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 Saturday, March 23
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THE NEW YORK TIMES DOESN'T DISAPPOINT: [Rod Dreher] The Times leaves New York to take the pulse of American Catholics amid the scandal -- and there's nothing surprising in the way they report it. They quote two members of the radical left-wing organization Call to Action, the dissenting theologian Richard McBrien, and the liberal academician Scott Appleby. The only believing Catholic they bothered to talk to was Bill Donohue of the Catholic League. Typical. I'm not even going to link to this lousy piece of biased journalism.
Posted
11:42 PM | [Link]
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OUR MISTAKE [Andrew Stuttaford]
There's a heartening piece in the Financial Times this weekend on the return of civilization to Kabul University. The dean of the law faculty notes how enrollment dropped under the Taliban, and not just because the fundamentalist regime barred women. The number of male students also fell.
"Under the Taliban, the university was open only for boys, but practically no boys studied here. They had to wear a turban and a beard and young men don't like these things."
No, of course they don't. The young could be natural allies in the battle against Muslim extremism. The West, however, must shed its exquisite cultural "sensitivity" and be prepared to lend unapologetic support to those within the Islamic world working for an enlightened alternative to theocratic tyranny. Of course, it is difficult for such efforts to have much credibility so long as we continue to maintain such close links with the disgusting Saudi despotism.
Posted
10:17 PM | [Link]
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FIVE MORE: [Rod Dreher] Dear Anthony O'Connell, the recently resigned pederast bishop of Palm Beach, was a busy man in his days as seminary rector. Now five more of his alleged victims have come forward. Now: the bishops' conference recommends candidates for episcopal vacancies to Rome. What did the bishops know about O'Connell's activities before making him Bishop of Knoxville, and later moving him to Palm Beach?
Posted
7:15 PM | [Link]
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ONE MORE [Andrew Stuttaford]
I'm feeling nostalgic today. I cast my first (and never regretted) vote for Mrs T. in 1979. So please allow me to repeat another Thatcher classic (this one from 1989). Someone had offered her Perrier to drink. Her reply:
“What’s wrong with British water?” She is, quite simply, priceless.
Posted
4:44 PM | [Link]
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BEST OF [Andrew Stuttaford]
Mrs. Thatcher's decision to withdraw from public speaking has prompted the British press to look back at some of her finer speeches. Here she is in Berlin in the early 1980s: "You may chain a man, but you cannot chain his mind. You may enslave him, but you will not conquer his spirit. But the day will come when the anger and frustration of the people is so great that force cannot contain it. Then the edifice cracks; the mortar crumbles - one day, liberty will dawn on the other side of the wall." These are words to be repeated again and again until they are heard in the cities of today's savage despotisms. Riyadh, Teheran and Baghdad would be a
good places to start.
Posted
4:41 PM | [Link]
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OUR IRON [Andrew Stuttford]
Sad news from Britain. Health problems have forced Margaret Thatcher to announce that she will never again make a speech in public. It is to be hoped that she will carry on writing. At times like these hers is a voice that still needs to be heard.
Posted
4:40 PM | [Link]
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BIASED? YOU BET [Andrew Stuttaford]
There's an interesting Q&A with Bernard Goldberg in this week's New York Press. Even more, enlightening, however, is the revelation (to me, at least) that, despite the enormous success of Bias , Mr. Goldberg has yet to be invited to do a single interview on any of the three national networks. They are, it would seem, cowardly as well as biased.
Posted
4:38 PM | [Link]
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MORE JESUS ART [Jonah Goldberg] Not to be outdone by my link to a Jesus-as-kibbitzer clip-art website (posted below) Andrew Sullivan has decided to up the stakes.
Posted
2:49 PM | [Link]
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THANK GOODNESS FOR SMALL FAVORS [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
The FBI, since discovering Robert Hanssen's moonlighting gig for the Russians, has begun limiting who has access to top-secret material and using polygraph tests.
Posted
12:36 PM | [Link]
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THE WHITE MARTYRDOM OF FR. TEAGUE: [Rod Dreher] "White martyrdom" is a term used to describe the phenomenon of suffering grievously for your faith without shedding blood. That's what has happened to Fr. Bruce Teague, who was punished by his Massachusetts diocese for calling the cops on a convicted child molester who was trying to hang around kids at Fr. Teague's parish. Why'd Teague get in trouble? Because the pederast was a priest of the diocese. And still is. Good priests suffer while these dirtbags continue to be protected by bishops.
Posted
11:27 AM | [Link]
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FOLLOW THE SQUEEZED BICEPS: [Rod Dreher] An orthodox priest and Corner devotee writes this morning to say St. Petersburg Bishop Robert Lynch's case is more significant than many reporters may realize. If Lynch really is a homosexual and a sexual harrasser, as has been claimed, it casts suspicion on his years as General Secretary of the national Catholic bishops' conference, where he was a favorite of the late Cardinal Bernardin. Moreover, after Bishop Symons of Palm Beach resigned after admitting to pederasty, Bishop Lynch took over that diocese as administrator, and helped pick Symons' successor, Bishop Anthony O'Connell -- who just resigned after admitting to homosexual abuse of seminarians. Can you say "lavender mafia"? Hey reporters, follow that trail of Lynch-squeezed biceps!
Posted
11:11 AM | [Link]
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DO NO BENEVOLENCE [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
A British judge has ruled that a paralyzed woman has the right to die, to have her life-support turned off, as she desires. The hospital must pay damages to the patient of £100 for "unlawful trespass," and handle her legal bills (£55,000). The judge called the hospital’s trespass "benevolent paternalism." So what’s the Hippocratic Oath these days?
Posted
9:48 AM | [Link]
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OF BICEPS AND BISHOPS: [Rod Dreher] Here's the very latest on Bishop Lynch's fine mess down in Florida. In this morning's Tampa Tribune, he says his press secretary's claim of constant sexual harrassment was one big misunderstanding. "Do I wish I didn't feel his biceps? Yes," says the bishop, ungrammatically. The alleged victim, a married man who received a $100,000 "severance" package from the diocese, says he struggled for years over whether or not he should tell anyone what His Excellency was up to. "I thought: Who would believe me? He's the bishop." Next time Florida reporters confront the Bish, they should ask him, "We know you were celibate, but have you also been chaste?" No theological weasel words!
Posted
9:27 AM | [Link]
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ABSTAIN FROM E-MAILING, PEOPLE: [Rod Dreher] Lots of theologians out there in the Corner. Thanks for writing to set me straight on chastity, celibacy and all that. If I've got it right, celibacy, in the Catholic tradition, is renouncing marriage for the Kingdom of God, and is something generally embraced only by priests and religious. Chastity is rightly ordering your sex life according to your spiritual state in life, and is something that is expected of all Catholics. A married couple is living unchastely if they use contraception, just as a single person is unchaste if they have sex outside of marriage. This makes the Catholic teaching somewhat clearer. Please, no more e-mails.
Posted
12:05 AM | [Link]
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Friday, March 22
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MISSING NEWS [Dave Kopel]
While the New York Times just had a coniption fit over a spike in the black youth gun-suicide rate that occurred in 1994, the Times did not see fit to print the fact that the black gun-homicide rate (like the white gun homicide rate) continues to plunge--as Bias Blog points out.
Posted
11:02 PM | [Link]
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LAMAR’S CHOICE [Ramesh Ponnuru]
Tennessee Republican congressman Ed Bryant is trying to make his Senate primary campaign against frontrunner Lamar Alexander into a conservative-liberal slugfest. Some social conservatives are siding with Bryant, saying that Alexander is “pro-abortion.” Kevin Phillips, Alexander’s press secretary, told me that Alexander is “pro-life,” just as he was when he ran for president in 1996. Back then, Alexander’s position was that states should restrict abortion but that the federal government should neither prohibit nor fund it. He also opposed the overturning of Roe v. Wade--which made his position rather self-contradictory, since Roe prevents states from enacting restrictions. I asked Phillips if Alexander still holds that set of views; he said yes. I suspect a lot of pro-lifers won’t be happy to hear it.
Posted
6:28 PM | [Link]
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BISHOP LYNCH ACCUSED: [Rod Dreher] Robert Lynch, the liberal Roman Catholic bishop of Tampa-St. Petersburg, today denied a Tampa Tribune report that his communications director quit after filing a sexual harrassment grievance against the bishop. Lynch said it's all a misunderstanding, and said the $100,000 the married man was paid upon leaving was "severance." Lynch also said he has always been faithful to his vow of "celibacy." For what it's worth, a priest pointed out to me on the phone today that a vow of celibacy is a solemn promise not to get married; a vow of chastity is a solemn promise not to have sex.
Posted
5:57 PM | [Link]
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THE STREETS OF KABUL [Andrew Stuttaford]
Delightful story from Kabul in today's New York Times about the large crowds celebrating the Persian new year, something banned under the Taliban's version of Islam. It is a small sign of the new freedoms being enjoyed in Afghanistan since that country's liberation, and it is yet another reminder that, given the chance, even some of the most traditional societies will reject fundamentalism. That's worth remembering the next time you are told that there is no safe alternative to the current Saudi regime.
Posted
5:25 PM | [Link]
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THE CNBC DICTIONARY [Andrew Stuttaford]
Here's a mystery. Some of the anchors on CNBC use the word "effort" as a verb. I am efforting to find out whether this is as strange as I think it is.
Posted
5:18 PM | [Link]
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IMAGINE THAT [Andrew Stuttaford]
The Daily Telegraph is reporting on a new study that may show that the Northern hemisphere is no warmer than it was a thousand years ago. Strangely the planet managed to survive without the help of a Dark Ages Kyoto.
Posted
5:17 PM | [Link]
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TESTING, TAKE TWO: [Ramesh Ponnuru]
The other day I answered a challenge from Jonah by saying I couldn't think of any objections off the top of my head to a high-school policy of random drug searches. Jacob Sullum weighs in with some objections worth considering . . . . although I still don't think the Supreme Court ought to micromanage local schools, however wise or foolish their policies may be.
Posted
4:41 PM | [Link]
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DECONSTRUCTING STUDY [Dave Kopel]
Bias Blog deconstructs a new study--reported by the AP and prominently featured by the New York Times--regarding black suicides and guns.
Posted
12:57 PM | [Link]
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SWITCHEROO [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
LaGuardia Airport was shut down this morning for a "security breach." Instead of zero-tolerance for honors students with knives from their grandmas' kitchens, how about zero tolerance for security breaches? Someone page Secretary Mineta.
Posted
10:57 AM | [Link]
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SURPRISE, SURPRISE: [Rod Dreher] My gift to K-Lo today will be to make this the final Catholic-related blog of the day (unless Something Big happens). But this is worth looking at for reasons much broader than the scandal. In his important New York Times column today, John Tierney discusses how press coverage has tended to mislead the public on the true nature of the Church sex scandal. As I've been saying, the majority of these cases involve priests sleeping with teenage boys, which is not the same thing as pedophilia. In fact, the homosexual nature of the scandal should make society re-examine some recently promulgated p.c. dogmas. As a professor tells Tierney, "I don't know that gay men are any more likely than heterosexual men to have sex with teenagers. But the experience of the Catholic Church suggests there will be problems if you send gay scoutmasters on camping trips with teenage boys." Please note: this sentiment appeared in The New York Times. That's important.
Posted
10:49 AM | [Link]
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JESUS IS WITH YOUR DENTAL ASSISTANT I really, really don't mean any offense. But don't these pictures make Jesus look a bit like a stalker?
