WASHINGTON DC, March 13 /RPS News/ -- Rioting in Syria expanded to Hasakah, Dirik, Amouda, and Ras el-Ein, all Kurdish majority cities in northern Syria bordering Turkey and Iraq. According to RPS sources, many Ba'ath government buildings have been scorched in Dirik and Amouda.

Kurdish and Arab leaders are calling for an uprising and indications are that Aleppo, the second largest city in Syria, is heeding the call. Kurds leaders are also calling for an uprising in Damascus.

Eyewitnesses are claiming that many civilians have been killed in Amouda and Dirik when they clashed with government forces. No exact figures were available.

Qamoshli, SYRIA, March 12 12:25pm/RPS News/ -- A soccer match between al-Jihad team of Qamoshli and al-Fatwa team of Deir el-Zour in northern Syria that started at 1pm local time, ended in at least 20 people dead and about 150 injured.

According to eyewitnesses, fans in the stands held up pro-Saddam and anti-Kurds banners and that when Kurds scuttled with them, the Mayor of Qamoshli called the internal security police and upon arrival started firing indiscriminately at the crowd.

RPS learned that most of the dead and injured were people who objected to the public display for support of Saddam. Qamoshli is a multi-ethnic city that includes Arabs and Kurds. Some fans claimed that the police joined the pro-Saddam fans and used their guns on unarmed people. The injured were transported to different area hospitals.

Thanks for your comments about Aznar.

I will never forget the TV images of Aznar after the ETA attempt on his life in 1995. He, like DeGaulle after the liberation of Paris or Reagan after being shot, showed what he was made of. He was calm, unafraid, in charge. Aznar won his election that day [Aznar's party won the election of 1996, and Aznar became prime minister early in 1997].

I will miss Aznar, not the least because he leaves power as the first Spanish ruler that, as far as I know, does so because he wants to [do so], since King and Holy Roman Emperor Charles I of Spain and V of Germany. I hope that he's not the last.

‘Prestigious’ London restaurateurs have formed a joint venture with Cuba to open up a reproduction of a famous Havana bar once frequented by Hemingway. To make the Cuban experience even more authentic, Scott of the Burton Terrace blog suggests that patrons should not “be allowed to use camera phones, access the internet or read books not approved by the restaurant. [They] must bring their own toiletries.” His readers have even more suggestions, including this:

”If you try to leave the restaurant with your child, Janet Reno will make sure your kid is dragged back in, at gunpoint.”

Talking to Bill O'Reilly last night about being pro-life in Hollywood, two-time Emmy-winner Patricia Heaton, from Everybody Loves Raymond said: "it will not be Barbra Streisand I'm standing in front of when I have to make an accounting of my life." In discussing abortion she said, talking about her work as chairman for Feminists for Life: "The early feminists were pro-life. And really abortion is a huge disservice to women, and it hasn't been presented that way. So -- so it's a -- there's a sort of an in for me because of that take on it."

Several readers noticed the same thing I have. Even when the conjecture was centered around ETA, the Madrid bombings were routinely referred to as "terrorism" by the media. When the same things happen in Israel, they're attacks by militants.

Let's see. Kerry believes that Bush's coalition was fraudulent, that Bush is a unilateralist, America has lost its allies and the Iraq war was...was...I'm sorry I really have no idea whether Kerry thinks the Iraq war was worth it or not since he steadfastly refuses to answer the question with any finality.

But as for the rest, let's see. It seems more and more likely that the attack in Madrid was because of Spain's "fraudulent" "paper tiger" coalition. Seems like al Qaeda thought it was a real coalition.

Meanwhile, we are still in multilateral talks with North Korea and seeking more cooperation from the UN in Iraq.

And, the French, the US and others are fighting in Haiti together.

And, oh yeah, Iraq has a new Constitution.

Am I crazy, or is the world Kerry sees simply different than the way it is?

from the guy whose email I last posted:

I realize you are busy and probably speed-read your e-mails, but you really missed my point.

