An email: " saw your post on the papal futures, which you probably noted simply because, well, it's is interesting that the futures are going to a European.

"There's a reason, I suspect. Even though Latins are half the lay population of the Church, they currently have just a little more Cardinals then Italy alone. 22 to 21, if I remember.

"I'm not sure if someone else mentioned it in the Corner already, but even if they did, it's worth repeating, placing bets on the next pope, as I'm sure you know, is forbidden of Catholics. Apparently it was quite the cottage industry in Italy when the Pope stepped and stopped the practice about 400 years ago."

John Tierney has a slapdash column on it. Steve Sailer's site takes apart the theory that abortion is responsible for half the drop in crime. (Actually, he took it apart when Steven Levitt first floated it, but Levitt has apparently not adjusted his argument since then.)

Sailer has an article coming out in The American Conservative on the theory. Some highlights:

"Levitt's idea outrages Pro-Lifers, who complain that King Herod used similar logic in ordering the slaughter of thousands of babies to try to eliminate the threat posed by the infant Jesus. That doesn't mean it's false. As a social scientist, Levitt has an obligation to follow the data wherever they may lead him. But that doesn't mean it's true, either. . . .

"[T]he acid test of Levitt's theory is this: Did the first New, Improved Generation culled by legalized abortion actually grow up to be more lawful teenagers than the last generation born before legalization? Hardly. Instead, the first cohort to survive legalized abortion went on the worst youth murder spree in American history. . . .

"[Levitt] argues that crime fell first in the five states that legalized abortion back in 1970. Okay … but isn't it at least as interesting that crime had previously gone up first in those early legalizing states? And hardly surprising it then burned out there first?"

From a reader:

Good Morning Jonah,

I just read over your piece on affirmative action and it's effects of Asians. I am black and entered UT in the fall of 1994 (two years before the hopwood decision) and graduated in 1999. At that time they didn't have the top 10% rule as they do now, but they still had automatic addmissions. They had a formula using SAT scores and your class rank. The higher your class rank you lower your SAT score could be. So since I was in the top 15% of my high school class I needed an SAT score that was 1100 or above, which I got. I know many of my peers may have seen me as only gaining addmission b/c of affirmative action, but I would have been automatically admitted with my class rank and SATs no matter if I was white, brown, yellow, grey, purple or blue. However, I did get a scholarship that was only for "underepresented minorities" Now my feelings about the scholarship are ambivalent, but I basically got a free education at a top university so I really can't fault myself for taking it. Sorry about the copious amounts of background, but my comment is about the # of black students. Even when I was there when race was a factor in addmissions the black population at UT was around 4%. That is miniscule. UT was practically beating down doors to even get that many black folks. You mention that the Asian population skyrocketed after the hopwood decision (if I had to guess I would say the the Asian population while I was at UT was about 8-12% maybe higher if you include those of Indian and Pakistani descent as Asian). Well I'm not sure this could possibly be related to the black enrollment b/c we numbered so few. So for instance even if every single black student was kicked out and replaced with an Asian student the Asian population of the university could have jumped, at most, 4%. Not exactly "skyrocketing". I'm not sure on the hispanic #s. Perhaps in combination they could account for the jump in Asians. However, after an initial drop in black enrollment after 1996, I think that it got back up to 3-4%. In essence my point as it relates to quotas for black students at UT is this: I think it is wrong. Quotas for any race are just plain wrong. However in this case the #'s of black students are so miniscule that I'm just not sure why it is such a big deal. UT is not some of the elite, top tier universities where they seek to have a black population equal to that of the population in general. UT's black population was only 1/4 that of the nationwide population. So once again why is this such a big deal?

Thanks for you time. I know your very busy.

From Reuters:

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (Reuters) -- In a victory for pranksters at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a bunch of computer-generated gibberish masquerading as an academic paper has been accepted at a scientific conference.

Jeremy Stribling said Thursday that he and two fellow MIT graduate students questioned the standards of some academic conferences, so they wrote a computer program to generate research papers complete with "context-free grammar," charts and diagrams.

The trio submitted two of the randomly assembled papers to the World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (WMSCI), scheduled to be held July 10-13 in Orlando, Florida.

To their surprise, one of the papers -- "Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy" -- was accepted for presentation.

