I’m late to pick up on this aspect of the fiasco in Kansas:

"TOPEKA, Kan. -- The Kansas school board's hearings on evolution weren't limited to how the theory should be taught in public schools. The board is considering redefining science itself. Advocates of "intelligent design" are pushing the board to reject a definition limiting science to natural explanations for what's observed in the world. Instead, they want to define it as "a systematic method of continuing investigation," without specifying what kind of answer is being sought. The definition would appear in the introduction to the state's science standards.The proposed definition has outraged many scientists, who are frustrated that students could be discussing supernatural explanations for natural phenomena in their science classes."

Incredible.

Literally.

Look, I understand – even if I do not agree with – the notion that homosexual ‘civil unions’ represent some sort of threat to the institution of heterosexual marriage, but this veto by the governor of Maryland seems to fail the test of commonsense as well, lets say it, common decency:

“The [vetoed] legislation would have granted nearly a dozen rights to unmarried partners who register with the state. Among those: the right to be treated as an immediate family member during hospital visits, to make health care decisions for incapacitated partners and to have private visits in nursing homes.”

For heaven’s sake.

From the London Times, February 25, 2003:

“The Mukhabarat never extracted a verbal confession from Mr Muhammad during the four months he was held in a tiny cell in the headquarters. He said that he was interrogated by a Mukhabarat officer named Basim twice a day, each time being whipped with cables while suspended from the ceiling, his hands tied behind his back. He had his jaw, ribs and hands broken. Sometimes he was taken to the basement, strapped into an electric chair and given shock treatment. “I had nothing to confess to,” he said. “They said I worked for Mossad (the Israeli intelligence agency) but my only mistake was that I sold Bazoft a roll of film.” In January 1990, days before Mr Muhammad’s trial, the Mukhabarat inked his thumb and pressed it against a statement in lieu of a signature. He was charged under article 158 of Iraqi law and sentenced by a military court to life imprisonment. He was transferred to the notorious Abu Greeb penitentiary, west of Baghdad, where 7,000 political prisoners lived in constant fear of torture and execution. He spent the next three years in solitary confinement. He was taken out of his cell twice a week for beatings. He said that in the prison basement were deep pits, each a metre wide. Up to ten prisoners deemed guilty of disciplinary offences would be dropped into these pits and kept there for a week at a time. “Many died in those pits,” he said. Last summer Mr Muhammad had the top joint of the second finger of his left hand smashed off with an iron bar for insulting Saddam, an offence for which five years were added to his sentence.”

Where were the mass demonstrations in support of the Muslims murdered by Saddam?

There weren’t any.

Where was George Galloway?

Kissing up to Saddam, that’s where.

Hat-tip Harry

Here’s Gerard Baker of the London Times’ on James Wolcott’s ‘hero’, George Galloway:

“As he railed against the senators, I couldn’t get out of my head that spectacle of the same man smiling as he lauded Saddam Hussein. As he exploited the fustiness of the surroundings and the plodding lawyerliness of his interlocutors, I couldn’t help but remember how, in the face of a different sort of power, he had saluted its indefatigability and promised to march on to Jerusalem.I also wondered what his and our life might have been like if he had deployed some of his little-man courage before Saddam; standing up for some of those other hundreds of thousands of other good Muslims — Iraqis, who could have done with a persuasive advocate there and then. “

“Some among the crowd burned an effigy of Tony Blair on a crucifix and then set fire to a Union flag and a Stars and Stripes.”

No further comment necessary,

Meanwhile, adding to the sense of crisis within the EU, economic woes in Germany mean that there’s another vote to watch – in North Rhine-Westphalia, the largest of the country's Laender, on Sunday, May 22nd. Currently, NRW is run by a ‘Red-Green’ coalition between Chancellor Schroeder’s SPD and the Greens, but it seems likely that this will be thrown out of office. If that happens expect Schroeder to tack sharply – and dramatically - to the left…

If you’re in a hole…

One of the major objections to the introduction of the euro was that it was a step too far too soon. Regardless of anything else, imposing a single currency on economies operating on very different rhythms was a recipe for disaster. It was, arguably, the Germans who were the first to pay the price, with the European Central Bank maintaining interest rates at levels far too high for the faltering German economy, but, as this report from the Daily Telegraph notes, the malaise continues to spread:

“Italy is in much the same mess as Argentina in the last throes of its disastrous dollar-peg and faces a "horrible martyrdom" as long as it remains inside the eurozone, according to a market report issued yesterday. Banque AIG, the financial wing of the US insurance giant, said Italy needed a 20pc devaluation to prevent a slump and a "horrendous" explosion of public debt. The warning came as fresh data from Portugal and Italy point to the worst budget deficits since the launch of the euro. Portugal's central bank has revealed that the country's deficit was likely to reach 7pc in 2005, far higher than earlier estimates. Lisbon is mulling "Draconian" cuts that risk driving the debt-laden economy into deep recession. Rome's REF research institute forecasts an Italian deficit of 5.7pc next year, smashing the EU's 3pc limit. Both countries have seen a sharp loss of competitiveness under the European Monetary Union, chiefly through higher wage inflation than Germany. They now face grinding "deflation" to claw their way back to health. The AIG note, by chief economist Bernard Connolly, a former EU official and stern critic of EMU, said Italy was "being asked to bear the unbearable". It has lost 30pc of its world share of exports since the late 1990s and is now "on its knees", according to the industry federation.”

What makes this particularly interesting is that the author of the AIG report is none other than the Bernard Connolly who was a former EU official fired by Brussels in the 1990s for warning that monetary union was, yes, a recipe for a disaster. Books on monetary policy are not normally the stuff of high drama, but if you want to understand the background to the mounting crisis in the eurozone (currency speculators, pay attention), there is no better starting point than Connolly’s Rotten Heart of Europe - and it’s a terrific read.

I wouldn’t want to overstate this, but with mounting dissent in France, Holland and Germany, there seems to be a slight whiff of 1848 in the air in Europe these days.

For example, looking at the increasingly encouraging signs that the Dutch are going to vote no to the wretched and impertinent insult that is the draft EU constitution on June 1st, the Economist has this to say:

“The no campaign points out that the same elite that signed up to the euro and allowed mass immigration with little public discussion is now lining up behind the EU constitution.”

Indeed they are – and it’s time to show this corrupt, complacent and profoundly malign elite the door. All of it.

And if you want to understand why the Dutch yes campaign has (so far) been so counterproductive, go here or read the comments of Dutch socialist MP Harry van Bommel, one of the fairly small number of Dutch parliamentarians opposed to the constitution:

“Mr Van Bommel also said Dutch people were being pushed towards a No vote because of the "ghost stories" being told by the government. "The justice minister has even said there is a chance of war in Europe if there is a No vote - referring to the break-up of the former republic of Yugoslavia. "The people in this country sometimes are not completely informed about what is going on, but they are not stupid. They are angry at the government for the fact that they are insulting their intelligence."

They are right to be angry and kudos to van Bommel (a dreadful lefty, but still…) and, on the right, the courageous Geert Wilders, for pointing this out.

Nee’s the way.

About 300 people have taken part in a noisy protest over the alleged desecration of the Quran outside the U.S. Embassy in central London. …
A British policeman said the language was offensive and unpleasant in the extreme. But police overlooked that and the fact that more than a few of the young men in the crowd covered their faces, technically a violation of British law, according to the police.
Shouting, "Down, down USA; down, down USA," the protesters called for the killing of Americans, the death of the U.S. president, the death of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the bombing of Britain, and the annihilation of the U.S. capital: "Nuke, nuke Washington; Nuke, nuke Washington! Bomb, bomb the Pentagon."
Some of the militant Islamic rhetoric smacked of incitement to commit murder, CNN's Senior International Correspondent Walter Rodgers reported. "Death, death Tony Blair; death, death Tony Blair. Death, death George Bush," the protesters chanted.
"The only language we speak today is the language of jihad," said one protester.

From a reader:

Dear Mr. Goldberg:

Your opinion that Americans who vote Democratic are really "Europeans
taking on the form of Americans" is proof that you are a complete idiot.

I guess anyone who doesn't scream in public that they are fervent
patriots, display sufficient symbols of national superiority, demonstrate unquestioning loyalty to a leadership cadre imbued by God with absolute infallibility, and denounce anyone around you with an independent notion of right and wrong as traitors or worse . . . is a "body-snatched zomboid creature" and should be put to death.

That logic makes you an American Nazi. Enjoy your heritage.

HAVANA, Cuba (CNN) -- In what organizers called an unprecedented event, dissidents from groups opposed to Fidel Castro's communist regime gathered publicly Friday and chanted "Down with Fidel."...

CUBAN INDEPENDENCE DAY, 2005

I send greetings to those celebrating the 103rd anniversary of Cuban Independence.