I clearly stipulated in my e-mail that, “I doubt Jonah would have even mentioned it if Gibson were a not-so-devout believer who had said, ‘I’m making this movie because I just think it’s a pretty powerful story that will make a cool movie.’ ”

In other words, if Sophia Coppola decides to make a biopic about the Apostle Paul, but does it purely as an artistic endeavor and not as an act of faith or a religious “calling,” then I think you will have very few, if any people wondering what she is going to do with the profits. In the case of The Passion, no one is demanding to know what Newmarket or actress Monica Bellucci are doing with their proceeds from the film.

Thus, asking what true believer and inspired-by-God Mel is doing with his likely massive profits will not in any way, shape, or form discourage secular Hollywood types from making similar movies.

While one could hardly describe it as concise, it would be a disservice to fail to mention Steven Runciman's History of the Crusades. Despite the length, Runciman is an engaging writer, and I haven't found a shorter text that truly does justice to the epic scale of the Crusades, both in their glory and in their brutality (which, to be fair, can be assigned to all involved). In addition, he's able to sketch the conflicts not just between the European Crusaders and the Islamic world, but also the oft-neglected Byzantine empire, which found itself caught in the middle.

I didn't say I was done criticizing him. From a reader:

You missed one of the great examples of hypocrisy-when Michael Moore came to Denver to prescreen his "Bowling for Columbine" myth for the parents of those killed he charged them admission. he also did not give a penny to the memorial fund.

From a reader:

Derb has written lots about the Uighurs of Sinkiang, always with the conclusion that they are resistant to al-Qaeda-type nihilism. This is from a September 5, 2001 article, straight out of NRO: "America's war on terror, and the anti-Muslim feeling generated in the U.S. by last September's attacks, have been a godsend to the Chinese. The Uighurs are Muslims, you see. Very few of them are Muslims of the fundamentalist kind: the Turkish/Turkic peoples seem to carry some cultural gene that immunizes them against religious fanaticism. Islam is their faith, though, and it follows that if the Chinese tag the East Turkestan independence movements as 'terrorist,' in the present climate of opinion, nobody will much mind." And remember, "The capital city is Urumqi"!

I did say in my defense that I'm fairly ignorant on the rise of Islam in China. This reader sets me straight:

Jonah,

Please don't tell me you fell for the standard Communist propaganda on the Uighur people of "Xinjiang."

Contrary to that pompous little e-mailer, the Uighurs are the most peaceful, liberal, and pro-American Muslims on earth. No one from the outside who has investigated the Communist claims of "jihadism" has ever found them. If Derb was "in town" he himself would have set that moron straight.

Sincerely (go ahead and use my name),

D.J. McGuire: President and Co-Founder, China e-Lobby
Author of Dragon in the Dark: How and Why Communist China Helps Our Enemies in the War on Terror (Now available at www.dragoninthedark.com, or via Amazon.com)

A reader responds to today's column:

This campaign is really wimpy. Bush should be called a liar and a man who will waste the lives of young Americans in a war for neocon-artists like you. He is a traitor and you are too. So I'd like to see an ad by the Kerry campaign that lays out all the neo-con lies and intrigues that have driven the nation to the edge of a cliff. That wouldn't be nasty enough, but it would be true. I can't wait until January 2005 when Bush is back in Texas on his faux ranch choking on pretzels and crying in his non-alcoholic beer. And I hope you will be kind enough to buy him a round or two. The American people are waking up to the nightmare Bush and the neo-cons have created. Maybe you should send your resume to The Nation because it's going to be a long time before you get anywhere near the hearing you get at the top of this corrupt government. And, one more thing: eff off, ok?

Given Jonah's post mentioning me, this is as good a moment as any to say that I have not (to my knowledge) defended Gibson the man. I've defended the movie he made against certain charges. I am perfectly prepared to believe that Gibson may himself be an anti-Semite, be on a "strange death trip," or whatever else the critics say. But I also think that the usual critical rule of judging movies on their own terms should apply here.

Regarding Rich's solution: It sounds like a compromise but isn't. Presumably Gibson is supposed to tithe his profits whatever movie he makes. The question here is whether this movie imposes a special additional obligation on him. To say all he needs to do is to tithe is to answer that with a no.