The prank recalled a 1996 hoax in which New York University physicist Alan Sokal succeeded in getting an entire paper with a mix of truths, falsehoods, non sequiturs and otherwise meaningless mumbo-jumbo published in the quarterly journal Social Text, published by Duke University Press.

Stribling said he and his colleagues only learned about the Social Text affair after submitting their paper.

"Rooter" features such mind-bending gems as: "the model for our heuristic consists of four independent components: simulated annealing, active networks, flexible modalities, and the study of reinforcement learning" and "We implemented our scatter/gather I/O server in Simula-67, augmented with opportunistically pipelined extensions."

From, well, this guy:

Jonah, Maybe OJ can help find the real killer whale(s).

Sorry. Couldn't resist. On the off chance you post this silliness in the Corner, please use my name. I yearn for fame.

Dave Skorka

I hadn't read that article closely enough. It's actually a classic example of the sort of journalistic narrow-mindedness I learned to hate at feet of the master, my dad.

I think most people have never heard of the false killer whale before. And yet the article says "False killer whales do not closely resemble killer whales. They grow to 20 feet, weigh up to two tons and have a tapering, rounded snout that overhangs their toothed jaw."

This leaves the reader with one important question: Why do they call them false killer whales?"

Were they wrongly accused in the past? Did they attempt identity theft?

This is an important point for young journalists: No reader has ever been offended by learning something interesting. Would it have killed them to offer two sentences as to why they're called false killer whales?

My dad always tells me that "every sentence you write should be either interesting or important." This is usually an unatainable ideal and I'd probably throw in "entertaining" as a third category. But it's a good rule of thumb.

Anyway, then there's another gaffe caught an intrepid reader. I'll post his email:

O.K., so I was reading that “wholphin” story you posted and noted yet another example of that great MSM fact-checking we’re always hearing about. Toward the end of the article, it says:

“Park researchers suspect the wholphin's father is a 15-foot long Atlantic bottlenose dolphin named Mikioi.”

Four sentences later, it says:

“Atlantic bottlenose dolphins reach a maximum size of 12 feet and can weigh up to 700 pounds.”

Call me crazy, but I think the average blogger would have caught that one and made the necessary fact check and correction.

K-Lo At first, I assumed that you were forgetting that I just came back from taping an episdoe Tucker Carlson Unfiltered. But now that I see you were linking to the hoe-down in Hotlanta I recognize you're right!

By the way: It seems to me that Young Republican outfits at various Sourthern schools should think about taking their year-end surpluses and putting them toward sending some delegates to the Hotlanta fundraiser bash.

Where else will you be able to pose with the nearly the entire NR cast while holding up a copy of your college's conservative newspaper? Not at C-PAC. Not at my house.

MANASSAS, VA (April 14, 2005) – Marymount Manhattan College has invited pro-abortion Sen. Hillary Clinton to deliver its commencement address and receive an honorary doctoral degree on May 20, publicly defying New York’s Cardinal Edward Egan and the U.S. bishops who forbade such honors in a statement last June.

Sen. Clinton has consistently supported legalized abortion, speaking at gatherings of abortion-rights advocates and voting against a ban on partial-birth abortion. She also has advocated expanding embryonic stem cell research and has declared contraception “basic health care for women.” During a January 2005 speech to New York State “family planning providers,” in which Clinton was widely reported as softening her stance on abortion, Clinton in fact began by repeating her firm commitment to keeping abortion legal: “I am so pleased to be here two days after the 32nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, a landmark decision that struck a blow for freedom and equality for women. Today Roe is in more jeopardy than ever, and I look forward to working with all of you as we fight to defend it in the coming years.”

The Wholpin. Part whale, part dolphin -- all party animal.

I also learned there is such a thing as a "false killer whale." Talk about names that don't help self-esteem.

Jonah:

The odd thing about that business of mainstreaming-by-name is that it ended by making the name-bearer's Jewishness more obvious than ever. I mean, if you hear of someone named "Irving" or "Sheldon," you assume he is Jewish.
(Similarly with a "Clarence," who is black and over 40, to a high degree of
probability.)

