Elfman, not Bush

“I intend to make Scientology as accessible to as many people as I can. And that is my goal,” Elfman said. To do this, she says, it is my “duty to clear the planet.” By “clearing” she means to rid the world of “body thetans” — aliens who Scientologists believe inhabit the earth from a nuclear explosion 75 million years ago. She continued that “the more successful I became, the more suppression I bumped into … especially in the entertainment industry, which really is home to rabid suppression.”

Permit me a bellow of insensitive laughter.

The Norwegian Defence Research Institute (who knew?) has now issued a report of the murder of Dutch film maker Theo Van Gogh. Its conclusion?

”This report surveys in depth the available open source information about the ritualistic murder of the filmmaker Theo Van Gogh on the streets of Amsterdam on November 2, 2004. The report makes the case that the murder of Van Gogh was a terrorist attack implemented by an al-Qaida inspired radical Islamist group within the framework of global jihad, and not an act of religious violence by a lone fanatic. The report also argues that the invasion of Iraq was an important motivational factor for the assassin and his accomplices, in addition to grievances related to the Dutch government’s policies concerning immigration and Dutch counter-terrorism measures.”

Via Tiger Hawk.

In yet more grim news from Holland, it has been disclosed that controversial Dutch MP Geert Wilders – his stance on multiculturalism and immigration has earned him a steady stream of death threats from real or purported Islamist groups - is being housed in a prison for his own security.

Yes, it has come to this.

Via Dutch Report.

It’s election year in Britain, and diligent British expats are registering to vote.

A friend of mine – a former British army officer now living in NYC – takes up the story:

“This link takes you to the official website of the Electoral Commission, something I laboriously have had to do to register as an overseas voter. I noticed the Languages hyperlink, and so, anticipating the usual polyglot mix of tongues to reflect (a) our glorious Imperial past; (b) the inevitable legacy of our immigration policy; and (c) our role as 19th century colonialist oppressors (take your pick) in I went. Imagine my surprise when, nestled amongst the possibly deserving Pakistani, Punjabi and Chinese (?) translations, a sub-site for the "UlsterScots" language.”

Yup, really.

There it is: “An Easie Guide Tae The Votein In Norlin Airlan

Over to you, Derb. Over to you, Scott Burgess.

Kathryn, so the UN has voted to ban human cloning eh? Whatever we may think about human cloning, we should both agree that this really is none of the business of the UN or the ‘international community’ it purports to represent. The US should decide for itself what science it chooses to adopt, reject, or ban. For the UN to get involved is, quite simply, insolence.

To say that the international community has some sort of jurisdiction in this respect makes it far more difficult for the US to reject (with any degree of consistency) the encroachments on national sovereignty represented by Kyoto, the International Criminal ‘court’ or the proposed, and repellent, Law of the Sea Treaty.

What is it about the name ‘Spitzer’?

Here in NYC we have Boss Eliot, thug, due process abuser. Over in Germany they have crazy Manfred. He’s a professor from Ulm and he’s claiming that television claims twenty thousand lives a year.

His main focus?

Oh come on people, you know what it is….

Yup. Ja. ‘Die Kinder’

"Children who watch TV have narrow horizons…It reduces the plasticity of their brains which remain unstimulated and fail to develop properly. Later they smell and taste things differently because their senses are warped, and, as adults, go on to buy unhealthy foods, similar to those they have seen advertised on television."

Legislation, doubtless, to follow.

The inspectors of the International Olympics Committee are in London, and all the stops are being pulled out to impress these grandees. Appropriately enough, given the Olympics’ long association with totalitarian pageantry, this detail, I thought, brought a hint of Speer, a touch of Riefenstahl, to the proceedings:

”At the palace the commission was led through the quadrangle, illuminated by torches…”

The only thing missing? A speech by Prince Harry.

Connoisseurs of the continuing Tory collapse meanwhile will note that Tory ‘leader’ Michael Howard has endorsed the British capital’s bid for Olympic martyrdom.

Paris 2012!

