After I criticized the President’s (or was it Laura’s) ridiculous decision to increase spending for the NEA, a number of people e-mailed me to say that, even if they disagreed with the decision (and almost all of them seemed to), this was a trivial matter, and nothing to be really concerned about. Doubtless, they would have said the same about HHS Secretary’s Thompson’s decision to blow $25 million of your dollars on a nationwide helpline to help smokers quit, but they would have been wrong about that too. As Jacob Sullum discusses over at Reason, if nothing else (and I think that these decisions can be criticized on a good number of grounds), their symbolism alone is disastrous: they reveal an administration wed to a vision of an overbearing, overreaching state and they reveal an administration that cannot be trusted to control government spending, something that is not only a disgrace in a supposedly right-of-center White House, but may also be economically disastrous.

Yes, of course, the administration has achieved a great deal in the war against terror, and, yes, of course, I’d hate to see John Kerry as president, but that doesn’t mean that George W. Bush should be given a free pass on this sort of nonsense. When it comes to growth government spending, Mr. President, slower, please.

Or, dare to dream, how about going into reverse?

A snapshot from USA Today :

“FLORENCE, Ariz. -- Thousands of illegal immigrants, mostly from Central and South America, are being released into the USA almost immediately after they are picked up by the Border Patrol as part of a policy that U.S. officials acknowledge represents a significant gap in homeland security…”

Reflecting the growing unease on this topic in Europe, Norway’s education minister has now found it necessary to tell parliament that there are no plans to ban the hijab from schools. On the other hand, it’s also reported from Norway that a municipally employed teacher has been prevented from wearing a Star of David. Officials have decided that it could be deemed a provocation towards the many Muslim students at the school.

Once again, no further comment needed.

Governor Dean's Statement on AFSCME

BURLINGTON--Democratic presidential candidate Governor Howard Dean, M.D., issued the following statement today:

"We announced last week that our goal is to win Wisconsin and our supporters responded beyond our expectations once again by donating more than $1 million to wage a strong fight in the state.

"We respect President McEntee and we will work hard to earn the support of AFSCME members in Wisconsin next week. With the backing of hundreds of thousands of Americans, SEIU, and IUPAT we plan to win Wisconsin next Tuesday, regain the momentum our campaign needs, and win the nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Boston."

Went to Nellie's Intermediate school last night to pick her up after a drama
program. Waiting in the school lobby, I found myself browsing a large board
promoting tolerance and diversity.

The display consisted of pictures of staff members. Each picture had a
question printed on paper & pinned to the picture. Underneath, on a
different-colored paper, was the staff member's reply to the question. Both
question and reply were printed, I guess from a school computer. I jotted
down the following. I have preserved spelling precisely.

---How can we help teach people that racism is not right?
---By excepting [sic] people for who they are.

---What does prejudice mean to you?
---When you discriminate agaist [sic] someone for being different than [sic]
you.

---What does prejudice mean to you?
---Prejudice is a terrible thing. It seperates [sic] all the beautiful
people that should be sharing ideas and gifts.

One of the reasons that many people (including myself) supported the EU was the idea that it would accelerate the global push for free trade. And (with the glaring exception of agriculture) for a long time it was indeed a force for good in this area. That’s decreasingly true these days, as can be seen from this new initiative apparently being discussed in Brussels.

"Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy is said to be pondering plans which could see governments able to veto imports which do not meet individual societies' "collective preferences".

No further comment necessary.

The proposed EU constitution is, once again, lurching back onto the agenda, cheered on by the usual dismal crowd of toadies, madmen, crooks and cynics. Meanwhile, the EU spokeswoman for Denmark’s Liberal party is bemoaning her country’s irritatingly democratic habit of putting major EU questions to the vote. The EU Observer quotes her as follows:

"Referenda have a very conservative effect on development. If the other countries copy us, the EU will fall apart…Referenda are in fact pure gambling. There is no guarantee of a positive outcome, unfortunately".

Well, give her full marks for honesty.

There has been, for once, good news on this topic. On Thursday, the Department of Defense canceled plans to use an electronic voting system that would have allowed Americans abroad to cast their ballots over the Internet. That seems sensible. The system may or may not have been vulnerable (my guess is the former) to tampering and error, but it looked likely to fail the essential test of any voting system: that it has to have the confidence of the electorate. The Department of Defense has done the right thing.