I'd like to know more about the social mechanics here. Was it a case of "gentile flight" from names that were being preferred by Jews for their Waspiness? Or were these names always unusual among Wasps, and Jews just picked them for some auspicious or euphonious quality they had, the way Chinese people go for "Amy" (sounds like "pretty" in Chinese)?

The idea of naming a kid "Harvard" is kind of cute. Best to start with low expectations, though: Should Mrs. Derb favor me with further issue, I shall consider "SuffolkCommunityCollege" as a possible forename.

A friend of mine has a theory about Jews of a certain generation (my father's) who have names like Irving, Sidney, Martin etc. It was an attempt to "mainstream" Jewish kids into American culture by giving them "anglo" names.

He was the first to point out to me how Asian kids are going through the same thing today. There are lots of whitebread names followed by Fong, Hsu, etc.

But there's something else going on too. I have received emails from several Asians (I assume Chinese) whose last names are obviously Chinese (i.e. like Wong, or Chang) whose first name is "Harvard."

That's branding.

That's a great Muggeridge story, Peter. In the quotability stakes, Mugg was way up there. I especially liked his remark about David Frost: "When I first saw David Frost, I expected that he would soon sink without trace. In the event, he has *risen* without trace."

However, the quip about the Ten Commandments being like an examination paper--"Six only to be attempted"--though often attributed to Mugg, in fact came originally from Bertrand Russell.

The best from a clutch of Asian super-kid stories. This from Noah Millman.

"John---My senior year of high school, I had a girlfriend who was Chinese.
She was terribly smart, a Westinghouse finalist. She was a shoo-in to get into every school she applied to. Well, she decided she wanted to go to Stanford, partly because it had a fabulous neuroscience department (her field of interest), partly because of the weather, and partly because it was on the other side of the country from her parents.

"Well, her parents had a problem with this, because, you see, everyone back in Taiwan knew that the best university in the world was Harvard. How could her daughter shame them by going to a second-rate university, particularly if she actually got *in* to Harvard (which she did)?

"That year, the Westinghouse people took all the finalists on a trip to China for a month. So, while their daughter was away, my then-girlfriend's parents drove up to Cambridge, and pleaded with the Dean of Admissions at Harvard to let their daughter rescind her reject and accept a spot at Harvard. Naturally, the Dean assented. They then called up Stanford and told the admissions office there that, regretfully, their daughter had changed her mind and decided not to attend Stanford after all.

"When their daughter returned from China a month later, it was too late to undo her parents handiwork. So she went to Harvard.

"We're not in touch, so I don't know how she feels about her parents these days. But I rather think when they get old enough to be thinking about what kind of nursing home their daughter will install them in, they should worry that they banked just a little too much on traditional Chinese filial piety."

Great story. This HarvardGirl diary entry of mine from last year is also pertinent.

A reader raises a nice -- if unpleasently so -- point about free speach in academia. How exactly is it under threat when just this week an NYU student asked Justice Scalia if he sodomizes his wife. He asked while his wife was present.

But, yes, the academy is in danger.

My ode to McDonald's from -- good golly! -- five years ago.

Pretty amazing that McDonald's and National Review were founded in the same year -- and they say the fifties were boring!

From a reader:

Assuming that 'grad' students in the US are the same as post-graduate students in the UK, it is ludicrous for them to consider striking.

Graduate students, especially in the sciences, should be treated like
the Apprentices of Sorcerers. They should be paid very little and made
to work long hours at menial laboratory tasks. Such treatment teaches
them humility you see, and makes sure they dont get too cocky about the
great powers they are soon to learn.

A great Tory, to be precise: the incomparable Samuel Johnson. This year marks the 250th anniversary of the publication of his Dictionary.

Reader Debby Witt reminds me of some gems from that work.

I am not yet so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.

- Dr. Samuel Johnson
(A Dictionary of the English Language,
preface)

Buffoon - A man whose profession is to make sport, by low jests and antick postures; a jackpudding.

Excise - A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid.

Lexicographer - A writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.

Network - Anything reticulated or decussated at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.

Oats - A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.

Patron - One who countenances, supports, or protects. Commonly,
a wretch who supports with insolence and is paid in flattery.*

Pension - Pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country.

Whore - A woman who converses unlawfully with men; a fornica-
tress; an adultress; a strumpet.