This, rather wonderful, story comes from Kirghizstan:

"It would be either the “lemon” or the “tulip” revolution. Kazbek and his friends could not quite decide. But as they watched Ukraine’s Orange Revolution unfold last year, they were convinced of one thing: Kyrgyzstan could be next. Their mountainous homeland was thousands of miles east of Ukraine, and one tenth of its size, but the political parallels between the former Soviet republics were striking..."

Read it all. And give a cheer to Kazbek.

The famous Baby 81 story has made the rounds for a while. This Sri Lankan writer claims it was largely fraudulent and claims to be a Jason Blair style story.

I have not seen Constantine and I never read the comics upon which they were based. But I thought the least I could do is post this email from a fellow-traveller who disagrees with NRO's review (see homepage for link):

Dear Mr. Goldberg:

I know you've got a little bit of a soft spot for comics and things geeky, and so I was hoping you might take a brief minute, maybe in the Corner, to correct Steve Beard with regards to his review of Constantine. The things he identifies as "comic book"--the cold-war detente between angels and devils, the bet between God and the Devil, the "leaping tall buildings" aspect and worst of all that bloody "holy shotgun"--have nothing to do with the comic Hellblazer, which is generally more informed about Christian doctrine. (When it departs from doctrine, someone diabolic or angelic generally mentions it, and makes a plot point out of it.) There is no "detente" in the comic, the bet is a Hollywood invention, "half-breeds" appear nowhere (and if Gabriel is a half-breed, it begs the question of who isn't a heavenly half-breed), and Constantine rarely casts a spell that has any effect whatsoever.

The movie was lousy--I don't know what Beard saw in it--but please don't let NRO join the rest of the chorus in blaming it on the comics. Just because Hollywood can spoil anything good that it touches doesn't mean Alan Moore or Garth Ennis deserve such calumny.

Breakinging News United Nations voted for Total Ban on Human Cloning

The UN voted today for a comprehensive ban on human cloning. It comes after a two year negotiation and confirms the defeat of the French and German effort to allow for human experimental cloning

“This is a powerful message to the world community that this morally questionable procedure is outside the bounds of acceptable experimentation,” said Austin Ruse, president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, one of the main NGOs involved in the negotiation. “ This should encourage similar bans in legislatures around the world including in the US Senate,” said Ruse

Lots of readers have asked me why I don't think Deep Throat was real. They usually ask because I say things like this "there was no deep throat." I've been meaning to write a column making my case. But Eric Burns basically made it for me. He adds some fascinating details I didn't know, but his conclusion is the same. Deep throat was a composite of Woodward and Bernstein's sources.

K-Lo,

For your sitcom: remember Samantha and Serena on Bewitched? Now that you've changed you signature, you can play yourself as well as your evil twin, "Kay-Jay". Kay-Jay would allow Star Trek postings in The Corner, and... oh, wait a minute... that would make her the good twin. ;-)

If accurately reported, Tandy's remarks are as disturbing as they are patronizing, but they do serve one useful purpose - they are yet another reminder that the 'war against drugs' has long since left the realm of the rational - if it was ever there.

The other day Max Boot walloped Thomas Woods' The Politically Incorrect Guide to American HistorySouthern Appeal is hosting what amounts to a postgame post-mortem on the whole thing with defenders on both sides of the debate. Poke around for the relevant links and what not. I ordered the book from Amazon the other day and it should be here shortly. Until then, I give the benefit of the doubt and the argument to Boot. But there are definitely two sides to the whole thing. ("Man, you weaselled out of that one." -- The Couch).

Justin Katz takes issue with a comment I made the other day. The point I was trying to make was that there is no reason for governments to recognize marriage (as opposed to enforcing whatever contracts individuals happen to make) unless governments have some legitimate role, however limited, in encouraging moral behavior and good character.

We tend to think of public policies in either welfarist or libertarian terms. Many of us reject, or think we reject, the idea that the promotion of morality is a legitimate aim of the government (although I suppose most people would allow that the inculcation of good habits can be a kind of incidental byproduct of, e.g., laws against theft).

But neither welfarism nor libertarianism allows much of a defense of marriage laws. A libertarian conception of marriage law is always going to be vulnerable because people will be making analogies to situations where everyone has the liberty to swing his fist until it hits someone else's nose. "How would those people's polygamous union affect your marriage?" will be the question. If you can't count in cultural effects that occur through subtle influences on people's behavior and beliefs, you've lost that argument.