Freedom is the birthright of all mankind. Leaders across the Americas understand that the hope for peace in our world depends on the unity of free nations. America's continued support of democratic institutions, constitutional processes, and basic liberties gives hope and strength to those struggling in our hemisphere to reclaim the rule of law and their God-given rights. As we observe Cuba's independence today, we look forward to the day when Cuba is free, and my Administration supports efforts to hasten that day's coming. The tide of freedom is spreading across the globe, and it will reach Cuban shores. No tyrant can stand forever against the power of liberty because the hope of freedom is found in every heart.

This milestone is an opportunity to celebrate the Cuban culture and the many contributions Cuban Americans have made to the United States. By sharing your proud history with all Americans, you enrich our society and contribute to the diversity that makes our Nation great.

May God bless the Cuban people.

GEORGE W. BUSH

"I've made my position very clear on embryonic stem cells," he said. "I'm a strong supporter of adult stem cell research, of course. But I have made it very clear to the Congress that the use of federal money, taxpayers' money, to promote science which destroys life in order to save life is - I'm against that."

A number of smart people have brought up a point I should address in arguing that NR's editorial stance (which I share) really is inconsistent: Back in December, NR argued that the filibuster of judges was compatible with (though not required by) the Constitution. Now NR is arguing for a rules change that is premised on the filibuster being unconstitutional. So there's an inconsistency, right?

I don't think so, because I don't think the premise is true. We're not talking about a point of constitutional order being raised, and I've been given to understand by multiple experts on the Senate rules that no senator who votes for the rules change has to do so on the basis that he thinks it is unconstitutional (even if many of them will vote for it on that to-my-mind-flawed basis).

From the Joint Economic Committee:

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released a report today on regional and state employment and unemployment for April (available at: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/laus.pdf ). A summary of the report can be found at the Joint Economic Committee website at: http://jec.senate.gov/_files/StateEmploymentStatisticsApril2005JEC.pdf ).

Highlights of the report:

· Non-farm payroll employment increased in 46 states and the District of Columbia in April and decreased in 4 states.

Ø Job gains of 10,000 or more occurred in Florida (+21,000), California (+20,400), Illinois (+17,700), Nevada (+13,500), North Carolina (+13,400), Texas (+12,100), and Michigan (+10,000). Job losses were reported in Colorado (-3,600), Delaware (-1,800), Louisiana (-500), and West Virginia (-200).

Ø The largest over-the-month percentage increases in employment were in Nevada, the District of Columbia, North Dakota, Idaho, South Dakota, Iowa, and Wyoming. The largest over-the-month percentage losses in employment were in Delaware and Colorado.

· Over the year ending in April, non-farm payroll employment increased in 48 states and the District of Columbia and fell in 2 states (Michigan and South Carolina). The largest percentage gains were in Nevada (+6.4%), Arizona (+3.9%), Utah (+3.5%), Oregon (+3.3%), and Florida (+3.0%).

· Three states recorded over-the-month unemployment rate decreases that were statistically significant in April (Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota). Virginia and Washington were the only two states with statistically significant unemployment rate increases in April (+0.3 percentage point each).

KJLo,

As a scientist, the recent cloning news is pretty depressing. We can and have debated the ethics of cloning and embryonic stem cell research (I stand on the same side as Benedict XVI), but some things really should be cut and dried. After reading more about it I realized that three of the clones were obtained from cells from children. Children! For a person to participate in a research study, they or their parents have to acknowledge they had informed consent. How do you give informed consent to clone your 2, 6 or 10 year old? Yikes!

Euphamism alert...

"Scientists say they know the word "cloning" raises fears of actual babies that are clones, but say they have no intention of doing such work." - Then what are they! Oh yeah, blastocysts.

"Opinion polls have had varied results, often depending on the words that are used to describe the work. In one recent Gallup poll, just 38 percent of respondents approved of cloning embryos for research. Another poll, that used the term "somatic cell nuclear transfer" instead of "cloning" found that 72 percent approved.

Dr. Hwang's paper goes a step further, using "S.C.N.T." instead of "somatic cell nuclear transfer" and then dropping the first two letters and calling the process "N.T."" — Let's just call it Chris.

Somebody stop this thing from spinning, I want off!

From a brave WSJ op-ed by Ali al-Ahmed of the Saudi Institute in the WSJ this morning:

As a Muslim, I am able to purchase copies of the Quran in any bookstore in any American city, and study its contents in countless American universities. American museums spend millions to exhibit and celebrate Muslim arts and heritage. On the other hand, my Christian and other non-Muslim brothers and sisters in Saudi Arabia -- where I come from -- are not even allowed to own a copy of their holy books. Indeed, the Saudi government desecrates and burns Bibles that its security forces confiscate at immigration points into the kingdom or during raids on Christian expatriates worshiping privately.

Soon after Newsweek published an account, later retracted, of an American soldier flushing a copy of the Quran down the toilet, the Saudi government voiced its strenuous disapproval. More specifically, the Saudi Embassy in Washington expressed "great concern" and urged the U.S. to "conduct a quick investigation."

Although considered as holy in Islam and mentioned in the Quran dozens of times, the Bible is banned in Saudi Arabia. This would seem curious to most people because of the fact that to most Muslims, the Bible is a holy book. But when it comes to Saudi Arabia we are not talking about most Muslims, but a tiny minority of hard-liners who constitute the Wahhabi Sect.

The Bible in Saudi Arabia may get a person killed, arrested, or deported. In September 1993, Sadeq Mallallah, 23, was beheaded in Qateef on a charge of apostasy for owning a Bible. The State Department's annual human rights reports detail the arrest and deportation of many Christian worshipers every year. Just days before Crown Prince Abdullah met President Bush last month, two Christian gatherings were stormed in Riyadh. Bibles and crosses were confiscated, and will be incinerated. (The Saudi government does not even spare the Quran from desecration. On Oct. 14, 2004, dozens of Saudi men and women carried copies of the Quran as they protested in support of reformers in the capital, Riyadh. Although they carried the Qurans in part to protect themselves from assault by police, they were charged by hundreds of riot police, who stepped on the books with their shoes, according to one of the protesters.)

TO: SENATOR BILL FRIST
FROM: SENATOR RICK SANTORUM
DATE: MAY 19, 2005
RE: COMMUNICATIONS UPDATE ON JUDICIAL NOMINATIONS

The following points are key findings from a recent New Models survey conducted by the Winston Group, May 16-17.

-- As a result of the change in the message environment, the debate focus has become centered upon the concept of an up or down vote.

-- We have been able to introduce the individual nominees into the debate and personalize this debate to some extent.

-- Our message has begun to penetrate. People are beginning to develop awareness that we are simply seeking a fair judicial confirmation process and that this effort is focused on judicial nominees only.

-- The Democrats' argument that the specific nominees are extremists is not successful. Additionally, Democrats are seen as opposing fair votes, and this positioning is not helpful to them.

-- Both messages have some difficulty with the electorate, but the Democrats' message is received less favorably than the Republican message.

-- As a result of this debate, both Senate Republicans and Democrats have seen drops in brand images, but Democrats are losing much more ground than we are.

-- Over the last month the brand image of Senate Republicans has gone from 52-39 in April to 49-43 now. We have slipped a bit but still maintain a positive image.

-- Democrats have slipped farther, going from 51-40 to 46-45, going from a positive image to a neutral image.

A lake in rural Russia disappears and it's got to be our fault. From Reuter's (Who else?):

Officials in Nizhegorodskaya region, on the Volga river east of Moscow, said water in the lake might have been sucked down into an underground water-course or cave system, but some villagers had more sinister explanations.

"I am thinking, well, America has finally got to us," said one old woman, as she sat on the ground outside her house.

Indian opens rent-a-crowd company. Maybe Jesse Jackson can get the US franchise rights.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's chief of staff yesterday acknowledged that scandals involving Iraq, peacekeeping and human rights have hurt the world body, but said any move to freeze or cut U.S. dues would set back the cause of reform....

Please be aware that some of us sneaking a peak at The Corner while working away in little cubicles, surrounded by our fellow employees. A little warning that audio accompanies the link would enable us to hit the “mute” button before thoroughly embarrassing ourselves.

I've been inundated with email from physicists. I really don't want to be the clearinghouse for this. But I will post this:

Hi Jonah,

The email mentioned in your last post is fundamentally wrong. You
CANNOT convert angular momentum into linear momentum or vice versa--
they are independently conserved quantities. He is correct that you
could solve the "twist" problem by using two counter-rotating
centrifuges, but this doesn't help with the recoil problem. The gun
could be designed to simultaneously fire rounds in opposite
directions, but this would be extremely dangerous to the user and
other friendlies.

When firing a single round, the recoil wouldn't be a big problem, but
it becomes serious when firing at a high rate. An infantryman firing
the handheld .308 version with steel ammo at 5,000 rpm with a muzzle
velocity of 2,500 feet / second would experience a constant recoil
force of 28 pounds. I doubt it would be possible to hold it steady.