I really don't want to spend the next day reading and talking about this. So let me say that I think a lot of readers who disagree with me make some excellent points and I've changed my thinking on some of this. Here's where I come down and where I think I'll be staying.

I think Gibson will have an image problem if he truly ends up pocketing as much money as some predict. Whether he should have an image problem is a different, though not irrelevant, point.

So should he?

Well, yes and no. As I said from the begining I don't believe in the notion of "excess" or "obscene" profits as they are defined these days. If, for example, you go into business to make a drug that cures cancer and you end up saving 2 billion lives and making $200 billion dollars, great. You did what you set out to do, you helped the world, you succeeded, hooray for you, go spend your money on a solid gold AMC Pacer for all I care (though again: images proplems are inevitable). (This is not to say I think all businesses are morally equivalent, making baby forumal is different than making porn movies, even if both are legal).

But here's the disconnect with the Gibson movie. Again, as I said, I take Gibson at his word that he didn't go into this for the money. He went into this as an artist, a believer, a messenger. And the message of that movie is significant, isn't it? Or has all of the praise on NRO and the condemnation elsewhere been for show? Ramesh and others even argued, rightly, in response to Gertrude Himmelfarb's op-ed that the message is so special it is sui generis. Well, I think if Gibson made the movie as a true believer and artist, then the profit he makes from it should have some connection to the message as well.

Let me offer two illustrations as to why I think so.

First, imagine Oliver Stone made a movie about the poor in America. Imagine it was full of all of the controversy, deceit and moralizing we've come to expect from Stone. Now, imagine he made $400 million in profits from it and all he did is buy a few more mansions with it. If you can honestly say that conservatives wouldn't have a point in criticizing Stone -- even mildly -- for that behavior, I salute your consistency.

Second illustration: Napster. For centuries artists have been monumental hypocrites. They claim they do art for art's sake, that all they want to do is "raise awareness" and that they do it for free if they had to. And yet, for the most part they've always been eager to limit the public's exposure to their work in order to maximize their profits. Why do sculptors break their molds if they want everyone to see their art? Rodin could have made thousands of copies of, say, the Burghers of Calais, but instead he made a handful and then broke the mold. This is a point I've made many times about the controversy over Napster. Acoustic guitar philosophers swear up and down they aren't in it for the money. They say they're in it for "the music" or "for their fans" and they often mock conventional business men for their "greed." But, it turns out, the second the possibility that more of their fans could get more of their music, they freak out at the thought they might lose their royalty checks.

Now, I believe passionately in property rights and I think people deserve to reap the rewards of risk-taking as much as the next guy. But I also think there's no shame in saying you want to make a profit in the first place. Artists do, or say they do. And when they get caught revealing themselves to be just as "greedy" as other businessmen, they should be called on it. (Imagine the hypocrisy if Oliver Stone opposed the free downloading of his poor-peoples movie by poor people).

Now, Mel Gibson made this movie, he says, as an artist, as a Christian, as a messenger. I believe him. As far as I know he didn't say he was in it for the money. Therefore, I think he's got an image problem. But people of good will can disagree.

to get Gibson-profit emails:

Regarding your latest post on The Corner on the profit motive wrt Christian movies, I think you miss the point.

Newmarket (the distributor) is making plenty of profit. So are the theaters. So are the actors, producers, etc. The only question here is whether or not it is unseemly for Gibson, who portrayed his making of this film as a religious calling, to make a HUGE profit from The Passion’s success. I doubt Jonah would have even mentioned it if Gibson were a not-so-devout believer who had said, “I’m making this movie because I just think it’s a pretty powerful story that will make a cool movie.”

Another way of looking at it: if people were demanding that Gibson AND everyone else simply give all the profits away, then you would have a point. As it is, you don’t.

My response: Really? Movies can get made on a routine basis with all the profits going to the theaters, distributors, etc., and none to the Gibson-equivalents? I doubt that.

E. J. Dionne Jr. says that the weak job-creation numbers, and the press coverage of outsourcing, have put Bush's re-election at risk. Perhaps. But consider the 2002 elections. During the summer of 2002, Republican panic (and Democratic glee) over the economy and the corporate scandals was running higher than it is now. The economy was worse then. And Republicans did extremely well in the fall.