It will shock few of you to discover I am no expert on diplomatic history. But I have a question maybe someone who knows about such things can answer: Where is it written that diplomats always and everywhere must be soft-spoken, arms-are-for-hugging types? I understand that the gravity of institutional, professional, psychological and ideological forces all pull in that direction. Diplomats are talkers and therefore doplomats are heavily invested in the value of talk. Nonetheless, is it really the case that arm-twisters, table-pounders, butt-kickers and straight-talkers have never been effective in the diplomacy trade? Are they really never called for? It seems to me I remember some foreign diplomats who've gotten too much out of America by such methods. But I could be wrong. To read the liberal assault on Bolton is to get the impression that it is axiomatic that such people can never be good diplomats. Surely there are some good counter examples. James Baker didn't seem like the kind of guy who ate lady fingers without dropping a single crumb.

Even if China-shop bulls have been successful in the past, it wouldn't necessarily constitute a case for Bolton one way or the other of course. You'd have to ask if this specific situation requires a Bolton type. But, it seems to me, you could certainly make that case considering how the UN has hardly excelled under the current regime of "no, after you, I insist" types.

The Washington Post has nuggety-nugaty story about the nugatory nature of academic nabobs. The George Mason University faculty senate voted against the Patriot Act yesteday with much high-minded nonsense. Which is to say 30 professors voted against it. Here's one nugget:

James T. Bennett, faculty senate chairman and an economics professor, said all but one of more than 30 members who attended the meeting voted for the resolution.

"The Patriot Act runs against the grain of the typical academic," Bennett said. "The whole idea of the academy is to look at all different points of view. This is the kind of thing that takes place in a dictatorship."

Me: Which "point of view" is being oppressed. You can still take out a copy of the "Hermeneutics of Herpes: Sexually Transmitted Dissidence in Haight Ashbury 1965-1974."

The only point of view the government is interested in is the point of view which says, "Hey, maybe that dirty bomb would go better under that playground."

Another nugget:

David L. Kuebrich, an associate professor of English who is secretary of the faculty senate, said he thinks the danger in the Patriot Act "is that we will curtail speech or research that would be quite critical of foreign policy at a time when we really need a broad review and to be open to dissenting voices."

Me: Ahh the arrogant solipsism of the literary genius overlooked! But tell me professor, If the government hasn't picked off Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky or Al Franken why, exactly, would they crush their jackboot down upon the craniums of the adventurous GMU scholar eager to speak truth to power about the sexual rhetoric implicit in the cruise missile?

Get over yourselves people.

Ed Driscoll has a big take-out on Brian Anderson's new book over at TCS.

I should note that the book is lavishly blurbed by yours truly. Actually, it's blurbed by yours truly and the blurb is lavishly displayed on the front cover of the book (the full quote is on the back).

This should serve as noification to publishers who do not send me free (good) books: My name moves product!

Last week I spent three days at a conference of various leaders of the budding VLWC, and it was, well, interesting. As happens at any such gathering, the networking was the greatest benefit. Met lots of good people. The sessions were too touchy-feely for me. I'm not a liberal who likes to talk about "feelings".

At one session, one participant told me "we can achieve world peace if we just visualize it". What the f**k? I jumped down the guy's throat--"When people were shooting it out in my front lawn in El Salvador, they didn't give a flying f**k about what you were visualizing. Neither do the warlords in Somalia, or in Darfur, or the insurgents in Iraq, or terrorists all over the world."

Man, talk about idiots reinforcing the worst stereotypes about our side.

Jeez. Fantasizing about eliminating the Defense Department isn't being part of the Reality Based Community. If that's the sort of thing you like to do, and are offended by my bluntness, then deal with it. Being a part of the reality based community means we must operate in--you guessed it--reality.

So there were the crazies, some of them in leadership positions of fairly prominent organizations. F**king obnoxious, and clearly a reason why our side can seem out of touch.

But there was another wierd dynamic at play--this one generational. There were leaders, all of them older, of extremely prominent liberal interest groups. We're talking labor, environmental, economic justice, things like that. And some of them were genuinely awesome.

But there was a large contingent of them that were obsessed with one thing--their pet issue. It was about them, them, them. Why wasn't their issue being addressed? Did they have to stay in some meeting if their issue wasn't being discussed? Etc.