Posted
10:24 AM | [Link]
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AHEM [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Well, thanks, Jonah (the check is in the mail), but how can you call yourself a Star Trek fan and not note first that it is William Shatner's birthday today? His website is all dressed up for the occasion, even. (So there Trekkies, I've gone an broken my own Trek ban.) It's also the delightful gospel-singing Orrin Hatch's birthday and....the marvelous NRO writer, and yes, Trek fan, Andrew Stuttaford's.
Posted
10:16 AM | [Link]
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NOW FOR THE REAL THING: [Jonah Goldberg]
Thanks to everybody for their birthday cheer yesterday. It was very much appreciated. But, now that we got that out of the way, the real birthday challenge is upon us. Today is Kathryn Lopez's birthday. As I have said before, K-Lo is the hardest working woman in rock and rock and roll, if by "rock and roll" you mean conservative journalism online or off. She is so gifted, she has managed to cover up the fact that I am half in the bag most days and for that I will be eternally grateful. She is part Rasputin, part Radar O'Reilly and all-American Catholic girl with her head and her heart wired together for some full-tilt boogie for Freedom and Justice. If you are even remotely appreciative of NRO, then show her some appreciation. Give it up for the girl! Happy Birthday Kathryn!
Posted
10:06 AM | [Link]
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CONSPIRACY THEORY: [Rod Dreher] Within the hour, an ex-seminarian who alleges he is a sex-abuse victim of disgraced Bishop Anthony O'Connell will file a RICO-based civil lawsuit against O'Connell , three dioceses and all the American bishops. The Miami Herald reports that the RICO civil law has been used against the Church in sex abuse claims before, but not successfully.
Posted
9:40 AM | [Link]
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DOING YOUR PART [[Stanley Kurtz]
Late last night I posted excerpts from the toughly worded statement put out by 155 Catholic academics and other professionals in protest of the exile and muzzling of Father Joseph Fessio. To see these excerpts, just scroll down to The Corner’s late Thursday postings. But to read the whole statement, to see the list of signatories, or, if you are a Catholic educator or related professional, to sign the statement yourself, go here.
Posted
9:07 AM | [Link]
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WHAT'S 100K BETWEEN FRIENDS?: [Rod Dreher] In the mid-1990s, the Catholic Church paid a hundred grand to an unnamed ex-seminarian to settle a sex-abuse claim against San Diego Bishop Robert H. Brom, the Boston Globe reports. The alleged assault took place in Minnesota, when Brom was a seminary rector. Get this: despite the payment, Brom insists the accusation was false, and the accuser signed a statement certifying this as part of his settlement (there is an allegation in recently filed court papers that the man signed just to get the money). One wonders: is the Church in the habit of paying $100,000 to people who make false allegations? Something's not right here.
Posted
9:02 AM | [Link]
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GOING TO THE MAT FOR REYNOLDS [Jonah Goldberg] President Bush's nominee for assistant AG for Civil Rights, Gerald Reynolds, is the last hope for mens collegiate wrestling (and probably mens collegiate baseball, and mens collegiate swimming etc). He's likely to re-interpret Title IX, the law which is essentially destroying all but the most profitable mens collegiate sports. For the record, I will be beating this drum quite a bit (though perhaps not up the level of Rod's pederasty posts) in the days and weeks ahead in part because my wife's wonderful new book is about to come out -- and it is on this very topic. But also because this latest lawsuit may be the death rattle of the sport if they don't change the way this law is interpreted.
Posted
9:01 AM | [Link]
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LITTLE HELP [Jonah Goldberg] For reasons that are beyond me, I volunteered to help the guys at Crossfire with their dress-rehearsal for the new format this afternoon. It won't ever be broadcast, but I gotta argue with James Carville (I know, I know) about Robert Ray running for Senate in New Jersey. Has anybody seen a defense of Ray's move? On the face of it, I don't like it. But I gotta play my role so I might as well know what the arguments are. [Please let me know.]
Posted
8:41 AM | [Link]
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PEGGY NOONAN DELIVERS II [John Derbyshire]
But see Jonathan Chait's clumsy attempt to trash our Great Lady in the current (3/25) New Republic. The man should be horse-whipped on the steps of his club.
Posted
8:35 AM | [Link]
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FOR THE RECORD [Jonah Goldberg]
In the post below I did not mean to suggest that the editors of the Wall Street Journal are of a certain inclination. It was a veiled reference to the Simpsons episode ("Much Apu About Nothing") where Homer starts a protest march over the prevalence of bears in his community. Here's the relevant dialogue:
Homer: We're here, we're queer, we don't want anymore bears.
Crowd: We're here, we're queer, we don't want anymore bears.
Lenny: Hey, that's a pretty catchy chant. Where did you hear it?
Homer: Oh, I heard it at the mustache parade they have every year.
Interestingly, the mustache parade line has been cut from the Simpsons episodes run in the Washington area for years.
Posted
8:31 AM | [Link]
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WE'RE HERE! WE'RE QUEER! WE DON'T WANT ANYMORE KANGAROOS! [Jonah Goldberg]
Excellent lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal explaining why those alleged "Kangaroo Courts" were never Kangaroo Courts (or any other form of Marsupial Justice). I have only one criticism. They write, "The critics now taking credit for these rules instead owe Donald Rumsfeld an apology." That's absolutely true. But those same critics owe an even bigger apology to John Ashcroft. Rumsfeld got very little criticism for the proposed military tribunals last November, in part because Rummy was too damn popular. So, even though the AG had no jurisdiction over the tribunals, Congress and the press beat him up over it instead. I've got no problem with Rummy getting his due, but he should get in line behind Ashcroft.
Posted
8:24 AM | [Link]
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MORE EMPIRE STRIKING [Jonah Goldberg]
My old buddy from my AEI days, Brian Anderson (now with City Journal) has an excellent review of Empire, FYI.
Posted
8:18 AM | [Link]
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COMMON-SENSE VICTORY [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
That honors student in Texas who was expelled for having a kitchen knife in his car, left over from lugging boxes for his sick grandmother (I kid you not) is going back to school today, thanks to a school-bard vote. Now, just to get rid of the the zero-tolerance law that mandates zero common-sense from school officials.
Posted
5:55 AM | [Link]
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THE OLD WOMAN & HER CANE [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
A 90-year-old woman defends herself against a buglar by beating him with her cane, then running to her neighbor's house.
Posted
5:45 AM | [Link]
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PROVIDENCE: [Rod Dreher] In Jerusalem yesterday, a small miracle saved the life of this New York Times reporter (link requires registration).
Posted
12:31 AM | [Link]
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PEGGY NOONAN DELIVERS: [Rod Dreher] Peggy Noonan delivers one of the finest pieces of writing you will ever read, in the form of a love letter to John Paul the Great, asking him to deliver his people in America from the present scourge. This column just might change history. Print this one out and nail it to the chancery door.
Posted
12:18 AM | [Link]
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Thursday, March 21
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STANDING UP FOR FESSIO [Stanley Kurtz]
There’s been an important new development in the case of Father Joseph Fessio, the prominent conservative Catholic priest exiled and muzzled by the Jesuits for his adherence to traditional Catholic doctrine. (For details, see my "Firing Fessio.") Now a coalition of 155 Catholic academics and other professionals has released a letter protesting the disciplinary action. Here are some excerpts: "Thousands of faithful Catholics are shocked and dismayed by the actions against Father Fessio....This action against one of the best known representatives of the [Jesuits] in the English speaking world is all the more disturbing because it occurs in the context of grave scandals involving the infidelity of Catholic priests...to their most basic vows....The perception of injustice toward Father Fessio is further compounded by the widespread perception that active dissent--both political and academic--is rampant within the Society of Jesus [i.e. the Jesuits]....The determination to undermine his initiative [founding Campion College] can only strengthen the conviction that the highest Jesuit authorities tolerate open dissent and opposition to the Church within their own academic institutions....The Society’s action...seems to reflect a general policy that brings shame upon the Society of Jesus, and affects the entire Church....Many Catholics have come to believe that the men who most strongly adhere to the principles and objectives of Saint Ignatius, the Society’s founder, are those least likely to be given encouragement by their superiors, and are the most likely to be punished for that very fidelity."
Posted
10:47 PM | [Link]
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THE SEARCH IS OVER [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Before midnight comes, I’ve got send Jonah his birthday gift, and announce the contest winners. There were a few themes running through your suggestions: most revolved around Star Trek, beef jerky and sausage, and religion.
A number of e-mailers (all men, I note) took the opportunity to scold me for my "ban" on Star Trek. Contrary to some Corner Trekkies’ suggestions I haven’t really all-out banned it. Just Trek in moderation.
The pork and beef fans sent me this way. Problem is they missed the whole fact that I am cheap (Jonah doesn’t pay me enough?!) and didn’t want to spend a dime. So no sausage of the month for Jonah, at least from me.
One reader suggested "Sign him up as an Ordained Minister of the Universal Life Church." NAH. Another wanted me to send him an e-card good for a free copy of the Book of Mormon. Someone else wanted me to sent Jonah to http://www.catholicfreebies.com. (Jonah, it's there if you want it.)
The most normal gifts, oddly, seemed to be a virtual beer or burger
Finally, one reader suggested Jonah might want to find out what kind of Colossal Death Robot he is. She said: "It seems like a Jonah sort of thing." Who am I to argue?
I’m thinking next year I might just send the guy a Hallmark. That or buy him a subscription to NR. Maybe I’ll get a discount. (Like this one: four free issues!)
Posted
10:45 PM | [Link]
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GOOD NEWS FROM BOSTON: [Rod Dreher] This has been a despairing day for me, with the Pope's statement on the crisis being so anodyne. So it was good to read this from a letter sent to me by a fellow Catholic suffering through this worse than most of us ever will: "I'll speak only for myself on this next point: the difficulty of holding my head up high as a priest in Boston, of being ashamed of what the clergy has done, etc., is not necessarily a bad thing for me. I wish it had never happened. I'm angry that it did. But it's helping me get back to the bedrock essentials of what it means to be a priest. Someone once asked me what was the 'most enjoyable part of being a priest.' Granted, the question was asked years ago -- in better times -- but the answer has always remained the same. What moves me most is something I never had to be ordained to do: giving communion to the faithful. You see open hands gnarled with arthritis, mechanics with grease so deep under fingernails it will never come out, but the look of faith and humility on each face, as they received the One Who has humbled Himself for us -- it never fails to move me to the bottom of my being. I've always thought that God was giving me the rare privilege to see each of these people at their best. The current scandal has reminded me of how much about my own faith and vocation I've taken for granted. And that makes me ashamed. But I'd rather realize it -- so I can do something about it -- than not realize it." Me too, Father, me too.
Posted
6:59 PM | [Link]
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KIDS THESE DAYS [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
They sure learn quickly nowadays--at least the important stuff. Kids at Stuyvesant High School in NYC are complaining that the debris from the WTC is being passing too closely by their school. They worry about the fumes and health problems. How about being grateful you're alive, kids? Thanks to OpinionJournal for linking to this.
Posted
5:51 PM | [Link]
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OH NO [Jonah Goldberg] The "peace process" is on hold again. The picture on Drudge says why. Be warned. It's horrendous.
Posted
5:36 PM | [Link]
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POSTED, WITHOUT COMMENT [Jonah Goldberg] Rich, a reader sent us the following:
"Gentlemen,
Several years ago the journal of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation featured an article comparing and contrasting the relative merits of Elk and Moose as game animals. One of the disparaging points made about moose by the elk aficionado was their evident stupidity and lack of discernment regarding their response to calls. It seems that there have been many examples of Moose being attracted to bad gas, which is frequently induced by hunting camp food. Hunters who have been suffering through particularly cacophonous spells coming out of either end have often been rewarded by having a large bull moose come into camp expecting to find romance. On this day I think it's particularly important to remember that moose have a history of being irrationally attracted to foul smelling expulsions of hot air."
