I love internecine ideological squabbles, as any longtime reader knows. I love arguing about what is or is not the correct position for conservatives, libertarians, trekkies and trekkers and everything in between. But I usually expect a minimum level of argumentation. Why is this or that the conservative position? Why do you say Hayek or Burke or Strauss would like this or dislike that? Why do you claim there's a conservative position on X or Y at all? Etc, etc.

Maybe that's why I find this sort of thing so lame.

The "cunning realist" writes:

Apparently, there is some sort of virus going around that affects ostensibly Conservative media outlets. Over at The Corner, it seems they've overstepped their literary charter a bit, forgotten their ideological roots, and perhaps taken leave of their senses in the process. From Jonah Goldberg:

"Lastly, the death penalty. Again, this guy is guilty. There are many witnesses, including this poor woman who was shot in the fact, the pistol-whipped AJC reporter, the dozen or so people in the courtroom who were held at bay etc. Nichols apparently went considerably out of his way -- postponing his escape -- to shoot down a judge. Opponents of the death penalty who make their arguments on procedural grounds -- as opposed to strictly moral or ideological grounds -- need to explain why this man should not be executed. Fine, fine, there may be others on death row somewhere who shouldn't be. Or, there may not be. But none of that is relevant to whether this guy should get what he deserves."

Everyone ready to go out to Stone Mountain and find a tall tree?

Proclaiming a suspect's guilt the day he is arrested is the absolute antithesis of Conservative ideology, and is a basic part of the judicial systems of some of the "evil" nations in which the United States is currently trying to effect change.

Me: Note there's no argumentation here whatsoever. He simply asserts that my statement is not merely "un-conservative" but the "absolute antithesis of Conservative ideology."

Nonsense. I am not going to waste much time arguing with someone who doesn't even try to make an argument. But one would expect someone who calls himself a realist would at least understand the realism of my point. I am all in favor of the man getting a fair trial. Then I'm all in favor of him being executed once the reality of the situation is comfirmed by a court of law.

Regardless, I am a commentator, an opiner, a journalist, a citizen. There's nothing in conservatism or in America's judicial system which says I cannot proclaim my opinion on anything I choose. Stalin was never convicted of a crime, nor Hitler. I do not call them "alleged" criminals either. And, O.J. Simpson was cleared by a jury and I think he's guilt of murder and I see nothing wrong, never mind unconservative, in saying so. Frankly, I don't know what this guy is talking about and since he makes no effort to explain himself, I see no need to explain myself further.

Andy, by the end there you seemed to have almost embraced a kind of cosmic pessimism that makes tactical questions moot. Nil desperandum. Republicans have managed to have a few political successes over the years even with their flaws, the Democrats' wiliness, and the media's bias.

You are right to suggest that we don't have the kind of precise exit-poll data that would make it possible to speak a bit more confidently about the role of judicial-confirmation fights in recent Senate elections. That's why I tried to make sense of what evidence we have. I think it is reasonable to view the social issues and the judicial issues as politically intertwined. It is simply the case that the judicial-confirmation issue has what political punch it does, on both sides, because of the way it intersects with the social issues. And it is also the case that a good chunk of the time the social issues come up in the Senate, it's in the course of the judicial-confirmation wars. Pro-lifers and pro-choicers did use the judicial-confirmation issue to rev up their troops, and, as I said before, it appears that the pro-life/conservative side did so more successfully--and not just in South Dakota. Also, to repeat a comment I made in our last go-round: The fact that Senate Republicans have been far more likely to exploit this issue when trying to get votes suggests that the practical understanding politicians on the stuff they know best--what works for them politically--aligns with my view. (I know from my reporting that President Bush believes that the judicial issue was a major reason the Republicans took back the Senate.)

Finally, a word on the AG/Supreme Court question. I argued that the reason Daschle refused to filibuster Ashcroft in 2001 was that he figured that it would be too politically costly; and the reason that calculation was correct was that the public thinks it important that the job be filled. I argued further that a Supreme Court vacancy would play out similarly--the public would want that position filled. But appellate courts just don't command the same attention, and can be filibustered at lower cost (but still a real cost). Andy says that the real difference here is involvement in national security: That's why the public wants the AG spot filled, and it means that the Supreme Court is more like the appellate courts than like the AG slot. All I can say was that nobody pressed the national-security argument hard back in early 2001. But we may find out who's right about this point fairly soon.