Wow! Their self-centerdness and lack of interest in working together (unless it revolved around their issue) was breathtaking.

On the other hand, most of the younger activists at this retreat ran community-style groups. They weren't focused on any single issue, but on using the collective force of their communities to bear pressure on various issues.

So at one point we had a session on organizing, and used the Wal-Mart campaign as a case study. While the older folks kvetched that their "issues" weren't being discussed, the younger folk seemed eager to find ways they could use their organizations to help execute various components of the campaign...

That lack of single-issue obsession allows these groups to form ad-hoc coalitions to tackle any number of issues. It's quite inspiring, actually. A new generation of activists seem to be rejecting the myopic single-issue focus of the previous generation--a short-sightedness that has, in large part (IMHO), led to the ineffectiveness of our single-issue groups. The environmental, labor, women's, lawyer, and ethnic/racial groups have been woefully ineffective in beating back attacks from the Right Wing machine...

There is still a clear role for the single-issue groups, but in the future, it may be more of a think tank model--providing the ammunition and research necessary for the ground troops to wage multi-disciplinary campaigns. DFA [Democracy for America] and MoveOn can mobilize its shock troops at a moment's notice, ready to wage a campaign in defense of ANWR, in defense of overtime pay, or a defense of a woman's right to choose. The single-issue groups can't hope to compete with that in the future. And they won't have to.

We are in a transition right now. Our model is changing. And it will be for the better. We are on our way to practicing the politics of "we", rather than the politics of "me" and "mine". And as we create an infrastructure that lends itself to easy coalition building, unencumbered by turf and big ego battles, we'll be much closer to a true Vast Left Wing Conspiracy.

BEERSHEBA, Israel (Reuters) - Palestinian suicide bombers killed at least 16 people in simultaneous attacks on two Israeli buses on Tuesday, breaking a long lull in suchviolence and threatening to disrupt an Israeli plan to pull out of Gaza.

The bombings by the militant Islamic group Hamas in the southern city of Beersheba were the first in Israel since March and the deadliest since last October. They showed thatHamas was not a spent force, even after repeated Israeli assassinations of its leaders and the building of a West Bank barrier.

From a reader:

You probably already know this, but apparently most fans of the movie don’t: The Warriors retells the story of Xenophon’s Anabasis, wherein the Persian Cyrus, while trying to take the Persian throne, was killed and his Greek troops, led by Xenophon, were left stranded in enemy territory and had to fight their way back home. That’s why the movie works—it’s pretty faithful to the spirit of the original.

Getting a lot of emails like this:

Hi, Jonah.

I received my Ph.D in chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1998. I'm not sure what the situation is there now, but there were always "humanities" grad. students pining for a grad student union of some sort. Most of us in the hardcore sciences wanted nothing to do with this. We got paid little, worked ridiculously long hours, but we expected this going in. Our time and money was precious and the idea of staging a protest "walk out" was absurd. Our motivation for getting away from the small stipend/long hours life was to...are you sitting down?...work harder to graduate sooner and find a real job. Doesn't take 8-10 years of an English Lit. dissertation to figure that out. Well, for most graduate students anyway.

(please don't print my name if you post this...thanks)

They're making a videogame out of "The Warriors."

I just got a press release announcing that The Atlantic will move from Boston to Washington over the next year. That is all. You may now resume your normal activities.

Update: Woops. Original post said the Atlantic was moving to New York. It's DC.

I think this should wrap-up what should have never gotten so unwrapped. From a reader:

I wish could find the picture. But, I believe it was in the Jerusalem Post that there was a picture of JPII being greeted by an Israeli official, perhaps Barak. The caption read something to the effect, "Pope John Paul II is greeting by Prime Minister Erud Barak. The pope is the one in the yarmulke. "

Many, many readers wish to clarify:

Please pass this on to your reader who doesn't know why Catholic clergy wear the zucchetto: They wear the zucchetto because, in the olden days, monks were tonsured (shaved a circle of hair off the tops of their heads) and the zucchetto was worn to help them stay warm in the pre-central-heating days.

From a reader:

Jonah,

Here at the University of Michigan, the graduate students have been
unionized since the mid 1970s--whereas the Columbia and Yale grads are just
getting around to it.

