I've been trying to decide who to ping at NRO for suggestions on good books about the US involvement in Nicaragua. I'm looking for something that is a little broader than just a rehash of Iran-Contra. Your post today about Corner readers ("The Corner audience is the greatest audience in the world.") and the success of your recent post asking for suggestions on good books about Vietnam has narrowed my selection to......you! Since you worked for President Reagan, I thought that might be able to offer some suggestions and if not you might just ping "...the greatest audience in the world." I hope that I'm not being too presumptuous.

Yes, we all know the problems that can come from absurdly soft judges, but, at the same time, whether it’s California’s ‘Three Strikes’, the Rockefeller drug laws, or any of the many other instances of mandatory sentences that litter the statute book, there is all too real danger that their inflexibility comes at the expense of justice. Check out the case of Jamie Olis, a former Dynegy executive. He has just been sentenced to 24 years for his part in an accounting fraud that prosecutors maintained led to $500 million in stock losses, a number that is, in fact, impossible to prove. Under Federal rules, he’ll have to actually serve at least twenty years. Now, financial crime can be devastating, and can ruin the lives of the fleeced, the swindled, and the robbed. It needs to be taken seriously. Found guilty, Mr. Olis deserved to go to jail. And for quite a while. But for 20 years, to be served, incidentally, in a prison system where inmates’ safety cannot be guaranteed? That doesn’t seem right. The sentencing judge appeared to feel the same way. Read the story and see what you think.

Of course, it’s almost impossible to decide what is a ‘fair’ penalty. It will vary from crime to crime, from victim to victim, from defendant to defendant. That’s why we have judges, that’s why we have judicial discretion but, if we are to reduce that discretion by legislating much narrower – and stricter - sentencing guidelines, here’s my test. If one of your close relatives (a close relative who you actually liked), or one of your friends, was to commit the crime for which that sentence was being fixed, a crime for which you accepted he should be punished, would you think that the preordained sentence, a sentence remember, that will be imposed with little regard to the actual circumstances of the case, was just?

I certainly don’t know all the facts, but I doubt if what happened to Mr. Olis satisfies that test.

The European Social Forum is, as its name would suggest, a self-important gathering that assembles from time to time to hawk socialism, stupidity and self-righteousness (if that is not to repeat myself). The observant Scott Burgess (he’s the source of the boar story too) has discovered that a European Creative Forum has now been formed to join in the fun. This quote from their website tells you all that you could want to know.

"The newly-formed European Creative Forum (ECF) joins the call to all artists, musicians, performers, DJ's, dancers, designers, writers, film-makers, writers, poets, actors, architects, rappers, jugglers, journalists, media activists, culture jammers, critics, promoters, organisations, charities, campaigns, collectives, networks and individuals who share the objective of creating and participating in the next European Social Forum in London in the Autumn."

And if you need more than that, check out the ECF graphic that Burgess has found. It says it all really.

Burgess also claims to be distressed that “jugglers” are included, but mimes are not. As Scott appears to be a good fellow, I’ll just assume he’s joking. Mimes are, of course, the spawn of Satan, the Dr Peppers of the entertainment world, creatures too loathsome even for the European Social Forum.

For over a century, a statue of a wild boar stood in the center of England’s oldest public park. It was damaged during the Second World War. Finally, it has been restored. The old boar was going to be put back where it belonged. Not any more. These plans have, apparently, now been "abandoned for fear of offending Muslims, whose religion considers pigs to be 'unclean'."

And if you want another tiny example of the West’s supine response to Islamic fanaticism – that’s it.

The idea that ‘religious workers’ should have some sort of immigration priority is one that has a long tradition in many Western societies. The rationale? The benefits that such people generally bring to the community. In an age, however, where an extreme form of Islam is potentially no less pestilential than, say, National Socialism or Communism, the idea that the arrival of such pious folk is automatically a good thing needs re-examining. And that is just what the Danes are doing.

The Guardian is reporting that “New rules will require any person coming to Denmark on a religious visa to show that they are a "worthy" candidate, are educated, financially self-supporting and connected with one of 200 recognised religious communities.”

Good.