As a close student -- and sometime practitioner -- of the genre, I must say Matt Labash has introduced a new standard of excellence. A very, very strong showing.

Three quick points. Fair or not many readers have commented that the fact the deputy who was overpowered was a woman is relevant. I agree to a point, but I've seen plenty of scrawny dudes working in similar roles. Still, if there are physical requirements for the job, they should be enforced regardless of the "disparate impact" on women or anybody else.

However, I find it astounding that it is against the law for a defendant to be brought into the courtroom in handcuffs on the grounds that it might influence the jury.

Lastly, the death penalty. Again, this guy is guilty. There are many witnesses, including this poor woman who was shot in the fact, the pistol-whipped AJC reporter, the dozen or so people in the courtroom who were held at bay etc. Nichols apparently went considerably out of his way -- postponing his escape -- to shoot down a judge. Opponents of the death penalty who make their arguments on procedural grounds -- as opposed to strictly moral or ideological grounds -- need to explain why this man should not be executed. Fine, fine, there may be others on death row somewhere who shouldn't be. Or, there may not be. But none of that is relevant to whether this guy should get what he deserves.

Rick - This conversation shall be continued.

Oh, yes. It shall be.

Andy McCarthy is asking me (among others) to justify the claim that Senate Democrats have paid a price for filibustering Bush's judicial nominees, and arguing that even if they did lose some Senate seats they would find that a price worth paying. The question is good and the argument interesting.

First, on Daschle. Here's McCarthy: "Had Daschle won, which he came very close to doing, could it really credibly have been said that this signalled that the filibusters were a a winning Democratic strategy? We would have scoffed at such a contention, and I don't think the counterclaim is any more persuasive just because he lost." I think the counterfactual doesn't work. If Daschle had won, we could confidently have said that filibustering judges didn't hurt him enough to cost him the election--but we would still have said that it hurt him. Why? Because we know from national polls taken during the election that voters, by a ten-point margin, preferred Bush to appoint judges rather than Kerry. Because we can see that in red states, it's Republican Senate candidates rather than Democrats who have been raising the issue on the stump. Because we have plenty of reason to think that the social issues such as abortion have been helpful to Republicans in Senate elections in 2002 and 2004 in Missouri, North Carolina, Georgia, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Louisiana--I'm probably leaving a few states off the list--and we know that those social issues are deeply entangled with the judicial-confirmation issue.

McCarthy is of course quite correct to point out that most people don't pay close attention to politics--and that's an understatement. But I'm not sure how far this gets you. People don't have to be consciously aware of the details of candidates' positions on issues for those positions to affect their votes. If Daschle had gone along with, say, the Estrada nomination, it would have made it much harder for the Republicans to portray him as an obstructionist opposed to conservative values. Given how close the vote was, I'm inclined to say that the obstruction made the difference in that race (which, of course, could also be said of other issues).

I don't think it's true that Ashcroft was confirmed without a filibuster because his job is seen as a national-security job or that his confirmation therefore holds no lessons for a Supreme Court confirmation fight. The position simply wasn't seen as primarily or even largely national-security-related in January 2001; it was debated in terms of race and religion. I think what's crucial is that the public thinks that the AG position is important and has to be filled for the government to run. They think that also about the Supreme Court. They don't think that about appeals-courts nominees.

Finally, on the question about Democrats' being willing to give up Senate seats in return for justices: that's a perfectly reasonable point when it comes to liberal activists or donors. But it's not obvious that the Democrats who hold those seats are always going to have those same priorities.

Interesting perspective, from a lawyer:

Jonah: Strange coincidence: A little while ago I was discussing the proposed bankruptcy reforms with a partner of mine who does recovery work. We talked about how the credit card companies want to limit access to relief under a personal bankruptcy filing - for fairly obvious reasons. Not two minutes later, I see your post on the HBO drug addict documentary. Another two minutes, and I get a call from my mom about a relative with a drug habit. It seems this relative (22 years old, no income), following what she describes as a common practice of drug addicts, obtained credit cards from several department store chains. She then purchased gift cards up to the limit of each store credit card (several thousand dollars under each card). These gift cards were then exchanged for drugs at about 50 cents on the dollar. She now wants to use bankruptcy to clear the debts. So on the one hand, I'm completely sympathetic with the argument that this kind of irresponsible build up of debt is not the type of situation where the bankruptcy laws should be used for a "fresh start". On the other hand, how much sympathy can one feel for the credit card companies if this debt were wiped clean - what were they all thinking in giving several thousand dollars in unsecured credit to a young unemployed person? Easy access to bankruptcy may make borrowers less responsible, but this seems to be one case where the lenders were hardly more responsible in extending credit. But either way, it also shows another negative social harm caused by drug addiction. Anyway, I thought it was strange to have the two themes collide like that while both were fresh on my mind. Keep up the great work.