Posted
5:12 PM | [Link]
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STRIKING BACK ON EMPIRE [Jonah Goldberg]
Andrew, for the record, I tried reading some of Empire. My humble assessment: It's a con. You're probably better at reading academic stuff than I am, but I'm certainly better at it than most of the little patchouli-soaked hemptavists sporting their open-toed shoes and closed minds who claim it's so brilliant. It’s dense, dull and full of more poorly translated Euro-jargon than a panel at the Modern Languages Association. It strikes me as the neo-Marxist version of Hawking’s "A Brief History of Time." There may actually be something of interest in there, but the vast majority of people who own it bought the book for show. Empire sits on their coffee tables next to their native American wind-chimes as a form of radical chic.
Posted
4:54 PM | [Link]
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“WHO IS THE MOOSE?”: [Rich Lowry]
Jonah, here’s a tidbit demonstrating the awesome power of The Corner: I was giving a talk in Washington, D.C. recently to college students. My breathtaking oration ends, and it’s time to take questions. What was the first or second query from those bright collegiate minds: “Who is The Moose?” Maybe my next talk should be titled, “The Moose: A Consideration of Its Place in the American Imagination, 1903-present.”
Posted
4:09 PM | [Link]
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SOCIAL RIGHT [Ramesh Ponnuru]
But social conservatism isn’t the GOP’s biggest electoral problem. When did the Republican revolution start to sputter out? When House Republicans voted to ban partial-birth abortion and same-sex marriage? No; those bills passed with large margins and bipartisan support. It was Medicare reform that did them in. Opposition to the minimum wage polls a lot worse than opposition to gays in the military. The party’s ties to big business poll worse than its ties to religious conservatives. On what issues did George W. Bush move left when he ran for president? Not on abortion, where he was less eager to tinker with the GOP platform than Bob Dole had been. He moved left on racial issues, on education, and, at least rhetorically, on the size of government. I’m not arguing that the GOP should move right on values and left on economics; but too many political analysts confuse their own views with those of the electorate as a whole, and I’m afraid Instapundit is among their number.
Posted
3:55 PM | [Link]
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THE GOP’S SOCIAL DISEASE [Ramesh Ponnuru]
The esteemed Instapundit—who puts the corner to shame by posting more
than all of us combined—has been on a bit of a tear about the malign influence of social conservatives. He disagrees with them on substantive issues such as their opposition to the sexual revolution. Indeed, he seems to find that opposition self-evidently ridiculous. I would think that any reasonable person could at least entertain concern about the rise of single motherhood, abortion, and divorce that have necessarily accompanied that revolution. But leave that aside. Instapundit’s also convinced that it’s social conservatism that keeps Republicans from attaining a national majority. People who are attracted to the GOP on economic issues don’t vote for it because it’s culturally alien and is constantly threatening to prohibit fornication. There’s something to this thesis: Cultural affinities do more to determine voting patterns than views on economics, and that’s increasingly true—just look at the red and blue map. It’s also true that Republicans would have a larger majority if fewer people were socially liberal.
Posted
3:55 PM | [Link]
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EMPIRE'S FRUITS [Andrew Stuttaford]
Part of the buzz attaching to Empire, the intellectually trivial, morally suspect, and highly fashionable book that attempts to set a new leftist agenda comes, I suspect, from the fact that Antonio Negri (one of the co-authors) is currently imprisoned in Rome. As readers of NR and NRO will know, Negri played an important role in the development of Italy's terrorist Red Brigades, the group responsible for a number of killings in the 1970s, including that of the then Italian prime minister, Aldo Moro. Negri's imprisonment stems from his activities in those days. Times change, but a reading of Empire would suggest that Negri's infatuation with militant action remains. It will be interesting to hear what he has to say about the murder this week of Marco Biagi, a senior adviser to the Italian government. Mr. Biagi had argued in favor of liberalizing labor markets and for that offense he was gunned down on Tuesday night. A successor to the Red Brigades has claimed responsibility.
Posted
3:54 PM | [Link]
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ONE HARRUMPH FOR THE MOOSE [Jonah Goldberg] Rich, If I didn't know better I would assume the corrupting influence of "Big Moose" got to you. Okay, fine. Good moose, nice moose. Pat, pat. Have a cracker. Anyway, I've got a suggestion. Until it's demonstrated that the Shays-Meehan-McCain-Feingold-Whatever law has actually done anything good, could we all spell reform, "re-form"? You see by definition "reform" means improvement while "re-form" means to rearrange. And there is zero evidence, the Moose's trumpets notwithstanding, that this re-form of campaign finance laws is an improvement in any way. When that evidence comes in, we can drop the hyphen and clap the Moose on the back. In fact, whether something was a reform, i.e. an improvement, is a judgement that can only be made after the fact. Personally, I think this should be the magazine's editorial policy for all re-forms the media and liberals call reforms.
Posted
3:38 PM | [Link]
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SOMMERS IN AUSTIN [Stanley Kurtz]
I’m pleased to report that Christina Hoff Sommers’s talk in Austin went off without a hitch. I don’t know if the people who launched the protest got wind of what was happening on The Corner and backed off, or if they simply meant to confine their activities to bringing behind the scenes pressure on the schools that invited Sommers. But a Corner reader from Austin, Christopher Burnett, sends this account: “Ms. Sommers talk in Austin...was well-attended and the crowd (75 to 100 folks) was well behaved. Nary a drooling uber-feminist in sight. Thus we were treated to a delightful presentation by a delightful person who said what she wanted to say without any childish disruptions. After hearing the lecture, I couldn’t imagine what the looney feminists had to complain about. Ms. Sommers simply spoke truisms that anyone who’s ever raised a child knows. Perhaps there’s hope for Austin! And a big thanks to the Corner for getting the word out on the talk.”
Posted
2:58 PM | [Link]
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WHY AMERICA IS NO. 1 [Michael Potemra]
Today's Washington Post runs some terrific Nixon material, transcripts of his rants against drugs and homosexuality. Here's my personal favorite: "Let's look at the strong societies. The Russians. Goddamn it, they root [gays] out, they don't let 'em hang around at all. You know what I mean? I don't know what they do with them. Dope? Do you think the Russians allow dope? Hell no. Not if they can catch it, they send them up. You see, homosexuality, dope, uh, immorality in general: These are the enemies of strong societies. That's why the Communists and the left-wingers are pushing it. They're trying to destroy us." You know what I love most about this? The idea that the Soviet Union, less than two decades before its complete destruction, is a "strong" society because it tyrannizes over its own citizens. Well, we didn't take Nixon's advice and become more like the Communists. And guess which country is still standing.
Posted
1:08 PM | [Link]
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TWO BLEATS FOR THE MOOSE: [Rich Lowry]
Jonah, I have to part ways with you. Today, I want to give The Moose credit at least for fervently believing in a bad idea and doing his small bit to push it to fruition. So, I think The Corner should officially dub The Moose “a helluva herbivore,” at least for today (well, at least until the close of business).
Posted
12:49 PM | [Link]
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BACK TO "THE POINT": [Rod Dreher] I'll be back on CNN's "The Point" tonight discussing the scandal, and the Pope's response. With any luck, we'll have a few moments to discuss the blessedness of Dear Leader ("Jonah" to the rest of you) reaching his Christological year on this day. Show's on at 8:30pm Eastern.
Posted
12:34 PM | [Link]
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BOOZ NEWS [Andrew Stuttaford]
The infantilization of America continues. Under pressure from a combination of unelected "advocacy groups" and self-important politicians, NBC has decided that it will not, in future, be showing commercials for hard liquor.
Posted
12:09 PM | [Link]
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NOTHING PLEASES THE MOOSE [Jonah Goldberg]
On what must be the secular equivalent of the Rapture for the Bull Moose (Glory Be! Campiagn Finance "Reform" is here!), he ends up sounding like a bitter old lefty, sitting in the dark, throwing beer bottles at the TV because nothing’s ever good enough. That’s fine, but then he goes on to write that Bush… "is defiant in the face of apoplexy of the likes of the bloviating Rush, the K Street Crowd (and their concierge, Delay) and the craven conservatives who cower in the corner." [Emphasis mine]. One must assume he’s talking about, well, me and Rich. "Craven" and "cower", last I checked, mean "cowardly" or "fearful" – and these are funny words coming from someone who won’t even put his name on what he writes. Anyway, I will take the high road and say, Congratulations Mr. Moose. I hope you’re right that this legislation will solve all of the world’s problems.
Posted
11:54 AM | [Link]
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LITTLE HELP [Jonah Goldberg] I'm probably going to do a corrections column soon. If not tomorrow then next week. If any of you have sent me really meaty corrections in the last few weeks, please resend them. This spam campaign from CAIR and some travelling has caused me to delete/ignore/lose lots of emails inadvertantly. Also, please don't just send me corrections to yesterday's column. Now I know Florida A&M was a traditionally black college and that the Nazis never turned Jews into soap (they did do plenty of other bad things, however). Real flying monkeys know what I'm talking about; I'm looking for the good stuff from the last few weeks/months. Please send them to Gfilecorrections@aol.com
Posted
11:19 AM | [Link]
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IN DEFENSE OF THE POPE [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Not to make this Catholic day in addition to Jonah’s birthday on The Corner, but a quick note on the Pope’s “statement.” I wouldn’t be as pessimistic as Rod. Regardless of how the media is taking it, I think it is important to look at it in context: JPII was sending his Holy Thursday letter to all the priests of the world—some who have grave evils that are not child-abuse and sex scandals to deal with. And for the priests in the U.S., the good ones—who I daresay are the majority—they need to be inspired. They need to be spoken to by this man, who knows evil. Seminarians on the verge of ordination need to remember why it is they said “yes” to the call in the first place. Because, along with criminal prosecutions, resignations, and cleaning house, the Catholic Church needs its priesthood. I think it’s important to remember this was the Pope's main audience in this letter, and there is some comfort to be taken in that.
Again, here’s the complete letter.
Posted
10:35 AM | [Link]
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THE OPRAHFICATION OF ANDREW: [Rod Dreher] Smart-guy Andrew Sullivan has oprahfied the Church scandal debate. Read down to the "Faith Again" part of his blog today.
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10:15 AM | [Link]
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THE POPE SPEAKS, FINALLY: [Rod Dreher] John Paul has finally broken his silence on the sex-abuse scandal shaking the Church in America -- and his words may break your heart. In a speech today, the Holy Father lamented that all priests are now put under the cloud of suspicion by the actions of a few bad ones. Maybe there will be more when the full text of the address is published, but there is no reported concern from the Pope for the real victims of this crisis: children and families. He said the Church "shows her concern for victims, and strives to respond in truth and justice to each of these painful situations." No it doesn't, Holy Father, which is how we got into this mess in the first place. This is the most depressing day, to me at least, since this scandal broke. One feels abandoned even by our sainted pontiff. If even he doesn't understand what's happening, and how serious it is, and sees the institutional Church as more victim than victimizer, then we are in worse shape than I thought.
Posted
9:38 AM | [Link]
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IN HIS OWN WORDS [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Not that I would ever take issue with a wire account (for those without the sarcasm filter: I'm being sarcastic), but in case readers want to go to the source, here's the Pope's Holy Thursday letter to priests.
Posted
9:27 AM | [Link]
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FUNNY, I DON’T FEEL OLD [Jonah Goldberg]
But I do feel like I’ve been at NRO for a lonnnnng time. Someone reminded me of my 30th birthday column. Note how formatting comes and goes, but atrocious grammar is forever.
