I watched it TWICE with my 3 children. I, like Derb, believe "popular culture is filth". But this movie is an exception to that rule.

What, exactly, were the police thinking? From Sky News:

“Daryl Hannah has been questioned by police after acting like her Kill Bill: Vol 2 character at the LA premiere. She aroused suspicion by doing kung fu poses and behaving cockily…”

That’s an offense?

A bastard, apparently:

“The following dolphin-perpetrated atrocities have been widely documented: gang rape of dolphin females; prostitution of same; porpoise holocausts; adults grabbing adorable baby dolphins in their beaks and whacking them to death.”

Sharks, the lot of them.

As tens of thousands of victims could testify (at least those who were left alive) brutality has been as much a characteristic of Castro’s regime as economic failure, oppression and lies. You would think, however, that, these days, Castro’s thugs would have the sense to confine their violence to their home turf. Apparently not.

“After the United Nations Commission on Human Rights narrowly passed a resolution today [April 15] critical of Cuba, members of Cuba's governmental delegation attacked Frank Calzon, executive director of the Washington-based Center for a Free Cuba.”

Wait, what am I saying? Those goons knew they would be safe:

“The attack took place inside the United Nations building in Geneva.”

Kerry, at least, is not inevitable, but over at Instapundit there’s some discussion as to what the Democratic candidate has been doing when taxes strike home. It appears (and note that word) that, in the past Kerry has declined to participate in a masochistic opportunity offered by the Massachusetts tax code. In Massachusetts, state taxpayers can choose an optional higher tax rate of 5.85% - instead of the normal 5.3%. Personally, if Kerry didn’t pay this extra, I wouldn’t blame the guy one bit, and, yes, he could make some ‘free rider’ arguments to defend his stance. Nevertheless, this could be something worth remembering next time you hear Kerry preaching about ‘the rich’ needing to contribute more.

You first, Senator.

And, while on the topic of tax, what about Mrs. Kerry’s returns? She’s not releasing them, citing her own privacy. That’s understandable. In some ways, we ask politicians to disclose too much of their personal business, let alone their personal lives, and that’s even more true of their families. Hillary Clinton, a ‘co-president’ with an explicit role in policy-making was one thing, but disclosure by a Mrs. Dean (whose general insistence on her right to live her own life was, I thought, entirely praiseworthy) or, possibly, Mrs. Kerry might be a different matter altogether. Then again, the sums of money at Mrs. Kerry’s disposal are, reportedly, so large that they raise issues in their own right.

Over to you, Senator.

Well, this looks absurd. CNN is reporting that “U.S. radio broadcasters have asked federal regulators to bar rival satellite radio services from offering content tailored to local markets.” The FCC is, apparently, ‘reviewing’ this request.

“Reviewing?”

What’s to review? The broadcasters should be told to take their request, and shove it.

"Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, But spare your country's flag," she said.

And at the end of the conversation, the question was, "By the way, we understand there’s a possibility you may not be supporting the senator." And I said, "Well, you’re right, I’m supporting U.S. Rep.Pat Toomey." And the tenor of the conversation changed very quickly. They said, "If that’s the case, your rail initiative will come to a sudden end, and it will never happen."

My anti-Franken column has generated some hysterical (in every sense) emails. Most are wayyyyyyyy too long to post, which in itself is a sign of hysteria. But here's an okay one, but it is brief:

Hypocrisy thy name is republican!! The word has become ugly among many on the left and the middle. I voted for George Bush in the 2000 elections and it's the worst mistake I've ever made. I'll never vote for another republican as long as I live. Why did I go to the left? Because I see a pervasive movement among the people on the right to take away my rights in the country. My rights as a woman (abortion legislation) and my rights as a citizen (Patriot Act). I am also VERY alarmed at the influence the religious right has over the current administration. Considering your name is Goldberg (I'm assuming your Jewish) you should be deeply concerned about this as well. I also see a profound level of secrecy in this administration that has not been seen since the Nixon administration. What do they have to hide? Lots. People seem to forget- these people are suppose to be working for us. In addition to the complete lack of accountability.... need I go on? How are republicans so blind to the dubious acts of this administration? How can you justify us taking valuable and limited military resources out of Afghanistan to fight an uneccessary war in Iraq? How can you excuse the promotion of freedom and democracy for Iraq by this administration when they're shutting down their newspapers? You people call yourselves conservatives but YOUR president has taken us from a substantial surplus to billions of dollars in debt, that is going to take generations to pay off. How can you excuse the inexcusable? The list is growing ever longer. You say Al and Air America have no content? How arrogant and absurd. Looking at the current situation the only people I see without a leg to stand is you sir and the people you represent. Liberal now and never going back....

From a reader:

Jonah,

I think your assessment of college voting patterns is pretty much
dead-on. One thing, though, that's important to remember is that
a large portion of college students -- those at public universities
in particular -- are effectively on the dole. Between the government
funding of their institutions coupled with perpetually rising tuition
that necessitates more and more government-backed loans and grants,
it's the equivalent of welfare recipients voting for the person who'll
give them more. (Never mind the fact that the flood of money chasing
finite supply only drives tuition still higher, in a vicious cycle.)
And only this week has Kerry been talking about giving college
educations away in exchange for "public service". It's all bread and
circuses.

I recall my own fit of insanity in the 1988 election, when I was all for
Dukakis simply because Reagan's tax cuts meant that scholarship
income not used for books and tuition were taxable, which had not been
the case before the reform. In time, I came to my senses about the
big picture, and perhaps many of the college students will, too.

Matt Yglesias draws much comfort from some data showing that college kids lean Democratic. That's fine. But he erects something of a strawman by saying that "There's been a campaign under way for several years now to convince the world that young people in general, and college students in particular, are a bunch of Bush-loving rightwingers." I'm sure some folks have been involved in what Yglesias calls "myth-making" but on the whole I think he misses the real effort and the real argument. The twofold argument I've been hearing from conservatives in recent years (inlcuding from me) is that the left's generations-long myth making about the inherently progressive nature of "the youth" is a bunch of bunk. And Yglesias' preferred numbers demonstrate that ably. Kerry leads Bush among college kids by 48-38 and does even better among likely voters. Okay. But more than a third of college kids don't like Kerry. And, I'll not only bet you those numbers will improve in Bush's favor as they are "soft" but I'll also bet that most of these numbers are personality driven rather than ideology driven.

Second, the trend conservatives have been noting is that the students are to the right of the professors -- which I think is undoubtedly true. I would also bet that they are even further to the right of the administrators. The fact that support for Nader is declining among college students further illustrates that the liberal babyboomers' solopsistic B.S. about college kids being inherently radical is so much wishful thinking.

I'd also add that college kids are increasingly libertarian these days. Whether that holds over time remains to be seen since collegiate libertarianism is often (but not always) based in a desire to be cool and rebellious against the right and the left. But, it's certainly true that a libertarian, principled or otherwise, could go either way between Bush and Kerry

Look, I have a long track-record of disdain for "youth" oriented politics of all kinds, but if Yglesias is basically putting a cheery spin on both a trend and a revelation that does not help the left. Sure, it's a myth that college kids are all Burkeans today. But I don't know anyone who ever said they were. I do know lots of people who've said and believe that being young is synonymous with being liberal, or "progressive". And that's bunk, and largely always has been.

SIR FRANCIS HASTINGS CHARLES DOYLE, second baronet (1810-1888), came of military stock and most of his male relatives seem to have been colonels at the very least. He went to Eton and Oxford, where, the D.N.B. [= Dictionary of National Biography] reports, "his intercourse with Gladstone became very intimate." Called to the bar, he later received the appointment of receiver-general of customs. To compensate perhaps for remaining a civilian, he wrote stirring military ballads: "The Red Thread of Honour" was translated into Pushtoo and "became a fovarite among the villagers on the north-western frontier of India." To crown his literary ambitions, he was elected professor of poetry at Oxford in 1867.

[I]n a closely divided Senate, Specter's tendency to side with liberals on social issues, as well as his willingness to challenge the worst excesses of the right on judicial nominations, tax cuts, the minimum wage, school choice and tort reform, has made him a Republican that Democrats can deal with. ...

But if Republicans maintain control of the Senate after November, Specter and a handful of other renegade GOPers, ranging from Rhode Island's very nearly liberal Lincoln Chafee to conservatives with maverick streaks like Arizona's John McCain and Ohio's George Voinovich, could be the only roadblocks to right-wing hegemony.

Jonah, no disrespect at all, on the contrary, just disagreement, lots of it! You’re quite correct, there’s no point in going through the drug debate again, but as you sort of, do so shall I. Sort of.