Re your "Independent" post -- I think Cornerites can fairly say we are of the "Cosmo" generation of conservatives. And I don't mean "that" magazine, either.

The average 29-year-old now hankers for a return to the lifestyle of a 1950s housewife. The daughters of the "Cosmo" generation of feminists want nothing more than a happy marriage and domestic bliss in the countryside, according to a survey.

Research into the attitudes of 1,500 women with an average age of 29 found that 61 per cent believe "domestic goddess" role models who juggle top jobs with motherhood and jet-set social lives are "unhelpful" and "irritating". More than two-thirds agree that the man should be the main provider in a family, while 70 per cent do not want to work as hard as their mother's generation. On average, the women questioned want to "settle down" with their partner by 30 and have their first child a year later.

A team of U.S. doctors, headed by a University of Virginia professor, secretly flew to Vienna in mid-December to assist in the treatment of then-Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko, according to U.S. officials, two of the doctors and the head of the Austrian clinic visited by Yushchenko....

Conservatives believe, not without reason, that private accounts will offer an invidious comparison to traditional Social Security. Workers will note that the taxes they send off to the traditional program disappear, while the money in their own accounts grows before their eyes. The private accounts will, in most cases, also appear to provide a higher rate of return. As noted above, the comparison is deceptive--traditional Social Security will be bearing the weight of the legacy debt, disability benefits, and, for affluent workers, redistribution to those earning less. But the comparison will create a constituency clamoring for expansion. Conservatives once proclaimed this unabashedly. The 1983 Cato Journal paper, which advocated what it called a "Leninist Strategy" for undermining Social Security, argued, "This mechanism for demonstrating the individual gains and losses that occur under Social Security is a key step in weakening public support for our present system."

Today's privatizers offer assurances that private accounts will be strictly limited and regulated. But those promises can't easily be reconciled with one of their key selling points--namely that workers would own them. "Under a privatized Social Security system, workers would have full property rights in their retirement accounts," writes Cato's Tanner. "They would own the money in them, the same way people own their IRA's or 401(k) plans." The comparison with IRAs and 401(k) accounts is instructive. These, like the proposed Social Security accounts, were created for the very narrow purpose of retirement savings. But their owners saw them as their own property and demanded the right to use them for children's educations, buying homes, and other purposes. Congress has steadily acceded to those demands, and the Bush administration has already proposed expanding IRAs into all-purpose tax shelters with even fewer restrictions.

As conservatives well understand, once a group of voters has been given a property right by Washington, they will never allow it to be taken away. The individual rights will be a ratchet, one that can be expanded but never contracted. The pressure for expansion would be especially strong during extended bull market runs, such as during the late '90s, when the public (and even some economists) tends to delude itself into thinking that stocks will rise forever. This is why conservatives are so insistent upon establishing individual accounts. They have uncharacteristically volunteered compromises--even offering to violate their theological opposition to tax hikes--in order to insert their opening wedge. Privatizers understand full well that any concessions they make can be legislated away in the future, while private accounts cannot.

Totally meaningless comment, but I read "you're at a cybermag" as "you're a cybernag". Sorry. Funny how the brain works.

Now that Frank Rich is being shifted back to the opinion pages, maybe he'll finally start giving us some actual arts coverage.

I write this with all respect, but I think you're being just a touch myopic in believing that the issue of judicial filibusters could ever have resonated with the general population. Most people-including intelligent, educated, folks who consider themselves to be politically aware-not only don't know who Arlen Specter is, they don't know what a filibuster is.

Whenever the question of the public's knowledge of politics comes up, I always think of Orrin Hatch's presidential campaign. Hatch recounted that he was "stunned" by how many people had never heard of him despite his years of ubiquity on Meet the Press and Face the Nation.