For the full-size version, firing .50 cal at 120,000 rpm at 8,000
feet / second, the recoil force would be strong enough to send a
humvee skidding backwards--even if it was parked on pavement with its
brakes on. At this rate, power consumption for the device would be
enormous--fifty megawatts--or about 5% of the output of a typical
nuclear reactor.

The inventor's claims of no heat signature are also highly suspect.
According to the laws of thermodynamics, no device is perfectly
efficient. Even if the DREAD was 99% efficient, the handheld version
would put out about 500 watts of heat and sound during sustained
firing, while the full-size would generate about half a million
watts, which would probably leave you in worse shape than the target.

As a short-burst tank-mounted weapon, it may hold promise, but it's
hard to believe the military.com article given the credibility issues.

This just in from a friend here in Silicon Valley:

I am on an airliner in Denver. The scene is how I imagine the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest might play if it were set in the airline equivalent of the cramped World War II submarine of Das Boot.

Here's the setting: This flight is full. "Hallelujah," you say, "the economy must be recovering. Well, no. United just cancelled most of its schedule between San Francisco and Newark to make certain this flight, indeed every flight, is full. On the first leg I dutifully stowed my suitcase in the overhead and my briefcase under my seat. On this leg, the second leg, the Das Boot leg, it just won't fit, because this time I am confined to an aisle seat and aisle seats in the way-back of a United B757 are equipped with lunch-box-sized foot-wells.

Got that? Back to our flight attendant. She races up to me and demands that I move my briefcase under my seat. When informed that it won't fit, she snaps that I shouldn't have brought it. When I point out that it fit fine under the normal seat on the first leg, Nurse Ratched waxes Socratic: "Do you think it's fair that you take up half a bin and someone else will have to check their [sic] bag!?"

"Well, umm, actually, yes. I'm paying $900 to fly to Newark today, I'm on board early, my ‘personal storage area’ is the size of a lunch box and I doubt that the bins will actually be filled to capacity." Stony silence. A slow burn on Ratched's part but, since we're not airborne and I cannot yet be arrested for crossing her, I get away with it….

In a true free market economy, one where insolvent corporations with steady revenue could not endlessly cycle in and out of bankruptcy protection, United Airline’s substantial assets would be sold and commercial air travelers in the San Francisco area could have a fresh start with one or more new choices for air transportation. As it is, some “employee-owners” of this mismanaged, bankrupt, pension-defaulting carrier have had it — for good reason — leaving them trapped, along with us, their passengers, in the Cuckoo’s Nest.

McClellan: "Well, it's what I talked about yesterday. This report, which Newsweek has now retracted and said was wrong, has had serious consequences. People did lose their lives. The image of the United States abroad has been damaged; there is lasting damage to our image because of this report. And we would encourage Newsweek to do all that they can to help repair the damage that has been done, particularly in the region. And I think Newsweek can do that by talking about the way they got this wrong, and pointing out what the policies and practices of the United States military are when it comes to the handling of the Holy Koran. The military put in place policies and procedures to make sure that the Koran was handled -- or is handled with the utmost care and respect. And I think it would help to point that out, because some have taken this report -- those that are opposed to the United States -- some have taken this report and exploited it and used it to incite violence."

Moran: "With respect, who made you the editor of Newsweek? Do you think it's appropriate for you, at that podium, speaking with the authority of the President of the United States, to tell an American magazine what they should print?"

John Bolton's prospects of being confirmed by the Senate as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations appear strong at this time with at least four Democrats saying they might support him and only one Republican saying he'll vote against.

Republican George Voinovich of Ohio, whose opposition cost Bolton the recommendation of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he'll vote no. Democrats Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Mark Pryor of Arkansas are all considering voting for Bolton, according to aides.

I feel sorry for the French. It must be like doing calisthenics what with the posts saying it's real and then it's not real. Each time they hear it's real they gotta drop to the ground in surrender. Anyway, stay down Frenchies. It's real. Here's the Patent.

Here's an explanation how it works from a reader:

The people writing to you to slam the DREAD are missing a simple piece of physics: the gun supposedly converts *angular* momentum (of, I assume a rapidly spinning disk) into straight-line momentum. This is the equivalent of a machine in a batting range throwing balls at you, or doing a round-house throw with your arm--your arm doesn't recoil backwards when you simply let go of the ball (one more example would be a driver hitting a golf ball--the head doesn't recoil when it hits the ball, it slows down dramatically--giving its momentum and energy to the ball.)

The equal and opposite reaction required by physics might cause the gun to twist, but not recoil.You could also overcome any twist by building the gun with two matched centrafuges, each spinning in the opposite direction. If these two disks were to fire sumultamously, it would eliminate any movement of the gun. The two disks would simple slow down a little every time they fired.

And here's a video.

In what scientists say is a stunning leap forward, a team of South Korean researchers has developed a highly efficient recipe for producing human embryos by cloning and then extracting their stem cells.

Writing today in the journal Science, they report that they used their method to produce 11 human stem cells lines that are genetic matches of 11 patients aged 2 to 56.

Previously, the same group, led by Dr. Woo Suk Hwang and Dr. Shin Yong Moon of Seoul National University, produced a single stem cell line from a cloned embryo, but the process was so onerous that scientists said it was not worth trying to repeat it, and some doubted the South Koreans' report was even correct.

Now things have changed.

"It is a tremendous advance," said Dr. Leonard Zon, a stem cell researcher at Harvard Medical School and president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, who was not involved in the research.

The method, called therapeutic cloning...

Email is split so far:

Jonah:

Sorry, but my BS detector is off the scale.

Probably works great in whatever game system spawned it.

Military.com is a reputable site. I cant vouch for the artists conception
of the weapon but for the most part they are too savvy to be duped by
scammers.

Subject: AN ANTI-RAMESH STRATEGY

You guys are starting to remind me of a bunch of Ninja extras in a Bruce Lee movie. Only there to get quickly dispatched by the master.

Mentioning Ninjas is bound to get me in the Corner. I couldn't think of a good pirate or viking analogy anyway.

Mr. Fleitz made a serious allegation that Mr. Westermann lied to Mr. Fleitz in his e-mail to him stating that he sent his language to CIA ‘‘intact.’’ Specifically, Mr. Fleitz stated that ‘‘Mr. Westermann lied when he told us that he had sent the language that Mr. Bolton wanted declassified to the Agency intact, and only with source citations. That was untrue.’’ Fleitz’ description of Westermann’s e-mail is not precisely accurate. The text of Mr. Westermann’s e-mail was as follows: ‘‘I sent your memo intact to CIA for coordination through the IC for cleared language. I added citations so they could reference the intel[ligence].’’ There is nothing false in Westermann’s e-mail to Fleitz. He had e-mailed the Fleitz memo intact, and he had included the source citations. If Westermann is guilty of anything, it is an act of omission: he did not tell Fleitz that he had also sent INR’s comments on the Bolton language. But, as discussed above, he was under no obligation to do so, because that comment was part of a process that was internal to the Intelligence Community. It also bears emphasis that there is no evidence of the precise question posed to Westermann by Fleitz that resulted in Westermann sending his e-mail. Westermann appears to have been responding to a phone call or message from Fleitz, not an e-mail, and there is no record as to what Fleitz said in his phone call or message. Thus, it is impossible to conclude that Westermann lied in his e-mail without knowing the question that prompted it.

I've gotten a few emails like this:

There is no getting around the laws of physics - every action has an opposite and equal reaction.

For this unit to impart that mass with that speed, something of that magnitude would be needed in the recoil.

a 30/06 at 3000 fps - 100 gr or 100/480 ounce would exert 39 ft/lbs of force (moving a 39 lb shoulder 1 foot).

Never mind pistol grips - this would need concrete reiforced beams. (unless the projectiles are self propelled - mini rockets)

Anyways, my scam meter is on reddish orange.

Wolcott's NRO jealousy strike again. Mocking NRO's fundraising drive "thermometer" he writes:

I wondered if perhaps the graphic needed to be updated to excite reader interest and participation. I was going to propose that instead of a corny thermometer the web designer might devise a Terry Schiavo Memorial Feeding Tube, in which each contribution would help keep National Review on life support for the foreseeable future.

Sometimes you have to think "outside the box."

This is what Wolcott means by thinking outside the box, going from being bitchy to classless.

Hitchens on Galloway:

"But he looks so much like what he is: a thug and a demagogue, the type of working-class-wideboy-and-proud-of-it who is too used to the expenses account, the cars and the hotels all cigars and back-slapping. He is a very cheap character and a short-arse like a lot of them are, puffed up like a turkey. He has managed to fuse being a Baathist with being a Muslim sectarian and a carpet bagger in the East End as well as a front for a creepy sub-Leninist sect, the Socialist Workers' Party. He's got the venomous riff-raff at one end and your one-God fanatics on the other. Wonderful. Just what we need."

