, Joe Lieberman must surely have been disappointed to see he stands at just 3 percent in New Hampshire, according to the just released Franklin Pierce College poll.

The Lieberman campaign's lack of traction isn't so surprising after observing their tactics today in Concord. In the middle of a cold, windy day -- with the first snow of the year falling all around them -- a team of young Lieberman supporters were promoting the fact that their man fights global warming. Apparently oblivous to the large white flakes around them, an observer noted, "It's snowing!" Unabashed, one young supporter replied, "That's because of global warming!"

If the current polls and message are any indication, the Lieberman campaign will continue to melt away just as quickly as this first coating of snow.

The addition of Mark Steyn to NRODT will put unbearable pressure on all those who are not yet subscribers….I would expect new orders to come rolling in. Thanks for adding him to an already awesome group.

The practical effects of this scandal can be seen in the general public failure to appreciate the military miracles of Afghanistan and Iraq. In the 2 1/2 years of this war we have lost less men than we did in one week of Vietnam. Our casualties are less so far than the first ten minutes or so of a typical Civil War battle, and less than the first couple of hours of a major WWII landing. To put it in perspective, take the tiny, square mile chunk of coral called Betio in The Tarawa atoll. It was assaulted by regiments of the 2nd Marine Division on Nov. 20,1943. Thirty six hours, four Medals of Honor, and almost 1000 dead Marines later, the Stars and Stripes flew over the airfield. Leon Uris wrote a poem about it, which can be sung to the tune of "Old Smokey":

BATTLE CRY

From out of New Zealand, the Gyrenes set sail,
to find an atoll where the Japs got their mail.
On an island called Helen, they staked out their claim;
and the Second Division won e'er lasting fame.
Dug deep in the coral, way under the sand,
five thousand Japs waited, for them to land.
The 2nd hit blue beach, they hit with a thud.
The 2nd hit blue beach, all covered with blood.
The 2nd hung on to the ground they had made.
All night they hid down 'neath the seawall and prayed.
The 6th they hit green beach, and landed by noon.
They waded past buddies killed in the lagoon.
The 8th came ashore, boys, o'er buddies who'd paid.
And killed all the Japs for the misery they'd made.
A thousand white crosses to tell of their laurel.
A thousand Gyrenes lay asleep in the coral.
Oh come now you mothers, you sweethearts, you wives;
shed no tear for Gyrenes who laid down their dear lives.
On an island called Helen, they staked out their claim.
And the Second Division won e'er lasting fame.

Kathryn - I know you expected me to comment on the loss of Re-Run, but I'm amazed we've heard nothing from Derb about Mrs. Kai-Shek.

it doesn't seem to count.

"When the day came for me to set a DESTINATION to travel, I knew that I had to plan my COURSE carefully. I was so ecited and nervous, I felt as though I would SEVER in two.

I know that I am very ACCURATE when it comes to finding my NAVIGATION.

I felt REVIVED when I started the engine. After this test, I would be able to fly by myself. I took off into the wind. My plane was unsteady due to the strong GALE.

Suddenly my plane's left wing started to chip off. I was in great DESPAIR. When I looked at the wing, I noticed that it had started to DETERIORATE. Thankfully, the wind started to clamed down and I flew safely to the ground. I felt great JUBILATION when I got my wings."

Argh! You Got Me (NRODT)!

OK! OK! OK! I give! Until you added Mark Steyn, I was able to resist. Geez, you people are ruthless!

"Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit."

"He fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down."

"Have a cup of coffee--it's already been 'saucered and blowed.'"

"She's so stuck up, she'd drown in a rainstorm."

"It's so dry, the trees are bribing the dogs."

"My cow died last night, so I don't need your bull."

"He's as country as cornflakes."

"This is gooder'n grits."

"If things get any better, I may have to hire someone to help me enjoy it."

"I'm 'bout as":
"Nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs."
"Busy as a moth in a mitten."
"Happy as a clam at high tide."

I see Andrew Sullivan just got a refund from Priceline thanks to his blogging. Good for him. But that reminded me of something. The Fair Jessica and I -- in a very rare outing -- went to Bobby Van's Steakhouse in Washington DC last friday night. It came very highly reccomended by the Washingtonian and we wanted to try a new steak place. It was pretty awful and doubly so considering how much it cost. Pretty much everything except the creamed spinach was mediocre. The steak was over-cooked and we even sent my wife's filet back. Maybe it was a bad night, but judging from that one outing, I encourage everyone to scratch the DC Bobby Van's off their list.