I pay far too much attention to this stuff myself, but I live and work in a city remote from D.C., and everyday I interact with professional people (lawyers, executives, etc) who couldn't name a U.S. Senator unless the Senator (1) is a "star" (Kennedy, Hillary), (2) is from the person's home state (and that's spotty) or (3) has had some direct effect on the person's business. I hear the words "Sarbanes-Oxley" (or maybe it's just one word by now) around the office about as frequently as "good morning" but I'll bet not a fifth of the folks who use it could tell you that Sarbanes is from Maryland.

No one will give a hoot what Mitt Romney's father did in 1964 or in 1968, when the elder said he had been "brainwashed." Only political junkies care.

This is like saying that liberals today care that Hillary Clinton was a Goldwater Girl in '64.

FLASH: Sen. Paul Sarbanes (D), longest-serving Senator in Maryland history, is expected to announce this afternoon that he will not seek a sixth term in 2006, ROLL CALL reporting... Developing...

This blogger says my post about Dope Sick Love is "rote nonsense" and he sent me the link with the subject header "you're dead wrong." He writes:

As for Goldberg and his rote nonsense: I would remind him that even in the political/legal climate as it is now, with all attendant corrosion of American culture beyond the immediate circle of this sort of thing (let's see who can distinguish between the actual dopers and everybody else who has to live with the widespread destruction of liberty that the War on Drugs has wrought), people still choose this way of death, and there is nothing on earth that he or anyone else can do about it when they do.

Suppress your liberal impulse, Jonah. Stop trying to save everyone. You can't, and you certainly have no right to attempt it at my expense.

Me:I find this not only to be childish table pounding, but completely off-point. When did I say we could "save" everyone? When did I suggest such was my goal? In fact, which of my points is this guy actually refuting? Or even trying to refute? The fact that these people are drug addicts despite the War on Drugs is a point I would make for my case. That some water makes it over the dam is not an argument against having the dam. That some people choose this "way of death" despite all of the barriers we throw up, does not demonstrate that there would not be many, many more people like this if we took those barriers down. Easier access to cheaper drugs would not create fewer addicts -- at least not in the short run (I am open to the argument that in the long run society might find an equilibrium). There are some people who become slaves to drugs very quickly and the only reason many do not become so enslaved is that it is a relative hassle to get them and use them in the open. Take away the hassle factor -- i.e. lower the price -- and you will increase the consumption.

And, as this documentary demonstrates, for some irreducible percentage of the population once they are addicted they cannot be un-addicted.

I have had this argument too many times to count now. I don't dispute that some people are simply self-destructive (I've known more than my share). But drugs like crack and heroin -- but not pot, which I favor decriminalizing -- make some people self-destructive who otherwise might not be. The economic model so many legalizers emphasize assumes people are rational actors without accepting that drugs by definition transform you into an irrational actor -- some permanently, others just for an evening. I'm not being "liberal" in pointing out that there are costs and benefits for both policy options. Legalization will have horrible costs in my opinion. Mature advocates of legalization admit this. They simply think the current costs of the drug war are greater and the benefits of ending it would outweigh the downside. All I disagree with is their accounting.

The Church report proves those assertions wrong. It says, "We found, without exception, that the DoD and senior military commanders responsible for the formulation of interrogation policy evidenced the intent to treat detainees humanely, which is fundamentally inconsistent with the notion that such officials or commanders ever accepted that detainee abuse would be permissible . . . [and] it is clear that none of the pictured abuses at Abu Ghraib bear any resemblance to approved policies at any level, in any theater."

But what about Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay? Weren't the interrogators just turned loose? In fact, no. Church wrote, "We found no link between approved interrogation techniques and detainee abuse."

Church found that most of the abuse cases didn't even come out of interrogations. "Of the 70 cases of . . . substantiated abuse, only 20 of these cases, or less than one-third, could be considered 'interrogation-related.' " The rest occurred in situations such as at the "point of capture" — where soldiers who've captured people they believed had caused the deaths or wounding of their pals got emotionally carried away.

As the Church report shows, the terrorists are trained in our interrogation methods and how to resist them. When we use more aggressive techniques — as we did in the case of two "high-value" detainees at Guantanamo who resisted standard interrogation for months — the new techniques "successfully neutralized the two detainees' resistance training and yielded valuable intelligence."