From a reader:

Jonah, I'm an undergrad at Miami University (in OH) and I'm spending my summer studying the election and the "emerging Republican majority" and how it will affect the country over the next few years. As soon as I started delving into the studies and analyses done on the subject, I started to realize what you just wrote your column about - the defining characteristics of Republicans seem to be optimism and patriotism, not wealth or class, and the reverse (pessimism and cynicism)best characterize Democrats. The key factor binding each of the parties together is an outlook on life and the country, not any demographic indicator. This is not to say that cynicism is not sometimes warranted, just to share with you my thoughts on what I think might be a coming sea change in American politics.

Ramesh - sorry to pile on. But what exactly is your problem with the Will column? I didn't love it, but it seems to me one can derive some moral lessons from the history of humanity. I don't think history will ever convince a large number of atheists that God exists -- or vice versa -- but surely your inner Hayek or Burke sees some use for history in moral argumentation?

The White House says that its progressive benefit cuts would eliminate 70 percent of the deficits projected for Social Security 75 years from now. Critics such as Jason Furman say that Bush's plan would actually get rid of only 30 percent of the program's deficit over the next 75 years. (Via Brendan Nyhan.) Who's right?

They're estimating different things, to start with. The Bushie estimate is about what happens in one year, the 75th. The point is that the cuts move you very close to a positive cash-flow by then and thus gets you on the path to sustainable solvency. But since there are deficits before (and afterward) that year, it's right to say that the cuts would eliminate only 60 percent of the cumulative deficits over the next 75 years.

The 60 percent and 70 percent figures are each useful to keep in mind.

Furman, however, gets from 60 to 30 by counting the costs of personal accounts. The accounts cost the government money over the 75-year period because some people contribute to their accounts before 2080 but retire afterwards, so the savings from the reduced traditional benefits they accept in return for the accounts isn't recorded. This "loss" is really just an artifact of accounting. Looked at on a person-for-person basis, or over the infinite horizon, the accounts don't make the program less solvent.

Not one of his most careful posts. First, he praises our December editorial suggesting that it would be unwise to make a formal rules change. He introduces a quote from it thus: "Here's an elegant argument that both decries the Democrats' tactics against judicial nominees and yet resists the filibuster." Surely he meant "and yet resists getting rid of the judicial filibuster"? Then he quotes the editorial and suggests we've flip-flopped. But the quoted material hardly justifies that claim. The quoted material suggests that filibusters of judicial nominees are constitutionally permissible. The magazine hasn't said anything to the contrary. Indeed, the latest editorial--the alleged occasion of the flip-flop--restates that very point: "Almost everything else in the debate is a diversion. The text of the Constitution does not forbid the Senate to let the majority confirm judges, as Democrats preposterously insist; nor does it require it" (emphasis added).

[UPDATE: On second thought, I'm probably being too tough on Sullivan--he doesn't seem to have been slamming us, which is the impression I left.]

Subject: re: Crapperquiddick
Nice nickname for the Newsweek fiasco, but my preference is the `Pee-Pot Tome Scandal'.

It has critics elsewhere, too. Matthew Yglesias faults NR, first, for ignoring various points he thinks it ought to have addressed. "That the Senate rules do, in fact, allow for filibusters is not mentioned. Nor is the fact that changing the Senate's rules does, in fact, require 67 votes." Well, sure, the editorial doesn't explicitly say that the Senate rules allow for filibusters. But since it explicitly advocates a rules change to end filibusters against judges, such an acknowledgment would seem to be unnecessary. And changing the Senate's rules does not, "in fact," require 67 votes. It is entirely possible that the Senate will vote to change them by 51 votes--something that the Senate rules also allow for.

Second, Yglesias says that the idea that conservative judges would allow voters and legislators to decide more policy issues--and that this is the reason liberals object to them--is "a load of crap" that NR writers "don't believe for a minute." Many conservative jurists, he notes, would be "far more eager" to strike down economic regulations than liberals. He could have added campaign-finance regulation and, more arguably, racial preferences, as other issues where conservative jurists would be more likely than liberals to strike down democratically enacted laws.

Now that strikes me as a fair point--which may be a function of the fact that I am much less gung-ho about judicial invalidation of campaign-finance laws, racial preferences, and certain economic regulations than other conservatives. But I think that the editorial's generalization is nonetheless sound as a generalization.

I don't assume that all conservative judicial nominees are going to be Richard Epstein clones; I assume, rather, that very few of them will be. (Janice Rogers Brown being the one about whom I have the most concerns.) I think that at the most, you'd have judges who try to advance the Rehnquist federalism "revolution." And that revolution has restricted democratic self-government hardly at all. Almost all of the laws that have been struck down could be rewritten in a way that would not change their substance but would pass muster under the Court's federalism jurisprudence. (For example, the Gun-Free Schools Act could have been rewritten so that states' keeping their schools "gun free" was a condition for continued receipt of federal subsidies.) For the federalism revolution to actually start restricting democratic self-government, Justice Thomas's concurrence in Lopez would have to have four more allies.

Now liberals (or other conservatives) might well see the federalism cases as a bigger deal than I do. But I don't think it is true that no conservative could reasonably regard them as a minor issue (as I do) or think that they are not what the current judicial-confirmation debates are about (as I also do).

Philip Gold and Erin Solaro have an op-ed arguing for it. I don't know whether to trust their judgments on the empirical points they raise, but their conclusion certainly seems questionable: "But there is an issue at stake here greater than military necessity. The issue is citizenship, and it is the same issue behind gay marriage. Are all citizens subject to the same rights and responsibilities? Are some citizens more equal than others? Shall we treat each other as citizens or as members of groups, some of whom may be excluded from full rights and responsibilities simply because others don't like them? For decades, conservatism has argued, vehemently, against 'group politics.' Who's practicing it now?"

This follows a complaint about conservatives going with "theory" and "emotion" rather than "facts." The argument they're making here is as much a "theory" or "ideology" as anything these conservatives have said--and it's a weak theory. We aren't saying that disabled citizens are lesser citizens when we exclude them from military service. Whether it's rational to exclude women from combat is, of course, a contested issue. But the Gold/Solaro formulation just begs the question and hides the fact that it is doing so in rhetoric designed to appeal to the emotions. (Not that I object to such rhetoric, but they've just given us their spiel about emotion being beside the point.) And the "simply because others don't like them" ought to have been beneath them.

I think his column is mostly good sense, but the defense of Newsweek is weak.

"Countless conservatives say the folks at Newsweek were quick to believe the atrocity tales because they share the left-wing, post-Vietnam mentality. On his influential blog, Austin Bay writes that the coastal media 'presume the worst about the U.S. military - always make that presumption.'

"Excuse me, guys, but this is craziness. I used to write for Newsweek. I know Mike Isikoff and the editors. And I know about liberals in the media. The people who run Newsweek are not a bunch of Noam Chomskys with laptops. Not even close. Whatever might have been the cause of their mistakes, liberalism had nothing to do with it."

So: Brooks doesn't know the cause of the mistakes, but he's sure that "liberalism had nothing to do with it." To think that liberalism had something to do with it is "craziness." The reason we can be sure it's craziness is that the people at Newsweek "are not a bunch of Noam Chomskys with laptops." I assume we can read this as a denial that Newsweek reporters and editors seek consciously to advance a liberal agenda through the magazine's reporting. I don't disagree with that denial.

But isn't Brooks excluding a lot of middle ground here? Couldn't it be that the reporters and editors tend to be liberal, and that their liberalism influences their decisions? Or is that more "craziness"?

I don't understand why you don't understand it, Jonah. NR had argued that a formal rules change was unnecessary to get conservatives confirmed to the courts. That was why NR judged the campaign for a formal rules change to be a mistake: a prudential judgment. It's in the nature of those judgments to change as circumstances do. The way the debate has unfolded over the last few months means that it is now much less likely that conservative judges could be confirmed without the rules change. Anyway: what's inconsistent about suggesting that it may have been wrong to go down a particular road but that now that we have, we ought to go forward?

Andrew: If "the more checks and balances the better" is your watchword, why stop at a 60-vote requirement? Why not make it 100 votes?

Repression and violence are the absolute ruler’s habitual tools. The secret police have already shot dead a score of Kurds in Qamishli and elsewhere demonstrating for autonomy on the lines of Iraqi Kurds. And in Lebanon Bashar can hope to activate those stay-behind agents to set the ethnic and religious communities against each other, in effect reviving the Lebanese civil war that contributed religiously inspired terror and the suicide bomber to the practices of the region. A couple of bombs have already exploded in Beirut. Hezbollah is waiting in the wings, and Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, its leader in Lebanon, likes to emphasize that he is at the head of “a resistance movement and not a militia.” Hezbollah, he also claims, is driving Israel to retreat, and it could do Bashar’s dirty work — and precipitate fighting — by firing some of those rockets when and if the Israelis leave Gaza as planned. Hafez Assad was a master of black arts of that kind, but in the post-Baathist world a hand-me-down reprise of them may not be enough to save Bashar.