Well, if we're going to play that game, my wife's book has also just come out in paperback. And, I see that my sister-in-law Carrie (Lucy's favorite aunt) has a whole bunch of über-wonky digital book-thingies listed in Amazon

"STOCKHOLM, Oct 23 (Reuters) - An Icelandic fishing captain, known as "the Iceman" for his tough character, grabbed a 300 kg (660 lb) shark with his bare hands as it swam in shallow water towards his crew, a witness said on Thursday. The skipper of the trawler "Erik the Red" was on a beach in Kuummiit, east Greenland, watching his crew processing a catch when he saw the shark swimming towards the fish blood and guts -- and his men. Captain Sigurdur Petursson, known to locals as "the Iceman", ran into the shallow water and grabbed the shark by its tail. He dragged it off to dry land and killed it with his knife.

"He caught it just with his hands. There was a lot of blood in the sea and the shark came in and he thought it was dangerous," Frede Kilime, a hunter and fisherman who watched from the beach, told Reuters by phone from Greenland. Icelandic author and journalist Reynir Traustason, who knows the trawler captain, said the act was typical of the man. "He's called 'the Iceman' because he isn't scared of anything," he said. "I know the people in that part of the world. They are really tough."

Jonah's post on the Richard Wolin article in the CHR is a bit misleading. Wolin himself does not "fetishize" the third world; indeed the whole article is extremely critical of Honderich (the pro-terrorist author whose book Wolin reviews), and one of the specific criticisms makes basically the same point Jonah did. Wolin: "What makes [Honderich's] argument problematic is its blanket refusal to acknowledge any indigenous causes of third-world poverty, be they geographic, climatological, regional, sociological, or political. Rather than promote intelligent reflection on the causes of global social injustice, Honderich is interested in playing a simple blame game." Wolin does conclude that Honderich's book is not necessarily anti-Semitic but that the tactics Honderich seeks to legitimize "flirt with a discourse of genocide whose historical resonances are all too familiar and disturbing."

Derb - I have no doubt that Jay knows a great deal about opera and music. And if he knows more about either than anyone you've ever met then he knows even more than I thought he did, which was quite a lot. And I am sure it is quite a treat to have Jay as a cultural sherpa. But you start from a premise not shared by everyone. Many decent humans in fact despise opera. I don't want to say I myself despise it, but I most certainly don't like it very much. And before you ask "have you given it a chance?" let me say, categorically, yes. As a child I appeared in numerous performances at the Met, including Pavarotti's first in New York. My father adores opera and took me to many other performances. He also had it playing in the background for much of my childhood.

So, while this may be a grand coup for thee, it's certainly not one for me. But I will gladly hold your hand at the next Star Trek convention.

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) -- Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who accused the Bush administration of manipulating intelligence to exaggerate the threat from Iraq, endorsed Democrat John Kerry for president on Thursday.

In a conference call with New Hampshire reporters, Wilson said he and Kerry, the Massachusetts senator, have shared the experience of challenging their government -- Wilson when he questioned the "rush to war" with Iraq, Kerry when he challenged America's role in Vietnam.

Speaking from Washington, Wilson said Kerry's actions, coming when he was but 23-year-old Vietnam War veteran, makes him stand out in the Democratic presidential field.

"John Kerry did the same thing after he came out of Vietnam, I did it at the age of 53 ... with a long and distinguished career behind me," Wilson said. "John Kerry did it at the very beginning of his career.

"I know how these sorts of things test one's mettle," he said. "To have stood up and said what he did, at the time that he did, in my judgment, sets him apart from the other candidates."

I haven't followed the Iran-EU nuclear negotiations close enough, but I'm still skeptical. The Iranians made this decision to produce unnecessary "peaceful" nuclear power a long time ago and I doubt a lot of Euro-talk dissuaded them at the last minute. I heard the other night that the Iranians need to have their parliament approve the deal -- which is a joke since the parliament does whatever the dictators say in Iran. However, to the extent this deal is progress at all, I wonder to what degree the US deserves some of the credit. After all, is it impossible that the US is the bad cop here? The EUers go in, chat 'em up and say, "Do this for us or we'll be forced to invite that guy in here -- and none of us want that!" Indeed this is the normal state of things for the last forty years. We protect Europe, the Europeans think they solved their problems through chit-chat.