Posted
9:21 AM | [Link]
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WAHOO [Jonah Goldberg]
Today I am as old as Jesus was, alas with remarkably fewer accomplishments under my belt. Thanks to everyone wishing me the best. Regarding Kathryn’s idea for a free gift which requires no ambulatory activity on her part, I have an idea. Yes, by all means subscribe to the carbon-based NR. But maybe you could also fill out the subscription form like this:
FIRST NAME: GIVE JONAH A RAISE
LAST NAME: GIVE JONAH A RAISE
EMAIL ADDRESS: GIVE_JONAH_A_RAISE@HE_DESERVES_IT.COM
Or something like that, be creative.
Posted
9:20 AM | [Link]
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I BEAT ROD!!! [Jonah Goldberg]
The Pope has broken his silence on the pedophilia scandal, calling it a "grievous evil." And, I caught it before Rod!
Posted
9:18 AM | [Link]
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SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY [Andrew Stuttaford]
Sweden has just announced that it is upgrading its mission in the North Korean capital to full embassy status. No word yet on the country's plans to open up diplomatic relations with the Devil.
Posted
9:15 AM | [Link]
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JONAH'S BIRTHDAY CONTEST [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
So today's Jonah's birthday. Happy birthday! (Click here for fireworks.) This is so typical for an online operation: While Jonah and I see each other in person maybe twice a year at most, I typically communicate with him more than I do with most of the folks sitting near me at NR World Headquarters. Which, as you might imagine, is a riot and an honor. So I need your help. I never plan ahead, so haven't gotten the G-Man a gift. Any cyber, NRO-cool ideas are welcome—just so long as I do not have to leave my desk or spend money (but you of course should feel free to spend money on a NR subscription. Click here to get the magazine Jonah Goldberg calls his "favorite." All subscriptions filed today will earn Jonah brownie points with "the suits.") We’ll announce the winning suggestion later today.
Posted
7:32 AM | [Link]
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MADNESS ON THE LEFT [Stanley Kurtz]
Just how marginalized the Left now is can be debated, but the existence of an anti-war Left is beyond question. Here are a couple of choice rants to prove it. The first belongs to Ted Rall, the cartoonist who likes to make fun of “terror widows.” In a column comparing America to George Orwell’s 1984, Rall gives us a peak at the method behind his cartoon madness. Rall’s piece is a near perfect expression of the line I noted a couple of weeks ago in “Left Plays Survivor.” He simply denies the reality of Islamic terrorism (except insofar as America’s own defensive moves provoke it) and sees the open-ended war as nothing but a ploy to keep Republicans in power. But you have to read the piece itself to get the full flavor of Rall’s paranoia. Another breathtakingly extreme expression of anti-war sentiment is available at CampusNonsense which links to protests at Stanford against the selection of Condoleezza Rice as a graduation speaker. The cultural divide between the anti-war Left and the rest of the country is positively oceanic right now. I can’t help but worry about the future, when the going in this war gets truly tough. But for now, I am simply dazed, amazed, and yes, somehow entertained, by what seems to me like the near madness of these anti-war tirades.
Posted
6:51 AM | [Link]
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BREASTGATE--THE LAST WORD [John Derbyshire]
The real outrage stirred by my last-Friday review of the current Time
Machine movie came in response to my side-swipe at the lame 1960 version. It seems there is a throbbing underground of Yvette Mimieux admirers out there. Perhaps the '60s weren't all bad.
Posted
6:48 AM | [Link]
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HITCHENS ON CHURCHILL [Andrew Stuttaford]
Jonah, you were talking about Christopher Hitchens's piece on Churchill in the latest edition of The Atlantic Monthly. One small point that caught my eye was the way in which Hitchens criticizes British appeasement of 1930s fascism, while at the same time condemning Britain's 1918 attempt to head off another 20th-century horror--Soviet communism. That seems somewhat inconsistent.I was also surprised to see the British intervention in the Russia of 1918 referred to as "the brutal, abortive invasion of Lenin's Russia." Leaving aside the fact that that vast and savagely divided country could not at that time have been described as belonging to Lenin (or anyone else) it is far from clear that the rather feeble British landings in Northern Russia really merit the label "invasion." They certainly do not deserve the adjective "brutal." Christopher Hitchens is, however, correct to say that they were "abortive," a fact that was a tragedy both for Russia and the world.
Posted
6:06 AM | [Link]
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ONE MORE THING ABOUT OPRAH [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
You might enjoy this oldie but goodie from Mark Steyn on Oprah, from NR circa 1998. Don't mind the now-ancient layout (don't worry if some graphics don't load).
Posted
6:03 AM | [Link]
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POOR GWYNETH [Andrew Stuttaford]
The New York Post is reporting that Gwyneth Paltrow may move to Europe because, she says, Hollywood is "completely male-dominated." Of itself, that's an irritating piece of PC claptrap, but it sounds particularly self-indulgent and silly coming from a lady who has made a good deal of money out of the place. Fans of Ms. Paltrow will, however, be glad to know that she hasn't yet joined Alec Baldwin in exile from the U.S. (come to think of it, nor has Alec Baldwin). Gwyneth will be presenting at the male-dominated Oscar ceremony on Sunday night.
Posted
5:55 AM | [Link]
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COMING OF AGE IN THE UNIVERSE: [John J. Miller]
NASA is thinking about how to colonize the galaxy, and it's turning to anthropologists for advice. Who else would propose using "Amazonian teams of women--lighter and more cooperative than men--waiting for the right moment to impregnate themselves using an on-board sperm bank"?
Posted
5:42 AM | [Link]
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Wednesday, March 20
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FOR THE RECORD [JONAH GOLDBERG] I did not know that Florida A&M is an historically black college. I bring this up because I used the word "simian" in the same sentence as "Florida A&M" and some readers think I will get in trouble for doing so. Anyway, I obviously didn't mean anything racial by it. But I did mean to say that the A&M students who applauded Alec Baldwin -- black or white -- were idiots. For the record.
Posted
7:14 PM | [Link]
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MILLION-DOLLAR SEX ABUSE SUIT FILED AGAINST CHURCH: [Rod Dreher] Late this afternoon, a $1 million sex-abuse lawsuit was filed in U.S. district court in Pennsylvania naming the Society of St. John, its top two priests, the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP), St. Gregory's Academy, the Diocese of Scranton and its bishop, James C. Timlin. NRO first reported allegations of sexual misconduct involving the Society here. The lawsuit alleges that Fr. Eric Ensey coerced the anonymous plaintiff into homosexual acts while the plaintiff was a student and a minor at St. Gregory's Academy. It also alleges that Fr. Carlos Urrutugoity, the Society's founder, "directed inappropriate homosexual contact" toward the plaintiff, all of which resulted in the boy's parents having to pay for medical care. The suit further alleges that Bishop Timlin was negligent for not taking complaints about the priests' purported homosexual behavior seriously, and acting to remove them, and makes similar claims against the school and the FSSP, which runs it. In the past, the bishop and the Society have denied these accusations. Now everyone will get to hash it out in court.
Posted
7:11 PM | [Link]
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OPRAH, THE END: [Rod Dreher] And finally, Karen Bashore notes that the phenomenon of oprahfication involves "the idea that it is more important to be 'concerned' about an issue than to be right about it," which pretty much sums up contemporary liberalism, if you ask me. Gary Dienes calls oprahfication "enlightenment through talking about something until one is convinced one is not to blame for it." Along those lines, a reader whose name I forgot to write down called oprahfication "the tendency to accept an emotional explanation when a logical one hurts our feelings," or "It's not my fault, and here's an expert to tell you why." Toby Bianchi takes a broad sociological view, calling oprahfication "the phenomenon of offering a liberal outlook on Tuesday, and having it repeated as gospel at 10,000 soccer matches by Thursday." Thanks to all readers who participated. I hope language maven Bill Safire is reading!
Posted
6:56 PM | [Link]
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MORE OPRAH: [Rod Dreher] Sanjay Verbeek describes oprahfication as "tenderizing issues into bland pap more easily digested by small children and liberals," and gives the following perceptive example: "Translating the word 'Islam' as peace is an oprahfication of the truth; Islam actually means 'submission.' Prof. Terry Mattingly, who knows more about the theology of Oprah-ism than just about anybody, defines oprahfication as "to address a serious issue in daily life in a manner that assumes all truth is based on human experiences (feelings and emotions) and/or current pop-moral and pop-psychological theories, as opposed to the claims of religious doctrine, transcendent faith or cultural traditions." Edwin Maier notes that oprahfying "often focuses on finding the reasons for a person's actions with little regard for the seriousness of those actions," while Carmen Parlato discerns that oprahfication entails "ability to claim membership in or solidarity with a recognized victim group, a near complete inability to reason through actual undisputed facts, and a near perfect ability to ignore inconvenient facts."
Posted
6:51 PM | [Link]
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OPRAH CONTEST RESULTS: [Rod Dreher] Wow, you guys are observant. I have way more great definitions than I can possibly post. Two of my favorite ones came from James McNeely, who snarkily questioned the notion of seeking a definition for "to oprahfy," writing, "It doesn't matter what I think 'oprahfied' means; what does your heart tell you it means?" But then he offered this: "Oprahfy: To confront all human conditions and problems by redefining them as a series of emotionally scarring events. ... A form of denial." Daniel Connaughton writes, "To oprahfy is to reduce or transform something into somethign that triggers and emotionally rewarding reaction." Matt Wood calls oprahfication "the act of applying a treacly veneer to a particular subject while simultaneously draining it of all force, power, significance and substance, so as to render it palatable to the broadest possible audience. And Kate Sherrod observes that "to oprahfy is to render the tragic ludicrous or the ludicrous tragic through various devices of sensationalizing; in either direction, it is to render sensible, tasteful, educated people completely incapable of caring about the matter (or material) to which one has tried to draw attention.
Posted
6:45 PM | [Link]
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LOGROLLING IN OUR TIME: [Rod Dreher] I hope everybody reads Jonah "Tomorrow Is My Birthday" Goldberg's first-rate G-File rant, about the necessity to remember exactly what was done to us on 9/11. For some reason, it put me in mind of Erroll Morris's terrific, creepy documentary, "Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred Leuchter, Jr." The film profiles a squirrelly nebbish who parlayed his fascination with the electric chair into a lucrative prison-industry consulting career. Leuchter came undone when he got sucked into the Holocaust denial fringe, whose figures flattered him and made him feel like he was Somebody. Leuchter isn't (apparently) an evil man, but he lost his soul because his pathetic need to feel important and loved made him believe evil things that couldn't possibly be true. Simple human vanity, as much as malicious evil, can corrupt our historical memory and understanding of events, without us realizing what has happened.
Posted
5:58 PM | [Link]
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PROHIBITION--A FEDERALIST VIEW [Jonathan Adler]
Whether or not one believes that drugs should be illegal, there is a strong argument to be made for leaving the particulars of drug-control policy to the individual states, and relegating the federal government to assisting in the control of interstate trafficking and other matters that impact an identifiable federal interest. This is, after all, what was done with alcohol after the end of prohibition. For an extended argument along these lines, see Daniel Benjamin and Roger Miller's provocative book Undoing Drugs: Beyond Legalization.
Posted
4:28 PM | [Link]
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LET JONAH'S KIDS TAKE JONAH'S POT QUIZ [Jonathan Adler]
Doesn't the whole debate about whether or not to allow widespread drug testing in schools disappear once the state's monopoly on education is ended? That is, once school choice is a reality, then parents can send their children to those schools that have drug testing policies of which they approve. If I recall correctly, Charles Murray made a similar argument a decade or so ago in The New Republic.
Posted
4:26 PM | [Link]
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SOOOOO SKETCHY [Jonah Goldberg] I hope everybody has read Byron York's excellent piece on Roger Clinton moolah.
Posted
3:16 PM | [Link]
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RAMESH IS HIGHER THAN A MOONBAT [Jonah] Just kidding.