Here, via the bloggers at The Agitator , is a selection of the flags of the world, graded aesthetically. Betsy Ross wouldn’t be happy with these findings, and there are many other misjudgments (for instance, what’s so wrong with “colonial nonsense”) but it’s good to see Somalia (shame about the country) and the Faroe Islands (shame they are not a country) getting the credit they deserve. Other discoveries – Botswana and Slovakia.

Read it for the insults. Did Libya: “even try?” The machete on Angola’s flag is “nicely depicted, but not a wise idea,” Rwanda’s flag (“a big R on an overused tricolour”) is “spectacularly unoriginal”, while Mozambique’s effort (“automatic weapons on a flag are especially bad”) “appears to have been designed by a committee all of whom had stupid ideas for pictures of extra things to put on the flag”

Enjoy.

A reader asks a good question:

"Has Kerry ever proposed any of the measures he's proposing now in the course of his 18-years in the senate? If not, why not, if it's such a good idea?"

I don't know the answer -- yet.

You can technically still be square and watch Rich on Charlie Rose.

Yes, I'm trying to up our google hits.

Here's an email I just got:

Cottle's plan sounds like a decent idea, but unfortunately it wouldn't work for several reasons.

1:creation of a special adult section of the internet that smut peddlers would have to register to be on. Do you consider Yahoo! an adult site? If not, then you would be wrong. For quite some time (and possibly still) Yahoo! was one of the biggest hosts of child-porn on the internet. Yahoo! groups stored terrabytes of images of illegal content that was loosely regulated by Yahoo! and much of which still exists today. Yahoo! restructured their groups so you could not search their adult groups database, but the groups still exist and are accessible to anyone who visits one of the web's most popular websites. Would Yahoo! register for this new domain, or at least put much of the content hosted on their site on that domain? How about Geocities, MSN, Lycos, etc, all of which host adult content in their groups or forums. Highly unlikely.

2: The online zoning would make it easier for parents to filter adult content. This reminds me of the gun control argument that making guns illegal makes it harder for criminals to get guns. It may be true, but if smut peddlers want to target kids to get them hooked early, they are going to find a way. Much in the same way that if criminals want to find a gun illegally, they will find a way.

Possible solutions: Ever wonder how kids find their way to these sites? Why do pop-ups with naked women keep flashing on my PC? Why do I get e-mails asking if I want to see terrible terribly things? If Congress wanted to address this problem they should first address the issue of spyware/adware and Spam. Unwanted solicitation is probably a leading reason for kids finding their way to adult sites. Kids unknowingly install a free screensaver and the next thing they know they are looking at naked people and receiving hundreds of unsolicited adult e-mails every day. Make it illegal to silently install software from the web that doesn't require the customer's interaction. When you install a free screensaver, or most any free application for that matter, you're probably installing Spyware/Adware with it. This software installs silently without any interaction from the end-user, and runs silently in the background on most PCs. The spyware/adware sends usage statistics to spam e-mails who then mail out tons of Spam to that user, and spyware will also create pop-ups with links to adult sites that are very difficult to prevent and remove. If users know that they are installing this software, they are much more likely to answer "no" if prompted "do you want to install this?". However, most of these apps install themselves while the downloaded program (screensaver, freeware, etc..) installs. Make this illegal, and punish those who break this law, and you'd see a reduction in the amount of Spyware/Adware/Spam almost immediately. By reducing spyware/adware/spam you're reducing the means by which kids accidentally find their way to these sites.

I saw a big billboard in downtown NYC today (that's where I am right now) for "Walking Tall," the new movie with The Rock. It just struck me as so weird that the star of the movie is called "The Rock." I actually like him and think he's a pretty good action star. I just think it's weird. Other than musicians I can't think of a time when there's been a star who goes by such a manufactured name. I'm sure there's a branch of futurist-libertarian types who look forward to the day when there are no last names at all and we all create our personas. You know, your accountant could be known as The Cruncher. The guy at Kinko's could be Der Doppelganger. Alec Baldwin could be Bag-of-Rocks. Whatever. I just think it's kind of fun to think about.