Let’s start with those offending adjectives, and, at the risk of being called Clintonian, some parsing. Remember too that this discussion was kicked off by reference to a striking dishonestly commercial that, in essence, impugned the patriotism of millions of Americans, rough talk indeed at a time of war.

When I used the terms you objected to, I was talking very specifically about ‘drug warriors’. You are quite right that there are many good reasons to oppose legalization. It’s a perfectly respectable point of view held by you and many other reasonable people. The motives of the ‘drug warriors,’ basically the political and ‘moral’ activists who have subjected this country to the disaster of what is, yes, a truly “fatuous” (‘foolish,’ ‘silly’) crusade, are, however, often something else. For far too many of them, their stance is either about political advancement, proclaiming their moral superiority or both. Given that their crusade has, in my view, been immensely destructive to this nation, describing it as ‘self-indulgent’ seems, if anything rather mild.

Turning quickly to the wider subject we’re not meant to be discussing, I certainly don’t think that ending prohibition would be a panacea (we are an imperfect species), but I’m convinced that it would solve more problems than it created.

You mentioned the tragic story of your friend. Awful. Horrific. But no reason to espouse a policy that has wrecked far more lives than legalized heroin ever would. It's worth recalling that ‘addiction’ is a far more complicated phenomenon than drug warriors usually admit. Is an addict a slave to the drug, a zombie who has lost his ability to take decisions for himself? No, of course not, not physically anyway. Cold turkey from opiates is unpleasant, very unpleasant, basically like a very, very nasty case of the flu, but it’s perfectly possible to get through it. What’s more, the idea that the decision to take, and continue taking drugs, is ‘irrational’ is, in fact, usually wrong. Drug taking may be misguided, and it may be self-destructive, but that does not make it irrational.

Are there some people, your ‘irreducibles’ perhaps, who cannot find the strength to quit? Sure, but their problems are better dealt with by physicians than prosecutors. How many junkies have died, I wonder, because the criminalization of their habit pushed them into an environment where medical help was elusive, needles were infected (‘fatuous’ does not even begin to describe the rules against needle exchanges), and cravings were fed by pushers whose only interest was in increasing the dose, the dependency and thus the danger?

Vast subject, so that’s it - for now…

I'm off to bed. Will be on CNN at 8:35ish in the AM. My socks won't match but you'll never be able to tell.

From a "reader":

Considering it was only kikey little farts who led the chorus of anti-French rants, it was worse than racist. It was whiny Jew racism, the worst kind.

Andrew - I have neither the time nor the inclination to restart an argument we've (meaning all of us at NRO) have had many times before. But let me say for the record that I'm often astounded by the inability of drug war opponents to treat with respect or good faith those they disagree with.

I know you obviously meant no offense to me personally, but the phrase "fatuous and self-indulgent," it seems to me, could very well apply to countless legalization advocates who refuse to recognize that there is a good faith argument on the other side. Indeed, I think many of the folks who glibly talk about legalization as if it were a cure-all, a nigh-upon utopian remedy to the very real problems of the drug war miss a simple fact: If we legalized drugs tomorrow, America would have a lot more drug addicts the next day. Not a lot fewer. That would mean a lot more ruined lives. Having watched what drugs have done to people very close to me, including one friend who died in his twenties after years of heroin addiction, I don't think a lot more cases like his would constitute huge progress.

Indeed, I think it is fatuous and self-indulgent to think so. Fatuous because there are simply no truly good answers (except perhaps in some future technology which makes for better drugs or better treatment) and self-indulgent because so many people who've used drugs and stopped think it's just as easy for everybody else to do the same. I like personal responsibility too Andrew, but personal responsibility requires humans to have the capacity to be rational actors. Drug addiction robs many people of precisely that capacity.

I understand that there are real problems of constructing public policies around the misfortune of a relatively small number of individuals. I just wish more pro-legalization conservatives would make the small concession of admitting that they are comfortable with the fate they will in all likelihood be consigning those individuals to if they got their way.

Amid all the talk about European 'appeasement', it's worth reading this extract from a Reuters story:

"ROME, April 15 (Reuters) -...Fabrizio Quattrocchi, one of four Italian security guards abducted [in Iraq] earlier this week, was shot dead on Wednesday after Italy refused to bow to the kidnappers' demands that it withdraw its troops from Iraq. Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said a video recording of the killing showed that Quattrocchi was hooded when his kidnappers put a gun to his head. "When the murderers were pointing a pistol at him, this man tried to take off his hood and shouted: 'Now I'm going to show you how an Italian dies'. And they killed him," Frattini said. "He died a hero," he added..."

Indeed he did. The murderers that butchered him are, needless to say, beneath contempt.

"The CPA and the White House must also accept that not all Iraqi militias were created equal, or evil. There are Iraqi security forces willing and able to fight against the Baathist remnants, foreign gangs and Shiite brigands who have put sections of the country in flames.

But Kurdistan's pesh merga commandos and fighters from the Iraqi National Accord, the Iraqi National Congress and other political organizations have been devalued and restrained by the CPA's apolitical occupation strategy.

Those with a political vision of an Iraq worth fighting for have largely been disqualified from defending it at the side of American forces.

Instead, the CPA championed a hastily trained, three-tier Iraqi internal security force of army, police and civil defense guards vetted and signed up by Americans with no way of verifying the backgrounds of the people they recruited.

The CPA-designed structure crumpled when U.S. Marines launched the siege of Fallujah and fighting flared with Shiite militiamen. Many Iraqi police and troops abandoned their posts.

The important exceptions to this pattern of flight have been kept unpublicized, apparently for operational reasons. The 36th Battalion of the Iraqi Army, fighting under U.S. command, has performed well in Fallujah.

This became known in Baghdad after the unit was praised by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez at a meeting with the Iraqi Governing Council on Monday.

'Shouldn't we form more like it?' asked Jalal Talabani, whose Patriotic Union of Kurdistan has joined its once bitter rival, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, and Arab political organizations in contributing 700 soldiers to the 36th Battalion. Bremer immediately opposed Talabani's suggestion, according to meeting participants. Adding militiamen would 'politicize' the army, Bremer reportedly said.

Tell that to the Marines, who have suffered heavy casualties as they moved to establish control in Fallujah after taking over from more static U.S. Army units a few weeks ago. Gen. John Abizaid, U.S. theater commander, may have other views on the future. He met on Tuesday with Iraqi political leaders who have contributed troops to the 36th Battalion."

Numerous readers -- as expected -- don't like my defense of the drugs-help-terrorists ads. Several have noted that buying oil helps terrorists because it sends money to the Saudis and the Saudis give that money terrorists. Others say buying anything could support terrorism because money doesn't support terrorists, people with money suppport terrorists.

I concede the point.

However, terrorists will seek out sources of revenue which are more likely to be invisible to law enforcement. For example, if you buy bootleg cigarettes you are more likely to be supporting terrorists than if you buy regular cigarettes.

Also, by definition, if you buy something illegal you are helping criminals, some of whom might be tied to terrorism in some way. Buying stolen property aids criminals, buying illegal weapons aids criminals and buying illegal drugs aids criminals. You could say if drugs weren't illegal you wouldn't be giving money to outlaws. But I already conceded that point.

The French US Ambassador claims it was "racist" to mock the French in the run-up to the war.

I'm crashing on a deadline. But I'll have comments later.

I seem to recall there was a lot of mocking and sneeering around here -- and certainly elsewhere -- when the Drug Policy folks were running ads linking drug use to terrorism. Well it turns out that drug use funded the Madrid bombing.

Yes, yes, yes: I understand that drug legalization advocates can claim this as evidence as to why we should de-criminalize drugs. Fine. But, that doesn't change the fact that the drug-use-helps-pay-for-terrorism argument is essentially valid.

From a reader:

I know the inscription, courtesy of GK Chesterton: “A man like Shaw could invent a new sophistry every ten minutes. It’s as easy as lying, because it IS lying.” (The quote is from “Orthodoxy.”)

Fair point from a reader:

Jonah,

Those great people in the flight that crashed into the field in Pennsylvania fought back, God bless them.

From a reader:

I consider myself fairly intelligent- BBA and JD. But when I read the Corner about the topics your requesting for your book, I get the feeling I will need to go back to school first and get a Masters in Liberal Arts, political science (a minor of mine) or perhaps European History in order to understand it fully. Not saying I am not going to buy it, that a definite, but just think its going to be one of those books with a billion footnoted references, all of which will be required reading before taking on the subject and ideals you intend to expound on. My limited knowledge of fascism is limited to my pol-sci professor calling me one for stating that I did not think the Vietnam war was immoral or un-winable and that our leaders only need to stop fighting a war in a PC fashion and carpet bomb the north with daisy-cutters until they surrender unconditionally ala Japan in WWII.