So we sympathize with those Republicans who have been proposing to change the Senate rules to make it easier to confirm nominees who have majority support. Nevertheless, we think the idea is a mistake.

For Republicans to leave the filibusters in place now after months of demanding a change would be ignominious. The same pundits who are saying that the majority party should not insist on its prerogatives would turn around and say that the majority party is responsible and should be held accountable for everything the government does. More important, a surrender would tell everyone — conservative voters, Democratic senators and interest groups, and the White House — that Republican senators were irresolute in their support for judicial conservatism. It would thus set back the urgent cause of a reformation of the federal judiciary.

French enthusiasts for the draft EU constitution may now be reduced to babbling on about ‘the children’, but, alarmed doubtless by the mounting scandal over the exchange rate at which the Netherlands swapped the Guilder for the Euro (a scandal which is helping the ‘nee’ campaign), one minister in the Dutch government is taking a rather more aggressive tack in their referendum debate (the Dutch vote on June 1, the French on May 29). He’s saying that the Dutch people are too dumb to decide on the constitution for themselves, an announcement that is not only rude, but disappointing given that part of the rationale for this wretched document in the first place was to ‘explain’ the EU to its luckless citizens.

'Plebiscites can be a good thing, but this one is about something the Dutch people know nothing about,' explained Economics Minister Brinkhorst.

Brinkhorst, old fellow, I’m not convinced that was the smartest thing to say… Arjan at Zacht Ei goes a little further. He thinks that the Dutch government has “lost its mind”.

He has a point.

UPDATE

In Denmark, meanwhile, we have this news (via England Expects):

"It appears that a huge row has bubbled up in Denmark prior to the launch of the Yes and No campaigns for their September referendum. The bottom line is that the PM, despite promising otherwise earlier decided not to send a copy of the treaty to every household citing the cost."

Adding to the fun, it now turns out that the government has overstated the cost.

Odd, that.

From the London Times:

”In a statement last night after Mr Galloway's fierce testimony on Capitol Hill, the Charity Commission took issue with his statement that its inquiry had examined "all money in and all money out". It said: "We did not undertake a detailed review of sources of income to the Appeal because the original concern prompting our inquiry was about the use to which funds had been put. "Our inquiry did not find evidence of donations direct from oil companies but noted that one of the major funders of the Appeal was Fawaz Zureikat, an individual named on 12 May 2005 by the US Senate Sub-Committee as allegedly connected with payments in relation to allocations of oil under the Iraq Oil-for-Food Programme. "We have no evidence to show that the income received by the Fund from Mr Zuriekat came from an improper source. But had the recent allegations been known to us at the time of our inquiry, we would have made the information available to the appropriate UK authorities for them to decide whether the Mariam Appeal had received funds from an illegal source."

Anne Applebaum: “Now, it is possible that no interrogator at Guantanamo Bay ever flushed pages of the Koran down the toilet, as the now-retracted Newsweek story reported -- although several former Guantanamo detainees have alleged just that. It is also possible that Newsweek reporters relied too much on an uncertain source, or that the magazine confused the story with (confirmed) reports that prisoners themselves used Korans to block toilets as a form of protest.”

Via Instapundit, who has this to say: “I had missed those confirmed reports, but heads should roll at the Pentagon for this. Not because it happened, but because we didn't make it a big story across the Arab media. That's unforgivable.”

MANASSAS, VA (May 18, 2005) - Today Baltimore's Cardinal William Keeler informed Loyola College of Maryland interim president David Haddad that the Cardinal refuses to participate in an event honoring Rudolph Giuliani, an advocate of abortion rights and probable Republican candidate for U.S. president in 2008.

The former New York City mayor has been invited to deliver Loyola's commencement address and receive an honorary degree on Friday, May 20. Despite a planned protest on Friday and a public campaign in recent weeks by the Cardinal Newman Society (CNS) and Defend Life of Maryland urging the college to withdraw Giuliani's invitation, Keeler's terse letter to Haddad offers the first public glimpse at what appears to be strained relationship between the historically Catholic college and its bishop.

"[T]here will be no representative of the Archdiocese [of Baltimore] participating in any event honoring former Mayor Giuliani," Keeler wrote in a letter dated May 18, noting that he and Haddad had an "earlier exchange of correspondence" about the college's invitation to Giuliani. In what may be a subtle threat to Loyola College's official recognition by the Cardinal as a Catholic institution, Keeler wrote, "I am confident that, by now, you understand many of the consequences that spring from an invitation having been extended to former Mayor Giuliani to receive an honorary degree at Loyola. May the Lord make of this event a teaching moment for many."

CNS is protesting commencement speakers and honorees at 18 Catholic colleges and universities, noting that the invitations are a direct violation of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops statement "Catholics in Political Life." The June 2004 statement includes the following mandate: "The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions." Complete details on the protest are posted at www.cardinalnewmansociety.org.

In a letter dated April 27, CNS urged Cardinal Keeler to "take immediate action to prevent scandal in the Archdiocese of Baltimore," first by privately communicating with Loyola College, but without "waiting until it is too late to inform the public that the invitation is in direct conflict with the U.S. bishops' statement and the Church's expectations for Catholic colleges and universities." CNS also noted Keeler's authority to determine whether Loyola could remain an officially Catholic institution:

"While our mission is the renewal of Catholic identity at Catholic colleges and universities, we realize that the enforcement of Ex Corde Ecclesiae may require the declaration that an institution is no longer Catholic, and we support such action if Loyola College obstinately refuses to acknowledge your pastoral authority as bishop and to uphold the Church's fundamental teachings," CNS wrote.

The public action by Keeler comes soon after pro-abortion Rep. Sherwood Boehlert voluntarily turned down an invitation to deliver the commencement address at St. Elizabeth's College of Nursing in Utica, New York, this Saturday. Even though Bishop James Moynihan of the Diocese of Syracuse had privately opposed the invitation to Boehlert, which violated a diocesan ban on such speakers at Catholic institutions, it was Boehlert who turned down the invitation because of planned protests by pro-life activists, similar to the Loyola protest planned for Friday...

Alarmed by new polling data, the socialist mayor of Paris explains the reasons for voting in favour of the draft EU 'constitution':

“I hope that on the day, the French people will think of themselves, of their history, of their children.”

Ah, for ‘the children’. Of course.

`...the tactics involved things deliberately meant to push the detainees' cultural buttons, such as sexually suggestive female interrogators.' And this is a problem how, exactly? Let Todd...er, Newsweek...run with this little tidbit, and you'll have riots on American college campuses, with energized crowds of young men demanding to be taken to Gitmo for interrogation.

Rich--

I seem to recall Mark Whitaker (along with the US government) was recently declaiming that there is no possible way he could have foreseen that publishing the Crapperquiddick allegations would have led to riots in the Muslim world. Whatever.

Now, according to the quote you've posted, he's suddenly become an expert on Arab political violence and is offering advice on what the White House should do to prevent further rioting. I'd say that Mr. Whitaker doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut, but he has recently shown some discretion. He was scheduled to speak on the topic of "Credibility in the 24-7 News Cycle" here at Stanford on Monday night, but he canceled, according to the Stanford Daily. [sorry link not working at moment]"

Of the figure, limbs, etc.: Fat and squat.

1780 F. BURNEY Diary Apr., Her daughter, a fubsy, good-humoured..merry old maid. 1826 J. WILSON Noct. Ambr. Wks. 1855 I. 261 Fat and fubzy fellows of colleges. 1829 DK. BUCKHM. Priv. Diary III. vii. 159 A fat, fubsy foot, as unsentimental as could be. 1879 SALA Paris herself again (1880) II. iv. 57 She was a squat, fubsy little old woman. 1895 Spectator 23 Nov. 723 To hold and confess the opposite opinion is to announce oneself a fubsy Philistine.

Congressman Sherwood Boehlert has withdrawn as this year's commencement speaker at the St. Elizabeth College of Nursing. That's because of rumors groups would be picketing over Boehlert's abortion views.

Here.

Now get back to work.

Andrew Sullivan is casting himself as the pastor Niemoller of the blogosphere again:

We couldn't even get a law passed forbidding the CIA from using torture. And what I find remarkable is that interrogatory abuse is now taken for granted, even by defenders of the administration. Here's Jonah Goldberg today:

But what on earth was gained by Newsweek's decision to publish the story — whether it was true or not? Were we unaware that interrogators at Gitmo aren't playing bean bag with detainees?

No we were not unaware. We were just looking the other way. So yesterday's outrage becomes today's world-weary assumption. This is how liberty dies - with scattered, knee-jerk applause.