From the AP (Link Via Drudge):

WASHINGTON - Top Republicans in Congress sought Friday to declassify two-year-old testimony by former White House aide Richard Clarke, suggesting he may have lied this week when he faulted President Bush (news - web sites)'s handling of the war on terror.

"Mr. Clarke has told two entirely different stories under oath," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said in a speech on the Senate floor.

The Tennessee Republican said he hopes Clarke's testimony in July 2002 before the House and Senate intelligence committees can be declassified. Then, he said, it can be compared with the account the former aide provided in his nationally televised appearance Wednesday before the bipartisan commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said he supports the move. "We need to lean forward in making as much information available to the public as possible, without compromising the national security interests of the nation," he said in a statement. Hastert said the initial request had been made by Rep. Porter Goss, the Florida Republican who heads the House intelligence committee.

The developments marked the latest turn in a Republican counterattack against Clarke, who has leveled his criticism against Bush in a new book as well as in interviews and his sworn testimony before the commission.

Ex-CIA Dir. James Woolsey, on Clarke (Via Hotline):

Ex-CIA Dir. James Woolsey, on Clarke: "He's a man who, once he gets locked into a view, doesn't listen anymore. He is an able man, in some ways. But in this case, he got locked into the view early on that there was nothing ever, no contacts of any kind between al Qaeda and governments such as Iraq. And so I think he ignored some of the clear evidence that George Tenet spread out before the Senate in 2002 about Iraqi training of al Qaeda in poisons, gases and explosives" ("On the Record," FNC, 3/24).

My syndicated column has a different email address when it gets sent out to the world. It's amazing how different the readerships are. Here are two fun emails just because it's late Friday. The first is from my column on C-Span :

Jonah,

With your typical fallacious reasoning, you try to use the outstanding creation of Brian Lamb as proof, somehow, that the media giants are not greedy corporations. You might as well tell us that if you are mugged on the way from making a withdrawal from an ATM, you will consider the mugger to be blameless if he/she gives you one of your dollars. One, obviously, has nothing to do with another. C-Span is a very good thing, a family favorite, but no responsible person would even think of using it to suggest that this absolves media corporations from blame for their misconduct and proves their inherent virtue. Brian Lamb deserves a Congressional Gold Medal, but the media corporations get more than they deserve in their tax deductions alone.. I give you a Bronx Cheer for mental loitering with the intent to mope.. You, I suppose, are awaiting the Newsprint Manufacturers' Association Award for "maximum consumption of newsprint without logic discussion?"

I suppose you have ben forced by circumstances to take take a break from your primary defense of the irrational and indefensible politicians of the your "Corporate Hippie Self Love Movement," exemplified by a radical right on the verge of becoming leftists -again without giving proper credit, this time Mussolini, who created the concept you so admire? I take it that this is because the truth about this Administration's sorry record is now coming to light? Authoritarian politicians and politics of the right and of the left, National Socialist German Worker's Party, "Neo-Con," Bolshevik, Maoist or al-Quaida, all possess the same essential characteristics, varying only in trivial detail. They do not meet the high standards of American Conservatism and represent an abandonment of the qualities which has made America great.

Thank for providing us with some of the oddest examples of "spin." Sometimes your comedic presentations are almost brilliant. Have you ever considered an appearance on Saturday Nigh Live? You really ought to think about a new career.

LOL

I think you are blinded by your countries hostility to Fidel Castro. It is so predictable. Your so called freedom loving country will not let you visit Cuba to see for yourself the running of this country that "dares" to reject capitalism. Who is the "evil dictator" ? Bush, Castro or Carter ? Yours [Name withheld] UK Citizen with freedom to visit Cuba (unlike you)

Let's set aside for a moment the fact that all this stuff is just very confusing even to those of us who have attempted to study it. I'll try to pick through all this. This is another don't use my name (whatever the going acronym is for that) e-mail.

Interacting with the deferral is the following: U.S. tax law taxes the global income of multinationals, but also allows a credit of foreign income taxes against the U.S. corporate income tax. So for U.S. affiliates in places where the corporate tax rate is higher than in the United States (like much of Europe) the effective tax rate they pay is the foreign tax rate, and the foreign government gets it all. An accountant may know this better than me, but I don't think repealing deferral changes the firm's tax burden or the firms' behavior. Seemingly repealing deferral would have more impact on the propensity of U.S. firms to invest in low-tax countries.