Me: Fear not. I just want to make sure I know what I'm talking about. Nothing in this book will go over anybody's head and it won't go too far in the weeds, except in the appendices where I might tackle some of the academic issues.

Here's another one. I've got an okay file on this already, but I am always looking for more. Some of the least enthusiastic Nazis were German conservatives in the tradition-bound Army etc. Nazism was a revolutionary ideology after all, and traditionalists in all parties have trouble with revolutionaries. If any students of the era know of any particularly apposite anecdotes, books or essays on this theme please drop me a line at JonahResearch@aol.com.

From the AP:

Once again, President Bush (news - web sites) misspoke on a weapons issue, telling the nation that 50 tons of mustard gas were found in Libya — twice the amount actually uncovered.

Maybe, the AP began a lot of stories about Bill Clinton with "Once again, Clinton boinked an intern..." or "Once again, the President perjured himself..." or "Once again, the President blamed others for his mistakes...." but I don't remember it.

One of the most common complaints from liberal readers of my syndicated column yesterday is that blaming Bill Clinton is pointless since "George Bush is the president now." Bush is running for president and so his actions are more relevant etc. Many also go one to whine about my "obsession" with Clinton etc.

Fine, fine, fine.

There's just one problem. The 9/11 Commission is not supposed to care that this is an election year! And, to the extent the press is supposed to be covering the substance of the commission's work, it shouldn't care that this is an election year either.

If we are asking the question, "How did 9/11 happen?" then Bill Clinton's blame-worthiness is not an academic or petty issue. For eight years he set the foundation for what happened on 9/11. By all means, let's also look at George Bush's 8 months. He was the guy at the wheel after all. But if the Commission is true to its mission then Bill Clinton's culpability is entirely pertinent.

Okay, since pretty much all of the academics are too afraid of the JSTOR cops to give me access to their accounts, I'll just throw this bleg out there. One of the many things about the history of fascism I am investigating is the evolution of fascism as not only a synonym with "conservatism" (which is nonsense) but it's segue into a psychological state. In other words capital F Fascism was once an ideology but in the 1950s it became lower-case f fascism and came to describe personality types who were invariably "right wing." Bullies, police, prudes, et al all became "fascists" psychologically. Adorno's "The Authoritarian Personality" was obviously a major source of this cultural trend. Hebert McClosky's 1958 paper, "Conservatism and Personality" in the American Political Science Review was also seminal (though I haven't read it yet, hint hint). The most recent example of this was that idiotic Berkeley study which claimed to have identified the conservative psychosis common to Reagan, Hitler etc.

Anyway, if any researchers, academics or layman run across anything they think would be particularly useful to this story, I would love to see it. I'm interested in the academic stuff as well as instances in the popular press and popular culture where the word "fascist" was cavalierly hurled at Republicans, conservatives, the police etc. Please send suggestions, examples, articles, leads etc to JonahResearch@aol.com. In fact, feel free to send anything you think might be of interest to me in regard to my book to that address.

From a reader (unsure of what he wanted, I edited out the name of his school):

I used to be a network admin at [Name of State University Withheld]. The amount of half-lobed projects that libraries engage in was a constant source of amazement to us geeks, even on a campus where WOMBAT (Waste Of Money, Brains And Time) was the norm. The last library project I was asked to assist with was a automated book scanner (with a nifty page turning device). The thing looked like the ACME corporation's best effort at new market penetration since Wile E. Coyote retired. The library used it to service remote requests through inter-library loan.

What is particularly idiotic is that once the requested pages were scanned, they were simply printed, on dead tree, and mailed to the requesting library. The existing electronic version was not even saved for future requests. Higher Ed institutions, have _really_ fast Internet access (we had 20 MB/s for freaking [Our State]), not to mention Internet 2 (145 MB/s!!!) between universities, and the librarians could not let go of the paper, even though the original request came in electronically.

The sad part of the story is that the machine was paid for thanks to the service fee tacked to everyone's phone bill to make libraries more 'Internet friendly'. I am so very glad not to work for a state government anymore. I still get flashbacks every April 15, though.

As far as electronic journals are concerned, it wouldn't be nearly as expensive for Lexis and JSTOR to provide centralized content repository and searching service if the participating journals submitted their issues electronically, under a standard format (which includes search keywords...) THAT would imply an unfathomable yoke on the Freedom of the luminaries writing the articles in the first place. Only Political Scientists shall rule Political Science journals! However, as a Master's (Liberal Studies) student, I can attest that most of those journal articles, even in electronic format, are not worth the paper they're printed on.

Sorry, but this is important. JSTOR is not a for profit enterprise! From their website :

"It is a priority for JSTOR to ensure that our content is available and accessible to all of our users.... As a not-for-profit organization with the mission to act as a trusted archive, JSTOR is in a unique position with regard to making content accessible."

One point I did mean to mention, which numerous readers have reminded me of, is that the "truce" offer from Bin Laden could also be a great sign of our success. Crying uncle is never a sign of strength, even if you're just crying uncle to your European relations.

One follow-up

Sorry to clutter your inbox, but I want to make it
clear that I agree with you. I am in the minority in
my chosen profession but I think that libraries, and
especially librarians, take themselves too seriously.
We are not the final arbitrators of what is
appropriate in the area of information dissemination.
We are merely the gatekeepers and I think it is
hypocritical to suggest that we need to block the flow
of information.

I would like to see more support for open-access from
the NEH/NEA and private companies. I think that the
journal publishers (especially in the Scientific,
Medical & Technical field) keep their prices
artificially high in order to create a higher respect
for their product.

Oh, and don't get me started on the ALA and how they
claim to speak for every librarian in the profession.
It is enough to make my blood boil.

A few emails and I'll get off of this:

Mr. Goldberg,

I am long time reader of yours and always enjoy your
posts on The Corner. I am a graduate student in
library science (graduating in 3 weeks) and have done
some research on the issue of electronic databases
such as JSTOR and their place in the academic world.

Make no mistake all of the database providers (JSTOR,
Project Muse, Lexis, etc) are for-profit entities.
All of them contract with various publishers to
provide abstracts or full-text articles. The database
providers then turn around and charge a large amount
of money to libraries for access to the material. At
my university the library pays close to $20,000 per
year for access to JSTOR alone - and this fee only
provides for 6 simultaneous users (out of a campus
population of 30,000+)

Another aspect of the database access is the
limitation of non-university users. At my public
university anyone may come into the library and use
the electronic databases. However, the contract with
the database limits off campus use to only those
affiliated with the university. This is true of the
majority of our electronic databases.

While the libraries and universities are here to
provide access, they are limited by the databases
providers themselves. Right now it appears that the
database providers have the upper hand.

Sincerely,

[Name withheld]

And...

As a Master's of Library Science student, I know I can't believe it's a master's
program either, I must say that if the public has access to everything we do
then the prospects of me getting a good job after I graduate is severely
reduced. So I guess it is mostly self-interest that keeps you plebs, from
breaching the JSTOR walls.

And...

Dear Jonah,

Oh yes JSTOR is fantastic! The problem with opening the floodgates and
letting everyone have access to this great resource (and other such
resources) is that the agreements which libraries sign with vendors
specifically forbids us to do so. JSTOR access is supposed to be
restricted to the college's or universities' own patrons. In fact the
prices that we pay are determined in part by the number of users we have.
This is simple economics in some ways. JSTOR is very expensive to produce
and the company which does this, unlike the colleges and universities, is
not a non-profit. Were one library to simply allow free access to all and
sundry, there would be no need for many libraries to subscribe and JSTOR
would go out of business.

Perhaps you could see if you could get access through a large public
library, a scholarly organization (such as the AEI), or possibly in-person
access at a local college or university. The college or university would
not be allowed to offer you off-campus access. Or you could find a friend
who is an academic (there are some conservatives on campus!) and have him
share his access with you. The latter suggestion by the way is not an
official suggestion. It does violate the terms of the agreement with
JSTOR. Still I know it is done. Just keep it under your hat.