Earlier this month, the Graduate Student Instructors (GSIs) staged a
one-day walkout in their contract negotiations with the University. They
wanted their roughly $14,000 stipend (which comes with a tuition waiver)
increased to a "living wage" of $22,000 per school year. Not to mention
that they wanted to be able to list any individual of their choosing as a
beneficiary of their health care plan. They also demanded that the
University include in health coverage payment for transgendered students'
care--psychological therapy, hormone therapy, and sex-change operations.

Luckily, after a dismal showing of student support in liberal Ann Arbor,
the graduate students' union ended up at the knees of the University,
settling for a 2.5% wage increase per year, and a watering down of the
English-speaking requirement for foreign GSIs.

The point is, though, that for as liberal as Yale and Columbia might be,
it's always moreso here at Michigan.

One regular reader says that grad students should unionize because they are abused. I responded, so are rookie cops and fraternity pledges. He came back: yes, but unlike grad students, they have futures. Another reader offers this:

Dear Jonah,

The Yale grad students unionizing has been going on since I went to grad school there from 1989-1991. I had one good friend who was very involved in GESO (the grad student union being set up as a sort of parallel but independant student government) and a girlfriend who was very involved in the student senate. Believe me I heard ALL the arguments back then. I saw only one argument that had any merit whatsoever. While the grad student stipend was supposed to pay your tuition and a small salary in return for 20 hours a week of research or teaching, in practice most professors, especially in the sciences expected AT LEAST 40 hours a week of research work. It meant you pretty much had to pick a disertation topic that was part of a professor's research and become his personal researcher to be able to get a tuition waiver, a small salary, and still be able to finish your disertation in anything like a timely manner. Of course Yale didn't help by requiring all grad students to pay 4 full years of tuition wether they were taking classes or not, meaning that even after they started their disertation, students needed a professor to fund them for at least two years. That said, they all had a pretty cushy life and didn't realize it. I had already worked for three years before grad school and was simply amazed to see how easy grad school life was in general. My feeling was always they needed another cause, and decided they would be a great cause.

Ramesh - Just curious did the three GOP strategists say whether they thought the actual charges against Delay were legit? Surely, even in the GOP caucus the issue of whether or not Delay did anything wrong has to play some role in their thinking about whether he should stay.

Here there was sharp disagreement. X predicts that DeLay will be “gone” by December—and says that it will be a real blow to conservatives, since DeLay has been a strong advocate of theirs within the House leadership. He thinks leaving soon would be the best outcome for DeLay personally, but that he won’t do it.

Z notes that DeLay isn’t helpful in some Republican congressmen’s districts: “Whenever you can’t take your leader home to the hometown barbecue and meet the family and the neighbors, you’ve got a problem. . . . That’s your leader. It happened to Newt. He wasn’t welcome in some towns. . . . He can survive. You can put him on a life-support mechanism for a long period of time. . . . If I were the Democrats, I would want him to survive.” Even if Republicans conclude that it is time for him to go, they won’t necessarily have the stomach to shove him aside: “He’s going to put the desk up against the door and pull out the guns and say I’m not leaving. You’ll have to physically remove him.” And getting rid of DeLay, Z adds, will leave the party in a bind: “They have no one with his skill set: raising the money, making sure the members get reelected, doing the tough stuff.”

Y is for hanging tough with DeLay: “People need to understand something: If the Democrats and the New York Times get Tom DeLay that’s not the end of a process, that’s the beginning of a process. [It will only] validate their charges [against the entire Republican majority].” He adds, “I don’t think he’s going to go down.”

Two of the three strategists favored the congressional intervention in the Schiavo case on the merits, but two of the three were concerned that it had done long-term damage to the Republican party. Y said that Republicans had been successful in making the Democrats look like the party of intolerance, since it treats its pro-lifers worse than Republicans treat their pro-choicers. He worried that this case would leave a contrary impression.

X, on the other hand, thought that the public had in large part reacted against having to watch a terrible story that they didn’t want to think about night after night on television, and blamed the Republicans for their having to go through it. The underlying impulse not to dwell on this topic, he thought, would keep it from having a lasting negative impact. He noted that the controversy over Clinton’s impeachment lasted longer and brought Republicans’ poll numbers lower—again, in large part, because people resented the Republicans for making this a long-running news story—but the controversy did not seem to hurt Republicans in the next election and may have helped them.