Now here is the problem - for a lot of firms, pre-existing foreign direct investment (FDI) is part of doing business. About 2/3 of U.S. FDI is directed at serving host-country markets, not in selling back to the U.S. So there's a big incentive to keep those investments regardless of taxes. But repealing deferral hits the main way in which FDI is financed. You can either transfer funds from the U.S. parent to the affiliate, have the affiliate borrow in local or world capital markets, or reinvest the profits of the affiliate. The biggest chunk of U.S. *outbound* FDI is these reinvested profits, in other words letting all your old foreign affiliates mostly self-finance through retained earnings.

So if you've got to have the affiliate there, and it becomes really inconvenient from a tax standpoint to finance its capital expansion through retained earnings, then your typical corporate treasurer would switch to one of the other two methods. Either have the head office borrow on U.S. markets, or have the overseas affiliate borrow on U.S., local, or world markets. Now if it matters at all, then this would tend to push interest rates up and crowd out Americans wanting mortgages, college tuition loans, or whatever. If it doesn't matter a lot, then the Treasury wouldn't really raise a lot of funds by doing it.

Another workaround that firms would likely use is that they have 2 different streams of sending money back to the United States. One is by repatriating profits, which this plan is designed to encourage more of. (Of course, U.S. firms repatriating too much profits is the sort of thing that anti-globalists complain about a lot, but never mind..) The other is by having the affiliates pay the parents license and royalty fees for technology generated by the parents' R&D. So if I really need the affiliate to be self-financing, I'd have them pay less license and royalty fees instead to make up for the new tax incentives to repatriate profits. Would this have an effect on corporate R&D, on productivity, on American dynamism in general? Or would it just disappear in the general fungibility of funds? This is the point at which I stop pretending to understand it very well....

Over the past six months, Palm Beach County State Attorney Barry Krischer has: raided drugstores near Rush's home; seized his medical records without going through the required process enacted by the Florida legislature to protect medical privacy; leaked false information to the media that he was about to plead guilty to a felony; threatened to make his medical records public unless he pled guilty to a felony he didn't commit; released to the media confidential letters regarding Rush's situation that he received from my office; and falsely claimed that the Florida Bar and attorney general's office approved of the release.

Normally, people with drug dependencies who acknowledge their problems and seek treatment are lauded for their courage, not prosecuted. So am I wrong to wonder if something is out of whack when the Palm Beach County State Attorney pulls out all the stops in an effort to nail Rush, while giving immunity to the traffickers who supposedly kept him supplied with painkillers, and who, as a result of a deal with the prosecutor, were able to make a six-figure killing selling their "story" to a tabloid?

I'll have some thoughts tomorrow. From a reader:

Today I was in the company of a number if Indian programmers at one of those obligatory outings to celebrate the completion of a project milestone. They solicited my opinions on Bush and the Iraq engagement. Almost all were adamantly opposed to both. One of them said “You don’t know what problems your country is causing the rest of the world.” After listing many countries that are by our side and have no problems with our actions, I suggested to them that this is just a simple matter of bringing murderers to justice, so what is the problem with that? Another answered “We don’t have the ability to protect ourselves. We can’t just go into another country and root our terrorists.” This is the first time I have heard this line of reasoning. It sounded to me like they feel forced to be nice to murderers so the won’t be targeted by them. They are afraid we stirred up a hornets nest and are cowering in wait of the sting. Am I wrong?

Taken aback, I had trouble responding to them. In the final analysis, I’m thinking we pay a certain price for justice sometimes, and these folks I played laser tag and bowled with all afternoon have no heart to pay that toll. All were in agreement that the world needs to come together to fight terror, but they object to our invading Iraq. I have to admit, ours has been a lethal and powerful response to terror that other countries might have trouble manufacturing. But, where is their fortitude? Seems a little world-wide fortitude in lieu of advanced weaponry and surveillance techniques could go a long way. Your thoughts?

ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY DENOUNCES GIBSON FILM AS PRO-CHRISTIAN

(London)-In his homily yesterday during a memorial service for Palestinian suicide bombers, the Right Reverend Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, denounced Mel Gibson's film "The Passion of the Christ" as being "overtly pro-Christian."

"This film is going to have a devastating effect on Anglicanism worldwide," said Reverend Williams. "Impressionable persons may be unduly influenced and actually begin attending church. And it would be a great tragedy if the Church had to divert its precious resources away from protesting against capitalism and democracy and use them instead for religious purposes"....

Jay’s list is an impressive one – the Backhaus recording is justly famous.

You can hear a snatch here (play Disc 1 Track 6)

But for this repertoire, I’ll stand by the lesser known Stephen Bishop-Kovacevich. Here’s a place where you can hear a snatch of him (play Disc 1 Track 12)

Hope this helps & enjoy it. A dedicated Corner reader

I notice Mr. Nordlinger gave you a list rather than a ranking. If you want one-stop Brahms shopping (the intermezzo you mentioned plus many of his other great shorter pieces, esp. Op 119 Nos. 1 and 3), try this CD from Radu Lupu:

Try Radu Lupu, Stephen Bishop Kovacevich, Julius Katchen, Wilhelm Kempff, Artur Rubinstein, Sviatoslav Richter if you can find it, Emmanuel Ax, Ivo Pogorelich, in roughly that order. In other words, just about anyone but Cliburn. Some of Cliburn's concerto records were very impressive, but his solo interpretations I've found quite bland. Gould could be very insightful, but some of his interpretations are just wild and the sound can be quite dry, and the dreadful vocalising along with himself is unspeakable.

Actually, Peter, you would be quite surprised at the work that Brahms did later in his life. He abandoned the large forms of the sonata, concerto, etc. and mainly wrote small character pieces, such as the Intermezzos. As someone who has played that piece, I would vouch for Kempff, Gieseking (also plays a good Ravel concerto) and Rubinstein, but I am not a big Hess fan. If you look through op. 116 - 119 you will find more high quality pieces like that. (op.117 no. 1, op. 118 no. 5 etc.). Keep defending free trade for me.

Piano Performance major at Arizona State

Canada's troops to reclaim Arctic Five-year plan to 'put footprints in the snow' and assert northern sovereignty Adrian Humphreys National Post Thursday, March 25, 2004 Canada is launching an extensive five-year plan to march soldiers through all of its uninhabited Arctic territory in the largest bid yet to exert sovereignty over its northern domain, an area drawing increasing international attention and conflicting territorial claims. A renewed northern mobilization by the army, navy and air force -- including new space-based technology -- marks a significant increase in Canadian Forces resources earmarked for the region at a time when military funding is stretched extremely thin.

Mark - I don't disagree, I just wish that it were otherwise. I think you'd agree that the facts of the accusation are more important than the motives of the accuser. If I publicly accuse you of murder, the fact I'm doing it because you stole my Tonka truck when I five is much less important then question of whether or not you're actually guilty. Hanna Arendt once claimed that it was the communists who introduced the tactic of attacking motives in order to dispute inconvenient facts. They'd call their opponents bigoted fascists as if that changed the fact that they were on Moscow's payroll. Whether that's true or not, it seems to me that going after motives rather than facts is a tendency of the left we usually don't like.

As Rich noted earlier, I think Clarke could have written a thoughtful, serious and critical book about Bush. I wouldn't necessarily agree with all of it, but this war on terro is a monumental and monumentally complicated undertaking. It would strain our faith in bith the fallibility of man and government to believe that Bush did everything perfectly. But Clarke's criticism is so outlandish, so not constructive, and so contradictory to the facts as we know them that Clarke's motives have to become an issue. Again, as Rich (and I) have noted -- and as you would no doubt agree -- that briefing Clarke gave is flatly incompatible with the tone, tenor and content of his book. If that weren't the case, I'd say his motives don't matter.