Church said in a conference call Wednesday that our interrogators are now "clamped up" — declining to push interrogations as hard as they legally and morally can and should for fear of the next investigation that will come along.

All Americans owe a debt of gratitude to the men and women of the agency who executed these presidentially requested and approved operations, often at the risk of their lives. Unfortunately, rather than receiving thanks, the C.I.A. officers are again learning the usual lesson: to follow orders, make America safer and prepare to be abandoned and prosecuted when the policy makers refuse to defend their own decisions.

As the bankruptcy bill emerged, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, sought to rally members of his party around a series of amendments that would offer special protection for those whose bankruptcy was attributed to health care costs or other unexpected expenses. But on that and nearly every other attempted change, solid Republican opposition, bolstered by a handful of Democrats, prevailed.

On the call to cut off debate on the bill, 13 Democrats joined Republicans, some of whom said privately that they were astonished that Democratic opponents of the bill were losing so many from their own party.

To TechCentralStation. They celebrated their 5th anniversary last night here in DC. For five years our friend Nick Schulz has done a stupendous job in making an indispensable site only better and better -- despite the hardship of what I consider to be a truly lame name for a magazine. Perhaps at their tenth anniversary party they'll re-christen it GadgetPortAuthority or GizmoMainTerminal.

I say it out of love.

From a reader:

Dear Jonah and Andrew, Thanks gentlemen for the Reason vs. Revelation death match. Kidding aside, it is a worthy conversation, although I think that there may be disconnect in it.

I think Andrew and Jonah might agree that 1) Religion as a ground for politics is a bad idea and potentially quite destructive, AND that 2) Believing that rationality is the only way of knowing the world is destructive and leads to dangerously grounded political orders also. Jonah's claim seems to be more about ontology, or what COUNTS when you are thinking about the world. While Andrew is raising concerns about how political orders have been grounded. Perhaps I am missing a more important disagreement, however.

Below are some more thoughts on the matter (although of questionable merit and will likely have you asking, "what does this have to do with Carl Schmitt?", the ramble below is how I came to the two points above):

Jonah says that the commitment to untainted rationality is likely to end in an ugly will to power in the political order, and Andrew says that the days of tainted rationality (and religious wars) can look an awful lot like a an ugly will to power situation also. I do think Andrew is correct except that some religions are more susceptible to ugliness than others, where as the extreme rationality approach is what it is. Carl Schmitt's (A one-time nazi) Concept of the Political (1927 I think) suggests that the political is that which is non-negotiable, that for which you are willing to kill or be killed (or have men kill or be killed). Schmitt seems to lament the loss of content from the political that it is now just down to a version of humanism or human rights. These other things, religion, culture, language that used to be important [worth fighting for] have been sucked away. Leo Strauss criticized that view and argued that the remaining humanism is a legitimate political ground--and a safe one (he argued against Schmitt before 1933, I think, so it was not a reaction to the Holocaust but a warning of it). What does this have to do with your conversation?

Strauss's insight that keeping religion out of the realm of that for which you fight in the political [violent arena by Schmitt's definition] arena is a good idea, does not conflict with an understanding that pure rationality leads to a destructive will to power. Andrew and Jonah can agree that 1) Religion as a ground for politics is a bad idea and potentially destructive, AND that 2) Believing that rationality is the only way of knowing the world is destructive.

Best,

Me: A very thoughtful email. My only objections, for now, are that A) Schmitt wasn't merely a one-time Nazi. In every meaningful sense once he became a Nazi he never stopped being one. He never expressed any remorse for the Holocaust even long, long after the details were known. The "crown jurist" of the Nazi Reich may have gotten into some intra-party squabbles and the like, but in his heart he remained a Nazi in the ways that count.

And B) I'm not positive the reader is exactly right about Schmitt's definition of the political. My understanding is that Schmitt believed every thing was political even those things which we call apolitical -- since to declare something beyond politics is itself a political act. Interestingly, Mark Lilla argues that Schmitt was fundamentally a theological thinker (which may play into my argument with Andrew more than the reader allows). But this may all be a trivial point and I am no expert on Schmitt (though I've been reading more by and about him lately).