Keep up the good work at NRO!
[Name withheld]

-The anti-war crowd portrayed the administration as evil and un-caring.
-John Kerry used the anti-war movement for his personal, political aspirations.
-Ignorant comparisons were made between the President and Hitler.
-No thought was given to the consequences the South Vietnamese people would suffer if we immediately pulled out our troops.
-The morale of our troops overseas suffered because of the anti-war movement's actions at home while the enemy's resolve was bolstered.
-The left proclaimed that the South Vietnamese people would be better off under the North's rule instead of being subjected to U.S. intervention.
-All enemies of freedom called the U.S. efforts imperialistic.
-Industry greed was claimed to be the main reason for the war.
-The administration was accused of manufacturing its reasons for the war.
-Hollywood celebrities received much free publicity by speaking out against the war, and most of Hollywood was adamantly against it.
-A major network's anchorman lost his objectivity and proclaimed the war to be a losing enterprise.
-Grieving families of killed servicemen lashed out angrily at the government.
-American Colleges and Universities were a festering cesspool of leftist, anti-war propaganda.
-"Make Love, Not War" was a simplistic sound-bite thought to be very, very clever.
-American troops were claimed to come, unfairly, only from lower-income families.
-The leftists treated the U.N. as a legitimate, intelligent, governing body that would act in our country's best interests.
-Atrocities committed by the North Vietnamese were downplayed and under-reported by the three major networks.
-Servicemen's efforts at humanitarian aid were ignored in favor of body counts and negative war images.
-Congress busied itself with finger pointing and witch-hunting."

I'm getting the first email from librarians. Apparently there's an "open access" movement which has been agitating about this stuff for a while. I kind of assumed there would be, given the logic of the internet age. A few have objected about the costs. "Who's going to pay for free access?"

Look: I don't know. But someone's paying for free access to libraries. The science journals cost a fortune to subscribe to. Considering the amount of Pharma money out there, and the public interest in furthering science you'd think someone would come up with a way to lower the costs there. I don't particularly care about the details. But I think it's a straw man to say the costs are what keeps me from paying for a single-user subscription! Few business models rely on denying the customer the opportunity to pay for the product.

As for giving this stuff out for free, libraries already do that. They just make it hard, by requiring the interested party to physically go to the library. I've been told that JStor itself is for profit, but the economics of the academic-industrial complex make it difficult for it to spread the wealth. Fine. But where are the foundations? Where is the National Endowment for Humanities? They could help pay for public access. I'll take a few fewer exhibitions on lesbian literature in ante-bellum Kentucky in exchange for free access to the accumulated wisdom of Western scholarship.

What the opponents of putting this stuff out for free seem to be saying is that they don't want it to be easy to get. Maybe that's because it will make librarians less important, maybe that's because it will result in fewer posh conferences for academic journal editors. I don't care. I just think it's hypocritical for people who claim to answer to a higher calling than mere profit to defend the principle of denying the public this stuff. As for the practical objections, someone else can sort them out.

I must say that, in all geekiness, I am painfully jealous of people with easy access to JSTOR. For those of you not in the know, it's basically the egghead Nexis and it goes back a billion years. When I blegged for that Political Science Quarterly article from the 1920s yesterday, numerous members of the professoriate simply punched a few doodads and sent it to me. I searched in vain to see if I could get a single-user subscription to it, which I'm sure I couldn't have afforded anyway.

This does raise an interesting ethical question. If academics are dedicated to the spread of human knowlegde, if librarians are even more dedicated to the dissemination of learning via the printed word, why shouldn't such a resource be available to everyone? Why create firewalls and gatekeepers to human wisdom, if that is what scholarly research is? Don't get me wrong, I see nothing wrong with Nexis-Lexis charging for its services. They are a for-profit enterprise. But universities and libraries are not. They serve a different mission. So why keep the common man out of the intellectual Promised Land?

Sen. Specter has been challenged from the right before, but never by anyone so formidable. And the political demographics are working for the challenger. Pennsylvania once was described as a state with two big cities -- Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and their suburbs -- as bookends, with the rest of the state resembling Alabama with no African Americans. Republican primaries used to hinge heavily on the four big suburban Philadelphia counties. Now, notes Rick Robb, a longtime GOP operative in the state, "the growth of the party" is west and north of that region -- Lancaster and York and Lehigh Counties.

If this Bin Laden tape is legit and al Qaeda is in fact asking for a truce with the Europeans in exchange for bowing-out of the war on terror and making nice-nice on Muslims, it's a big deal. Even if strategically it amounts to little -- even the French wouldn't publicly accept such a bargain. But it reflects a great deal about the way al Qaeda sees this conflict. It is now impossible for the champions of nuance to claim that the Spanish capitulation was anything but a huge victory for al Qaeda -- in the eyes of al Qaeda. Why? Because this tape shows that they now believe they can build on the success of Spain and create a non-aggression pact with Europe.

From the vantage point of an Islamist, Europe is much less of a threat. Militarily, it can't do much beyond its borders. It's not particularly Christian any more and is getting less so everyday. Meanwhile, Muslims already have significant demographic advantages in Europe and those advantages are only increasing. Why not divide the West?

After all, America is the danger and, even better, America cares what Europeans think. Indeed, for some reason many Americans actually believe doing good is bad unless there are a bunch of white guys with foreign accents helping us out. If Europe turns its back on America, won't America lose it's nerve even further?

What will be interesting is not how European leaders react -- they will all say very dismissive and brave things. What will be interesting is to see how the "European street" reacts. I fear many will be all too willing to make such a deal. After all, many of them have been demanding such an arrangement for a while. And, the more interchangeable the war in Iraq and the war on terror become, the more Europeans will be attracted to such a bargain.

Bwaaahaa ha ha ha! From Drudge:

AIR AMERICA 'BOUNCES CHECK'; LIBERAL RADIO NET TAKEN OFF AIR IN LOS ANGELES, CHICAGO AFTER ONLY TWO WEEKS

After just two weeks on the air, Air America Radio, the fledgling liberal talk-radio network featuring Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo, appears to have encountered serious cash-flow problems.

The CHICAGO TRIBUNE is developing a story, insiders tell DRUDGE, on how the network was pulled off the air this morning in Chicago and Los Angeles, the network's second- and third-largest markets, because, the owner of both stations said, the network bounced a check and owes him more than $1 million! A charge the network strongly denies... Developing...

Numerous readers have informed me that VillainSupply.com is probably the best place to show for laser sharks.

From a reader:

Dear Mr. Goldberg,

A quick note regarding Kerrey; on Fox news last night he referred to the “Gorelick Wall” memo as “An Excuse.” If I were a counterintelligence agent in the field I would interpret this as the ultimate, demoralizing, dammed if you do dammed if you don’t statement of all time. Blame the frustrated agents in the field for following orders, while putting the person who issued the order on the very commission responsible for the investigation of the intelligence failure that following her order helped caused in the first place….Ugh.

The Tenet-must-go, should-have-gone-already mentality is the type of reaction one would expect from the chicken-little left, not from the bright minds at NRO.

First, firing Tenet immediately after 9/11 would have been a serious mistake. The CIA was getting an avalanche of information around the world reacting to the attack. They had the responsibility of uncovering any additional attacks as well as putting together the intelligence for the U.S. response against the attackers and their supporters. What better way to reinforce the risk-averse, keep-your-head-down mentality that dominated the agency in the 90s than to start firing the bosses immediately after a crisis? Bush's visit to Langley and pep talk in late September was exactly what the institution needed - don't get distracted by what went wrong before, focus now on the task at hand.

Like firing the coach in professional sports, the team only gets better if there's a better coach to replace him. If those calling for Tenet's head have a better candidate, they ought to mention it. (The only serious name I've heard mentioned is Rep. Porter Goss, head of the intel committee and former CIA officer.)

As for the structural problems Tenet talked about - today America expects up-to-the-minute assessment of what secretive, shadowy small groups are planning and thinking from an institution designed to assess the Soviet Union's military capabilities. It's a lot easier to count the number of tanks on an East German base than to figure out the specific intentions in the mind of a jihadi.

Every day, the CIA takes in mountains upon mountains of information from classified and unclassified sources in varied formats such as agent reports, intercepted emails, copied documents, imagery, and audio in dozens of languages. All of this has to get analyzed, and then edited, trimmed, and boiled down to - among other things - a several-page PDB and half-hour to an hour daily morning briefing for the president.

Of course, in hindsight, important facts are going to get edited out, deemphasized, or other facts emphasized. The issue of 9/11 wasn't connecting dots, it was sorting out which three dots - the flight school reports, the talk of hijackings, and the old plan of Operation Bojinka - should be connected amongst the thousands that were empty bluster, false rumors, vague threats, etc. Today, intelligence agencies face the same problem - sorting out what's real from what's the idle boasts of jihadi wannabes, or outright disinformation.

"New blood"? Conservatives are the few who understand that change is not synonymous with progress. A new director does not guarantee of improvement.

"and the fixes YESTERDAY." What fixes? Less layers between the analysts and the policymakers? More raw data to the policymakers? Maybe that will improve things; maybe that will result in policymakers doing the job analysts should be doing. More information to other agencies? Congress leaks classified information like a sieve; would the security benefits of giving info to the FAA, FBI, TSA, Homeland Security, etc. be worth the risk that some bureaucrat could leak information that can identify sources and methods?