Meanwhile Meg McLaughlin, the president of the faintly-spookily named Accenture eDemocracy Services (the organization responsible for developing the DoD’s system) tells the New York Times that “we are confident that sending absentee ballots via the Internet is just as secure as sending them by mail.”

Give it up, Meg.

If there was a stir during the day, it occurred when Dean indicated he would consider taking the vice presidential slot on a Democratic ticket. "I would . . . do anything I could to get rid of President Bush," he said on WMCS-AM, a Milwaukee talk-radio station. "I'll do whatever is best for the party. Obviously, I'm running for president, but whatever's best is what I'll do."

TED KENNEDY: "There is no morality in the mushroom cloud. The black rain will fall equally on the just and the unjust, and the world that is left in the ashes of Armageddon will little know nor long remember which was the Evil Empire."

Mrs. Bush was mostly pleasant throughout the interview in her little-used East Wing office. She said she worked mostly from a desk in the private quarters of the White House. But she was testy about what her aides describe as her view of an Eastern establishment press that is antagonistic to her husband. When she was told that the campaign was looking tough already, she instantly disagreed.

"The Implications of Grutter v. Bollinger:Affirmative Action in Higher Education and Beyond."

Monday, February 9,2004,3:45pm

Hutchins Hall Room 100

Michigan Law School

Kudos to Jonah for his superb NRO column yesterday, href="http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg200402051231.asp">Division
Diversions: Enough with this two-Americas, wedge-issues, unity nonsense.
I have a small quibble and a proposed addendum. First the quibble,
though "quibble" is probably not the right word. Although Jonah is right to
note that Democrats like John Kerry imply that they will unite the
American people, I was struck at the time that, in his victory speech on
Tuesday, Kerry did not explicitly promise that he would do so (and of course
if elected he won't). Instead, after chastising Bush's claim to be a "uniter
not a divider" on the ground that we are more divided than ever (as though
this is solely Bush's fault), his very next line began (I quote from
memory), "but WE BELIEVE that. . . ." The "we" here was clearly Democrats
since the litany that followed was his campaign issues that obviously divide
the electorate. This "we" is in contrast to "they" which refers to
Republicans. Unlike George Bush, Kerry made no promise to unite America and
he has no intention of doing so. When Democrats repeatedly call to "Take back
the White House" or, even worse, "Take back America" (a pretty scary phrase
when you think about it) what they mean is take it back from the other half of
the electorate with whom they disagree. Unless they somehow dispose of this
other half, the nation will remain divided as it always has.

Now here is my proposed addendum: Jonah's historical survey reminded me of
my pet peeve which I sometimes even let myself vent to my students.
It is the eternal reference by public figures to "these troubled times" in
which we live--a phrase that has been uttered by public figures for as long as
I can remember--including throughout the boom years of the 1980s and 1990s
when it really started to get on my nerves. I remember the 1970s when we
still had the Vietnam War, gas lines and stagflation and malaise. I recall
the 60s when, after the Kennedy, King, and Kennedy assassinations, one dreaded
hearing the words "We interrupt this program to bring you the following news
bulletin. . ." because it was often followed by some new catastrophe. From
body bags, to riots in all major cities to regular airliner crashes (yes at
least one or more a year), to coal mine disasters, to mass street protests,
sit ins and shut downs, it was a truly miserable time. I even
remember the 50s when as a very small child I was seriously afraid of nuclear
conflagration--with good reason and with the rest of the nation watched the
events of the Cuban Missile Crisis unfold on TV in 1962.

I then ask my students (rhetorically), if we are living in troubled times, can
you tell me when in the past was the good time? Was it the 50s (Korea,
the "red scare")? The 40s (WWII & the holocaust)? The 30s (Depression)?
The 20s? (A few frenzied fun years in between WWI and the Crash marked by
widespread gangland violence and corruption resulting from Prohibition), the
Teens (WWI and the Lost Generation)? The 1900s (Jim Crow)? Indeed all these
decades were marked by racial segregation and a palpable overt racism in the
culture that I am old enough to remember. The end of the Nineteenth Century
(labor unrest and violence, mass immigration into choked cities,
Reconstruction)? The Civil War (about which Jonah writes)? Antebellum
America deeply divided over slavery? The late 18th Century when Madison and
Jefferson organized their Republican Party to oppose the reigning
Federalists? Or was it after the Revolution when factional politics got so
bad we needed to devise an entirely new constitutional order? Or was it the
Revolutionary War? Or....well you get the idea.