This is an interesting article by Richard Wolin about an essentially, or at least operationally, pro-terrorist intellectual in Germany. What I find more interesting than the now cliched moral equivalence and fashionable fetishizing of third world murderers is Wolin's banal assertion about Ted Honderich's book, "Written in an offhand, chatty style, its main point -- unarguable, as far as it goes -- is that first-world nations bear responsibility for third-world nations' impoverishment."

I've never understood where this allegedly universal consensus that the first world is responsible for third world poverty comes from. Now, I am very sympathetic to the idea that the first world has a moral obligation to help out impoverished peoples. And, yes, I think certain European nations -- France, for example -- have some extra burdens in specific nations. But let's just set the record straight: The first world found all of these nations already poor. We didn't make them poor. It's not like Europeans found prosperous healthy nation-states and then set about to lower the standards of living in them. Of course, colonialism did some damage to many societies, but it also elevated many societies. It improved the quality of life and it was the end of colonialism which has caused such a mess in so many places. Again, I'm not saying the first world didn't mess up a lot, but this cut-and-dry "the rich nations are responsible" nonsense is precisely that, nonsense.

Earlier this year, I began an abortion on a young woman who was 17 weeks pregnant. Because of the two days of prior treatment, the amniotic membranes were visible and bulging. I ruptured the membranes and released the fluid to reduce the risk of amniotic fluid embolism. Then I inserted my forceps into the uterus and applied them to the head of the fetus, which was still alive, since fetal injection is not done at that stage of pregnancy. I closed the forceps, crushing the skull of the fetus, and withdrew the forceps. The fetus, now dead, slid out more or less intact. With the next pass of the forceps, I grasped the placenta, and it came out in one piece. Within a few seconds, I had completed my routine exploration of the uterus and sharp curettage. The blood loss would just fill a tablespoon. The patient, who was awake, hardly felt the operation. She was relieved, grateful, and safe. She wants to have children in the future.

My friend Martin Morse Wooster should work in that agency from "3 Days of the Condor" becuase he literally reads everything. Every now and then, he's kind enough to send me items I wouldn't otherwise see. Anyway, a few times a year, for the last few years, I get an envelope from Martin with a little note saying "Check out page this or that" to find an article in Liberty magazine denouncing me. The articles are usually pretty funny in their self-importance and earnestness (New readers may not know that there are legions of hardboiled libertarians of a certain stripe who think I'm the devil).

Anyway, I just got a new one. It's an article buried in the back (Liberty is arguably the worst laid-out magazine outside of a junior high school) by some guy named Clark Stooksbury. He says "In the age of Bush, the label 'conservatism' means little more than bloated deficits, perpetual war and boot-licking obeisance to the president. For a good hard look at the modern conservative movement check out its flagship, National Review, in either the online version, or the print magazine, cloyingly called 'on dead tree.'"

Then there's more about me owing my career to Monica Lewinsky, how I quote the Simpsons a lot, how Limbaugh and Coulter are even more immature than me (a low blow!) blah, blah, blah. He finally gets around to mentioning that he's actually supposed to be writing a review of a re-released book by the late, great, Robert Nisbet. Nisbet is "conservatism for grown-ups" he writes, because Nisbet criticized the Reagan adminsitration. "While the Goldberg crowd equates all criticism of Bush II with treason." There are a few more whines and snarks and then it ends.

Now, I don't bring this up to defend myself. I've long stopped caring what folks like this guy and Liberty magazine think of me. Indeed, it's particularly easy when they just make stuff up. Which gets me to the real point, all across the web -- and in other three dimensional backwaters -- there are people who call themselves conservatives who've convinced themselves they are rebels for challenging what they perceive to be National Review's style conservatism. That's fine. Indeed, it was probably ever thus. But they almost never actually use facts. They just say things like the above without even bothering to demonstrate it (much like all of the NR endorses gay marriage nonsense). For example, both in print and online, the magazine has criticized president Bush many times -- just not that much on the war on terror, because we think he's doing pretty good there. But on steel protectionism, the farm bill and big government conservatism generally, we've hit him hard and often. If we've ever used the word "treason" about a critic of Bush's, I'd like to know about it. And as for Robert Nisbet, he's among my favorite authors -- something I must have said a zillion times. Indeed, type "Robert Nisbet" into NRO's search engine and see what you'll find.

I don't mind criticism, even from the fever swamps. What I do object to is mindless and fact-less assertion without evidence. These people always get their dresses over their heads whenever I say I don't take them seriously. Well, I will when they start acting serious.