We've seen Tenet (and Bush)'s answer: TTIC, the Terrorist Threat Integration Center. Maybe it will work, maybe it won't. If it doesn't, we can try something else. But so far, there have been 945 days since 9/11, and the Agency and its domestic partners are 945 for 945 in terms of preventing another domestic attack.

"A disasterous ship"? Nonsense. There's no simple, easy reform of the intelligence community that will guarantee no more attacks.

Tenet will probably retire sometime shortly after the election. He will leave a record of some big successes, some big failures, but mostly a steady hand in the Agency's hardest times.

Sensenbrenner Urges Commissioner Gorelick to Resign from the 9/11 Commission Because of Her Conflict of Interest

WASHINGTON, D.C. - House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R-Wis.) released the following statement:

"Yesterday, a 1995 memo written by 9/11 Commission Member Jamie Gorelick, in her former role as the second in command at the Justice Department, revealed her actions in establishing the heightened 'wall' prohibiting the sharing of intelligence information and criminal information. Scrutiny of this policy lies at the heart of the Commission's work. Ms. Gorelick has an inherent conflict of interest as the author of this memo and as a government official at the center of the events in questions. Thus, I believe the Commission's work and independence will be fatally damaged by the continued participation of Ms. Gorelick as a Commissioner. Reluctantly, I have come to the conclusion that Ms. Gorelick should resign from this Commission.

"The Commission's Guidelines on Recusals state, 'Commissioners and staff will recuse themselves from investigating work they performed in prior government service.' Commissioner Gorelick's memo directing a policy that 'go[es] beyond what is legally required' indicates that her judgment and actions as the Deputy Attorney General in the Reno Justice Department are very much in question before the Commission. Indeed Attorney General Ashcroft called this DOJ policy, 'the single greatest structural cause for September 11 ... [and] embraced flawed legal reasoning.' Commissioner Gorelick is in the unfair position of trying to address the key issue before the Commission when her own actions are central to the events at issue. The public cannot help but ask legitimate questions about her motives.

"While it is regrettable that this conflict had not come to light sooner, this Commission's work and forthcoming recommendations are too important to be questioned in this way, and may be devalued by Ms. Gorelick's continued participation as a Commissioner. Given Ms. Gorelick's work as the Deputy Attorney General under Janet Reno, Ms. Gorelick can be quite valuable to the Commission's work preparing 'a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.' However, that contribution should come as a witness before the Commission - not as a member.

"Key figures like former FBI Director Freeh, Director Mueller, Attorney General Ashcroft, former presidential adviser Richard Clarke, and National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice have all testified before the Commission and would have rightly sparked indignation about a conflict of interest had these individuals also been members of the Commission. Testifying before the Commission is Ms. Gorelick's proper role, not sitting as a member of this independent commission."

Little has changed for the people of Iraq. They used to be bombed and shelled by Saddam's henchmen for refusing to believe his lies - and are currently being bombed, shelled and abused by the coalition forces for refusing to toe the U.S. line.

Democracy has never been imposed so brutally on any nation by a band of fraudulent genocidal criminals posing as the bleeding heart freedom lovers of Washington.

From a reader:

Dear Mr. Goldberg, I love your work and read it regularly. However, I have just one quick comment about your April 14th piece entitled "The Blame Game." I've been a Mormon all my life and like to think I know a great deal about the things we Mormons do and like. As far as I know, we Mormons don't tend to go in for bowling leagues all that much. I'm not sure why. It seems an enjoyable sport. We're more into Softball and Basketball. And we can get downright nasty if it’s an important game. Smiley emoticon I wish we were more into Hockey, but that seems to be something only Canadian Mormons enjoy. Again, love your work. Keep it up!

CONFLICT OF INTEREST? [Andrew Stuttaford]

Jamie Gorelick sits on the 9/11 commission. She’s a Clinton era Deputy Attorney General, who now works as a litigation partner for the Washington law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering. So far so good. Now here’s the twist (via blogger Dwight Meredith). Wilmer, Cutler have reportedly agreed to represent ‘prince’ Mohammed al Faisal, a potential defendant in the litigation being brought by the 9/11 families against various prominent Saudis.

Now the ‘prince’ is entitled to legal representation, but you don’t have to be paranoid to think that there’s a clear problem here with conflict of interest. Remember that there doesn’t have to have been any actual impropriety to find a conflict. The mere potential is enough, or, in sensitive cases, even its perception. If investigating 9/11 isn’t sensitive, what is?

Gorelick should resign from the commission.

And while we’re on the subject of the commission, how about those 28 pages?

Posted at 11:29 AM

Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism expert for Presidents Clinton and Bush, began his testimony before the 9/11 commission with an apology: "Your government failed you. Those entrusted with protecting you failed you. And I failed you. We tried hard. But that doesn't matter, because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask, once all the facts are out, for your understanding and for your forgiveness." Moralists warn against the spurious sorrow that afflicts the first-person plural of so many collective apologies: We erred, says the penitent, though he clearly intends to shift blame and odium to his fellows. Clarke has now developed a first-person singular that apes this dubious plural: I ask for understanding and forgiveness for our misdeeds--meaning that Bush, Rice, and the other bums don't deserve it. Clarke's supposed honesty was moral preening. Did we mention he has a book out?

When Ken Starr was investigating the President, there was a concerted, White House approved effort to descredit him. Starr, who had been one of the most respected lawyers in Washington by Democrats and Republicans alike (Dems and Reps approved him to read Bob Packwood's diaries, for example), was villified for any number of imaginary or exaggerated misdeeds. The one the White House seemed to favor most was that he was a "tobacco lawyer," as if representing tobacco companies -- as opposed to, say, rapists -- is not only a conflict of interest, but actually disqualifies you from public life.

Now, Jamie Gorelick is revealed to have a pertinent, first-hand and an obviously irrefutable appearance of a conflict of interest. I don't think this makes her a bad person or anything like that. And, obviously, the comparison is far from perfect since Bush isn't being "charged" (except politically) with doing anything wrong. Nonetheless, Gorelick's involvement in the conceiving, administering and implementing of anti-terrorism policy and her continued role as a 9/11 Commissioner strikes me as a real issue deserving of serious scrutiny. After all, Henry Kissinger and George Mitchell were disqualified for the leadership of the Commission because of their business ties, surely crafting the policies being investigated is no greater conflict of interest.

Is it possible that GWB merely let slip something for his second term?????

I've been saying to friends that the line up I'd like is as follows:

Rumsfeld State (Can you imagine him taking the fire hose to that crowd?)

Cheney Defense

Rice VP

Part of the reason that this is such a mess is that nothing DOJ assumed was required (and then proceeded to "go beyond") really was legally required. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. A wiretap is a "search and seizure" -- it captures conversations. So what the Fourth Amendment minimally proscribes is unreasonable recording of conversations. If someone is plotting against national security (by terrorism or espionage), it is perfectly reasonable to record such a conversation, whether or not you have a court order permitting it.

The Constitution only sets the threshold of what the government may do or not do; Congress is empowered in many areas to pass laws that create further restrictions. In the criminal law, that was done by Title III (18 USC 2510 et seq), which generally forbids the government in an ordinary criminal investigations to tape record conversations unless the government has first gotten a wiretap order based on a showing of probable cause to believe a crime is being committed. That, however, did not affect national security wiretapping. National security wiretapping is part of the executive branch's defense powers, not its law enforcement powers (which are heavily regulated by the courts). Under the Constitution, courts do not have much if anything to do with national defense -- under separation of powers principles, that is ceded to the executive branch.

In the Vietnam era and in Watergate, however, it emerged that presidents (most infamously, Nixon) had abused national defense powers. That is, under the guise of national security, he had intelligence agents spy on political enemies. In order to crack down on this abuse, Congress thought it would be prudent to subject to Court review the President's national defense power to tape record potential foreign enemy spies and terrorists. It passed a law called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 1978, which required intelligence agents to establish to the satisfaction of a special FISA Court that there was probable cause their target was an agent of a foreign power before recording could take place. There was probably a good argument that this was an unconstitutional intrusion on the President's national security power, but the political climate post-Watergate was not a good time to be making such arguments.

FISA, in addition to the probable cause showing, also required the executive branch to certify that it was seeking to use FISA for national security intelligence gathering purposes. The fear behind that requirement is that the government might use abuse its FISA authority. That is, in an ordinary criminal case where it did not have enough evidence to show probable cause that a crime was being committed, the government might pretend that it was doing a national security investigation under FISA just so it could get permission to record. This was a hypothetical and very silly fear: if an agent was inclined to be corrupt, it would be much easier and smarter just to make up evidence needed to establish probable cause for a regular criminal wiretap than to pretend the subject of his investigation was an agent of a foreign power; and, internally, the FBI and DOJ require a more rigorous approval process for a FISA wiretap than a criminal wiretap, so the chances of being caught would be greater.