It's a must-see new documentary on HBO. It is a brutal-but-riveting depiction of the worst ravages of drug addiction. It is not suitable for little kids.I would encourage advocates of legalization to watch it, not so much to change their minds (though some might) but because it's an important reminder that at least at first, legalization would create more cases like the ones depicted in this film, not fewer. I am perfectly comfortable admitting that the drug war has huge downsides, many of which I would like to ameliorate. It would be nice if more proponents of legalization at least acknowledge that there would be massive downsides to ending it at well. I'm not trying to create a strawman, I know there are realists around here. But they don't read my email.

Andrew - I think you make a truly excellent and fair point about technology being a -- or perhaps the -- key restraint on some previous genocidal campaigns. Lord knows how much worse off, say, the Huguenots might have been if the Gatling gun had been around. But while I'm no student of pre-modern genocide, it seems to me that a lack of technology hasn't stopped some mass murderers from getting away with, uh, murder. Rwanda had no Auschwitz.

And I guess we agree on much else as well. I think you're probably right to look at what unites genocidal movements rather than the ideas they profess to hold. I guess what interests me for the purposes of this discussion is that so many of the forces of "reason," truth, light and progress which were allegedly unleashed by the Enlightenment in general and the French Revolution in particular were in fact used as ruses for horrors as bad as any which came before -- and in some cases worse -- and were all the more horrific because they were commited by the most "enlightened" elements of society.

This, in the modern era, is the crucial distinction I was trying to highlight. It is one thing to believe in an actual religion which puts God and the hereafter permanently in the hereafter. It is another to use the passions of religion in an attempt to bring heaven to Earth. I agree that fanatics of authentic religions have attempted to do just that with bloody results. But the deadliest cults in the modern era have tended to hide behind the language of reason, or The People, or "social justice" or "the Proletariat." And even some religious movements are really religious in name only. Much of al Qaeda's schtick is really just warmed-over anti-colonialism and nationalism with a thick Islamic varnish to make it more attractive to the rubes who blow themselves up in order to get their 72 first dates.

After the apathetic ‘si’ that Spain gave to the proposed EU constitution, attention is now turning to the referendum in France, now pushed to an earlier date by a Jacques Chirac concerned that support for this revolting document among the French is fading away.

But could the Netherlands be about to spring a surprise? The London Times has this to say:

“The Government has announced that a referendum on the constitution will take place on June 1. It will be the first time that Dutch citizens are asked what they think of the EU. While international attention has been focused on the French referendum, just three days earlier on May 29, the Dutch are far more likely to slam on the brakes of the constitutional juggernaut. Polls in France still show a majority in favour of the constitution, but the Government in The Hague has been shocked to find that a majority of its citizens are opposed, and by no small margin. A recent poll was telling. It showed that 42 per cent of Dutch would choose to vote “no”, against 28 per cent who plan to vote “yes”. The Netherlands is the only founding member of the EU in which opinion polls suggest that the constitution will be rejected.”

Better I think, to look beneath the very different beliefs professed by the mass murderers, and see what unites them. Some will be cynics merely using an ideology for their purposes, while others, more dangerous, are the true believers – in the ‘People’ perhaps, or a god – who feel that so long as they are acting in the interests (as they interpret it) of their faith any atrocity can be justified, however appalling.

for little kids, according to George Lucas. Of course, he also says he's "very please with the whole" series. So take his judgement as you will.

It is time to act on precisely that intuition and pass a law that draws that line: no creation for the purpose of destruction. We need to do it consensually. And we need to do it now. Tomorrow is too late. By tomorrow we will have an embryo manufacturing industry, and we will already be numb to it.

According to Claudia Rosett:

BEIRUT - With the reinstatement yesterday of the same pro-Syrian prime minister who resigned 11 days ago, Omar Karami, Lebanon's democratic spring is turning into a high-stakes showdown not only for the Lebanese, but for President Bush's policy of busting up the autocratic rackets of the Middle East.

Right now, the situation looks increasingly dire for this country's democratic opposition. But plenty turns on whether Mr. Bush, who has promised the democrats support in their bid to end Syrian domination, will stick to his word. Signs are that, much like Saddam Hussein, the Baathist regime of Syrian leader Bashar Assad is out of tune with the times, stuck in the era of pre-September 11 American foreign policy and betting that Mr. Bush doesn't mean what he says.

Among the graffiti in Beirut's Martyrs' Square, epicenter of the democratic movement, is a telling mix of two dictators' names, scrawled in English: "Assaddam."