So, Shannen, you are "doubtful" that a campaign to impeach lawless judges would work and think it "distinctly unlikely to succeed," but you think it wrong to deny the practicality of such a campaign. I don't think these positions are going to get along well with each other. I think you are led into this cul-de-sac because you have too limited a set of alternatives. You make it sound as though the alternative to ending filibusters and impeaching judges is doing nothing to challenge judicial imperialism.

But ending the filibuster is only a means to the end of confirming judges (who are committed to the proper enterprise of judging). If you can get just as many or more such judges confirmed by breaking a Supreme Court filibuster--which has been the basic claim I have defended against you and others--then ending the filibuster through a formal rules change doesn't do anything more (and may do less) than that course of action. Your bringing up the filibuster issue begs the question.

And what about the alternative of trying to get good judges confirmed, making the conservative case about judicial power, and removing issues from the courts' jurisdiction? A majority of the House has gone on record for limiting jurisdiction. It won't do the same for impeachment.

But this guy doesn't. From a reader:

I think I'll sleep a bit better tonight knowing that al-Qaeda's master poisoner thinks that the best way to kill large numbers of Britons is to target the toothbrushes.

Isn't it possible that this plan was designed to occur simultaneously with 9/11 but nobody in Britain has bought a toothbrush since then?

But just as deserving of execution! From the Sun:

COP killer Kamel Bourgass was yesterday unmasked as Osama Bin Laden’s master poisoner — with a mission to murder as many Britons as possible.

Fanatical Bourgass, who stabbed detective constable Stephen Oake to death as police closed in on an al-Qaeda cell, spearheaded a terrifying plot to terrorise London.

The gang planned to smear lethal RICIN poison on door handles of cars and shops in the bustling Holloway Road, North London.

They even intended to open TOOTHBRUSH packs in shops, daub them with ricin and re-seal them.

And the alarming campaign also involved a CYANIDE attack on the Tube, targeting passengers with a pump-style garden spray gun.

Note: Ignore their strange habit of ALL CAPPING some WORDS. Also, ignore those page 3 girls. Tsk. Tsk.

Those of us who grew up reading National Review in the darkest days of the Cold War remember with fondness how consoling it was to be reassured, every two weeks, that there were some folks out there who understood the true dimensions of the conflict, and how important it was that the good guys win — not just deal, or trade, or coexist, but win. In this regard, NR’s history is bound up with the biography of its most famous subscriber: the late Ronald Reagan, whose summons to moral clarity ended up toppling an Evil Empire. Tear Down This Wall: The Reagan Revolution — A National Review History (Continuum, 197 pp., $12.95) is an anti-Communist nostalgist’s dream, a moving anthology of some of the best NR pieces about Reagan (and some by him), as well as his most important speeches. To read this book — which contains an amazing amount of material in its brief length — is not just to revel in a past that ended well, but to be strengthened for the struggles America will face in days to come.

From a reader:

I’m in the same age range as you, and that’s not quite the reason for Snuffy’s outing. As was explained to me by someone who worked for the station – because I admit I was in fits enough about it to complain to my mother, who called and asked – Snuffy was supposedly encouraging kids to have imaginary friends. Enough parents complained that they outed Snuffy.

I will use this email to clarify several issues for readers in the dark. From a reader:

It isn't a yarmulke. It's a zuchetto.

Maybe we Catholics thought you Jews looked pretty cool in them--that's the best reason I found so far.

I don't know why I'm explaining this to you and I am getting the same feeling when I answered a rhetorical question and was told it's a rhetorical question.

There's something else snide in here, like I barely got the thing about Big Bird and the snuffalufagus and completely missed the joke about the coins stamped with the 410 BC.

I don't get it...

A. I know it's not a yarmulke. The joke was simply that The New Republic is famous for having an unofficial Jewish orientation in the same way some thing NR has an unofficial Catholic orientation. I should also add, "A yarmulke by any other name..."