No matter. The certification requirement was put in the statute. Soon, the government began to interpret as if it were not only a requirement to declare that the FISA wiretap was sought for intelligence (rather than criminal) purposes, but as if it actually prohibited the government from USING FISA recordings in criminal cases. It says no such thing -- indeed, nothing in FISA prevents the government from using FISA recordings in criminal trials -- which is important because terrorists commit lots of ordinary crimes, and prosecuting them is sometimes a very good way to stop them from blowing things up and to induce them to cooperate.

When the government started to act like there was something wrong with obtaining evidence of ordinary crimes by FISA, the federal courts naturally reacted by not only seeming to agree, but by going one better: they developed a "primary purpose" test -- requiring the government to prove that its real reason for using FISA had been to conduct a national security investigation, not to build a criminal case. If the government could not prove this, the FISA intercepts could not be used as evidence.

Although it never actually happened that intercepts were suppressed, the “primary purpose” test is the law the Gorelick memo referred to when it talked about what was “legally required”. “Primary purpose” put the government in a bind: The government started to be afraid to investigate terrorists for criminal violations, because if you then also used FISA, the mere fact that you had done some criminal investigation would theoretically leave you vulnerable to the charge that you were using FISA to build the criminal case – not for the “primary purpose” of intelligence collection.

Government lawyers are usually cautious. By nature, they avoid going to the ultimate margins of what they are allowed to do. This helps them later on, when defendants claim that evidence should be suppressed, to impress the court that what they did must have been reasonable and permissible because it was less than the law would have allowed them to do. So the government put in safeguards, described in the memo, that were more hamstringing even than the primary purpose test. As the memo describes, the intelligence agents were basically not allowed to communicate with the criminal agents – they were supposed to investigate on totally separate tracks; that way, it was thought, there could be no suggestion that the FISA wiretaps had been used to build a criminal case.

In the end, this is all tragic. As the FISA Court of Review held in 2002, there was no problem with FISA intercepts being used to help criminal cases, the certification requirement was never meant to be a restriction on the use of FISA evidence, the “primary purpose” test was something that should never have been imposed by the courts, and the restrictive Justice Department safeguards – “the Wall” between criminal and intelligence agents – designed to avoid running afoul of primary purpose were utterly unnecessary. All the safeguards succeeded in doing is stopping agents from pooling information and connecting dots about people who were trying to kill us all.

Sorry this is so long and complicated, but something that takes 25 years to get this screwed up is bound to be long and complicated.

has two good posts (that I am mentioning at the moment; I don't mean to suggest that his others aren't!): one on Scalia's odd invocation of the First Amendment, and another on an attempt to regulate google.com.

While I'm on the subject of this blog, I may as well mention a post there that had caused me some puzzlement. Jacob Levy, in the course of making a point about originalism that I think is wholly sound, remarked that he thought that the "fast track" procedures for approving trade agreements were unconstitutional. ("Fast track" has been relabeled "trade promotion authority" for obscure p.r. reasons.) I had previously associated this view with crackpots, not people who know what they're talking about, so I was surprised to see it coming from Levy--and I'd be interested in seeing why he takes it.

It sounded like Governor Thompson had no idea this memo existed. And Ashcroft intimated that the Commission knew nothing about the memo. Now, what makes that interesting is that one person on the Commission had to have known the memo existed -- its author. If in fact everyone but her was in the dark about it, and if in fact her memo was as central to this whole "wall" problem as Ashcroft suggests, why didn't she mention it? Presumably it's relevant and even if it's not there is definitely an appearance of relevance, which is a standard we know she's familiar with. It's not up to her -- or shouldn't be -- to decide whether the Commission should know about this.

Indeed if you listened to Philip Zelikow's "staff statement" at the begining of the hearing it was pretty clear that she would have had reason, cause and opportunity to mention it. Here's what he said:

Finally, even though the number of agents devoted to counterterrorism was limited, they were not always fully utilized in the field offices. We learned through our interviews that prior to 9/11, field agents often were diverted from counterterrorism or other intelligence work in order to cover major criminal cases.

The second core challenge was a legal issue that became a management challenge as well. Certain provisions of federal law had been interpreted to limit communication between agents conducting intelligence investigations and the criminal prosecution units of the Department of Justice. This was done so that the broad powers for gathering intelligence would not be seized upon by prosecutors trying to make a criminal case. The separation of intelligence from criminal investigations became known as the wall.

New procedures issued by Attorney General Reno in 1995 required the FBI to notify prosecutors when facts and circumstances are developed in a foreign intelligence or counterintelligence investigation that reasonably indicate a significant federal crime has been, is being or may be committed.

ZELIKOW: The procedures, however, prohibited the prosecutors from, quote, "directing or controlling," close quote, the intelligence investigation.

Over time, the wall requirement came to be interpreted by the Justice Department, and particularly the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, as imposing an increasingly stringent barrier to communications between FBI intelligence agents and criminal prosecutors.

Despite additional guidance on information sharing issued by Attorney General Reno in February 2000 and by Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson in August 2001, the wall remained a source of considerable frustration and concern within the Justice Department.

Justice Department prosecutors and FBI criminal agents were responsible for large criminal cases, like the embassy bombings. The intelligence side of the FBI, though, had the legal tools essential for domestic intelligence work, such as FISA surveillance. In this environment, domestic counterterrorism efforts were impaired.

Ashcroft revealed that Jamie Gorelick wrote the memo which expanded and raised the wall between intelligence and criminal investigators and analysts. Not only that, but the commission did not ask for the memo and so Ashcroft declassified it for them.

Can you feel the burn?

Ms. Lopez, You should note that the ESPN index is at least logical and traditional in its correlation between scoring and what it seeks to measure. A zero on the Kerry Misery Index signifies unimaginable, horrific depths of misery while a zero on the ESPN Misery Index indicates a complete absence of misery. Which do you think is going to make more sense in a soundbite?

Kerry: "And I say to you, my fellow Americans, that we have reached an all-time low on the Misery Index."

Public: "Yay, misery is at an all-time low!"

Kerry: "No, no, a low score is bad."

Public: "Uh, then why isn't it called the Happiness Index?"

GORTON: I want to read you the one paragraph, it was the subject of Bob Kerrey's question, and ask you whether or not it is accurate.

The staff report reads, The FBI's inability or unwillingness to share information reportedly frustrated White House national security officials. According to the former national counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke, the National Security Council never received anything in writing from the FBI whatsoever.

Former Deputy National Security Adviser James Steinberg stated that the only time that the FBI provided the National Security Council with relevant information was during the millennium crisis. Clarke told us that Attorney General Reno was notified that the National Security Council could not run an effective counterterrorism program without access to FBI information.

Is that a correct characterization?

FREEH: I don't think it is.

I can't speak for the frustration of other people, but with respect to sharing information, you know, I didn't provide written memos to Sandy Berger or the president or anybody else at the NSC, but as I said before, the attorney general and I, every two weeks, almost like clockwork in the last 14 or 15 months of our overlapping tenure, sat with Sandy Berger in his office for at least an hour, perhaps two hours, and went over every single piece of counterterrorism, counterintelligence case that we have.

By the way, Dick Clarke was never present at any of those meetings. Why Sandy Berger didn't want him there, I don't know.

But we had detailed discussions of all those matters on a bi- weekly basis. So the notion that we weren't sharing information is, as far as I am concerned, an incorrect characterization.

The e-mailer who questioned the worth of a G-rated version of Scarface has missed the point. I'm pretty sure nobody is yearning for a G-rated version of Scarface, the Untouchables, Wild Thing, Freddy vs. Jason, etc.

What would be nice is a G-rated version of all the films that COULD be G-rated if you chopped 10 seconds out of them. The G-rated version of Scarface would be a minute long. But there are a large number of films that would be very good for family viewing with only one or two edits. I often hear people complain about Hollywood's gratuitous use of profanity, etc. - about films that are absolutely fine for family viewing EXCEPT for the fact that someone decided to add a gratuitous profanity. Why, for example, does there need to be one profanity in the middle of "The Princess Bride"? Removing such wouldn't detract from the film; quite the opposite.

Nobody was suggesting that Hollywood should make every movie family-friendly, nor that parents should ignore the ratings, nor that parents should be able to expect that every movie would be suitable for children. But when the family "unfriendly" part constitutes only a few seconds of the movie and is irrelevant to the story, and when the technology exists to easily give viewers the option of not having to endure it, why not? That would be a lot more useful and popular that 95% of the "extras" that come on DVD's now.

