A less interesting email in response to same column:

You don't know what you're doing. If you aren't concerned about the way Bush is attempting to break down the barrier between church and state in order to propagate his own sectarian evangelical BS, you're missing a few screws. The core of his neoevangelical crowd is about an intolerant as any group in America. As a Jewish American you ought to be embarrassed to be defending these medieval lunatics. You're evidently a gambling man. You know these people have nothing to do with your own beliefs. They just happen to overlap -- in a few key areas -- for now. You're playing with fire. And I promise you you'll get nice and toasted one day if you keep it up. Just keep defending these loopy freaks. It will catch up to you. p.s. I assume you know what I mean. If not, do the research. And take off the painted-over goggles for God's sake. You've got to figure out who your true friends are.

Now that's an interesting email, in response to Monday's G-File:

Dear Mr. Goldberg, We must rescue Bryan in the Scopes trial from all the lies arising from that work of fiction--Inherit The Wind. Bryan won fair and square, i.e., he outsmarted Darrow, and in a way that should make all us right wingers proud. The evidence is in the actual court transcript.

Bryan went back and read Darrow's summation in the Leopold-Loeb
trial. Darrow pleaded for their lives by suggesting that the University of
Chicago was partially to blame by exposing the poor lads to library shelves
of books by NIETZSCHE! His teachings were swallowed by the boys and drove
them to murder poor Bobby Franks. Well, Bryan argued, in few of that
argument, why couldn't the state of Tennessee elect to protect younger
children from the dehumanizing teaching that men are descended from apes,
and therefore liberated from Bible morality. Bryan was not against
evolution as a capitalist tool, but as an instrument of Godless
amorality. AND he beat Darrow fair and square with Darrow's own words!

Hello from Camp Fallujah!

I thought I would write to everyone so that the only information you get isn't from the Communist News Network. For security reasons, they shut down the internet for a while and they still have the phone center closed so I can't call for awhile. When I get an opportunity, I will phone some of you and let you know in person that I am OK.

Much of this is excerpted from a letter I wrote to [name deleted] earlier. If you get a chance, please give her a call. The appliances have been rebelling as usual. It seems that whenever I deploy a major appliance decides to act up. I am not sure why. I don't think that the appliances were abused or had any sort of developmental problems. But for some reason, they get together, draw lots and one decides to have a major meltdown. I think we will have to be like Woody Allen and have a meeting of all the appliances to lay down the law. Anyway, the dryer decided to overheat and without [name deleted] noticing that something smelled funny we might have had a major fire.

As you can imagine we have been quite busy. If you look at the news it is generally pretty accurate about casualties from what I can tell. The ER docs and surgeons have been extremely busy in the last 2 days. I have been helping [name deleted], the ER doc with doing triage and managing pt flow as I don't have that many patients. I did see several in the last couple of days and business is starting to pick up, but I anticipate that my real busy time will be after all this latest battle is over. I did see an interesting pt with multiple concussions today and have admitted him to the ward to observe so I am contributing to the cause. ....

As you can imagine, life here is quite intense recently. There is a lot of outgoing artillery fire and the fight is moving closer to us as it progresses. You shouldn't worry though because we are well protected and there are multiple perimeters around us.

I don't know whether I have told you this before, but there are a lot of former interns who rotated with me here. They are both physician assistant students and battalion surgeons. It is kind of fun to see them and rewarding to work again as a team.

Today, I took a shower, changed underwear, socks and uniform and feel like a new man. As I was walking from the shower trailers today, I had a little laugh to myself about the pervasiveness of Disney in our lives. I was humming the song from Beauty and the Beast, "I'll be human again. I'll be human again."

Casualty flow has been pretty steady today. Not like yesterday, but still some significant stuff to deal with. My two roommates are the two general surgeons and they are really nice guys. I feel kind of bad that they are up most of the night sometimes while I get to sleep through the night and have regular hours. Even so, in a short time my time will come and they will be goofing off so we will see how that goes.

I have two psychologists working here. [Name deleted] is from San Diego and he is fairly newly licensed. [Name deleted] is from Okinawa and she is still doing post-doc hours. They are very good and I enjoy working with them. I have been trying to get out and be more integrated with the medical staff and I think this will pay off later on. We have three psych techs. They are each characters in their own right. All of them have a ready supply of quotes from movies to fit the occasion. I feel my age when I have no clue what they are referring to. This is a pretty good crew and when we get time, I hope to impart a little of my experience to them. It will be interesting to see what happens when this recent push is over.