From a reader:

Good Evening Sir. I just read your article in the Union Leader about the testimony of Mr Clarke today. I have to shake my head. I will not insult your intelligence like so many of my friends and neighbors do when i dare to question the current administration, however i will turn the tables on you, and do like you have done to Mr Clarke. What are your motives sir? What makes you write an article like this? How many people have to come forward? How many lies have to be debunked? How much will you overlook? How many ominous and unseemly connections will have to be brushed aside? Answer that and i will then place my faith in your journalistic integrity? Sincerely, A Father of four children who does not want to see their blood spilled in foreign lands for a lie.

From a reader:

Jonah,

I respectfully disagree that it is wrong to force children to recite the Pledge. I recognize this is not what is at stake in this case, but even if I was I would not have a problem with it. The public has an interest in promoting love of country and patriotism. As Walter Berns so eloquently wrote a few years back, patriots are made, not born. Do we think that people will naturally have the kind of devotion to country that will require sacrifice necessary for any regime to survive? Devoid of any public support, do we expect that a decent patriotism can survive? Do we now say that pride in country, what one might call a public pride, must be a purely private matter? This is a silly argument. This is taking individualism and the public/private distinction to the point where the public is no longer able the defend itself.

I should clarify that I would want my kids to be forced to say the Pledge at whatever school they go to. But I can't deny that making it obligatory strengthen's the atheit's case. Moreover, I do think parents should be the final authority on such things.

From a reader:

Jonah:

Great posts in the corner about the Pledge. Just to offer moral support, I
wanted to let you know that I am (a) an atheist and (b) definitely opposed
to altering the Pledge of Allegiance - and for precisely the reason you
state: it's more trouble than it's worth. Not changing it hurts nothing.
Changing it just rips the national fabric a few more threads.

During the '96 Olympics, some nut job was carrying a huge cross around
Centennial Park and yelling about how much Jesus loved everyone. Clearly,
Nedow is at least as crazy as that guy.

Keep up the great work.

Look: I am not oblivious to the argument that in a vacuum there is something to the atheists' case. As I've argued before, the 9th circuit's decision wasn't loony given the precedents of the last thirty years. Again, my basic objection is pragmatic and small-c conservative. It's not worth changing. Active, politicized atheists in this country -- and many sympathetic liberals -- have bought into a bogus narrative. They seem to believe that religion is the source of American history's great evils. That's an argument for another day, but suffice it to say that for every bad thing done in religion's name in American history it's just as easy to find many good things (like, um, the Reverend Martin Luther King's civil rights movement).

But while that part of the narrative is simply inaccurate another part of the narrative is flatly illogical. They seem to believe that the role of religion in American life is increasing and that is the source of the problems today. This is nonsense. Never mind that the "under God" line was inserted half a century ago and could never get in there today were it not already there. But our political leaders invoked religion and used religion as a guide for our law so, so, sooo much more in the past than they do today. The idea that the Founders would be horrified by the "under God" passage is laughable. President George Washington declared national days of prayer and fasting. States had their own established Churches. Lincoln got jiggy with the God references. Our civic arhcitecture is drenched in allusions and mentions of God and the Bible. Look at our money for Pete's sake.

The problem with this narrative is not that it is false, though that's bad enough. The problem is that once you believe it you are never satisfied until every last part-per-billion of Godness is purged from public life. That is not a great position for the atheists to take because it demands a couner-reaction that will be far worse than the "harm" caused by the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance.

It reminds me of Jesse Jackson's insistence years ago that the most pressing civil rights issue in America was DC statehood. Well, if that's the most pressing civil rights issue in America, then the civil rights problem has been solved! It's like saying the most pressing public health problem is the continued headaches of glue sniffers. If atheists truly see this as their biggest problem then most Americans will see atheists as kooks and zealots. For their own sake, atheists should drop it.

From a reader:

Dear Mr. Goldberg,

Your argument for leaving the pledge alone is that removing the words now
would do more harm than good. Who is harmed by removing 'under God'? 90% of the American people may oppose altering the pledge, but are they actually harmed by the words being removed? If so, how? Certainly, the removal of 'under God' does not make the pledge contradict anyone's religious beliefs. At most, it removes an affirmation of their religious beliefs - but to say
that is harmful is as absurd as saying the pledge's current omission of the
phrase 'under God, washed of sin by the sacrifice of Christ' is harmful to Christians as it doesn't affirm those beliefs either.