This isn't "asking Hollywood to raise our kids". It's simply a regret that there are a large number of movies that could be enjoyed together as a family if there a way to cut out a few seconds of pointless garbage.

"It's all about freedom of choice, which is one of the things that makes this city so great."

Well it did, Tom, it did.

(Via Radley Balko)

Your comment about DVD’s containing alternate “clean” versions of films is…well – silly. Why would you rent a film for your family that is not intended as family-fare? Is there really anything achieved by watching a G-rated version of “Scarface”? I’m tired of parents asking Hollywood to raise their kids. Movies have ratings for a reason – use them. Stop looking to have everything child-proofed. Some movies aren’t meant to be viewed by children. Try this: instead of requesting filmmakers neuter their work, how about renting TWO films that day – one for everyone and one for you later when the kids are asleep. I happen, incidentally, to be a fairly conservative Republican who often finds myself nodding my head in agreement with your posts. On this subject, however, it seems you have more in common with the PC police than the G.O.P.

The Connecticut NAACP's listed phone number went straight to voice mail most of the week, and the voice mailbox was full, so reporters couldn't even leave messages asking for comment. (Would they have answered the phone, or checked their messages during the week if GOP Connecticut governor John Rowland had made the same comments?) The national NAACP initially didn't want to comment because they hadn't heard Dodd's words themselves. They were referred to the Congressional Record, and then didn't return phone calls on the subject for the rest of the week. (Their main media relations number also goes straight to voice mail; guess they're screening their calls.)

Dodd's comments may not have gotten much attention for a number of reasons, but a key point is that it's not just media bias. Part of it is that media stories, particularly controversies, thrive on conflict -- somebody had to come out and call Dodd's comment insensitive/bizarre/whatever, and then he could respond, and everyone in the Connecticut delegation and Senate leadership could comment on the controversy. Without any group -- beyond a bunch of bloggers -- up in arms about Dodd's words, the story could only have been "SOME REPORTERS THINK DODD'S COMMENT REMINDS THEM OF LOTT'S".

You wouldn't know it from the written reports, especially the selective (and probably out of context) quotes from the grieving father, but these girls are (were) exceptionally brave soldiers who knew that what they were doing was right. On my local TV news, an interview with Michelle from last winter was aired last night where she talks about how awesome it is to realize how much good they are doing in Iraq, and how hearing from the local Iraqis makes it all worthwhile. Apparently Michelle was talking to locals that hide from the American press corps.

Witmer said he worried about his daughters joining the military but felt at the time that duty with the National Guard would be relatively safe, especially with a military police unit. The Witmers also have two sons.

"My daughters wanted the freedom of being able to call their shots with their education," he said. "They were using that to go to school."

Because that would be an admission by Hollywood that the blood/sex/language is gratuitous. If it can so easily be removed from the product, it didn't need to be there in the first place.

There are already products similar to this. TV Guardian searches the closed captioning for objectional words, muting the audio track and replacing the objectional word with another word. It's OK as it goes, but when watching the story of Jesus and seeing him tell Peter "Before the jerk crows, you will betray me three times", you realize that language is a tricky thing.

A Republican, she told Reuters she would use her position to help explain America's involvement in Iraq. "What needed to be done had to be done," she said.

Freeh: Protecting our homeland from attacks by foreign terrorists had long been the FBI's priority. Back in September 1994, I recommended to Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick that the DoJ strengthen investigative powers against suspected "undesirable aliens," accelerating deportation appeal proceedings and limiting U.S. participation in a visa waiver pilot program under which 9.5 million foreigners entered the U.S. in 1994. I also recommended that we include provisions for the detention and removal of undesirable aliens, under a special, closed-court procedure. I also criticized alien deportation appeal procedures wich often took years to conclude. Finally, I recommended legislation to provide the FBI with roving wiretap authority to investigate terrorist activities in the U.S. President Clinton requested that authority in 1996. . . .

From a reader in response to today's column:

Mr. Jonah Goldberg I have just read your editorial, Whistling Defeat, with considerable interest in view of the analogy of Iraq and Vietnam. In May, 1969, I joined my Marine Corps battalion as a young infantry officer, while it was engaged in a fierce combat operation. The 101st Airborne were in a ferocious battle with North Vietnamese Army units dug in on a hill that came to be known as Hamburger Hill. My Marine unit, 9th Marines, was working in support of the Army in the general area, but not on the hill itself. I can still remember reading in our military newspaper, Stars and Stripes, in the field in Vietnam, that Senator Edward Kennedy was lambasting the American effort at Hamburger Hill for the casualties and in a general indictment of our war effort. I remember also how demoralizing it was to read what our elected representatives were saying while we were engaged with our enemy. I am sure that our forces in Iraq today can sense the same frustration and betrayal as others of us sensed 35 years ago. Thanks for an informative message.

Immediately after the passage I quoted, comes this bit:

"He could, for instance, have left his vacation in Texas after receiving that briefing memo entitled 'Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.' and rushed back to the White House, assembled all his top advisers and demanded to know what, in particular, was being done to screen airline passengers to make sure people who fit the airlines' threat profiles were being prevented from boarding American planes."

Um, I'm fairly certain that even after 9/11 the Times had a big problem with "screening" passengers who fit the "threat profile." Or am I wrong?

Getting a lot of email about Andy Rooney's
column (via Drudge). Here's an interesting response from an Ivy League academic:

Most laughable is his claim that 23 suicides (however tragic) is evidence of how awful the situation is in Iraq. According to statistics from the National Institute of Mental Health, there were 10.7 suicides/100,000 individuals in 2001 . However, the ratio of male to female is 4:1. Therefore, the rate for males is 17.2/100,000, assuming a 50/50 population gender split (check math with Derb). 1 in 7 soldiers deployed in Iraq is female (http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/1265/context/cover) (maybe not the best reference). Assuming 130,000 soldiers deployed in Iraq, one would expect 19.2 male suicides and 0.78 female suicides for a total of 20 (once again, check with Derb). The 23 suicies in Iraq is most likely not significantly different from any random group of 130,000 people in the US with a 6:1 split of male to female over a year. As usual, when condemning our actions, people fail to factor in what would have gone on over the last year had we not invaded Iraq. If by some wild chance you decide to post any of this, please don't use my name. Thanks and keep up the good work.

The New York Times editorializes:

No reasonable American blames Mr. Bush for the terrorist attacks, but that's a long way from thinking there was no other conceivable action he could have taken to prevent them.

I absolutely agree. There were a great many actions the government could have conceivably taken. It could have conceivably grounded every plane in America. It conceivably could have announced it was going to scrutinize every Muslim and Arab living in America without citizenship, and every single one which didn't have his or her papers in perfect order would be deported. It is conceivable that George W. Bush could have championed measures even stronger than those in the Patriot Act before 9/11. It is conceivable that he could have bombed Afghanistan, issued orders to assasinate every Jihadist terrorist it could get in the crosshairs. It is conceivable that he could have told Americans that civil liberties would have to take a backseat to security and that tourism would have to suffer.

The only thing that is inconeivable is that the New York Times would have condoned any of these measures or measures which fall far short of these. Indeed, it is inconceivable that the Times would have done anything but denounce the President as a would-be dictator. Indeed, it is difficult to find very many examples of things President Bush did after 9/11 to prevent terrorism that the New York Times did not sneer at in some way.

Applying the standard of "conceivability" is not only intellectually dishonest for the Times it is hypocritical since it is something approaching this standard which the Administration applied to its decision to go to war with Iraq -- "are we doing everything conceivable to make sure this never happens again?" -- and we all know how much support the Times has offered for that effort.

While Kerry does not adhere to all the strictures of the faith, Bush may not be any better a choice for Catholics, added Mary Ann Walsh, spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

"There is no candidate that is in agreement with the church on all issues," she said.

A depressing email from a reader (I'm not as bummed out as him, though I generally agree that Milbank's stuff has refined the art of journalistic cheap-shots to an unprecedented level):

After this weekend, I think we all need to get used to the sound of President Kerry as depressing as that is. Never did I think I would see the Press sink to the level they are at. They have stopped even pretending to be journalists and are now full fledged Dem hacks, and they don't care who knows it. Dana Milbank appears to be a Krugman disciple, and he is supposed to reporting actual news, not writing opinion columns that belong in MoveOn.org. Milbank's pieces on the PDB are just unbelievable. W is wrong on everything according to the Press, the Press is politicizing the war and 9-11 to no end (see Bush-hating 9-11 widows, they went to Afghansistan to prevent the war for pete's sake, but does the press mention that, of course not), good economic news is on a need to know basis and course no one needs to know about that in an election year (can you say Kerry boom starting Dec 04), and Kerry's incredible baggage is swept under the rug (He was the leader of a group and was at the meeting where they took a vote on assasinating sitting U.S. senators, he said U.S. soldiers committed war crimes in Senate testimony, and he went to Paris to negoitate with Hanoi, which is illegal). Very, very depressing.