Me: This is nonsense. The level of censorship -- official and self-imposed -- during the war on terror is a fraction of a fraction of what was routine during World War Two. Today we have silly debates about whether journalists should wear tiny flags on their lapels. During WWII, Walter Cronkite wore a military uniform while reporting the news (and gladly subjected his reports to censorship). Did liberty die to the tune of scattered, knee-jerk applause then?

Post-9/11 David Westin, the president of ABC News, openly pondered -- at a journalism school! -- whether butchering passengers with box-cutters on civilian aircraft in order to attack the Pentagon was legitimate. "As a journalist," he righteously intoned, "I feel strongly that's something that I should not be taking a position on."

Meanwhile, as I mentioned this morning, liberty is spreading, to the knee-jerk yawns of a world-weary establishment press.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – NARAL Pro-Choice America, the nation’s leading advocacy organization for personal privacy and a woman’s right to choose, announced that Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island will deliver the keynote address at the organization’s annual gathering of its state affiliates. The speech is slated for Friday, May 20 at the Beacon Hotel in Washington, DC.

The NARAL Pro-Choice America Summit will focus on the anticipated battle over a Supreme Court vacancy and the group’s prevention-based legislative priorities.

I was reading your piece on the Newsweek Koran issue. I was drinking coffee. I got to the end and read the line about low flow toilets. I laughed until coffee came out of my nose. It was not pretty. Perhaps you could put some type of beverage warning on pieces like that.

It is just amazing how what would have been remarkable six months ago and unimaginable 2 years ago becomes boring today. This is from page A 10 of The Washington Post. Obviously, there's room for skepticism and pessimism. But sheesh:

DAMASCUS, Syria, May 17 -- Beset by U.S. attempts to isolate his country and facing popular expectations of change, Syrian President Bashar Assad will move to begin legalizing political parties, purge the ruling Baath Party, sponsor free municipal elections in 2007 and formally endorse a market economy, according to officials, diplomats and analysts.

Assad's five-year-old government is heralding the reforms as a turning point in a long-promised campaign of liberalizing a state that, while far less dictatorial than Iraq under Saddam Hussein, remains one of the region's most repressive. His officials see the moves, however tentative and drawn out, as the start of a transitional period that will lead to a more liberal, democratic Syria.

Emboldened opposition leaders, many of whom openly support pressure by the United States even if they mistrust its intentions, said the measures were the last gasp of a government staggering after its hasty and embarrassing troop withdrawal last month from neighboring Lebanon.

A hand grenade found close to George W Bush during his visit to the ex-Soviet republic of Georgia was armed and could have gone off, an FBI agent has said.

"The United Keetoowah Band would like to make it clear that Mr. Churchill IS NOT a member of the Keetoowah Band and was only given an honorary 'associate membership' in the early 1990s because he could not prove any Cherokee ancestry."

More here.

Warren - I started posting them on a lark and now I can't stop. While I like getting them, even if I didn't the fact is reader demand for new timewasters is insatiable. You wouldn't believe the angry email I get if I go more than a day or two without providing lawyers, engineers and grad students something to waste time on. I actually had one guy tell me at the Dubliner meet-up that my timewasters are a "lifesaver."

I don't completely understand it and I really wish I could personally capture a tiny fraction of the lost national income that comes with such things. But I do what I must.

"A lawyer who helps represent a dozen detainees at Guantanamo Bay said Monday that on two separate occasions two prisoners told her that guards and interrogators desecrated the Koran. She spoke on condition of anonymity because high-level talks were underway with the State Department to win the release of her clients.

"The lawyer acknowledged that she did not see damaged copies of the Islamic holy book. But she said she did not believe the prisoners could have collaborated on the story, because they told her the stories in separate interviews and they were not housed together.

"There was no way to independently verify the lawyer's statements.

"Although the military has found "no credible allegations of willful Koran desecration," said Whitman, the Pentagon spokesman, it continues to investigate conditions at the prison that holds 520 detainees."

A new kind of timewaster.

From a reader:

Jonah,

re: your cautionary note of what if it turns out that
the Koran really was desecrated -

It doesn't matter to me, and I don't think it should
matter to anyone else. The obsessive focus on the fact
that the story seems to not be true is silly, as far
as I'm concerned.

Think of it like this: say the story actually was
true, and you as a Newsweek editor have the choice of
either running it (knowing the likely consequences) or
discretely approaching military officials with the
story first. Which is the ethical and responsible
thing to do? Seems like a no-brainer to me. The fact
that journalists are so unthinkingly wedded to this
idea that they need to "get out" every little damaging
fact, regardless of its value in being released or the
unhappy side-effects is just sad and makes me respect
them less than I already did.

Russell Wardlow

PS: if you happen to print any part of this, feel free
to use my name. Unlike the apparent predilections of
your other readers, I'm a shameless egomaniacal
attention-seeker.

You'd think that after spending nearly a decade publicly smacking the liberal media I'd get just a teensy-weensy bit more of the benefit of the doubt. But no, already the majority of email from purer-than-thou folks on the right is decidedly of this flavor (asterisks are mine):

In a world full of trouble and Newsweek making s**t up out of whole cloth, we can allways count on one thing. Jonah Goldburg will act like a spinless "what-if...what if" Candy-A**.

I do agree I'm "spinless" though.

For a group of people who don't like elitist liberals, you sure are sounding a lot like them with your Star Wars bashing. Star Wars is space opera, not science fiction, and is meant to be fun. Reading the criticism on the Corner takes me back three years to the howls of protest literary circles prior to the release of the LOTR movies (if the masses like this it must be bad, and not high literature). Escapism is not always a bad thing-and the Star Wars movies are meant to be escapist. Reading criticism about the opening sentence in all six movies not conforming to the science about the number of galaxies and the actual distance between them just reinforces the media stereotype that conservatives are stuffy, uptight snobs who take themselves and life entirely too seriously.

The target audience for Star Wars has always been kids, and not just those who grew up on the original trilogy. Good heroes, really bad villains, comic relief, spaceships, blasters, swordfights and lots of explosions-just the sort of things that most 6-12 year old boys think are cool.

Lighten up folks.

I like anti-MSM mobs as much as the next guy, but I have a bad feeling about where this one is going. What happens if in the coming weeks a true and provable allegation of Koran abuse surfaces?

What will be the reaction from frenzied-feeders be then?

Just curious.

Peter: Let me just comment on one of your subpoints. "Brown is not the first judge to cite natural law in this regard. Clarence Thomas, among others, has done the same and his track record in adhering to the applicable law in the case before him is well known (and not dissimilar from Brown's). . . . Conservative nominees who, in their non-judicial commentary, tip their hat to natural law have generally proven themselves to be more disciplined in checking their ideology at the courthouse door than liberal nominees who tip their hat to a living breathing constitution."

Kirsanow is surely right to say that a good record can trump a bad speech. But there's natural-law commentary and then there's natural-law commentary. I think Brown's comments were more troubling than Thomas's pre-confirmation remarks. Thomas, recall, basically said something nice about an article by Lew Lehrman in Lehrman's presence. He did not suggest that the natural law authorized judges to overrule the positive law; I find it hard to see how Brown's comments can be read to mean anything other than that. (Nor has Justice Thomas engaged in objectionable forms of "natural-law judging," with the possible exception of his concurrence in Adarand.)

In Brown's defense, I would say, however, that her apparent willingness to rethink incorporation mitigates the problem as far as I'm concerned (although it will, of course, make the problem worse for liberals). As an appeals-court judge, of course, she could/should neither roll back incorporation nor indulge in any "higher law" activism. If she were on the Supreme Court and did both, the net effect might well be to reduce the relative power of judges.

Ever since I gave an off the cuff interview to Salon about extraordinary rendition I've been increasingly uncomfortable with my answers. In theory, I still don't have major objections to the "ticking-bomb" justification for torture. Nor do I have any major objections to smacking around the worst sorts of terrorists if it's deemed productive. But theory and practice are different lands and I think extraordinary rendition is torture by outsourcing and ultimately counterproductive and immoral. I've been noodling it for awhile, ever since I read Victor Davis Hanson's adamant opposition to it alongside by on-the-one-hand this and on-the-other-hand that answer. But Reuel Marc Gerecht's recent piece in the Standard turned me around officially. I doubt my change of heart will be of much interest to anybody, but I thought I should throw it out there.

May 17, 2005

To whom it may concern:

Harvard is to be commended for any steps it takes to ensure that its faculty hiring and tenure decisions are based on merit and not on irrelevant characteristics such as skin color, national origin, or sex, and for improving its recruitment policies so that it casts its net far and wide in order to find the best possible candidates.

Likewise, however, Harvard should not give preferential consideration to anyone simply because she is female, or a member of an “underrepresented minority” group. To do so would be unfair and divisive; it would stigmatize all those hired or given tenure who share those characteristics and would inevitably lower the quality of the faculty (since merit is being weighed less); and it would violate federal law, including Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (42 U.S.C. 2000e et seq.) and 42 U.S.C. 1981. As you know, the Ivy League has an unfortunate history of discriminating in favor of some and against others in order to ensure a predetermined racial and ethnic mix. If some groups are considered “underrepresented” (African Americans, Latinos), it follows that others must be “overrepresented” (Jews, Asians). Instead of focusing on group numbers, Harvard should simply hire and grant tenure to the best individuals.