Or consider 1996, the last time a president got re-elected--and re-elected quite easily. The end of 1995 and the start of 1996 saw a lot of press coverage of "downsizing," the hot media scare story about the economy at that time. (It affected about as many voters as "outsourcing" does.)

The major econometric models of elections all show Bush winning, some of them comfortably.

Then there's the what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it problem. Kerry's plan to revive the economy is to hike taxes on high earners. Voters may not have strong objections to the idea, but I don't know that they're going to see it as a way to create jobs.

None of these points means that Bush is going to win, or that the jobs issue won't sink him. But it does mean that it's not a slam-dunk for Democrats.

I've gotten several emails like this:

Jonah,

Your lack of knowledge about the rise of Islam in China is apparent. Was Derbyshire out of town?

The province of Xin Jiang Province is a hot bed of non-Han Chinese Islamic jihadism. The capital city is Urumqi.

Do you know what which Islamic countries border China and the one in particular that has a 25 mile border with China.

Your specific ignorance as to this issue is appalling for someone who has pretenses to erudition.

As usual,

All the best
[Name withheld]

Me: I do not dispute for a moment that I am relatively ignorant about the rise of Islam in China. What this and other readers missed was, well, my point. I was trying to make a joke about how the political correctness around the issue of Islamic terrorists being mostly Arab or Arab-looking would require that Bush's ads warn of a terrorist threat that "looks like America." By the way, I am perfectly aware that there are millions of Chinese Muslims -- and quite a few Norwegian Muslims too.

We bring the Muslims in the world the good news that the winds of black death (the anticipated strike on the United States) is now in its final stage...90 percent [ready] and God willing...soon (at the suitable time for the mujahidin (and the believers will rejoice by the victory of Allah). A warning to the nation...: Do not get near the civilian and military establishments of the crusader United States and its allies.

God is Great, God is Great.... Islam is coming...whatever the price....

The Abu-Hafs al-Masri Brigades (Al-Qaeda)

Sigh. A new Bush ad has an-Arab-looking terrorist in it and already the specter of "racism" is being raised. If the media plays this as they usually do, we can expect a lot of silliness and then, maybe, some ads featuring blue-eyed Mormon kids, old Norwegian women and Chinese men as Islamic terrorists.

I've got to head out for a while and I've already got several metric tons of Gibson email to wade through. So this is the last one for now, it's fairly representative of the backlash and makes some fine points:

Boy, are you wrong. Being on the verge of baseball season, your post and subsequent weasel words are a huge 'swing and a miss' that can be felt out here in Chicago, even on a windy day...

If a movie about Jesus' death was made by, oh, say Oliver Stone, in which distorted facts were spun into a preposterous conspiracy, and we then saw Stone being interviewed in his Dom Perignon-filled swimming pool, high-fiving his financial backers ("I KNEW those Christian suckers would buy into this!), then I too would be upset at the prospect of his making a gazillion dollars. But not so much with Stone as with the idiots who pay him the money.

Gibson clearly didn't do this as as a financial proposition. I'd wager he expected, at the outset, that he was pretty likely well end up $25mm poorer at the end of it. The fact that he looks to be hitting a gold mine is both a nice snub of Hollywood business acumen, and an opportunity for Gibson to test core beliefs (what would Jesus do if someone dropped a couple hundred million large into his bank account?).
Give him a chance- what with all the defense of the film he's been undertaking, perhaps he hadn't yet made plans on how to spend all the profits?

Of course, if he's filmed high-fiving friends in his Dom-filled pool, you can be sure I won't be buying the DVD of Lethal Weapon VIII.

Otherwise, keep up the good work- you're on a roll.

From a reader:

Hi Jonah,

Just got back from a week in the UK last night.

The whole time I was there all news outlets and programs...especially the BBC, were wall to wall with coverage of the return of the four UK citizen detainees from Guantanamo. The nation was blanketed with stories, reports and chat show discussions, all of which carried the same underlying themes and memes—barbaric Americans...poor lads...evil Bush...etc..