No, by comparison, today we are living in incredibly wonderful times, even
after having been attacked by radical Islamic terrorists with whom we are now
at war--though times were definitely better in the years immediately before
9/11. Remember all this the next time you hear a public figure preface his or
her remarks with "In these troubled times." On second thought, why should you
be as annoyed as I am. Never mind.

From a reader:

Jonah, Do I have to remind you that Communist China: 1) Bans all unauthorized religions? 2) Sells arms to terrorist states (Iran, NK, Syria, Libya, etc.)? 3) Has 500 missiles pointed at the island democracy of Taiwan? 4) Has eroded Hong Kong freedoms to the point where some are calling it "one country, one and a half systems"? I know you're not the kind of conservative that goes ga-ga over a tax code, ignoring everything else in the process. That's why I found your corner entry so disappointing.

ME: Oh, I agree with all of that and I apologize for suggesting otherwise. But I do think the Gipper would be pretty psyched about all of this given his view that economic liberty and political liberty are intertwined. Plus, on the narrow issue of economics, it is pretty ironic/fun when the biggest Commie nation in the world throws in the towel and adopts Reaganomics to facilitate growth.

From today's Wall Street Journal (sub required):

China Sets Tax Plan to Aid Growth

BEIJING -- In a major new policy that a senior Beijing official says resembles "Reaganomics," China is preparing to stimulate investment in its economy by reducing taxes for domestic companies and by simplifying the tax code.

The plan, however, would also lead to a de facto increase in the taxes that foreign-invested companies pay, because much of the preferential tax treatment they enjoy would be abolished. By the time the plan is fully implemented in two years or so -- contingent on approval by Chinese lawmakers -- the new tax rate for all foreign and domestic companies will be "in the range of 24% to 28%," Deputy Finance Minister Lou Jiwei, a plan architect, said in an interview Thursday.

"Our major purpose is to standardize the system and block loopholes," Mr. Lou said. But the lower taxes for Chinese companies, accompanied by what he said would be a gradual shift away from using government spending to fuel growth, also underscore how much fiscal policy has evolved in a country that is nominally ruled by communists.

"It's a lot like Reaganomics," Mr. Lou said. "We feel that only through simplifying things and lowering tax rates will revenue collection become more efficient. At the same time, we also want to give fuller play to companies," rather than the government, when it comes to investment in the economy, Mr. Lou said....

From a reader:

Dear Mr. Goldberg,

I once heard (saw?) the great WFB on Firing Line compare the death penalty to speeding tickets: a lot of people speed, but only a small portion are actually caught & ticketed. Should we then stop ticketing speeders because some get away?

Fry that dude.

...got several readers thinking about the Simpsons. Some quotes, most even about sugar, from the episode where Homer wants to be a sugar mogul:

"Must protect sugar...thieves everywhere...the strong must protect the sweet...the sweeeeet" -Homer

"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women" -Homer

"I want it all - the terrifying lows, the dizzying highs, the creamy middles. Sure, I might offend a few of the blue noses with my cocky stride and musky odors. Oh, I'll never be the darling of the so-called city fathers who cluck their tongues, stroke the beards, and talk about what's to be done with this Homer Simpson." -Homer

Homer: And you didn't think I'd make any money. I found a dollar while I was waiting for the bus.
Marge: While you were out "earning" that dollar, you lost forty dollars by not going to work. The plant called and said if you don't come in tomorrow, don't bother coming in Monday.
Homer: Woo hoo! Four-day weekend!

"We hit the jackpot here...white gold...Texas tea...sweetener!" -Homer

"Read your town charter, boy. 'If foodstuff should touch the ground, that foodstuff should be turned over to the village idiot.' Since I don't see him around, start shoveling!" -Homer

"Oww! They're defending themselves somehow." – Homer, while being stung by bees attacking his sugar pile.

Beekeeper 1: "To the beemobile!"
Beekeeper 2: "You mean your Chevey?"
Beekeeper 1: Looks down in shame "Yes."

"A mountain of sugar is too much for one man. It's clear now why God portions it out in those tiny packets." – Homer

From a reader:

Jonah, In a few years, you will begin to hear the exact same argument in your house:

You: I said no!
Little Lucy: But, Dad, Jane's mom is getting her a squirrel for a pet!
That's not fair!
You: Go to your room!