Email from my Dad (imagine him saying this while pushing me on a swing and you have a fairly good snapshot of my childhood):

I don't think anyone has explained the significance of the name of the Shiite militia, the "Mahdi Army" - or at least I haven't seen it. The Mahdi, mainly according to Shiite belief, is the messiah who will appear at the end of history and will reward and punish. Many Moslems over the years have claimed to be the Mahdi but the one who is most famous for it was Mohammed Ahmed (I think) who had a following of zealots in the late 19th century in the Sudan, which was then ruled by Egypt, but with British overseerage, and it came to be restructured as the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (also referred to as the Condominium.) The Mahdi rebelled against Egypt and Charles ("Chinese") Gordon was sent to put him down, conquering Omdurman, the old Sudanese capital (the twin city of Khartoum. Gordon defeated the Mahdi but in the process was himself killed. Lord Kitchener was then sent to avenge the British deaths, which he did and laid out the new Khartoum in the design of the Union Jack. Winston Churchill, incidentaly, was with the Kitchener force and participated in what probably was the last classical cavalry charge, swords drawn. The Mahdi was extraordinarily charismatic and while he lived Omdurman was substituted for Mecca as the destination of the hajj for Sudanese and some other Moslems. I don't know if Sadr is proclaiming himself to be the Mahdi - I doubt it - but it's an interesting name for his "army." (Gordon, incidentally, was callerd "Chinese" because he put down the Taiping Revolution in China with his "ever-victorious army " a very popular guy, hence the need to avenge his death.)

It’s the day that brought me back to life. It’s the 9th of April and I’m free, and they will not steel my joy again and they will not silence me. A year ago at the same date, the thieves and criminals prevented me from celebrating my freedom in the open air, and today thieves, criminals and fanatics are doing the same, but they will not steal my happiness that is making my soul fly and dance with joy and they can’t stop this.

A year ago, words failed me as I met the 1st American soldier, and I still remember his name, “corporal, Adam” and all I could utter was “thank you!” how could I ever put my whole life in few words? How could I have thanked that soldier enough? How could I have told him what it meant to me to see him and his comrades-who brought me back to life- at last? Thank you Adam, Lieutenant Antonio, Captain Brian Curtis and all the coalition soldiers who I can’t remember their names, and those I never met.

It’s the 9th of April and I feel safe! And I don’t care what those ‘political experts’ on the newspapers and TV channels, say about the ‘occupation’, deteriorated security and ‘unemployment’. You can’t understand this, because you never experienced real fear this long. Let me tell you about it, as I’m one of those who passed Saddam’s filthy test of life.

The statue fell and with it, horror fell. You don’t know what it means to be scared to death most of your life, brothers and sisters. I knew that and I faced it during the reign of evil and darkness. I was afraid to talk, I wasn't allowed to think and I wasn't allowed to feel…I wasn't allowed to love.

How dare anyone imply to me how should I feel? And who they think they are, those who try to put words in my mouth? I’m alive and I’m free, and I have the right to say whatever I feel and chose the words I like. No one will tell me again what to say and what to feel.

From the December 21, 1998 Time magazine (Nod to Daly Thoughts ):

"Intelligence sources tell TIME they have evidence that bin Laden may be planning his boldest move yet--a strike on Washington or possibly New York City in an eye-for-an-eye retaliation. "We've hit his headquarters, now he hits ours," says a State Department aide."

Fresh Mozzarella, tomato, and avocado chopped salad

Ginger-snap and apricot crusted ham

Green chili cheese grits soufflé

Fresh asparagus

Roasted sweet and sour beets, carrots, and parsnips

Homemade yeast rolls

Lemon Meringue Pie

The back page of today’s New York Times ‘Week in Review’ section proudly displays a list of Times’ journalists who have won the Pulitzer prize, a prize which is, apparently, “widely considered journalism’s highest honor”.

Right near the top is “1932: Walter Duranty, for coverage of the news from Russia.”

Yes, that Walter Duranty, the liar, the fraud, a man who denied genocide, a man still on the Times’ honor roll.

Draw your own conclusions.

While on the subject of drivers’ licenses, it seems that, when it comes to the question of illegal immigration, Jeb Bush is as feckless as his brother George. The Florida governor is backing a bill that would allow ‘undocumented aliens’ to get drivers’ licenses.

”The bill he is backing has enough safeguards that it would ensure terrorists are not getting licenses, Bush said Monday.”

Wow. He should tell Tom Ridge his secret.

In response to a post on Saturday about 88 allegedly illegal immigrants detained after a domestic flight to Newark, a reader asks exactly what form of i/d they were using. Good question. They could, I suppose, have been using passports from their native lands, but, if not, they must have been using drivers' licenses, which in turn must either have been illegally obtained or were fakes.

Homeland security has, clearly, a way to go.

Will Hutton is a surprisingly influential British commentator with the quite remarkable ability to be wrong about almost everything always. Notorious both for his slightly unhinged anti-Americanism and his creepy devotion to the Brussels ‘project,’ Hutton now turns his attention to ‘fundamentalism’. Now, I’m no fan of religious fundamentalism of any description, but to compare its American version to the poison of Islamic extremism is, quite simply, nonsense. Doubt me? Well, lets take a simple (and rather crude) test. Would Mr. Hutton rather fly in a plane piloted by an Islamic or a Christian fundamentalist? I think we know the answer.

The reality is that, while all forms of fundamentalism may share certain psychological causes, they also differ very greatly. More than that, to regard all fundamentalisms as the same is to ignore the fact that what someone believes is as important as how they believe. Fundamentalist Christianity is very different from fundamentalist Islam, and to deny that is a blind, idiotic fundamentalism all of its own.

An exaggeration? Well, read this comment from Hutton and judge for yourself:

’In Iraq, the two unforgiving eye-for-an-eye fundamentalisms - American and Islamic, informed by the doctrine of blood sacrifice - confront one another in an arena of escalating violence.”

What a cretin.

Night had smothered the city, and the city gave up its protest in uncountable millions of bubbles and gasps of light. Below was glittering Manhattan. The east was black. The opaque hilly horizon of the west was razor-edged against a last gleam of cold white light. Destroyers rode the unbridged Hudson; ferries and small craft flecked her with light. The East River lay her dark secretive self, coddling her treasure, Blackwell’s Island, lay a cool, lamp-spotted, many-bridged stream between the sprawling white conflagrations of Brooklyn and Manhattan. It was terrifyingly beautiful up on the roof, four hundred feet above the gaudy streets, four hundred feet up in the cool dark silences, four hundred feet up nearer the stars….

[Blue] put his hands into his trouser pockets and leaned backward, his face toward the heavens, now filling with stars.

“I think,” he whispered half to himself, “my heart would break with all this immensity if I did not know that God Himself once stood beneath it, a young man, as small as I.”

Then, he turned to me slowly.

“Did it ever occur to you that it was Christ Who humanized infinitude, so to speak? When God became man He made you and me and the rest of us pretty important people. He not only redeemed us. He saved us from the terrible burden of infinity.”

Blue rather caught me off my guard. I might have admitted in him a light turn for philosophy. I did not expect any such high-sounding speculation as this. But he was passionately serious. He eyes were glowing in the dark. He threw his hands up toward the stars: “My hands, my feet, my poor little brain, my eyes, my ears, all matter more than the whole sweep of these constellations!” he burst out. “God Himself, the God to Whom this whole universe-specked display is as nothing, God Himself had hands like mine and feet like mine, and eyes, and brain, and ears!....” He looked at me intently. “Without Christ we would be little more than bacteria breeding on a pebble in space, or glints of ideas in a whirling void of abstractions. Because of Him, I can stand here out under this cold immensity and know that my infinitesimal pulse-beats and acts and thoughts are of more importance than this whole show of a universe. Only for Him, I would be crushed beneath the weight of all these worlds. Only for Him, I would tumble dazed into the gaping chasms of space and time. Only for Him, I would be confounded before the awful fertility and intricacy of all life. Only for Him, I would be the merest of animalcules crawling on the merest of motes in a frigid Infinity.” He turned away from me, turned toward the spread of night behind the parapet. “But behold,” he said, his voice rising with exultancy, “behold! God wept and laughed and dined and wined and suffered and died even as you and I. Blah!—for the immensity of space! Blah!—for those who would have me a microcosm in the meaningless tangle of an endless evolution! I’m no microcosm. I, too, am a Son of God!”

He finished his outburst with a great gesture to the stars.