You would have thought that Army Rangers had swooped down on the Manchester Marks & Spencer’s and ripped these guys out the arms of their blind grandmothers. There was practically no mention of the fact that all of these guys had been picked up in the middle of a war zone in Afghanistan (when they supposedly were visiting Pakistan, which they had suddenly gotten the urge to go visit a few weeks after 9/11.)

Most of the TV channels interrupted regular programming to carry the landing of the C-130 plane carrying the sweet boys. The “presenter” I watched pointed out several times that the British authorities would not be making the lads wear shackles and hoods (unlike some other country we all know and loathe.)

Now the irony...

Yesterday morning the TV channels were in the middle of more live coverage of the Fab Four (preparing to show the release of one of them from the Paddington Green police station and the tearful reuniting with the family) when the reports of the bombings in Spain began to come through. All coverage switched over to cover that developing story.

What a difference a few minutes makes.

Kathryn posts:

E-mailer makes a good point, roughly right, I imagine: "Right off the top 1/2 is going to taxes, that ought to satisfy your social obligation argument."

I'm sorry but this is very wrong and it has nothing to do with Mel Gibson and the Passion. Taxes are not charity. They are not good works. They are not "social obligations" at all. They are a legal requirement ofthe state. Indeed, one sign that our current taxes are too high is that so many people think paying them absolves them of other social responsibilities. This is one of the reasons high taxes are immoral because they constitue the coercion of citizens to do what other people think is right, but you don't (think of federally funded abortions, for example). If paying taxes satisfies your "social obligation" does that mean folks -- like me -- who are always trying to minimize their taxes are less socially responsible, less moral?

Here's another:

I can't tell you how flabbergasted I was to see your post on Mel's Profit this morning. It literally reads like something you'd find on Salonor maybe the DNC's website.

1. He invested his own money on this project because on one else would touch it
2. Until the darn thing was released everyone was predicting (hoping?) he would lose his shirt on it
3. Isn't that the epitome of an entrepreneur? Isn't that what you used to celebrate?
4. For which other entrepreneurs have you questioned what they would do with
their profits?
5. Even if he took no risk on the deal (e.g. if he someone else had financed the deal and he had just contracted for a percentage of the profits) -- isn't it a good thing that the made this movie as opposed to Kill Bill or Lethal Weapon 53 anyway? To my knowledge you haven't made a big deal about the profits he or anyone else has made on other films. Why is it okay to make huge profits on Lethal Weapon 4 (which you could argue is of questionable artistic or cultural value) but somehow unseemly to make profits on the Passion?
6. What business is it of yours (or anyones) whether Mel tithes or not?
"(it's certainly fair for him to recoup his investment and then some)"??!?
My God! Who the heck are you? Since when is it National Review's position
(I know, I know, you never said it was NR's position) -- since when it is YOUR position that someone else gets to decide that it's "fair" for him to recoup his investment? And who is going to decide how much "then some" is? The government is already going to take 40% of it; even if he gives 10% to the church, he's still going to be left with $100+ million! We can't have that! After all, this isn't Ernest goes to Rehab, in which case, absolutely, it's okay to make $100 million.

The mind boggles. Perhaps I'm overreacting, but your post has me baffled.
Do you really believe this?

Me: Ignoring the hyperbole, I think point #5 is the best one and I hadn't thought of it that way. After all, why should a man be condemned for making a profit from doing good when he's not condemned for making a profit doing "bad" -- or at least not good. Put aside the readers implicit suggestion that it's okay to condemn making profit from making bad movies, I think this is a very good point. And I'll keep pondering it.

However two points: First, and again, all of this stuff about me having the "right" to "decide" anything strikes me as batty. And it troubles me that I never get these statements from readers when, say, I criticize Michael Moore for treating his own employees like dogs. After all, what business of mine is it how Michael Moore treats his workers? If you're answer is "hypocrisy," fair enough. But there are no shortage of people who would say there's something like hypocrisy in making a film to spread the Gospel and making a huge pile from it.

Which brings me to my second point. This is largely an issue of appearances. It might be right, wrong or something in between for Mel to get super rich off of a film depicting Christ's agony. But, as a matter of objective analysis, I think some people think it doesn't look great.