A welfarist conception of marriage creates another impossible situation for anyone who wants to resist a slide toward a purely contractarian view. You would have to show conclusively that certain types of unions don't promote the public welfare in social-scientific terms. You would have to show, for example, that kids raised by threesomes get colds more often than other kids. And even that wouldn't really work--you'd never be able to show that bad outcomes would happen every time a threesome was recognized as a family unit by the government.

If marriage laws promote liberty and social welfare, as I think they do, they do so precisely by encouraging moral behavior--by channeling sexual behavior, in a pretty non-coercive way, into desirable patterns. I don't think that this point, incidentally, ought to be the exclusive property of either side of the same-sex marriage debate. I gather that Jonathan Rauch, a thoughtful supporter of same-sex marriage, believes something similar to what I've just said. He thinks that the morality that marriage laws promote, and should promote, is a morality of commitment. Same-sex couples can qualify. Opponents of same-sex marriage, on the other hand, tend to think that the public moral good that marriage laws promote is tightly bound up with procreation in a way that means that legal status for same-sex couples cannot serve that good.

If you don't see a legitimate role for government in promoting morality at all, on the other hand, then you would support same-sex marriage only as a move toward a contractarian policy. Ultimately, I think, you would have to say that marriage is none of the government's business.

K-Lo and Coffin: Can a die hard Yankee fan and a long time Red Sox supporter find peace as roommates tune in next week as our duo debates who was tougher The Babe or Curt Schilling.

If Shannen was a liberal it would be a much easier sell.

That's Posse Incitatus's theory of the Summers assault. It's also basically what Harvey Mansfield says in today's Journal. It's payback for Kerry.

I'm off to tape the Carlson show. This Darth Vader costume sure is tight.

From a reader:

Mr. Goldberg,

As a recent graduate of Harvard, I am somewhat amused
by the recent furor surrounding our president but I
can't say that I am all that surprised. I think that
your assessment is spot-on: Summers is in trouble
because he said something that offends the
sensibilities of the Harvard community and therefore
must be castigated, regardless of the merits of his
argument. There's nothing like a "Top University" to
stifle debate.

Although I don't think that this has made the news
year, the release of the transcript has also brought up
a second complaint about Summers' remarks in addition
to the "innate differences" hypothesis: many of my
friends and classmates have told me how upset they are
about his question regarding which gender is more
pre-disposed to putting in longer, more stressful hours
for a job ["So I think in terms of positive
understanding, the first very important reality is just
what I would call the, who wants to do high-powered
intense work?"] While I feel that this is a completely
valid question, these women complain that Summers was
implying that women "aren't willing to work hard"--in
my opinion, a distortion of what he was trying to say.

But as I said before, none of this--the aversion to
open debate on campus, the exaggerated reaction,
etc--really surprises me. The weather has been getting
warmer in Cambridge over the last few weeks, so the
time has arrived for the Harvard community to engage in
its yearly spring semester ritual of staging some
completely misguided protest. A few years ago it was a
Living Wage campaign, more recently it was against the
Iraq War, and now this:

--------------------------------------------------
EMERGENCY PLANNING MEETING to Protest Summers & Sexism
TODAY (Friday) 2:30 pm - Loker Commons

Larry Summers' remarks on women in science at the NBER
Conference are now publicly released. National media attention is
focused on Harvard -- in this climate a student protest has the potential
to capture major news coverage and impact national public
discourse.

WE MUST SEIZE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO SPEAK OUT AGAINST
SEXISM.

* The dining hall workers union is organizing against the hostile environment created by his comments.
* Yale students demonstrated on Thursday in solidarity.
* Senior faculty are challenging him and suggesting his resignation.

IT'S TIME FOR HARVARD STUDENTS TO JOIN IN RAISING OUR
VOICES!

Students and alumnae are planning a demonstration before the faculty meeting next Tuesday afternoon -- when professors convene to discuss a vote of "no confidence" in Summers.