Today, we had a rather touching moment. November 10th is the Marine Corps Birthday. Around mid-morning there was the sound of bagpipes in the triage area. A Marine in cammies, flak and kevlar played amazing grace and the Marines hymn. It wasn't the best bagpipe playing I've heard, but it was fitting. We all stood at attention. When he was finished we applauded and then went back to work. The corpsmen painted a large piece of plywood red and then lettered in gold, "Happy 229th Birthday Marines." It is a great bunch of folks here.

I have to say that on a day like today, the Marine Corps Birthday, I have never been more proud to be a Navy Medical Officer. We are doing the most important thing that we can do, which is to provide the best possible treatment for our Marines, soldiers and sailors who have been wounded in battle. It is pretty amazing that anyone who makes it to us alive has survived. Anyway, I just want you all to realize that our guys are doing a great job.

I am hoping the demolition will be complete soon and they can get started on building the new Fallujah Walmart.

Semper Fi guys,

It's also well worth asking whether Belgium (a country that sent 'observers' to the US elections) is, in any real sense of the word, a democracy. It doesn't seem so. And if that's case, what is it doing in the EU, an organization that likes to boast that it is a club of democracies.

Time, I reckon, to throw Brussels out of Brussels.

As always, thank you so much for all that you do. I couldn't find an email addy for McCarthy so I just thought I'd pass the kudos along to you. The article he wrote on Roe/Specter today was STELLAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've been saying the same thing ever since I read Bork's first book much to the consternation of my Con Law prof. in undergraduate school. The clear distinction on original intent and the whole "living Consitutiton" notion supported by Specter and the Libs.

Who can be the first to email me a PDF or other electronic version of a Time magazine article from March 13, 1972 by Melvin Maddocks titled "The New Cult of Madness"?

Winner receives a coveted National Review no-prize and thanks in the Corner.

It is Gonzales. And Tim, as for that Stephanopolous thing, I think the way to parse Steph's meaning in the first part -- as close to forced out as possible in this administration -- is thus "Ashcroft wasn't forced out but he should have been."

As for Ashcroft being essentially white, isn't the more damning implication that Stephanopolous thinks there's something essentially Hispanic or African-American? Isn't that a racial stereotype? Same point as yours, but no liberal cares about stereotyping "angry white males."

From a reader:

Ashcroft is from my home town, Springfield, Mo. He is a square and a dork but is also a real stand up guy. He is the guy, of course, who got beat by the dead Mel Carnahan. In that race, Ashcroft refused to campaign after Mel died. that bit of gallantry almost surely cost Ashcroft the race.

I have grown to admire Ashcroft over the years. He has been stoically steadfast in his defense of America. He has been treated so unfairly and yet he never complained, he just kept doing his job. He is a quiet hero.

Matt Ygelsias has a generally sensible and wise post about the need for Democrats to come to grips with the reality of the war on terror. But he also writes this:

"When the Cold War ended, the Republican coalition collapsed rather spectacularly, and Bill Clinton was swept into office with a historically low share of the popular vote. With national security back on the agenda, even the collapse of Ralph Nader's support wasn't enough to give the Democrats a majority."

How did the Republican coalition collapse spectacularly? Bush I lost in a squeaker largely because Ross Perot was in the race as a fiscal conservative. Bill Clinton ran as a moderate, pro-death penalty, anti-welfare candidate in 1992 who often ran to the right of Bush on foreign policy (remember "butchers of Beijing" and all that?). Of course, he was more than a little dishonest in his campaign because when he got in office he tried to govern from the left -- gays in the military, Hillarycare etc. When he did this, that "collapsed" Republican coalition retook the House and the Senate. Bill Clinton then tacked to the right on domestic policy signing on to a Republican Budget and a Republican Welfare reform bill. Clinton ran in 1996 against a decent man but a terrible candidate. Nevertheless Clinton championed small-bore issues which were largely culturally conservative and certainly small-c conservative (school uniforms, the V-chip, seat belts on busses). In his second term he did almost nothing of historical note except diddle an intern and lie under oath about it and go to war without UN approval (something anti-Iraq war liberals saluted at the time). In 1998, Congressional Republicans had a setback because of impeachment, but they didn't lose the House. Meanwhile, 2000, 2002 and 2004 were all very good years for the GOP.Of course, '02 and '04 were post 9/11 but throughout the 1990s the GOP increased its control of state legislatures, state houses and the Congress. So again, I ask, what exactly was this spectacular collapse Yglesias is talking about?

The next AG?