Posted
3:14 PM | [Link]
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JONAH'S POP QUIZ [Ramesh Ponnuru]
No immediate objections come to mind about a schoolwide policy of drug testing. (Nobody at NR that I'm aware of has, by the way, advocated legalizing drugs for children.) Why the Supreme Court gets a veto over a school's disciplinary policies is also something of a mystery to me.
Posted
2:57 PM | [Link]
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JONAH'S BLIND POT [Ramesh Ponnuru]
My own position is less far from Jonah's than he thinks. He says he favors the legalization of pot but not of other drugs and therefore puts himself in the prohibitionist camp. I basically take the same view--although I would also rethink the "war on drugs" as a federal responsibility. But I think Jonah underestimates how big a part of the war on drugs marijuana is, in terms either of arrest rates or law-enforcement resources. Legalizing marijuana would not be some minor change to our drug laws.
Posted
2:56 PM | [Link]
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MICHAEL MOORE, GENTLEMAN OF THE PEOPLE: A Corner reader took offense at Michael Moore's nasty behavior, as reported in yesterday's San Diego Union-Tribune, and wrote Moore to complain about it, calling himself a "former fan." Former Fan forwarded me the e-mail he received from Moore (mmflint@aol.com), reproduced here verbatim (except for the profanity): dear former fan, glad you are former! 'casue i don't need any fans who would believe that scummy anti-union paper! that pr--k who wrote that column is best friends with the guy who was married to my sister and abandonned her and the two kids there in san diego. so f--k him, f--k you. everything he wrote was a lie, and i plan on taking action. mike
Posted
2:29 PM | [Link]
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OPRAH CONTEST: [Rod Dreher] I've heard and used the term "Oprah-fied" myself, the capital "O" and the hyphen indicative of a certain unease with the neologism. Imagine my surprise and delight to see it deployed as "oprahfied" by Jim Nuechterlein in his First Things column this month. Truly it has entered the popular lexicon. Would any of you Corner lexicographers care to hazard a definition of "oprahfication"? What does it mean to oprahfy something? Keep your definitions short and sweet, and send them to me at rdreher@nationalreview.com. I'll post the best ones in The Corner by day's end.
Posted
2:18 PM | [Link]
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WORSE THAN I THOUGHT [Jonah Goldberg] I just read the transcript of Chris Matthews' anti-neoconservative rant (I'd link to it, but I got it through Nexis, I couldn't find it at MSNBC). Good Lord, Matthews sounds like he's about to say "I have in my hand a list of neoconservatives inside the American government." He makes David Frum – a Canadian by birth -- sound like a Soviet mole. And, most bizarre, he calls Dana Milbank's puff piece on Bill Kristol a "very courageous piece," as if Milbank had the guts to name names. He asks Milbank, "Are [the neoconservatives] -- are they loyal to the Kristol neoconservative movement, or to the president?" I don’t like calling people McCarthyites, partly because McCarthy was right about a lot of stuff, but Matthews seems to be doing his best impersonation.
Posted
1:25 PM | [Link]
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SAUCER OF MILK FOR THE POST [Jonathan Adler]
I am surprised that no one commented on the Washington Post's surprisingly catty and personal editorial on Senator Lott's response to the defeat of Judge Pickering for a seat of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The usual Post editorial is mild and mundane. Even when taking uncharacterisically strong positions, the Post typically adds all sorts of caveats to tone down their position. Not so here. The Post calls Lott "touchy," "impulsive," "irrational" and "petty." Then it suggests that the Senator "do some deep breathing and consider the possibility that no one is out to get him, that Mississippi can do better than Judge Pickering, and that even as minority leader, he's still got a job that keeps him out of the sun." Meow! That almost reads like Maureen Dowd.
Posted
12:45 PM | [Link]
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MATTHEWS AGONISTES [Jonah Goldberg] I don't watch Hardball anymore, but to be fair I rarely watch any of those shows. But I do find Chris Matthews' ongoing meltdown to be fascinating. He's been railing against "the Neocons" with a passion usually only found on the most rabid paleocon websites and he's been screaming about the shortcomings of all his competitors. It’s only a working theory, but I think Matthews is freaking out because he’s losing his relevance and so, out of desperation, he’s consciously or subconsciously conjuring some old lefty dovishness from his Tip O’Neill days in order to carve out a niche for himself. I think it’s a shame because generally I like the guy.
Posted
12:16 PM | [Link]
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DOING JUSTICE: IN TERRORISM TRIAL, DEATH-PENALTY DEBATE BLAZES NEW GROUND:[Rich Lowry]
From the Wall Street Journal: "On Sept. 15, federal agents transporting suspected terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui from his Minneapolis jail cell to a New York detention center made a detour, stopping first at the buring wreckage of the World Trade Center. According to the government's written record of the conversation, Mr. Moussaoui eyed the disaster scene and had this to say: 'F-- you, f-- America.' Then he laughed, according to the record, take from officers who accompanied Mr. Moussaoui that day."
Posted
12:12 PM | [Link]
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OUTTA HERE: [Rich Lowry]
Our resolve to get rid of Saddam Hussein is already having an effect. This from Newsweek: “About three weeks ago 36 officers, including a colonel in Saddam’s elite special Republican Guard, showed up in neighboring Turkey, according to one former Iraqi general (a State Department source puts the Iraqi officer defection rate at about a half dozen per week.)”
Posted
11:52 AM | [Link]
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MORE FROM NEWSWEEK: [Rich Lowry]
“In neo-Nazi circles, 74-year-old Albert Huber is something of a celebrity. The retired Swiss journalist gives talks to far-right groups around the world, condemning Zionists and arguing that the Holocaust was exaggerated. Over the past two decades he made regular trips to the United States, lecturing at Aryan youth and Nation of Islam meetings. Huber’s rants are especially popular among radical Muslims. Born a Christian, the blue-eyed, silver-haired Huber converted to Islam in the 1960s. He now calls himself Ahmad, and preaches that neo-Nazis and Muslims should join ranks to defeat Israel….The late Iranian dictator Ayatollah Khomeini was so impressed with his theories that Huber was once invited to sit at his feet at a gathering in Tehran. More recently, Huber says he has been approached at Islamic conferences by people introduced as representatives of Osama bin Laden.”
Posted
11:51 AM | [Link]
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KSFO FYI [Jonah Goldberg]
I'm joining those crapulent reprobates on KSFO in San Francisco tomorrow morning at 7:00 AM Goofy Coast Time. Truth be told, it’s the only radio show I truly enjoy doing because they understand that everything’s done with ball bearings these days.
Posted
10:58 AM | [Link]
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FALLING BEHIND [Jonah Goldberg]
Edward Gresser of the Progressive Policy Institute sent me an interesting note in response to Monday’s Goldberg File. Regarding my illustration of the stagnation of the Arab world’s economy (Subtracting oil and Israel, North Africa exports less than Finland), Gesser explains that exports are the least of it. "Basically the region's share of the world economy collapsed in the last twenty years as its population nearly doubled. As other countries moved on to clothes, semiconductors etc., the Middle East is still concentrating on oil. Cambodia, for example, is now twice as big an exporter as Lebanon and Malaysia exports a lot more than Saudi Arabia. In 1980, the region’s share of the world’s exports was 13.3% in 2000 it was 4.1%. It’s share of imports was 6.4% in 1980 and it was 2.8% in 2000. Gesser, who’s written a paper on this says "The investment side also pretty interesting, he writes. For example, "Singapore alone has gotten more investment than all the Arab states plus Iran plus Pakistan." In 1985, the share of world investment in the region was 4.8%. Today it is 1.6%.
My only question in response to this is, Why exactly does Pat Buchanan thinks an exploding population is a sign of economic and social health?
Posted
10:51 AM | [Link]
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MORE ZERO-TOLERANCE NONSENSE [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
As the child of two educators, I almost always want to believe the media is missing something when it comes to ridiculous school decisions. But here we are, another silly zero-tolerance case. A 16-year-old honors student expelled for having a bread knife in his truck. As the boy’s father has said, "Zero tolerance doesn't mean zero judgment or rights." The district superintent seems to agree, saying the law ties the school’s hands. Can someone spell common sense? Never, when it comes to “weapons.”
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10:50 AM | [Link]
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THE COMING STORM [Rod Dreher]
Michael Kelly's excellent column today ends with his approvingly quoting a nun saying it's time to "take back our church." Many of us feel the same way -- but I doubt very much the nun and I agree on what "taking back our church" means. For us orthodox Catholics, it means cleaning out the seminaries of dissenters and sexual outlaws, installing bishops who are vigorously and publicly faithful to the Magisterium, and who take the teaching of the faith seriously. And, of course, zero tolerance on sexual abuse, and a workable mechanism for enforcing it. If you want to see what the incoherent Catholic left wants, read Andrew Sullivan today. The only thing I agree with Andrew on is the seriousness of the crisis, and how the just anger of the Catholic faithful will not be appeased in the usual way. Are orthodox Catholics ready for this fight? We had better be.
Posted
9:56 AM | [Link]
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WOMEN WHINING ENDLESSLY [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that female science professors at MIT are still whining about “feeling marginalized.” Despite equal pay, according to the provost, "Women faculty members are not equal participants in our faculty community. A comment is repeated over and over that MIT is a 'man's world.' This must change." Maybe it has something to do with the feeling comes from the fact that the guys are working while the women are whining. (For more on the endless MIT controversy see here and here.
Posted
9:53 AM | [Link]
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POP QUIZ [Jonah Goldberg]
I know I’m the house nerd when it comes to the drug war. National Review favors the legalization of drugs and -- with the exception of pot -- I’m against it. So maybe Ramesh or somebody else could explain to me why this Oklahoma drug test thing is such an outrage? Put aside for a moment the fact that schools are in loco parentis (or whatever that’s called) institutions, kids are subject to random tests every day. We call them pop quizzes. The assumption behind a pop quiz is that you haven’t been behaving properly (i.e. studying) and we’re going to catch you in order to make you learn an important lesson. Random drug tests operate on the same assumption. I admit it would bother me if these were adults, but kids are not full-fledged citizens and they shouldn’t be treated as such. I also admit that I would flip out if I were subjected to such a test in school. But that’s what kids do in such situations. Regardless, I don’t love the policy, but teaching kids that there are consequences to taking drugs seems to me a reasonable thing for a school to do – especially if we’re supposed to be following a "zero tolerance" policy.
Posted
9:47 AM | [Link]
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GOOD-NEWS ACADEMICS[Dave Kopel]
It's not often that an article in a scholarly journal can change the world for the better in a just a few days. But according to the New York Times, an article by Representative Tom Lantos (D., Calif.) in the The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs helped convince U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson to quit. The article describes Mrs. Robinson's role in allowing the Durban conference against racism to turn into a pro-racist, anti-Semitic atrocity which ignored human rights violations such as the continuing slave trade in Africa. Lantos explains that the conference went off-track when a pre-conference in Tehran turned into anti-Israel hatefest, and Mrs. Robinson applauded the conference's results. At the Durban conference neared, Mrs. Robinson sided with the Arab dictatorships in equating Israel with Nazi Germany. Lantos reports several other important facts: A few months before the conference, a delegate from a sub-Saharan African state asked why the United States was letting Egypt, which receives two billion dollars a year in U.S. aid, take the leading, hardline role in demanding the anti-racism conference be turned into an anti-Israel conference. At Durban and before, many of the so-called "civil rights" groups from the United States supported the anti-Semitic positions pushed by the Arabs, and encouraged black African states to hold firm in their demands for slavery "reparations" from U.S. taxpayers. International "human rights" groups such as Amnesty International did almost nothing to oppose anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism. To put it bluntly, many of the so-called human rights groups don't care about the rights of Jewish humans, and many of America's so-called Middle East allies--especially Egypt, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia--work diligently and unyieldingly against U.S. interests.