B. The Snuffy/Big Bird thing. The reason it was "dated" was that Snuffy is no longer Big Bird's secret friend. Everybody knows about him. When I was a kid -- hence the standard timeframe for my juvenalia -- Big Bird could never get the other Sesame Streeters to believe Snuffy existed because Snuffy would disappear when strangers approached. My understanding that they cancelled this schtick when someone got worried that kids would take away the lesson that adults wouldn't believe them if they said child molesters or some such were harrassing them. This was not a concern for the producers of the Flintstones apparently, even though Mr. Kazoo certainly gives off far more of a molester vibe than a giant woolly mammoth-like creature who walks and talks at 2 miles per hour and has no opposable thumbs (opposable thumbs strike me as essential tools for most perverts).

3. The joke about the coins stamped 410 B.C. is simple. How would the people making the coins know it was 410 years until Christ's arrival?

Update Perhaps it's the Great Gazoo not Kazoo. Google is unhelpful on this. But I really don't want to have the issue settled. Let's keep it a delightful mystery.

Subject: News Flash re Bolton
I have it from a close source that Bolton once dismissed a subordinate with a raised open palmed hand and uttterd the word, `whatever’ in a snarky, Valley Girl sorta way.

Let’s hope the Times or the Post doesn't run this above the fold--the nomination will be toast.

From Live Science:

Scientists with the Mammoth Creation Project hope to find a frozen woolly mammoth specimen with sperm DNA. The sperm DNA would then be injected into a female elephant; by repeating the procedure with offspring, a creature 88 percent mammoth could be produced within fifty years.

"This is possible with modern technology we already have," said Akira Iritani, who is chairman of the genetic engineering department at Kinki University in Japan and a member of the Mammoth Creation Project. However, the DNA in mammoth remains found to date has been unusable, damaged by time and climate changes. "From a geologist's point of view, the preservation of viable sperm is very unlikely, and this is so far confirmed by the poor condition of cells in the mammoth carcasses," said Andrei Sher, Russian paleontologist and mammoth expert.

One question: Will the creature be invisible to everyone except Big Bird? ("Dude, that's so dated and inside" -- the Couch).

Elegant, artful, unproductive.

From a regular liberal reader of mine:

Imagine John Kerry had won the election. (I can hear you shudder from here). Now imagine that authorities caught a terrorist (think al Qaeda or maybe an extreme Left Wing environmental group) responsible for multiple deadly bombings here in the US… and that prosecutors cut a deal with him that avoided the death penalty.

Do you think there would be at least one post on the Corner wondering, maybe with a little outrage, why he avoided the death penalty? Kerry’s “soft” on terrorism… he’s too French to apply the death penalty… etc. Maybe it would be a time to reflect on the risks of extremist ideology on the safety and security of our nation.

I haven’t seen anything on Rudolph on the Corner, or Fox News all day. This is, in my understanding, the 3rd deadliest terrorist in American history. Every little wanna-be terrorist moron Muslim we arrest (Think the Buffalo six) gets a ton of attention, even if they’re eventually released because they were really not much of a risk at all. This guy successfully bombs over and over… and… silence.

It’s almost like some folks think his heart was in the right place.

I’m sure there’s a better explanation… I just can’t think of it.

Me: He should think harder.

I get this sort of email all of the time. I don't think it's illegitimate to read the "significant silences" on blogs. What someone chooses not to write about can say a great deal about a writer. But this simply strikes me as nonsense. I haven't written about Rudolph because I haven't followed the story much. I suspect it's the same for a lot of folks around here. From what I have read, it sounds like the plea deal was an issue of prosecutorial discretion. Personally, I'd have no problem with Rudolph getting the chair. I doubt anyone at NR -- who supports the death penalty -- would disagree. (It was, recall, Ashcroft who decided to seek the death penalty in the first place and no one complained about that).

But there's a lot of apples-and-oranges thinking here. Rudolph is certainly newsworthy -- and if you google his name at NRO, you'll find it's come up a lot. But he's hardly representative of a news story nearly as huge, complex and interesting as al Qaeda and the war on terrorism. It'd be nice if folks didn't automatically leap to the conclusion that the lack of comment on something is an explicit endorsement of the most execrable position possible. Alas, it happens every day and it says more about the people leaping to conclusion than it does about those of us who are leapt upon.