I knew these emails were coming:

Jonah,

What business is it of anyone’s what Mel Gibson does with the profit from a movie he financed and made? Why does the fact that it is a religious movie give you, or anyone else, the license to be concerned about the movie’s profits? And why does the AMOUNT of profit dictate the necessity for us all to discuss what he does with the money? If he only made, say $75 million, would you be concerned? By the way, where did Spielberg’s profits for Schindler’s List go? I understand that he did found Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, a non profit organization after the movie came out. But did he pocket most of the profit? If not, good for him, but I’ve searched the internet and don’t see that topic ever discussed (except where a news story said that Schindler’s wife wanted 6%).

Mel Gibson has given significant portions of his earnings to his religious cause long before his movie was made.

I agree with you most of the time, and maybe I’ve just had too much coffee, but that post just flew all over me.

ME: I'm going to respond at length in the hope of anticipating further emails on this point.

It's funny, we can go on for weeks in the Corner judging what various liberals and/or celebrities do and say without anyone saying "Why is that your business?" But, every now and then, if someone turns their attention on what a conservative icon does, we get the "who's buisness is it?" complaints (the last time for me, I think, was when I said some negative things about Dick Grasso). Well, I'm sorry, it's all of our business. I've addressed this point so many times I don't want to repeat myself. But look at it this way: If you are opposed to government interference in the private sector you need to be in favor of increased vigilence by the private sector. The government has absolutely no business whatsoever with the issue of what Mel Gibson does with his money. But we live in a society too. Shaming, judging, encouraging, applauding, celebrating the actions of public figures is how culture gets made.

I don't think Christina Aguilera should be forced by the feds to stop acting like a tramp, but I do think it's entirely legitimate for me and others to criticize her for acting like such a frat house throw rug. I don't think I have the right to make Mel Gibson do anything. But I have every right to have opinions about the guy and, last time I checked, I have the right to voice those opinions. Indeed, that's what I get paid to do.

As for Spielberg, my recollection is that he did give away all of the profits for the simple reason that a mega-millionaire getting really rich off the Holocaust is a bad look, especially for a guy named Spielberg. If I'm wrong on that, fine. But that doesn't really affect my point, does it?

As for the point about the "AMOUNT" being the issue, fair enough. But I think most reasonable people know what I'm getting at (and most email has been in agreement with me). No, if he made $3 million in profit, I wouldn't be raising the issue. He took serious risks and who knows what kind of price he's yet to pay at the hands of Hollywood etc. But this game can be played in reverse. What if he made $3 billion from a movie about the Crucifixion? Would this reader still be untroubled by it if Gibson did nothing with the money?

By the way, I don't mean to pick on this reader, it's just that I'm getting and will get lots of email on this point.

The Washington Post story on the accused spy Susan Lindauer mentions her second cousin Andrew Card by name seven times, including in the second paragraph. Fair enough. But it doesn't mention that she worked for Democrats until the second to last praragraph and even then it's pretty weak: " Lindauer worked as a press aide for some Democrats in Congress in the mid-1990s and as recently as 2002."

Note: I think this is very unlikely.

But all of the coverage of the Madrid bombings focuses on whether it ETA or Al Qaeda (See today's Times, for example). What if the real scenario is closer to both-and? First, if it's al Qaeda, the thinking seems to be that it's onee of al Qaeda's subsidiaries. Second, there's been a lot of conjecture that if this is was ETA then it probably isn't the main faction of ETA. Their political arm, after all, condemned the bombings. So if it was the Basques it was probably a rogue faction.

Now, Al Qaeda is, we've been told time and again, a "terrorist holding company." What if one of these splinter groups of al Qaeda found common cause with a splinter group ETA? It is not like terrorist groups -- and regimes -- haven't formed absurd marriages of convenience before (Molotov-Ribbentrop pact anyone?). Remember all of the weird links between and among the IRA, Libya, the Palestinians and the Sandanistas and others during the 1980s?

Indeed, the Islamists could have duped ETA into doing something like this -- or vice versa.

What would make that so troubling is that it would give Al Qaeda a new way of getting around most of the usual security measures designed to foil Islamist attacks. Anyway, just something to ponder.