What issues will we raise? From resignation, to childcare for Harvard workers, to a women's center, to finals clubs, let's get planning and put together an agenda!

Join us if you're concerned about improving the climate
of this campus for women and about a feminist agenda at Harvard.
-----------------------------------------------------

From a reader at Harvard:

Dear Jonah,

I agree with you whole-heartedly about the Summers show trial. As a female scientist, I feel that this situation has made it WORSE for people like me, who has never felt particularly discriminated against (I think, however, that it has more to do with personality traits than the reality of whether one is discriminated against). I am of the generation that will be applying for academic positions in the next, say, two-to-five years, and the "task forces" set up will mean that any woman hired can be considered of questionable quality: were you hired because you excel, or to fill up the diversity quotas? Seems like the same questions one might face if one were of color.

I also hate the notion, which MUST necessarily follow from this kerfuffle, that there are things one cannot discuss. Academic freedom: yeah right!

Keep up the good work!

Several readers have noted that if I'm going to link to exciting geek trailers, I should have put the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy trailer up a long time ago. They're right.

I'll be back on this weekend. Check listings.

I've read the whole transcript including the Q&A now. It seems to me that Summers' sin is that, despite saying he's just being provocative, he really does believe there is a strong genetic component to the cognitive differences between men and women. Of course, he's making a statistical point. There are more male geniuses and there are more male morons while women tend to be in the middle of the distribution. This doesn't mean, at least from what he's saying, that there aren't women who are just as brilliant as the most brilliant men, it's just that there are fewer of them compared to men. He allows that better socialization and tougher anti-discrimination efforts could and should boost the numbers of women at the top, but he seems to believe the underlying statistical difference reflects a basic reality that can never be completely erased.

And there you have it. Because he believes something the Harvard faculty do not want to concede even might be true, he must say it is not true. That fits the pattern of inquisitions perfectly. Recant what you believe to be scientifically true because a sophisticated mob says you must.

Tha the faculty at Harvard is going mad. It's like the Crucible or something. It's approaching an inquisition. Here's an excerpt from the New York Times:

"My best guess, to provoke you, of what's behind all of this is that the largest phenomenon - by far - is the general clash between people's legitimate family desires and employers' current desire for high power and high intensity; that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude; and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination," Dr. Summers said, according to the transcript.

"I would like nothing better than to be proved wrong, because I would like nothing better than for these problems to be addressable simply by everybody understanding what they are, and working very hard to address them," he added.

Over and over in the transcript, he made clear that he might be wrong in his theories, and he challenged researchers to study his propositions.

He also urged research on "the quality of marginal hires" to the faculty when efforts to diversify are under way. How many of these hires, he asked, have "turned out to be much better than the institutional norm who wouldn't have been found without a greater search?" Or are "plausible compromises" that are not unreasonable additions to the faculty? And "how many of them are what the right-wing critics of all of this suppose represent clear abandonments of quality standards"?

Several Harvard professors said they were more furious after reading the precise remarks, saying they felt he believed women were intellectually inferior to men.

Everett I. Mendelsohn, a professor of the history of science, said that once he read the transcript, he understood why Dr. Summers "might have wanted to keep it a secret."

"Where he seems to be off the mark particularly is in his sweeping claims that women don't have the ability to do well in high-powered jobs," said Professor Mendelsohn, part of a faculty group that sharply criticized Dr. Summers's leadership at a meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on Tuesday. "There's an implication that they've taken themselves out of that role. But he brings forward no evidence."

Now look. The guy said he was there to provoke people. He said he was there not as a president but as an academic. He was speaking to an off-the-record session of grown-ups. He said numerous times that he was offering theories he hoped would and could be falsified. And for this the Harvard faculty might vote no-confidence in the guy. And he's already been forced to apologize three or four times (I'm losing count) and appoint not one but two task forces which no one doubts will release reports saying Summers is a neanderthal.

Meanwhile, that no-talent-ass-clown Ward Churchill is a champion of free speech for refusing to apologize or even "back-up one inch" on his statement that the decent, innocent victims of 9/11 were the moral equivalent of the man who sent babies and old women to the gas chambers.

What is wrong with these people?