Posted
8:27 AM | [Link]
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CHECKBOOK TERRORISM [John Derbyshire]
In an e-mail responding to my Ireland piece, a reader used the phrase "checkbook terrorism" to refer to the armchair types here in the U.S. who give donations to IRA fronts like Noraid. It may be that I haven't been keeping up as well as I should, but this phrase is new to me, and I think very handy. Think of the Saudis, for example--checkbook terrorists!
Posted
7:58 AM | [Link]
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WHY, OH WHY? [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Maybe this could be a gift to the rest of us: How about when a New York Times columnist wins the Pulitzer, his byline is retired. So, we wouldn’t have to read Maureen Dowd anymore. And I would be happy to help work for the Campaign to Pulitzer Krugman and Kristof, for instance. Today for those of you wise enough to skip her, Dowd says, among many other completely ridiculous things: “The last happy, hetero, celibate parish was run by Barry Fitzgerald and Bing Crosby.”
Posted
6:44 AM | [Link]
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LOOK WHO'S READING [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
In his latest syndicated column (on the realities of Arab hatred for us), David Limbaugh cites the venerable Corner. Read his column (today, and regularly) here.
Posted
6:33 AM | [Link]
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THERE’S NO WAY TO HIDE FROM THE JURY ROOM [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Russell Yates is in the news for missing jury duty earlier this week. Somehow he missed the summons. Even better: Andrea Yates was called three months ago.
Posted
6:22 AM | [Link]
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JUST LIKE BROWARD [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Ok, all my post-election feelings of distress and dismay came rushing back when I read that after a brave move to cancel “Take Your Daughters to Work Day” this year, Broward County, Florida changed its mind. What they haven’t back down on—yet—is that in their version of the silly day, boys are included; it’s Take Your Child to Work [to Goof Off] Day.
Posted
5:57 AM | [Link]
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LOVING FIDEL: [John J. Miller]
The lawyer for Cuba spy Ana Belen Montes says that his client worked on behalf of Fidel Castro "because of her moral belief that United States policy does not afford Cubans respect, tolerance and understanding" and that she "was motivated by her desire to help the Cuban people." The most obvious way to help the Cuban people, of course, is to work against Fidel Castro.
Posted
5:40 AM | [Link]
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Tuesday, March 19
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WHOSE ETHICS? [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
I’ve long disliked the “ethics column” in the New York Times Magazine. But now there’s something to be grateful for: At least he’s not on the op-ed page. Check out the questions he wishes he would get on Slate. You wonder why Slate bothered publishing it and then realize it’s just a pitch for his new book (he’s an ex-Slatewriter). Here’s a peek: “Although many people think I'm a big doofus, I get to make nuclear weapons policy for a powerful nation—you'd recognize all the abrogated treaties. I'm thinking of being a little looser about nukes and using them not just as a deterrent but in regular battles. I wouldn't employ such weapons of mass destruction on just anybody but only against a really evil country—you know, one that tried to acquire weapons of mass destruction. OK? Hey, wait a second. This is none of your damn business! You tricked me again!—G.W.B., Washington”
Posted
9:19 PM | [Link]
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HANDS-ON LEARNING [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
There’s a piece in the Washington Post today about a controversy in Montgomery County, Maryland where schools want to be able to demonstrate to kids how to use condoms. I’m assuming they’re talking bananas, not the more realistic sex-ed that Berkeley has been known for. Of course, they are bananas to talk as if condoms are a panacea for kids, who they assume they cannot persuade from having sex early and often. It’s amazing how in schools where religion and morality are such touchy subjects, administrators are often so quick to touch sex.
Posted
9:14 PM | [Link]
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THE MAN WHO FOLDED HIMSELF [John Derbyshire]
No, not Gary Condit. This is the 1973 novel I mentioned in my review of The Time Machine last week, which I said covered all bases so far as the paradoxes inherent in the concept of time travel are concerned. (What happens if I go back in time & shoot my grandfather? etc., etc.) Several readers told me they had trouble finding copies--it's long out of print, and my mention seems to have caused a run on the 2nd-hand book sites. Well, the author, David Gerrold, tells me he has a large box of mint-condition
paperback copies, autographed, at $20 per--and that includes shipping. E-mail him at davgerrold@compuserve.com.
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8:02 PM | [Link]
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THE ROAD TO GENOCIDE [Dave Kopel]
The human-rights group Genocide Watch has identified six stages which precede genocide. According to the group, Zimbabwe has entered the final stage, Preparation, which immediately precedes genocide. The Heritage Foundation offers a detailed plan for what to do to stop the murderous Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe: Recall our ambassador; continue to withhold direct foreign aid; support pro-freedom organizations in Zimbabwe; and expand Voice of American broadcasts to Zimbabwe. That's a good start, but here's an even more important step: begin distributing arms to the people of Zimbabwe, so that they can resist genocide. Mugabe has been confiscating guns from his potential victims. The history of the 20thcentury shows that genocide is always preceded by gun prohibition. A lot of people have wrung their hands over the world's failure to prevent the genocide in Rwanda a few years ago; if we're serious about preventing genocide in Zimbabwe, it's time to act.
Posted
7:54 PM | [Link]
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P.S. ON SOMMERS [Stanley Kurtz]
To the folks in Austin. The St. Stephens website seems only to list a P.O. Box, not an address. The address of the school is 2900 Bunny Run, Austin Texas.
Posted
7:13 PM | [Link]
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MORE ABOUT SOMMERS, AND WHERE TO FIND HER [Stanley Kurtz]
Thanks to all Corner readers from Austin who've e-mailed NRO about the Sommers talk. Austin conservatives are at one in characterizing their city as a center of Texas liberalism. And plenty of folks have asked for information on the Sommers talk. Thanks to a kind reader, you can find it here. The e-mail alert sent out about the Sommers talk falsely characterizes her as fomenting a battle between girls and boys. The truth is, Sommers exposes the false claims of "girl crisis" advocates that really do harm boys (and that don't help girls either). For interest, here are some more excerpts from the anti-Sommers alert. Notice how the assumption is that anyone conservative or Republican is, almost by definition, inappropriate as a speaker at a school: "[Sommers' book] is part and parcel of the right-wing agenda promoted by the American Enterprise Institute. Sommers, like Newt Gingrich, is employed by the American Enterprise Institute, to promote a "conservative agenda" within the realm of women's issues....GENaustin (formerly The Ophelia Project), SafePlace and Texas Freedom Network are deeply concerned that St. Stephens, St. Andrews, Trinity and St. Gabriel's Catholic School are sponsoring such a controversial and divisive speaker on such an important topic." It's wonderful to think that a posting on The Corner might result in Sommers getting some help. I have two suggestions. First, someone ought to call the Austin Herald and let them know about the talk and the controversy. Second, whoever comes to support Sommers needs to maintain basic courtesy, or we just turn into the other side. What strikes me here as well is the power of blogging, which seems to be able to bridge the local and the national. Anyway, thanks to all the Texans who wrote in. Have a great time at the talk! From the sound of the e-mails, you may be outnumbered, but if this works, not by much.
Posted
7:12 PM | [Link]
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FROM THE "LET THEM EAT CAKE" FILE: [Rod Dreher] When last we checked in with Omaha Archbishop Elden Curtiss, he was struggling to explain to his people why he allowed a priest who had admitted an obsession with child pornography to continue working around kids for a year -- until the cops caught up with the pervert. Two Omaha Catholics, including an 80-year-old woman, wrote letters to the city paper complaining about the archbishop's actions. Curtiss wrote them back -- and you won't believe how he dressed them down!
Posted
7:03 PM | [Link]
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FORGIVE ME IN ADVANCE [Andrew Stuttaford]
Some situations just cry out for a bad pun. So I'm just going to describe the Sullivan/Derbyshire "breast" controversy as a tempest in a B cup...
Posted
5:55 PM | [Link]
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MORE ON MOORE: [Rod Dreher] If this jackass didn't exist, the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy would have to make him up. Admitted multimillionaire Michael Moore gives an interview in which he praises chain restaurants because they aren't run by small businessmen, who are in his view nothing but a bunch of right-wing racists. Thanks to Instapundit for first linking to this gem.
Posted
5:53 PM | [Link]
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NEVER MEET YOUR HEROES [John Derbyshire]
Hilarious. Reminds me of a classic Orwell story in similar vein. While writing "The Road to Wigan Pier," Orwell did a tour of the "depressed areas" of Northern England under the guidance of various handlers provided by the leftist Independent Labour Party. One of these guides was a communist, whose conversation was formed entirely out of Marxist cliches about the wickedness of the bourgeoisie. Orwell put up with it for a day or two, then rounded on the fellow: "Now look here. My family is bourgeois and my friends are bourgeois, and if you gon't stop talking about them like that, I'll punch your head."
Posted
5:11 PM | [Link]
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I SPIED [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Ana Belen Montes, a senior official in the Defense Intelligence Agency, was arrested in September for spying for 17 years for Cuba, for free. No diamonds or cash or the like. Just love of Castro, one guesses. She must have gotten the romantic impulse from the American media.
Posted
5:08 PM | [Link]
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THE MORALITY OF GUN CONTROL [Dave Kopel]
Besides being ineffective, is gun control also immoral? Jeff Snyder addresses the question in his new book A Nation of Cowards, which I review in the latest issue of Ideas on Liberty. I also review David Young's outstanding collection of original documents, The Origin of the Second Amendment: A Documentary History of the Bill of Rights.
Posted
4:32 PM | [Link]
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MAKING HIGHER ED SAFE FOR SOMMERS [Stanley Kurtz]
I first met Christina Hoff Sommers when I went to see her give a reading from Who Stole Feminism at a bookstore in Boston. I was still an academic, deeply involved in curriculum battles with feminists at Harvard, and I’d come to familiarize myself with the work of this noted feminist critic. Demonstrators stood just outside the rows of folding chairs, shouting challenges, and constantly interrupting as Sommers delivered her talk. I was awestruck at Sommers’s calm in the face of this harassment. Finally, I’m proud to say, I turned and shouted back at the demonstrators, telling them they’d had their say, and that we’d come to hear Sommers. To my surprise, they picked up and left. (Take a lesson. Fighting back works.) I guess I’m still in the business of defending Sommers from the thought police. But it’s important to understand that for courageous folks like Sommers, the battle never ends. Readers of NRO may remember the incident I wrote about last December, when Sommers talk was cut off by a government official and a professor told her to “Shut the f**k up, bitch.” That was spectacular, but the harassment is constant. Tomorrow, for example, Sommers is scheduled to deliver a talk at the St. Stephens school in Austin Texas. Already, an e-mail alert has gone out from local organizations on the feminist Left, GENaustin (formerly the Ophelia Project), SafePlace, and the Texas Freedom Network, organizing protests and expressing deep concern that several of Austin’s Catholic schools are even inviting Sommers to speak. And this is Austin, Texas, not Boston, Massachusetts. We must honor Sommers and those conservative warriors who share her courage, but there’s no doubt that the constant harassment takes a toll--ultimately by serving as a warning to others not to speak up. There is nothing to do but fight these tyrannical tactics. The battle is tough, but not unwinnable. Any readers of The Corner in Austin?
Posted
4:30 PM | [Link]
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"NEVER MEET YOUR HEROES": [Rod Dreher] Blowhard Michael Moore showed up for a book signing in San Diego, and alienated a working man. Hilarious stuff.