Part of the problem with our culture today is so many liberal parents actually cave to these arguments. They have to, for intellectual consistency's sake.

From a lawyer in Rochester, NY:

That emailer demonstrates the problem w/ all of liberal thought. Liberals aren't happy w/ equality of opportunity (every murderer has the potential to get the death penalty if the gov't can successfully prosecute for it). Instead, liberals want equality of outcome (everyone gets the same punishment). This is akin to liberal desires for universal health care. Liberals don't care that nationalizing health care would simply mean that everyone gets a lower standard of care - as long as the outcome is equal.

Or maybe I don't understand it. A reader writes:

Dear Mr. Goldberg,

The argument against executing Mr. Smith is that other murderers (assuming he is, of course, the culprit) have performed substantially similar actions
and have not been executed.

See eg, Reinhardt's argument (his answer to question 10).

Not to suggest it is a particularly compelling argument, but it is certainly valid to question whether it is justice to execute the murderer who makes numerous mistakes, incontrovertibly proving his guilt, while letting the smarter but no less worse murderer receive only life in prison due to a lesser body of evidence against him.

ME: Assuming I understand his point, I don't see why person X should not get the punishment he deserves because person Y didn't get the punishment he deserved. If some murderers are cheating justice because of a lack of evidence, that's too bad. But that's the price we pay for a system based upon fair trials. But it simply doesn't strike me as "unfair" to execute a murderer caught dead to rights even if someone else gets off for a similar crime. The justice system makes all sorts of compromises with circumstance. But if it doesn't have to, and the guy deserves it, why not go for the most just punishment? I think it's terrible that mob hit men strike deals for their testimony, getting cushy safe-houses and/or country club prisons. But just because those mass murderers get such deals, does that mean all mass-murderers should get similar deals?

By the way, I'm not saying that all murderers should always get the death penalty. I think we can discriminate, as most laws do, between different kinds of homicide.

So they found the body of this eleven year old girl in Florida. They have Joseph Smith on video tape abducting her. He has a criminal record. They will probably wrap up the forensics in the next couple days. Let’s just assume they do. Let’s assume they’ll find her backpack and some blood and some other grim reminders of what this awful man did.

So what is the argument against executing him?

Oh, I don’t mean the arguments about the sanctity of life, state-sanctioned murder etc. I respect those arguments even as I disagree with them profoundly.

I’m referring to all of those esoteric arguments about statistical discrepancies, racial disparities etc. What do those arguments have to do with the case for or against executing Joseph Smith? What does it matter if we’ve sentence someone to death incorrectly elsewhere (though, apparently never executed anyone incorrectly) if Joseph Smith is clearly guilty? All of this high-flown rhetoric and statistical legerdemain tends to obscure the fact that certain people really deserve the death penalty. I think Smith -- if proven guilty -- would deserve it if we’d mistakenly executed 500 people this month alone. I think Smith would deserve it if he were black and we’d been executing blacks “disproportionately” for years. I think he’d deserve it if his execution didn’t deter any other crime, anywhere, ever. As Ernest Van den Haag noted in the pages of NR long ago, "If deserved, capital punishment should be imposed. If not, it should not be. Deterrence, however useful, cannot morally justify any punishment."

Arguments based on error rates, deterrence and statistical analyses of ethnic breakdowns (or left-handedness for that matter) have absolutely nothing to do with whether or not Joesph Smith deserves the death penalty for what he’s done. Nothing. They do have relevance, obviously, to the various questions about how – and if—our justice system should be reformed or changed. But executing Joseph Smith – if proven guilty of this crime – would not be an argument for fixing the justice system, it would be exhibit A in the case that sometimes the justice system gets things right.

While playing with this pretty cool interactive electoral map, I thought of something. Will the networks stay with Red for Republican and Blue for Democrats. The reason the Republicans got stuck with red last time was that the challenger party gets red. Well, that should make the Dems get their more logical color this time. But that would also blur the great storyline of the 2000 election. It'll be interesting to see if there's a mini-controversy about it.

Oh, and by the way, if you play with that map you'll see why this will probably be a fairly close election no matter which Democrat runs against Bush (not counting the Shaprton-Kucinich contingent).

And now I'm going to bed. I'll be on CNN around 8:30 AM EST (today, Friday). If you've got a really good suggestion for an undercovered story of the week between now and 7:30 AM feel free to send it along.