John Negroponte is a smart, effective, honorable man. He's probably the best man our State Department has produced in a century -- and I mean that as a great compliment to him. He's terrific.

But he isn't the kind of DNI I would have chosen.....

Kathryn, Hope all is well at "the", uh I mean "NRO".

Was watching Survivor: Palau (I admit it!) earlier tonight with the lovely Mrs. Wiffler, and couldn't help remember why I recognized the name "Palau".

It was the site of the battle of Peleliu in 1944. Maybe you could take a look at these links and consider if they might warrant a link on the Corner. It would be nice if people knew about the eight Marines who earned the Medal of Honor for their actions there. If you take a few minutes to read them, their stories are quite moving, and are fading into lost memory.

I had to catch myself from wondering if, 60 years from now, we'll tune into Survivor: Fallujah.

Semper fi,
Maj. Jerry Wiffler
See here and here.

In diameter, the arteries were the size of the tip of a pencil, Reddy said, and the aorta was 3 millimeters, or about one-eighth of an inch, long. His chest was the length of the doctor's finger.

That's what the Kyoto protocol has cost the world in order to achieve the potential of saving us 0.000009899 °C in temperature increases as of this posting. The cost is going up fast. That's according to the Kyoto Count-Up over at JunkScience.com.

Kathryn posted the link below, but I think his opening statement is worth reading right away:

I asked Richard, when he invited me to come here and speak, whether he wanted an institutional talk about Harvard's policies toward diversity or whether he wanted some questions asked and some attempts at provocation, because I was willing to do the second and didn't feel like doing the first. And so we have agreed that I am speaking unofficially and not using this as an occasion to lay out the many things we're doing at Harvard to promote the crucial objective of diversity. There are many aspects of the problems you're discussing and it seems to me they're all very important from a national point of view. I'm going to confine myself to addressing one portion of the problem, or of the challenge we're discussing, which is the issue of women's representation in tenured positions in science and engineering at top universities and research institutions, not because that's necessarily the most important problem or the most interesting problem, but because it's the only one of these problems that I've made an effort to think in a very serious way about. The other prefatory comment that I would make is that I am going to, until most of the way through, attempt to adopt an entirely positive, rather than normative approach, and just try to think about and offer some hypotheses as to why we observe what we observe without seeing this through the kind of judgmental tendency that inevitably is connected with all our common goals of equality. It is after all not the case that the role of women in science is the only example of a group that is significantly underrepresented in an important activity and whose underrepresentation contributes to a shortage of role models for others who are considering being in that group. To take a set of diverse examples, the data will, I am confident, reveal that Catholics are substantially underrepresented in investment banking, which is an enormously high-paying profession in our society; that white men are very substantially underrepresented in the National Basketball Association; and that Jews are very substantially underrepresented in farming and in agriculture. These are all phenomena in which one observes underrepresentation, and I think it's important to try to think systematically and clinically about the reasons for underrepresentation.

Does this really sound like a guy who should be slow roasted for his "insensitivity" to women?

Since Talking Heads have come into it, I wonder if you know whether it's The Smashing Pumpkins or just Smashing Pumpkins? It makes a much bigger difference than putting the article in front of National Review or Talking heads because, in this case, it's the difference between pumpkins that one finds fabulous--"Smashing!"--or the physical act of smashing them against something.

Yes, I think a lot about such weighty matters.

Your e-mailer said, “Sorry to come in late, but dropping the article just sounds "cooler". You could always spot the poseur when he referred to David Byrne's band as The Talking Heads.”

It cycles. "The" was definitely cool, originally: The Who, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones.

Then, inexplicably, it wasn't: Led Zeppelin, Mountain, Deep Purple. I remember from this time that The Carpenters insisted on being called "Carpenters" because "The" wasn't cool any more.

Then, suddenly, "The" became cool again: The Police, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Dead Kennedys. (But yes "Talking Heads" ... the exception that proves the rule.)

Now, I guess, we've come around again, and: Jimmy Eat World, Three Doors Down, ... sigh.

Anyone who has lived on both coasts knows the following:

The East Coast drops the article “the” and the West Coast adds it.