Posted
2:54 PM | [Link]
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"IT IS SINFUL TO APPROACH THEM": [Rich Lowry]
Brave and important op-ed in the Washington Post on that horrific incident in Saudi Arabia recently when schoolgirls were reportedly prevented from escaping a fire by the virtue police. When this incident came up at our editorial meeting, someone opined that it sounded like it had to be an urban legend. How could something like this actually happen in the 21st century?
Posted
2:19 PM | [Link]
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TUNE IN TONIGHT: [Rod Dreher] Tonight I'll be a guest on a special episode of CNN's "Newsnight with Aaron Brown," which will be entirely devoted to the priest sex abuse scandal. Check it out at 10pm Eastern. The story has become red-hot in New York, with the Manhattan DA telling Cardinal Egan to hand over names of sex-abuse priests. So far, Egan's giving everybody the silent treatment. Here's what I have to say about that in today's New York Post.
Posted
2:12 PM | [Link]
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SHIFLETT ON CD: [Rich Lowry]
Very multi-talented NRO-nik Dave Shiflett is out with a new CD. Dave tells The Corner that “all proceeds go to a host of starving bartenders” and that “it is said to be unpatriotic NOT to support this project.” Check it out...
Posted
1:15 PM | [Link]
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SWIFTLY ASIDE [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Massachusetts's acting governor Jane Swift just withdrew from the governor's race, so Mitt Romney can move in. The state looks forward to the cutting of child-care expenses from the governor's office budget.
Posted
12:32 PM | [Link]
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MORE POLLS ON SOCIAL SECURITY [Ramesh Ponnuru]
Can be found here. [Warning: It's a pdf file; need Acrobat Reader to open.] Karlyn Bowman’s conclusion from a review of the poll data: Neither “the ups and downs of the stock market” nor “Enron’s collapse” have affected public opinion on Social Security reform “in any significant way.”
Posted
11:43 AM | [Link]
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DOES DICK MORRIS STILL READ POLLS? [Ramesh Ponnuru]
Morris in today’s New York Post: “In the aftermath of the recession, it will be some time before anyone is willing to bet their Social Security check on the stock market.” Gallup/CNN/USA Today poll, Jan. 25-27, 2002: “A proposal has been made that would allow people to put a portion of their Social Security payroll taxes into personal retirement accounts that would be invested in private stocks or bonds. Do you favor or oppose this proposal?” Results: Favor, 63 percent; oppose, 33 percent.
Posted
11:37 AM | [Link]
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SAMANTHA & ME [John Derbyshire]
I am not privy to NRO's e-mail bag, but I can give the following report on my own. Response to the movie review was about average for a column--60 or 70 e-mails. The great majority wanted to talk about sci-fi, or argue about whether or not Wells was making a social point. Less than 10 raised the breast issue, in every case to take me up on the point of fact--i.e. either agreeing or (more often) disagreeing about the quality of the features in question. So far nobody has objected to the remark on grounds of taste. My impression is that this is very far from being the most controversial thing I have ever said in an NRO column. Must try harder...
Posted
11:34 AM | [Link]
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KRISTOL'S BEEN OUTED! [Jonah Goldberg] A very strange article on Bill Kristol's impressive influence in the White House by Dana Milbank. It reads as if Milbank needs Kristol to co-sign a loan for him. Not sure I agree with all of it, though I kind of like the odd insinuation that NRO is the home of anti-Bush rhetoric and the Weekly Standard (where McCain is God and Don Rumsfeld is an appeaser of the Red Chinese) is Bush's ideological brain trust. Milbank wonders if Kristol is working "mind-control" on the Bush adminsitration. But I predict many will think this smacks of Kristol's mind-control on Milbank. But, as always, only the Shadow knows the real story. And Kristol's not talking.
Posted
11:07 AM | [Link]
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TRUE, TRUE [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
In the mailbox: Mark Freshwater points out: "This whole controversy about the film review is soooo Sept. 10th."
Posted
9:15 AM | [Link]
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IS THE POPE TOO ILL TO HELP?: [Rod Dreher] Here's an interesting account from the International Herald-Tribune reporting that some Vatican insiders are saying John Paul II is too sick and feeble to handle the clergy sex abuse crisis in America. Others, however, say the Vatican has been slow to react because the American bishops who have bungled this so badly were appointed by John Paul. There's word that His Holiness will finally speak about the crisis during Holy Week. Also, add Pat Buchanan's name to the growing list of prominent Catholic conservatives calling on the Church to clean house.
Posted
8:38 AM | [Link]
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MEIN KAMPF IN ARABIC [Stanley Kurtz]
The London Daily Telegraph reports today that Hitler’s Mein Kampf, in a newly published Arabic translation, is a bestseller in the Palestinian territories, and is selling briskly as well in Britain, where it is offered at newsstands in areas with large concentrations of Arab immigrants. The Arab world has long been rife with the worst sort of anti-Semitism, something that scholars of the Middle East have virtually refused to talk about.
Posted
8:08 AM | [Link]
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SEND IN THE DRONES [James S. Robbins]
A few weeks ago the military was taking hits from the press over a missile strike launched from a Predator UAV at suspected al Qaida targets on February 4. After the successful strike, reports surfaced that the people who were killed were not in fact enemy forces but subsistence farmers gathering scrap metal. The March 18, 2002 edition of Army Times features a full-page story entitled “Hunting bin Laden” which gives a detailed description of the activities inside the secret command post in which targets acquired by UAVs are identified, analyzed, and either engaged or not. While not dealing explicitly with the February 4 strike, the details are similar enough to let the reader understand the thoroughness with which the service, intelligence and other personnel do their job. Check it out if you are interested. Suffice it to say that it takes a lot more than just being a tall guy in a white robe to get on the target list.
Posted
7:39 AM | [Link]
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RE: SNIT FIT: [Rod Dreher] Actually, John, I wouldn't have used the line either, unless it were clear that I was being snarky (e.g., "bodacious ta-tas"). If Andrew had said the remark was tasteless, that'd be one thing. But he somehow found Derb's comment to be an example of an NR "double standard," which made no sense to me, seeing as how the actress in question is an adult.
Posted
7:39 AM | [Link]
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SOFT-MONEY MAVENS: [John J. Miller]
The anti-soft-money Democrats apparently have received a soft-money donation of historic proportions, according to this LA Times story.
Posted
7:11 AM | [Link]
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SO LONG, MRS. ROBINSON [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Mary Robinson, the cheerleader of that infamous Durban conference (just days before Sept. 11) and other international atrocities, who currently chairs a human-rights confab where the U.S. sits on the sidelines as the likes of Cuba, the Sudan, and Saudi Arabia take on human-rights issues throughout the globe, is resigning. (Click here for the full membership list.) Amen
Posted
6:32 AM | [Link]
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KIDS THESE DAYS [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
The six-month review of slang. Your clothes are out of style: “Is that a burka?” That guy’s handsome: “He’s firefighter cute.” Petty concerns: "That's so Sept. 10." And some unfortunate ones: Bedrooms is a mess: It's "ground zero." A mean teacher: He's "such a terrorist."
Posted
6:20 AM | [Link]
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AIRPORT SECURITY [Jonathan Adler]
What is upsetting about what Mr. Quast observed at the airport is not that a four-year-old boy was searched, but that the security staff made their method so plainly observable (and therefore avoidable). I, too, have seen security folks select every n-th person for a search. This is insane because it is easy to avoid--the alert terrorist will merely shift his position in line, much as today's would-be terrorist knows not to purchase a one-way ticket with cash. Searching a passenger who is himself so obviously innocent, however, is not as inherently misguided. There is precedent for the use of innocent passengers as "mules" to carry explosives. In one famous incident, a terrorist hid a bomb in the luggage of his girlfriend--who was, at the time, pregnant with the terrorists child--and did not himself seek to board the plane. If a terrorist is willing to incinerate his pregnant girlfriend, there is no reason to think a would-be terrorist would not be willing to hide a bomb on a child.
Posted
6:17 AM | [Link]
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SNIT FIT? [John J. Miller]
Rod, just curious: Do you think it's appropriate to say of an actress, in a movie review and apparently just for the heck of it, "Her breasts are particularly fine"? I'm a big fan of Derbyshire's work, but that's a line I would have left on the cutting-room floor before posting.
Posted
5:53 AM | [Link]
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NAME GAME: [John J. Miller]
A reader points out that my recent missile-defense story incorrectly refers to the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization; the Pentagon agency in question changed its name in January to the Missile Defense Organization. While I normally don't enjoy being corrected, this time it's worth it: BMDO was a Clinton-era invention, meant to obliterate the Reagan-era name for the same office, the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization. This may seem like a lot of silly politco-bureaucratic infighting over acronyms--and it is--the name now has a kind of accurate simplicity to it.
Posted
5:49 AM | [Link]
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Monday, March 18
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SNIT FIT ALERT: [Rod Dreher] Our old friend Andrew Sullivan is still sore over the argument he and I had last week about priests and pederasty. Now he's accusing NRO of "double standards" because Derb wrote a movie review in which he praised the bodacious ta-tas of a comely 19-year-old lass. Andrew admits the woman in question is of legal age ... so what's his point, exactly? That NRO's writers include heterosexual males who admire the physiques of adult women, and who also hold the view that it is wrong for adult males to sexually assault male minors (female too, for that matter)? Guilty as charged, hoss. Andrew should stick to writing about the war (which he does today, and wonderfully). His mind fogs over when it comes to sex.
Posted
3:41 PM | [Link]
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SEEN AT THE AIRPORT [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
This from Corner reader Dave Quast: We're all familiar with the anecdotes about grandmothers from Des Moines being needlessly troubled by airline security employees. But what I saw yesterday should leave no doubt that Norman Mineta should be ridden out of DC on a rail.
As I was boarding a flight from Seattle to San Francisco, it was clear that the gate agent was merely counting, and sending every n-th person to be searched more thoroughly than the rest of us. The entire line was shocked and appalled when A 4 YEAR OLD BOY was selected as a target of their mindless procedure. He was scared, and his Dad was quite put out (understandably) as the security guy asked him to spread his arms and finagled his metal-detecting wand into his nooks and crannies. (Well, his nooks, anyway.)
We were all aghast, but it seems fruitless to complain about anything in this environment. If we don't expect airline or security workers to THINK, is it too much to ask that the Sec. of Transportation think? I don't think so. Isn't profiling better than THIS?
Posted
2:48 PM | [Link]
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MINOR CLARIFICATION [Jonah Goldberg]
Below, Rod refers to "The Corner's view" in his post "What Instapundit is Missing." Now, I think it's fair to say there's a certain degree of intellectual and ideological consensus here in the Corner. And, as silent as I am on the Catholic scandals, I probably agree with Rod on most of this stuff. But, I can't speak for everybody else who posts to the Corner. Which is why I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the phrasing "The Corner's view." NRO has no separate editorial policy from NR; this was one of the first instructions I received when I became editor of NRO. I don't think the Corner should be held to a single position either. There have been lots of good disagreements in this space, and I would like there to be more. This is a forum, not a real-time editorial.
Posted
1:53 PM | [Link]
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KINSLEY'S B.S. IS EVEN WORSE [Jonathan Adler]
Ramesh rightly points out that Kinsley's attack on Virginia Thomas mischaracterized her argument. The piece is also extremely disingenuous. For instance, Kinsley claims "Republicans are "hypocritical" to criticize liberal interest groups for imposing litmus tests on Bush's nominees. He ponders: "In Virginia Thomas' opinion, should Republican senators vote to confirm a judicial nominee who believes that Roe v. Wade was correctly decided?" If Kinsley had bothered to check, he would note that the GOP-controlled Senate never rejected a judicial nominee to any court because the nominee supported Roe v. Wade, and there was scant Republican opposition to the nomination of liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court.