HEARING OF THE SCIENCE, JUSTICE, STATE, COMMERCE SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE
SUBJECT: FY06 DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE BUDGET
CHAIRED BY: REP. FRANK WOLF (R-VA)
WITNESS: FBI DIRECTOR ROBERT MUELLER
2359 HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.
10:03 A.M. EST, TUESDAY, MARCH 8, 2005

REP. WOLF: 112952 Thank you, Mr. Director. I'll have a number of questions at the end, but we're going to have a couple of preliminary ones so everyone has plenty of time to ask questions.
I would just say, thinking back at your first appearance before the committee, it's a fairly dramatic difference insofar as your testimony then with regard to now. I think the Bureau has become much more robust. And it would be interesting to go back and match it word for word to see how dramatically the Bureau has actually changed.
113023 Just a couple of questions. One I think you know. 113028 Last week NBC News carried a story about some terrorists who were in the Supermax prison writing people outside. 113037 We met with representatives of the attorney general's office late last week, either on Thursday or Friday -- I think it was Thursday -- and also members of the Bureau of Prisons.
113050 I don't think anyone who's been connected with any terrorist activity -- and that was the attempt on the World Trade Center in 1993 -- ought to be permitted to write outside. 113100 Now, I understand -- I was told that there were several Supreme Court decisions that the Bureau of Prisons was basing their policy on.
113112 The world has changed dramatically. I think the last decision -- one was from the '70s; one was in the '80s. I'm asking you to go back and look at that changing it again. And, quite frankly, if you have any problem with the Supreme Court, it just sort of came to me; this committee has given the Supreme Court a tremendous amount of money to protect the court with regard to bombings, with regard to many other activities. The court itself and the justices are aware of the threat because they have been to this committee over and over in asking for things. So everyone would understand the world has changed since 9/11.
I read a piece, I think in the New York Times, by McCarthy, Andrew McCarthy, Andy McCarthy. Do you know him?
MR. MUELLER: Yes.
REP. WOLF: Do you think he's a pretty good person?
MR. MUELLER: He's one of the best prosecutors you can find in the United States. He is one of the best prosecutors you'll ever find in handling a terrorist case.
REP. WOLF: And did you read his piece? Was it the New York Times? Did you read the piece?
MR. MUELLER: I believe it was the New York Times.
REP. WOLF: The National Journal -- where he made the case that this is a totally poor policy, bad policy, inappropriate policy, because those letters could be used for recruitment and many other things, which we won't go into here today. Did you see his piece?
MR. MUELLER: I had thought that I had seen a piece by him. I'm not certain where the piece was, but I do recall seeing a piece by him -- it may have been summarized someplace -- where he articulates that understanding.
REP. WOLF: 113238 Do you believe that the policy should be changed whereby people who have been convicted of terrorist activity, terrorist activity -- and there were three individuals, I think, who died in the attack on the World Trade Center -- 113255 that ought not be permitted to just write letters outside that can be used for recruitment and other reasons?
MR. MUELLER: 113255 I absolutely believe, and I know the Department of Justice and BOP are looking at enhanced restrictions on the ability of persons who have been convicted of crimes relating to terrorism to correspond with others outside. 113312
REP. WOLF: Could you report back to the committee? And hopefully this change will take place relatively soon so that you wouldn't want to find that something happened because of a letter that was sent out yesterday or a letter was sent out tomorrow. I think the policy ought to be changed relatively soon. So if you could report back or ask the attorney general to report back to the committee on how the policy is being changed.
MR. MUELLER: Be happy to do that.
REP. WOLF: Okay, thank you. The second issue is with regard to the Virtual Case File. As we mentioned earlier, we have asked the committee's survey and investigation staff to do a review of the Virtual Case Files program. We understand that your staff has been very helpful providing the S&I staff with information.

Old dialogue from Slate between Peter Singer and Richard Posner. My favorite passage from Posner:

Now you may reply that these are just facts about human nature; that they have no normative significance. But they do. Suppose a dog menaced a human infant and the only way to prevent the dog from biting the infant was to inflict severe pain on the dog—more pain, in fact, than the bite would inflict on the infant. You would have to say, let the dog bite (for "if an animal feels pain, the pain matters as much as it does when a human feels pain," provided the pain is as great). But any normal person (and not merely the infant's parents!), including a philosopher when he is not self-consciously engaged in philosophizing, would say that it would be monstrous to spare the dog, even though to do so would minimize the sum of pain in the world.