We will be watching Harvard’s implementation of its latest announced initiative with interest, with a particular eye on the federal civil rights laws. Please do not hesitate to contact us if we can be of any assistance.

Sincerely,

Roger Clegg
Vice President and General Counsel
Center for Equal Opportunity

From a reader:

Jonah,

Here's a good discussion topic for the Corner:

So what if Republicans end the judicial filibuster and, somewhere in the
future, lose the Senate? Is this really a problem?

A-22 TO STACK ARMS

1. Members of the squad stack arms from their positions in line at normal or close interval. Squad members numbered 3, 7, and 11 make the stacks except when there is no one to their left. In squads larger than 14 men, additional stackmen are designated. In squads so armed that it is not feasible for numbers 3, 7, and 11 to make the stacks, other squad members may be designated as stackmen. The command is "Stack, ARMS."

2. At the command "ARMS," the man on the left of the stackman grips his/her rifle by the upper hand guard, raises it, with the muzzle straight up, until his/her right arm is level with the deck. The Marine passes it to the stackman, who grips it with the left hand at the upper hand guard just below the stacking swivel. (See figure A-18a.)

3. The stackman places the butt of the left rifle between his/her feet, with the barrel to the front, muzzle tilted forward. The Marine raises the stacking swivel of the left rifle with his/her left thumb and forefinger. Then the Marine swings the butt of his/her own rifle 2 feet in front and 6 inches to the right of his/her right toe. The Marine then shifts his/her right hand to the stacking swivel, which the Marine engages with that of the left rifle. (See figure A-18b.)

4. The member on the right of the stackman grips his rifle with his/her right hand at the small of the stock, his/her left hand near the stacking swivel. Without moving his right foot, the Marine steps to the left front and carries his/her rifle well forward, barrel up. With the forefinger of his/her left hand, the Marine hooks his stacking swivel to the free hook of the center rifle's stacking swivel. Then the Marine rotates his/her rifle so the barrel rests in the angle formed by the other two rifles. (See figure A-18c.) The Marine pulls the butt toward him/her until the stack is tight and then lowers the butt to the deck. The Marine then resumes the position of attention. (See figure A-18d.) Figure A-18e shows details of the stacking swivels at stack arms.

5. Other rifles are passed to the nearest stack on the right. When passing extra weapons to the stack, the right hand grips the upper hand guard and the left hand grips the balance. The muzzles of these weapons point straight up while they are being passed to the stack. They are laid on the stack by the stackman, sights inboard, and tilted so they remain in place.

"Perhaps unsurprisingly, Britons described them as "chauvinists, stubborn, nannied and humourless". However, the French may be more shocked by the views of other nations.For the Germans, the French are "pretentious, offhand and frivolous". The Dutch describe them as "agitated, talkative and shallow." The Spanish see them as "cold, distant, vain and impolite" and the Portuguese as "preaching". In Italy they comes across as "snobs, arrogant, flesh-loving, righteous and self-obsessed" and the Greeks find them "not very with it, egocentric bons vivants". Interestingly, the Swedes consider them "disobedient, immoral, disorganised, neo-colonialist and dirty".But the knockout punch to French pride came in the way the poll was conducted. People were not asked what they hated in the French, just what they thought of them. "Interviewees were simply asked an open question - what five adjectives sum up the French," said Olivier Clodong, one of the study's two authors and a professor of social and political communication at the Ecole Superieur de Commerce, in Paris. "The answers were overwhelmingly negative."

Mon Dieu.

Wow. I suppose this shouldn't be surprise, but people really dislike the guy. I mean really dislike. Getting lots of (unprintable) email from people who make long -- but expletive laced -- arguments that he's a hack, a moron, a jerk etc. I'd hate paying him the compliment of revealing that some folks care about him so much. It almost makes him sound like a leftwing O'Reilly. Of course, the big difference is that lots of people watch O'Reilly.

First Pawlenty, now Coleman?

Pleeeeaaaase stop picking on Minnesota. Give us a little while to at least feel like a red state (even if we are not, yet), before you pull the rug out from under us.

THe idea that somehow [Yalta]...could have been different "if only" is just nonsense. The Soviet army, by '45, was largely unbeatable. Despite our guys and the brits heroics against the nazis, it was clearly the Soviets who did most of the fighting (and dying). East Europe was (sadly) a lost cause....

At any rate, I would think NRO would be a bit more honest and stop this nonsense of suggesting "if only."…. If only Patton had attacked the Russians and started WW3? Would that actually have been a good thing?

Not quite true that no supplies got through [to Warsaw]. This from http://www.polonia.co.za/WarsawFlights/Page.htm:

Call after call for supplies to be flown in by the Russians went unanswered. Frequent appeals made by Churchill were ignored by the Russians. Allied aircraft could reach Warsaw, but the range was to great for them to return to base. The Russians refused to allow Allied aircraft to land in Russians occupied-territory, refuel and return. The Russian betrayal of the Allies placed Churchill in a terrible dilemma. He had given pledge to support the Polish partisans. The only air force units who could help were those based in Italy and specifically the heavy bombers of 2nd Bomber Wing at Foggia which were under South African control.

Churchill, realising these proposed Warsaw raids would be almost suicidal for the aircrews, could not order such missions, but he asked for volunteers. Without doubt, the Polish aircrews of 205 Bomber Group all volunteered, and they were not alone. The crews of two South African squadrons volunteered. And so did crews in Royal Air Force squadrons.

Night after night, on twelve-hour round trips, the B24 Liberator bombers took off and flew the 2720 km from Italy through some of the most heavily-defended German night-fighter hotspots, to reach the battered Polish capital. There they descended to rooftop height to escape the probing searchlights and the heavy flak, and to drop the precious supplies they carried.

Between 8 August and 22 September 1944, British and Polish air squadrons, alongside 31 and 34 Squadrons of SAAF, dropped supplies to beleaguered Polish partisans fighting againstoverhelming odds in the city of Warsaw. A total of 181 sorties were attempted, with the loss of 31 B24 Liberator bomber aircraft. The loss rate of 40% (almost one man in evry two) was phenomenal. It has been debated that the sheer heroism shown by the aircrews in attempting to complete their missions, was beyond equal. "

An additional point: During the Warsaw Uprising (in which my mother fought) Churchill wanted to resupply the Polish Home Army with air drops of weapons and provisions. To stop this, Stalin refused to allow U.S. and British planes to land on Soviet soil -- they could not make it to Warsaw and back without landing in Soviet controlled territory. Churchill told Roosevelt we should send them anyway -- that Stalin would never actually prevent them from landing once they were in the air. Roosevelt refused. Stalin's troops waited on the other side of the Vistula for the Germans to wipe out the Polish resistance (and thus the leaders of a free and independent Poland). If we had resuplied them, it would have sent a clear signal to Stalin that we would not acquiesce to his subjugation of Eastern Europe -- and Yalta would have been a very different meeting....

• Fabricating anecdotes in a desperate effort to liven up a dinner party.

• Using cringe-making terms of endearment such as ‘babykins’ in public.
• Displaying fear during horror films (if male) - this is a turn-off for women.
• Racking up excess luggage charges by going over the top with holiday packing.
• Making a partner spend far longer than they want to on shopping trips.
• Laughing at your own jokes, oblivious to the fact that no-one else is.
• Complaining about partner’s clothes.
• Changing preset controls on the car stereo.
• Tipping clutter from coffee table on to floor to make way for TV dinner.
• Failing to replace loo roll when it is finished.
• Leaving wet towels around.
• Scattering clothes about the bedroom.
• Reading e-mails while claiming to be conducting an important discussion about the mortgage or similar subject.
• Using a fork as a backscratcher.
• Nose-picking.
• Burping.
• Clipping toe-nails, even if newspaper is spread on floor to catch clippings.
• Wearing tatty clothing.
• Getting drunk despite lack of any obvious excuse.
• Failing to control flatulence.
• Being late.
• Asking for explanations of TV dramas, causing partner to miss plot twist.
• Obtaining reassurance about clothing, then changing it anyway.
• Making any attempt to complain about any of the above.

He doesn't really deal with the substantive case against his bill, preferring to make personal attacks on Dick Armey. The bill doesn't keep fradulent claims from getting money, and it doesn't close the door to further litigation.

Specter doesn't adequately rebut the arguments he does choose to address. He denies that the trust fund for paying out asbestos claims would be funded by taxes: "Mr. Armey says the bill would levy $140 billion in new taxes to create a federal trust fund for asbestos victims. He knows better. Manufacturers, which are liable for asbestos injuries, and their insurers have offered to create the $140 billion trust fund to avoid further liability. The bill is explicit that the federal government would pay nothing into the fund."