First email on the issue:

Jonah,

Good point but seems a bit premature. He has not yet realized the gain.

I do think Mel’s history of spending his money on the Church gives us a clue as to how he will spend this.

Thanks for all the great discussions. I am addicted to The Corner.

The Democratic Underground's analysis.

The Journal also reports today that Mel Gibson stands to make between $350 and $400 million in profit from The Passion. I am not someone who thinks profits are ever "obscene" -- at least not in the way liberals use the word. However, is no one remotely troubled by this? Whether the movie is wonderful or offensive, it is still about the Crucifixion and Mel Gibson has said time and again that he made the movie out of religious and artistic passion. I take him at his word, and considering the trouble he had in making it, there's a lot of evidence on his side.

But doesn't that raise the question of what he's going to do with all the cash? If he's going to use the money to make more biblical pictures, as he's said he wants, I think that's one thing. But simply pocketing all of the cash (it's certainly fair for him to recoup his investment and then some) without doing good works with it seems, to me at least, problematic. I mean this isn't "Ernest Goes to Rehab," it's a movie about, well, we all know now what it's about -- and he's making a third of a billion dollars from it. Shouldn't he at least tithe it?

Maybe he's addressed this elsewhere and I missed it?

Other than John Miller's excellent piece in the Journal today, there's also a piece by Sharon Begley on the problems with opinion polls. It's a very useful primer on a problem I've heard about from pollsters and the like for years and it's only going to get worse. Alas, the article's behind their subscription firewall. But two points worth noting:

First, the plus/minus margin of error is the most inconsequential of the problems built into opinion surveys. She explains:

Don't be fooled. For all its apparent precision, the plus-or-minus statement bears little resemblance to how accurately a poll reflects the opinion of voters. It is error of a completely other kind that trips up polls.

(Math-averse readers are allowed to skip this paragraph.) The sampling error represents the range of possible outcomes from taking a random, representative slice of the population. For practical purposes, it equals one divided by the square root of the number of people surveyed. If you poll 1,600 people, then the sampling error is 1/40, or 2.5%.

Second, the real problem with polls is their non-sampling error. These are the people who don't get asked questions because they are either unavailable or unwilling. Surly people, for example, are radically under-represented in public opinion polls. If certain attitudes are over-represented or under-represented among the surly, what are pollsters missing? Pollsters randomly dial phone numbers, but since rich people have more phone lines, are they over-represented? Pollsters won't call cell phones, but young people increasingly have only cell phones. etc etc. Anyway, it's a useful piece.

From John in Briggs, Texas:

Dear Jonah,

I couldn't have said it better than Dave, the NRO reader's quote you posted yesterday (Wednesday) around 5:30 pm under the heading of "THE SUITS DIDN'T WRITE THIS" . So I, too, decided to stop freeloading and subscribed to the dead tree version of your excellent magazine. Even though I have been unemployed for a very long time, struggling to find employment (the job market is not as rosy as some at NRO think it is), and my financial condition is tight, I felt that becoming a subscriber was the least I could do to show you and everyone at NRO how much I appreciate, enjoy, and learn from what I read at NRO. I can not believe what I would be missing if NRO didn't exist.

Thanks for everything you do.

With warmest regards,

Spain has not only taken a firm stand against domestic terrorism, but joined the global War on Terror as an equal partner. The most striking strategic moment of Operation Iraqi Freedom wasn't the opening salvo lighting up Baghdad, but the Azores summit before the war began. The three boldest leaders of Western civilization stood shoulder to shoulder: President Bush, the valiant Tony Blair and Prime Minister Aznar - in many ways the bravest of the three.

On the eve of war, Aznar faced a situation much like the one FDR faced between 1939 and Dec. 7, 1941. FDR knew that we had to join the fight, but the American people didn't appear ready to accept that necessity. Aznar went FDR one better. He ignored the political torpedoes - a majority of Spaniards didn't support sending their troops to Iraq - and did what he saw as essential for the future of his own country and our common civilization.

Aznar risked all politically to do the right thing.

As a result, the forces of international terror want vengeance against Spain.