As I mentioned in today's USA Today piece, Bush picked up an enormous number of votes from Orthodox Jews on election day. Orthodox Jews have been trending more conservative, politically for a while (as Peter Beinart noted in this interesting op-ed before the election). But, even so, few could have predicted this much of a gain. Figures on what Bush got in 2000 vary -- from as low as 29% to as high as 40% (and remember Lieberman was on the Democratic ticket). In 2004 Bush got 69% of the Orthodox Jewish vote, which apparently helped Bush in certain areas of Ohio and Florida.

From what I hear, one person who deserves an enormous amount of the credit for these gains is my very old friend Tevi Troy. A policy guru on the campaign and before that in the White House, Tevi also worked tirelessly reaching out to the Jewish community as a liaison. Bush's victory has many and morre obvious authors of course (Though wouldn't it be fun to watch the reaction in certain quarters -- Middle Eastern, Liberal Jewish, paleo-whatever -- if Bush's margin were attributable to the Jewish vote?). But this is an important trend -- Orthodox Jews are only about 10% of the Jewish population, but they are the fastest-growing segment because they have so many kids -- and Troy played an enormously important part in accelerating that trend.

Update: Ahem, the trend I was referring to here wasn't the increase in the Orthodox population, but in its Republican vote. Though Tev is a good family man.

American soldiers looking for payback. I'm not sure the author intended this to be wholly flattering, but this is the sort of attitude I think many of us want for the tip of the foremost spear in the arsenal of democracy.

That's what lot's of boys (and I'm sure a quite few girls) said this morning when they saw this story in today's Washington Post about the scramjet. Here's the opener:

HAMPTON, Va. -- They call it a "scramjet," an engine so blindingly fast that it could carry an airplane from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., in about 20 minutes -- or even quicker. So fast it could put satellites in space. So fast it could drop a cruise missile on an enemy target, almost like shooting a rifle.

Next week, NASA plans to break the aircraft speed record for the second time in 7 1/2 months by flying its rocket-assisted X-43A scramjet craft 110,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean at speeds close to Mach 10 -- about 7,200 mph, or 10 times the speed of sound.

I have a piece in USA Today, uh, today.

I've been pretty silent about all the resignation stuff all week because I was under a gag-order from the Fair Jessica (Note to new readers: TFJ is my bride (who I started wooing through the G-File) and she was an aide and speechwriter for the AG since before 9/11).

Anyway, Jessica's pretty bad about keeping me in the loop about this sort of thing. During the early days after 9/11 she was really mum about all the cool stuff going on. The underground complexes, secret spy satellites, James Bond-like technology, the secret army of US-trained ninjas and all of the other stuff she refused to confirm or deny existed as I imagined them. But I did know a bit earlier than the press that Ashcroft was resigning. I'm probably going to write a syndicated column about the guy. But in short I really do think he did a heroic job as AG and that while he may never be the official spokesman for Club Med Cancun, he's a decent man who did a hard job extremely well and got unfairly vilified for it by an entire political class more interested in scoring cheap points than in discussing the facts -- or improving our security.

As for The Fair Jessica, I guess she'll be out of work come January. I don't want any of you mega-billionaire corporate CEOs or top-tier politicians, desperately in search of speechwriters or ghostwriters to worry about it. National Review pays us more than enough to keep our baby in burlap with enough left over for bus fare to the soup kitchen.

[Today is]the 229th birthday of the finest fighting force on the planet... and America's force of choice in the battle for Fallujah.

Anyway, on November 10, 1775, the Continental Congress met and passed the following resolution - in secret - thus establishing an American Marine Corps (based on the Royal Marine Corps model):

Resolved: That two battalions of Marines be raised consisting of one colonel, two lieutenant colonels, two majors & other officers as usual in other regiments, that they consist of an equal number of privates with other battalions; that particular care be taken that no person be appointed to office or enlisted into said battalions, but such as are good seamen, or so acquainted with maritime affairs as to be able to serve to advantage by sea, when required. That they be enlisted and commissioned for and during the present war between Great Britain and the colonies, unless dismissed by order of Congress. That they be distinguished by the names of the first & second battalions of American Marines, and that they be considered a part of the number, which the Continental Army before Boston is ordered to consist of. Semper Fi

The gospel-singing son of a minister, Ashcroft is a fierce conservative who doesn't drink, smoke or dance. His detractors said he gave religion too prominent a role at the Justice Department — including optional prayer meetings with staff before each work day. He has also been a willing lightning rod for critics who said his policies for thwarting terrorists infringed on the rights of innocent people.