I do not feel obliged to defend this reaction; it is a moral intuition deeper than any reason that could be given for it and impervious to any reason that you or anyone could give against it. Membership in the human species is not a "morally irrelevant fact," as the race and sex of human beings has come to seem. If the moral irrelevance of humanity is what philosophy teaches, and so we have to choose between philosophy and the intuition that says that membership in the human species is morally relevant, then it is philosophy that will have to go.

Washington DC, March 10, 2005/RPS/ -- The Arab Human Rights Committee in Syria, led by Dr. Ammar Qurabi, called for Syrians to peacefully march to the Ministry of Justice today to object the lack of freedom and expression and to free prisoners of conscience in Syria.

Upon arrival to the Ministry of Justice, about 100 marchers were met by intelligence and security personnel who used sticks and batons to beat the marchers back and to disperse them. Some people sustained injuries.

The treatment of intellectuals and human rights activists in Syria is subject to great debate in the society. More and more Syrians have come to the conclusion that the regime must change in order to deconstruct the country and construct it again. Lack of respect for the constitution and the laws in the Syrian society is driving people to think in extreme ways.

As a pediatrician and medical geneticist I've had to deal with the issue of newborns with fatal malformation or syndromes on a few occasions, and this whole euthanasia thing in the Netherlands really makes my skin crawl. About 1 in every 7 or 8,000 newborns has trisomy 13 or 18, for example (think Down syndrome, only a lot worse). These conditions are almost always lethal in the first few months of life and are characterized by a variety of birth defects, everything from cleft lip and palate to complex congenital heart disease, to structural brain malformations and severe retardation. Very few live more than a few years. These are terrible conditions, but they're not painful, except, of course to the family. Counseling in these situations usually involves spelling out the facts (obviously in much more detail) and, in my experience, most families accept the situation, understand their baby is going to have a short life, and enjoy the time with their baby as much as possible. I've never heard anyone suggest euthanasia. However, medical intervention is often tailored to the situation, for example, in an otherwise healthy newborn with complex congenital heart disease, corrective surgery would be arranged. However, if the infant has trisomy 13, it's difficult to justify the expense, resources and pain required to fix the heart, if the ultimate outcome won't be altered. So if no amount of medical intervention is going to lengthen their life, why put them thru it? It's always seemed to me that the humane thing to do in these hopeless cases is to just let nature take its course, and I don't mean exposure on a hillside, but rather provide food, comfort, love and attention, and understand that medical technology can only do so much. I don't see how any active measures to "speed things along" could ever be justified on the basis of sparing the infant unnecessary suffering, because I really don't think they are suffering. While I'm sure there is a financial incentive driving this, as every day in the NICU costs thousands of dollars, I think it's clear that one reason infants are being euthanized in the Netherlands to spare their parents (and the "caregivers") needless suffering. Once we start justifying infanticide to make ourselves feel better, what's next?

My post about contradictions has elicited some interesting email. Perhaps I'll columnize on it later. But there was one thing I wrote in haste that an old friend of mine who's a real-live working historian called me on. He's right. The New Deal didn't break the consensus about a pluralistic society. It was simply the apotheosis of a trend which started with the Progressives. The salient bit from his email:

The Progressive Era was all about rationalizing society. This definitely
predates 1920 and is more than just a caveat. Just finished reading Walter
Lippmann's Drift and Mastery (1914) with my class this week. Lippmann,
moving away from socialism, is all about rationalizing society along
scientific models. If you haven't read it, you need to for your book (as if
you don't have enough reading). It's a model for the Big Business-Big
Labor-Big Government axis that develops beginning in the New Deal and
continues through the 1960s.

World War I was a model for the rationalizing and nationalizing of the New
Deal and WWII, especially with the War Industries Board.

As for Andrew's point about rationality being in the eye of the beholder, I take his point. However, I'd argue that most of the really famous mass murders of the 20th century were not the result of faith in transcendent moral precepts, properly understood. Rather they were the result of men trying to replace transcendence with their own will to power. This was the point of Julien Benda's Treason of the Intellectuals where he rightly decried the the new fashion among intellectuals to deify the particula