Posted
1:37 PM | [Link]
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MORE THAN A BLOG [Stanley Kurtz]
Josh Mercer’s new CampusNonsense site is more than just a conservative campus blog. It aims to be a kind of clearing house for conservative blogs nationally, which are linked in the right-hand column. Click on Arizona State’s “Collegiate Conservative,” for example, and you’ll read the story of yet another conservative paper theft. Many of these papers were burned. (The Left seems to have entirely forgotten the terrible images of Nazi book burning.) CampusNonsense has also got a bunch of links to campus conservative papers. And the blog itself features entries by Mercer and others. Check out Harold Eustache Jr.’s account of what happens to black conservatives when they try to speak their mind. This blog is the future. With CampusNonsense acting as a national clearinghouse, we’ve finally got a quick and effective way to give aide and comfort to victims of leftist tyranny throughout the academy. But CampusNonsense still has only a small collection of blogs to list in its right hand column. The potential here is boundless, but if this is going to work, the CampusNonsense network has got to expand. So all you collegiate conservatives out there, start blogging! Then get in touch with Joshua Mercer’s CampusNonsense. I’ll be watching. And if we’re lucky, so will everyone else.
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1:30 PM | [Link]
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BLOGGING ON CAMPUS [Stanley Kurtz]
A couple of weeks ago, I put out a call on The Corner for a blogging revolution among campus conservatives. Kevin Deenihan’s CalStuff (actually, Deenihan’s more classic liberal than conservative) had just played a critical role in bringing two Berkeley scandals to national attention (a male sexuality class with what we might call an extraordinary “lab,” and the theft of a Berkeley conservative newspaper that had just exposed the neo-racist ideology of a campus Mexican American group). CalStuff fed national blogging on these scandals at Instapundit, The Corner, and elsewhere. The result was help for embattled Berkeley conservatives, and trouble for the Berkeley left. So why not have an army of conservative blogs on campuses across the country? That way we could make an end-run around leftist domination of both the academy and the media, thereby bucking up conservatives on campuses nationally. As Kathryn Lopez announced last week on The Corner, my call has now been answered by Joshua Mercer’s brand new CampusNonsense.
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1:27 PM | [Link]
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THIS JUST IN: [Rod Dreher] NBC News reporting a breaking story from Washington. FBI agents are rounding up some 80 participants in an online child porn ring -- including firefighters, teachers and yes, a few Catholic priests. Big press conference on this set for 3pm Eastern.
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1:26 PM | [Link]
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ME ON TV TODAY: [Rod Dreher] I'll be on Court TV's "Catherine Crier Live," discussing the Church abuse scandal with Ray Flynn, the former Boston mayor and ex-US Ambassador to the Vatican. Tune in at 5:30pm Eastern.
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1:14 PM | [Link]
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WHAT INSTAPUNDIT IS MISSING: [Rod Dreher] Instapundit takes on The Corner's view that the heart of the Catholic priest sex abuse scandals lies in the large number of unchaste homosexuals in the priesthood. I won't recount his arguments here (follow the link if you want to see them), but he does ask, "What am I not seeing?" Only the fact that the overwhelming majority of the cases that we know about -- which is to say, the cases that have been the subject of legal proceedings -- involve priests preying on teenage boys (even the liberal Boston Globe reported this yesterday.) Instapundit wants to know what the big deal is over adults having sex with teenagers, and suspects anti-gay prejudice is behind the outrage. This is insane. These are not just adults; these are priests. Many, many young men who have been coerced into sexual relations by priests have suffered tremendous emotional and psychological damage, and have lost their faith. It would hardly be less outrageous if priests were assaulting teenage girls, but the simple fact is there is not a lot of that going on, certainly not relative to the rates of homosexual assault on teen boys. Facts, alas, are stubborn things.
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1:12 PM | [Link]
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BYE BYE BILL [Jonah Goldberg] Though not 100% official, it sounds like "Politically Incorrect" has finally been cancelled. In case your interested, here's my column on Maher from last October.
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12:30 PM | [Link]
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GO ME! [Jonah Goldberg]
I just wrote a whole Goldberg File in 1 hour 17 minutes. It's not bad. Now, I have to finish my Yucca Mountain piece for the mag. Ugh. But, I don't want to hear jack from anybody about how I always file late. If the crackheads at NR-HQ can't get me posted in a timely manner, take it up with them.
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10:42 AM | [Link]
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GO BILL BENNETT!: [Rod Dreher] Another leading conservative voice has joined the ranks of the Catholic faithful demanding an end to business as usual by the Church hierarchy regarding sex abuse cover-ups. Bill Bennett spoke out in a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed today, which we unfortunately can't link to. Bennett was just on CNN making the absolutely necessary point that ending celibacy is a red herring, because men who enter the priesthood attracted to boys or other men will not be deterred by the possibility of marriage. Bennett said that these scandals overwhelmingly involve priests sleeping with teen boys, implying that a real solution will have to involve examining the role of homosexuals in the priesthood. Good on him. We have to keep saying this, because it's a truth the mainstream media will be hard-pressed to acknowledge.
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8:29 AM | [Link]
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CHURCHILL REVISIONISM REVISED: [Jonah Goldberg]
A reader sent me this email clarifying/contradicting the contention -- made by Chris Hitchens -- that Chruchill's major war speeches were made by an actor. Here's his note:
A good source for debunking popular Churchill myths (and confirming their truth even if it reflects badly on the great man), is the Churchill Center's quarterly publication, Finest Hour. Web site is winstonchurchill.org. The Finest Hour, Autumn 2001 (Number 112), had a story on Churchill's speeches, "How Churchill Did It", by Dr. Stephen Bungay. A footnote (number 6) on page 27, discusses the belief that Churchill's "their finest hour" speech of June 18, 1940, was delivered by an actor. I quote the footnote in full:
6. David Irving has put it about that this broadcast, along with the "fight on the beaches" speech of 4 June, was in fact the work of the actor Norman Shelley (Churchill's War, Avon Books 1987, 313, 338.) Others, such as Clive Ponting in 1940: Myth and Reality (Hamish Hamilton 1990, 158) eagerly followed suit. In fact, neither Churchill nor Shelley broadcast the speech of June 4th: parts of it were read out by an announcer with no pretence to be other than who he was. The speech of 18 June was broadcast by Churchill and can be heard at the National Sound Archive in London, ref. 2488-91, preceded by an announcer saying: "Ladies and gentlemen, the Prime Minister." Churchill was asked by the British Council later in the war to make a recording for the U.S., and having rather a lot on his plate, he suggested they use an actor instead. Shelley did the recording, Churchill heard it, was much amused and gave his approval. Shelley told the story in a BBC radio interview in 1978. It is not known for sure when, if at all, his recording was used. Its fate remained unknown until the autumn of 2000 when Anthony Shelley discovered a disc dated 7 September 1942 of his late father doing a Churchill impression, though it is not of any known Churchill speech. I am grateful to the late Sally Hine and to Simon Rooks of the BBC Sound Archive and to Chris Mobbs of the National Sound Archives for helping to sort this out. (See, "That Actor Again" in Datelines, FH 109.)
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7:57 AM | [Link]
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GO MAGGIE! [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
According to the London Times, Lady Thatcher calls on Britain to get out of the EU, calling it “fundamentally unreformable.” Furthermore, she notes in her upcoming book, according to the Times, that "most of the problems the world has faced, including Nazism and Marxism, have come from mainland Europe." We couldn't agree more.
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6:04 AM | [Link]
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KINSLEY’S B.S. [Ramesh Ponnuru]
Just got around to reading Michael Kinsley’s piece going after Virginia Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas. Mrs. Thomas wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal criticizing liberals’ tactics in judicial confirmation fights—using her husband’s as one example and Charles Pickering’s as another. Kinsley acts as though Thomas’s complaint is merely that Democrats oppose nominees for ideological reasons. He writes, “[I]t seems to me that Republican presidents have been more disciplined than the one recent Democrat, Bill Clinton, about nominating judges who won't surprise them, which makes the Republican indignation about ‘ideological’ opposition to the president's choices more hypocritical.” If Republicans are so disciplined, how does Kinsley explain David Souter? Republicans manifestly had no litmus test on abortion for Supreme Court nominees; Clinton made his explicit. But anyway, the conservative complaint about Pickering’s treatmen!
t was that he was smeared and his record distorted, not merely that he was opposed ideologically. Kinsley never mentions that. As for Justice Thomas: If he told the truth about Anita Hill (as I tend to believe), he clearly has a legitimate grievance—and arguably has one even if he didn’t. But leaving that aside, would Kinsley really defend the opponents who made an issue of Thomas’s religion or compared him to David Duke?
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5:58 AM | [Link]
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ROD, I'LL SEE YOUR PEACE LOVING AND RAISE YOU [Jonah Goldberg] Police in Saudi Arabia tried to block firemen from rescuing school girls in a fire. Since they weren't wearing the scarves and robes, the police decided it would be better to let them burn.
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12:08 AM | [Link]
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Sunday, March 17
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WATCH IT! [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Just a subtle suggestion: Our own Michael Novak is on CSPAN'S Booknotes tonight at 8PM EST and replayed later on (11pm, I believe...check your local schedules). And buy his new book, On Two Wings at the www.nrbookservice.com
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8:01 PM | [Link]
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PEACE-LOVING MUSLIM UPDATE: [Rod Dreher] Five Christians were murdered today in a terrorist attack on a Protestant church in Pakistan. We await CAIR's e-mail campaign denouncing this violence. Meanwhile the New York Times (link requires registration) can't find any Palestinians who want a cease-fire with Israel, even as Israel proposes that to allow Gen. Zinni's peace mission to proceed. Indeed, Hamas is now calling for rivers of Jewish blood. We're sure CAIR regrets that too.
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6:47 PM | [Link]
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EUROPE'S WAR PROBLEM [Andrew Stuttaford]
Part of the explanation for European worries about the war against terrorism may be anxiety over the possible response from the EU's large Muslim population. This report from the Sunday Telegraph seems to suggest that these fears are becoming ever more explicit.
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2:40 PM | [Link]
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NOT ALL ABORTION LEGAL [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
New York State saw its first felony abortion conviction in decades on Friday, of a 20-year-old man who beat his girlfriend, who was three months pregnant at the time. "I'm going to beat that baby out of you," he reportedly told her when she refused to have the legal kind of abortion. He faces a sentence of 3 1/2 to 7 years in jail.
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1:57 PM | [Link]
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IT'S A GAY THING AFTER ALL: [Rod Dreher] Finally, the Boston Globe reports that the priest sex scandals nationwide aren't true pedophilia (a deep-seated attraction to prepubescent children), but overwhelmingly a matter of men assaulting adolescent boys. Now, we'll probably be told that the facts are homophobic, or somesuch nonsense, but it's great that the liberal Boston Globe is willing to report this. It is absolutely clear now that we will never be able to figure out how to end this excruciating crisis without critically examining the culture of homosexuality in the Catholic priesthood.
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11:27 AM | [Link]
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SCANDALIZING CARDINAL EGAN: [Rod Dreher] Here's a bombshell from today's Hartford Courant blasting New York's Edward Cardinal Egan for the way he handled a terrible sex-crime scandal in his previous assignment as bishop of Bridgeport, Conn. Court documents reveal that Egan treated victims of his priests with callous indifference bordering on malice, and showed little interest in investigating complaints against priests. This evidence makes a strong case that protecting the institutional Church is more important to the cardinal than truth, justice and the rights of children and families. New York Catholics will now want to know if that's the attitude he brings to his office here. Last week, Egan's spokesman insisted that the NY Archdiocese would not reveal how many of its priests had been substantially accused of sex abuse in recent decades, nor how much money has been paid out to settle claims. That kind of arrogant stonewalling cannot stand any longer.
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6:53 AM | [Link]
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