On the East Coast you say, “Take 95 north to 495…”

On the West Coast you say, “Take THE 10 to THE 101…”

Could it be that the people who insist on saying THE National Review are from the left coast?

Hmmmmm….

Sorry to come in late, but dropping the article just sounds "cooler". You could always spot the poseur when he referred to David Byrne's band as The Talking Heads.

From the AP:

NEW YORK (AP) - CBS will televise a one-hour prime-time tribute to Dan Rather the night he leaves the evening news anchor chair, and its producer says it won't avoid the story that has clouded his final days on the job.

"Dan Rather: A Reporter Remembers" will air 8 p.m. EST on March 9, an hour after he anchors his final evening newscast after 24 years, the network announced Thursday.

If you haven't heard, lefty bloggers want Brit Hume's head on plate because of what he allegedly said about FDR's plans for Social Security. Much like Ishtar, the full story is long and uninteresting. Nevertheless, the folks at Villainous Companyhave tried to put this whole issue to rest. Something tells me that A) they won't be successful and B) Brit Hume's job is safe and sound.

For over a year I "turned off" my old JonahEmail@aol.com address because it had become so spamified. I recently switched it so it could receive email again and I'm discovering that many people are still sending email to it. This is a bad idea in that I still almost never check it (thought it's perfect for really annoying press releases and the like). If in the last year or so you were baffled why I never responded to your million-dollar deal or some such and you sent email to that account, you now know why you never heard from me.

By this:

"The group has also been working with a California lawmaker to introduce state legislation that would ban the sale of cloned or genetically engineered pets."

The intervention of a 'California lawmaker' is almost always the sign of a really, really dumb idea.

I don't agree with all this or even most of it, but this is a civil and honest case from the other side. It's not the first one I've received but they are a distinct minority amidst the many emails on the subject:

Jonah: You are probably getting deluged with e-mails from leftists like me, so I want to make one point. I want to focus on what I think the importance of the story is to you as an independent journalist and conservative.

Forget the gay stuff. Forget the alleged conservative hypocrisy. Forget speculative (and absurd, to me) Monica parallels. Forget the fact he was a bad writer. Even forget Plame for now, until we hear more.

The scandal is the fact that Gannon was an administration shill given unprecedented access to the press briefings. Note that being an administration shill is quite different from being a conservative largely sympathetic to the administration (which I assume you are). The purpose of a free and independent press is to act as the watchdog to power, to question and examine the government. A true independent conservative journalist isn't there to toss softballs to the administration -- the administration has plenty of avenues to get its point across. A true independent conservative would press points where he or she felt the administration was not doing enough or not living up to its rhetoric, on such issues as, say, federal spending, faith-based initiatives, troop support, or whatever else you are interested in. It is OK and probably unavoidable to be biased, or even partisan, in favor of the administration, but it is a scandal to pretend to be independent when you are an arm of the administration.

Gannon is a scandal because he was a fraud, an administration plant. All of his questions were designed not to shed light on issues of importance to conservatives per se, but rather to boost and support the administration. The scandal is that he was posing as something he was not, an independent journalist.

You might be behind the curve, but check out the revelations that Gannon got into the press room before the supposedly independent "Talon" ever existed. It appears his only affiliation at the time was with the GOPUSA website. It appears that he was given a hard pass, even before "Talon" ever existed. (Even if the hard pass was not issued, he was routinely issued a day pass, which amounts to the same thing.)

We don't know how Gannon got into the room. How did a non-journalist, not affiliated with any news organization, get a coveted press pass? (Remember, even if you consider Talon a legitimate news organization and not a site devoted to cut-and-paste summaries of administration and GOP press releases and talking points, Gannon was allowed in before Talon existed. Compare with Maureen Dowd's column today concerning her inability to get a pass issued.) Someone pulled strings, circumvented the rules, because they knew Gannon would be an appendage to the administration. He was given favorable treatment specifically because he was NOT an independent journalist. As an independent journalist yourself, doesn't this cause concern to you? When seen in the larger context of Armstrong Williams et al and the fake newscasts the administration circulated, wouldn't this pattern of misleading and non-disclosed administration propaganda posing as independent journalism constitute a fairly big scandal, regardless of who is President? You are in the class of people who should be most concerned, if you value the perception of being independent, because the more that instances of stealth propaganda emerge, the more that all pro-administration journalists will be called into question, fairly or not.