From a reader, retired from the Air Force:

I had the pleasure of spending 3 month in Haiti courtesy of President Clinton in 1994. The country is a basket case. If ever there was an argument that wealth has beneficial impacts on the environment, and poverty devastating effects, it is Haiti. I saw NO wild birds in 3 months, only feral chickens. There were a few dogs rooting in US trash, but they were mostly shouldered aside by the Haitians themselves. Cosmo would hate it, no squirrels either. The hillsides were mostly deforested, so when Tropical Storm Gorden came by, an entire pie shaped part of Port Au Prince was washed to sea in a mudslide - estimated casualties 2000, but nobody really knew because there was no reliable census. For disease and vermin, the place was crawling pretty much everything nasty. An Army troop of my acquaintance was bit by a brown recluse spider on the exposed appendage in the port a john - something I would not wish on even Al Sharpton. I also saw the tarantulas that the entomologists had caught, about the size of a good size dinner plate. Given time, I am sure that some of them had desires to play Shelob. We were mostly free of the stomach issues since MRE's are immune to bacteria in the way they are immune to taste. This changed once we had Brown and Root (Oh my gosh Halliburton worked for the Clinton Administration too?) started preparing real and quite tasty food. Suffice it to say that a 100 yard sprint to the port a john is not fun, when around 7000 other folks have some form of stomach distress. Astonishingly, despite the AIDS infection rate of over 2/3 for prostitutes, when the Bangladesh battalion showed up to do their part, their first request upon hitting the ground, was asking for permission to set up the unit brothels.

Bush is apparently thinking of appointing him to the intelligence panel. I think that's a great idea. Here are some other folks who I think make sense for one reason or another:

Joe Lieberman
Sam Nunn
John Breaux
Rudy Giuliani
Robert Strauss
Kenneth Pollack
Richard Pipes
Bill Cohen
Fareed Zakaria

Not that I want to get in the middle of Derb and Peter, but here's an interesting tidbit on the point of what a mess Haiti is (where my brother's wife is from, btw).

My parents were stuck in an airport once and they struck up a conversation with a young doctor/scientist who was on his way to Haiti. Haiti? Why? They asked.

Well, he was specialist in epidemiology, infectious diseases etc. He explained that Haiti has more diseases, documented and "wild," that an epidemiologist could do in one or two years in Haiti what might take a lifetime elsewhere. Haiti is to 21st century disease researchers what, say, Sub Saharan Africa was to 19th century zologists. So, if you're heading there, you might want to hold off on the cheap steak tartar.

Interesting feedback. I would say that one reason NRO isn't as "interactive" about the campaign this year might have something to do with the fact that there was no Republican primary. For example, The New Republic's website -- not mentioned in the PEJ's report -- has extensive and excellent primary coverage in a way that I doubt they would if this were purely a Republican primary season. Obviously, they'd cover a GOP primary but the New Republic isn't a first-stop resource for Republican primary voters and National Review isn't for Democratic primary voters.

Also, I've got to remember to send out that "More 'Bitch-Slapping!'" memo.

Reader Sean Porter writes:

Dear Jonah:

Two things:

1. A nit: I think "really pointy rocks" should have been "really pointy sticks" in order to insert (or better capture) a Monty Pythonesque moment.

2. According to Robert V. Remini in Andrew Jackson and His Indian Wars, Viking Penguin, 2001:

"Without doubt the election of 1828 was one of the filthiest in American history, with no holds barred. [Andrew] Jackson's wife was labeled a bigamist, his mother a prostitute, and he himself a murderer. And [John Quincy] Adams hardly fared better. He was called a pimp for the Czar of Russia and charged with living in kingly splendor in the White House. Other charges of immorality or misbehavior by the two men were invented or distorted."

Remini goes on to describe that, by the time of the 1828 election, the North-South divide was starting to take shape; one of the major issues for the South was the constant conflicts arising out of the continuing land grab by southern settlers of Native American territories east of the Mississippi, coupled with British and Spanish intrigue in Florida involving the use of Native American and fugitive slave soldiers against Americans (the Northern states had long before wiped out significant Native American power).

Also, the 1824 election of John Quincy Adams has been decided by a vote in the House, which was led by Speaker Henry Clay. No sooner had Adams been inaugurated then Clay was appointed Secretary of State, an office that at the time was a leading position in which to ascend to the presidency (the 1824 House vote was called "the corrupt bargain").

Just thought another slice of a divided America may be of interest.

Keep up the great work.