But the manufacturers would be sending money--based in part on their incomes--to a trust fund operated by the federal government. You could just as well say that federal welfare payments are from individuals rather than from the federal government, which is "just" a middleman.

Unfortunately, it looks as though Specter's bill has enough support from Democrats to pass through the Judiciary Committee over the objections of Senators Coburn, Kyl, and Sessions. The bill will have to be fixed in a House-Senate conference if it's to be fixed at all.

On the eve of this brawl, it's worth recalling how we got here. Our own choice for what started the modern bitterness would be 1987 and the Robert Bork fight. There were previous court battles--Abe Fortas and Clement Haynsworth come to mind--but the trashing of such a widely respected jurist marked that date as the one when nominations became political campaigns.

Dean's remark, in a speech to Massachusetts Democrats at their party convention, drew an immediate rebuke from US Representative Barney Frank, the Newton Democrat and one of DeLay's harshest critics. ''That's just wrong," Frank said in an interview on the convention floor. ''I think Howard Dean was out of line talking about DeLay. The man has not been indicted. I don't like him, I disagree with some of what he does, but I don't think you, in a political speech, talk about a man as a criminal or his jail sentence."

NBC's Katie Couric offered up a fawning tribute to Pennsylvania's liberal Republican Senator Arlen Specter, whom Couric termed a "moderate," on Friday's Today show. After touting Specter, who is currently undergoing treatment for Hodgkin's lymphoma, as a "feisty" and "firm" Senator with a "razor sharp mind," Couric delivered loaded questions that presented conservatives as the main cause of acrimony on Capitol Hill. She asked Specter: "Do you believe the religious right has too much influence on the Republican Party at this point?" Couric also singled out Republicans and their proposal to end the blocking of judicial nominees with filibuster, not Democrats who changed 200 years of tradition, as the culprits for souring the public: "If the nuclear option is played out, don't you think voters are going to be disgusted with all politicians and say come on, get out of the sandbox?"

Instead of figuring out who we want most, maybe it makes more sense to figure out who we'd like least. Among the potentials, I can really only think of one I'd never vote for under any circumstances and that's be George Pataki. Next up on the list are the hold-your-nosers. I don't know enough about the rest of the field to say categorically I'd be pinching my nose to vote for 'em, but I consider Bill Frist a serious contender for this category. If Hatch ran, he'd be a nose-pincher candidate for me. I'm very torn about Giuliani, but I admire his work in NYC enough to say that I'd have principled problems with the guy, and leave it at that. Let's say something similar about McCain. The rest range from bleh to need-to-know-more. Condi Rice is far more of an unknown than her backers claim.

But then there's Cheney. He has one of the best resumes of his generation. He was always more libertarian-Reaganite than Bush. And he likes to crack skulls for truth, justice and the American way.

Kathryn -- You write: "Cheney? Come on. He's already had his unexpected political comeback."

Maybe we've only seen the begining of his comeback. Halliburton was his Elba. Bush called him back from it. Perhaps historians will note that he served admirably for 8 years under George W. Bush and then four in his own right -- when he launched a slash-and-burn program against the size and scope of the federal government and terrorist bastions around the globe. A few bumps in the road notwithstanding, Cheney represents most of what I like best about this administration. I'm still a supporter of Bush, but many of the things which define him the most are not the things I like best about the administration.

Yes, yes, yes there is the pesky issue of Cheney's four -- or is it five? -- heart attacks. That's why you need a really strong VP pick. Also, fear of the grim reaper's political timetable might give my boy the added encouragement to get good stuff done early.

Please note, I don't actually believe Cheney will run. But I am just so underwhelmed by the field right now. I listened to a speech by Gingrich the other day and, for the life of me, I couldn't remember why I don't want him to be president. It all came back to me in time. But he was very good. I should say that I was impressed with George Allen when he spoke to NR, but I don't have a great feel for him yet. So, until a necromancer can bring us Reagan-Goldwater, I'm lining behind the man from Wyoming.

Why is it that all the stories you read in Time-Newsweek-The New York Times-The Washington Post-Etc. or see on CNN-The BBC-CBS-NBC-Etc., why is it that all their stories about Iraq, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, etc., why is it that the presumption, the prejudice, the predisposition never goes the other way? Why is it that their reporters always assume the worst: that we're doing dirty at Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc., and are primed to pick up and believe any rumor damaging to the United States?

Well, it looks like I may have been wrong about the capacity for outrage over the Newsweek story, if I go solely by the early rumblings. We'll see how the story plays out over the next 24 hours.

I should say that I don't think there's as much room for outrage as some of emailers do. I take Kathryn's point on Rushdie; the Koran is especially sacred and all that.

But, it's hardly as if defenders of the U.S. government's actions can be absolute purists either. The allegations about torture and whatnot reveal that it is not exactly uncommon for interrogators to use the religiosity of their prisoners against them. Flushing a Koran down a toilet -- and telling the press about it -- would certainly constitute a huge blunder. But how many of us were saying "there's no way that can be true!" when the story first broke?

And, just as I said when the Abu Ghraib photos came out, whoever gave this to the press isn't doing anybody any favors. I don't know who the senior Administration official is, but -- particularly if he wasn't sure it was true! -- telling Newsweek we're flushing Korans was a super-bonehead move. Running the story , under those circumstances was idiotic. That it ran in the Periscope section shows that they didn't really even think about what they were doing.

A pox on all their houses.

A majority of my regular lefty correspondents have chimed in with all sorts of odd outrage over my post about Newsweek. I am truly at a loss to understand why.

They offer a wide array of responses and I'm not sure how to answer many of them. But one common theme seems to be, "How can you say that when Bush got X, Y or Z wrong?"

My short answer is: easily. Name anything Bush got wrong or is alleged to have gotten wrong. On each score the media outrage -- canned or sincere -- has been enormous.

I don't absolve the rioters and I don't ascribe ill intent (yet) to Newsweek. But again, if Bush were responsible for a similar event I sincerely doubt his hecklers would have the same attitude.

Nobody can defend what happened, so disgracefully, so shamefully, in Abu Ghraib under US command, and Christopher Hitchens is not trying to do so. Here, however, is what he does have to say:

“Abu Ghraib was by no means celebrated as an ancestral civic and cultural center before the year 2004. To the Iraqis, it was a name to be mentioned in whispers, if at all, as "the house of the end." It was a Dachau. Numberless people were consigned there and were never heard of again. Its execution shed worked overtime, as did its torturers, and we are still trying to discover how many Iraqis and Kurds died in its precincts. At one point, when it suffered even more than usual from chronic overcrowding, Saddam and his sons decided to execute a proportion of the inmates at random, just to cull the population. The warders then fanned out at night to visit the families of the prisoners, asking how much it would be worth to keep their son or brother or father off the list. The hands of prisoners were cut off, and the proceedings recorded on video for the delight of others. I myself became certain that Saddam had reached his fin de régime, or his Ceauşescu moment, when he celebrated his 100-percent win in the "referendum" of 2003 by releasing all the nonpolitical prisoners (the rapists and thieves and murderers who were his natural constituency) from Abu Ghraib. This sudden flood of ex-cons was a large factor in the horrific looting and mayhem that accompanied the fall of Baghdad.I visited the jail a few months later, and I can tell you about everything but the stench, which you would have to smell for yourself. Layers of excrement and filth were being shoveled out; cells obviously designed for the vilest treatment of human beings made one recoil. In the huge, dank, cement gallery where the executions took place, a series of hooks and rings hung over a gruesome pit. Efforts were being made to repaint and disinfect the joint, and many of the new inmates were being held in encampments in the yard while this was being done, but I distinctly remember thinking that there was really no salvaging such a place and that it should either be torn down and ploughed over or turned into a museum.”

And then he goes on to conclude as follows:

“How shady it is that our modern leftists and peaceniks can detect fascism absolutely everywhere except when it is actually staring them in the face. The next thing, of course, if we complete the historic analogy, would be for them to sign a pact with it. And this, some of them have already done.”

Read the whole thing.

That most of the supposed achievements in education under Tony Blair’s government were illusion, spin or dodgy statistics should be obvious to most observers, if not the British electorate or Tony’s admirers over here, but sometimes a story breaks that should catch even the attention of the most deluded admirer of ‘New’ Labour. The Saunday Telegraph has the details:

“Examiners marking an English test taken by 600,000 14-year-olds have been told not to deduct marks for incorrect spelling on the main writing paper, worth nearly a third of the overall marks.”

That’s dumb, really dumb

As any fule kno.

Newsweek apologizes for getting the Koran in the toilet story wrong, sort of.

Something tells me that if the White House made a mistake which resulted in riots, deaths, etc there'd be a just a smidgen more outrage than we'll hear about this.