The appeal to tradition works if there is no particular reason for the
change. Tradition is a perfectly valid argument against exchanging the
meanings of the words 'down' and 'up'. However, it is quite clear that the
pledge as is manifestly harms atheists. They are forced to swear a pledge
containing words which contradict their beliefs. In light of this, your
appeal to tradition simply does not apply.

ME: I think this is just flat wrong. First of all, if tradition can be overturned because of a "particular reason" then tradition can always be overturned because there will always be "particular reasons" for overturning it. There needs to be a "good reason" for overturning tradition (indeed, isn't that the whole logic behind stare decisis?). This reader sugggests that that good reason is the "manifest harm" done to atheists. Wrong again. The pledge does not harm atheists, it offends atheists -- a much lower standard. And, again, if offense alone can overturn tradition then tradition has no power whatsoever.

From a reader:

Jonah,

I still have a quote from you saved on my computer regarding Newdow that you posted to The Corner on July 2, 2002. To my mind, it's still as appropriate today as the day you wrote it:

"I hope everybody has read the New York Times profile of Pledge of Allegiance plaintiff Mike Newdow. They say that hard cases make for bad law. Well, nutcases make for worse law. This guy -- who I am sure has a very high IQ -- is precisely the sort of person I think of when I use the phrase "pugnaciously stupid." It's the aggressive nature of his idiocy, the in-your-faceness of his Jackassery, that so offends me. Like Peter Singer, he has that uncanny ability to articulate so eloquently ideas so dumb most of us don't know how to respond to them. My contempt is boundless."

Yep, that pretty much covers it.

Ben

Sir, One thing I haven't heard in the media is this: If what Clarke is saying is true, then the liberals, by all logic, are upset that Bush didn't overturn the existing Clinton doctrine early enough. It is generally accepted that incoming administrations universally carry forth existing national policies until they come up with their own. When the Bush tax cuts went through, even the biased main stream media said that now it was Bush's economy, not Clinton's. Well, it seems to me that until such a time that Team Bush could create a different terrorism policy, the existing Clinton policy was in effect. So, the Clintonistas are saying that Bush didn't change the existing Clinton Doctrine (Essentially doing nothing) fast enough. Am I off base? Your thoughts?

From a reader:

The response to your knee-jerk 'get the *&^% out' diatribe is the same as always to such idiocy: maybe the guy actually LOVES HIS COUNTRY, as you conservatives tell us we all should, and wants to change things for the better here. I'm an atheist myself (one who supports the Iraq war, before you pigeonhole me), and I think the Pledge is creepy in general, and the God bit just annoying. The beauty of our country is that it evokes great loyalty precisely because it doesn't demand it. The Pledge is a pointless and anti-American exercise. The fact is, the intention of the fundies is to try to force their God on the rest of us (and why shouldn't they? wouldn't you, if you felt you had access to the ultimate truth?) and we have to fight it where we can. How exactly would it be a 'slap in the face' to take God out of the thing? Was it a slap in the face to religious folks for the many years it existed with no reference to God?

ME: Obviously, I disagree with a lot of this. But let me just address one point. This reader (a professor) wants to know how it would be a slap in the face to Americans to get rid of the under God portion since it was only added half a century ago. Well, because it obviously would be. Close to 90% of Americans want to keep the pledge in there. Taking it out because of the demands of a tiny minority would once again reinforce the widespread (and correct) feeling that a tiny group of secular social engineers have once again redrawn the country according to their own unpopular views. This reader and others like him fail to understand that to most Americans Mr. Newdow is just as much of a fundamentalist (or "fundie") as members of the religious right.

The most persuasive argument -- among many -- for why the phrase under God should stay there, in my view, is not because it's an establishment of religion or because we are a "Christian nation" but because removing it would do more damage than leaving it. Indeed, if the phrase under God had never been added, I would be against adding it today. But the fact is it's there today and it's one of the few places left where fundamentalists like Newdow haven't scrubbed religion from the Public Square like so much graffiti. And I am a Burkean on this. As Delta House President Robert Hoover might have said had he been serving as Solictor General, "But sir, the phrase 'under God' has a long tradition of existence both to its members and the community at large."