Then you have all the lies. Gannon lied about his relationship to the websites, lied about first attending the briefings under the aegis of Talon, about not getting a hard pass, and other things. All of this strongly points to some sort of cover up. It is hard to avoid suspicion that he is covering up who gave him permission to enter the press briefings and his other ties to the administration.

I am somewhat appalled by the focus on the gay prostitute angle, especially the glee and mocking coming from some on the left, and I think efforts to pose this as conservative hypocrisy instead of administration propaganda misses the mark. This isn't a liberal or conservative scandal at all. It is a scandal that points to the erosion of the free and independent press.

For backup of the claims that Gannon was given a hard press pass (apparently solid, but not 100%) before Talon existed, or at least was at press briefings before Talon existed (100%), see these Kos diaries:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/16/155840/912 (Gannon in briefings before Talon existed)

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/2/17/125328/435 (hard pass)

Also check out Blumenthal in Salon today, and see what you think: http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2005/02/17/gannon_affair/

Face it, you guys have become "the" National Review. There are no others, be it on dead tree or online. You are a monolith, the only review of the nation in existence. Or as Jonah would say the "Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu waza Banga"

I’d consider “the” a blessing in disguise. When someone verbally says “the National Review,” it sounds just like “the national review.” In other words, the speaker is subliminally equating your magazine with the national review of the way things are. Not a message I’d think you’d want to dissuade.

From today's Hotline:

Last week CNN's news director Eason Jordan resigned from his post after a remark he made at an allegedly off-the-record session at the Davos conference in Switzerland. Jordan had said he felt U.S. troops had been targeting journalists in Iraq. A blogger at the conference published Jordan's comment on a Davos blog. It was then picked up by the National Review online, reprinted on a blog of a radio talk show host and finally appeared in the Washington Post. That's the Washington Post's new motto 'You heard it here, Twelfth'" ("Daily Show," Comedy Central, 2/16).

One more tidbit for Geraghty. He must rehearse his answers to the question "What do Americans think of Turkey."

I predict he will be asked this 8 hundred katrillion times.

From a reader:

Good news and bad news. During lunchtime just now I went to the local Borders to buy the latest issue with your Groundhog Day article. The good news is there was only one copy left which means plenty of $$ into NR's bank account. The bad news is that the lower right corner of the cover was torn away so that only half the UPC remained and the price was nowhere to be seen, rendering it unpurchasable (or at least, un-quickly purchasable). I didn't buy it because I had to get back to work and there was a long line and I didn't want to wait for the clerk with the blue hair, black lipstick, and pierced everything to do a price check. I hate to assume the worst in people but my spidey sense tells me some angry lefty ripped the cover deliberately in order to stop the plague that is the spread of conservative thought.

Jim Geraghty of Türkiye'de Konumun Sütunu (TKS) is trying trying to figure out how to deal with America-bashers when he goes to Turkey. I don't have any great advice. Besides, my one extended stay abroad was in Prague in the early 90s, and it wasn't that extended. Most of the anti-Americans I met were, uh, Americans. And that requires a whole different social etiquette.

(If I remember it right) I did like the line the French ambassador used on John Miller at the Fox green room when he learned that John had co-written an anti-French book: "We have much to discuss."

This could serve well in situations where politeness is required but time is short. It establishes that you disagree with the person without sounding too condescending. It also suggests that you might be open to give-and-take while at the same time upholding the reality that the guy is flat-out wrong.

Of course, this all depends on what the person says. But my guess is Jim will be travelling in fairly polite elite circles. Even if not, I've been to Instanbul -- I went there by train from Prague (remind me to tell you that story) -- and I found the people incredibly gracious and friendly.

I do think that Hugh Hewitt's suggestion that Jim bring some extra copies of a pro-America book is a good one. But it might be more practical to bring something shorter, like an extended article which he can make copies of. Not sure what that article would be though. If you have ideas, tell Jim.

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