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TURNING POINT? [Kathryn Jean Lopez] The daily roundup for today on debka.com is worth a read. Maybe the Powell trip will wind up being useful, after all. Posted 7:12 PM | [Link] EUROPE'S GORGEOUS MOSAIC: [Rod Dreher] A 10,000-strong pro-Palestinian demonstration in Amsterdam turned violent today. This story doesn't give details about the ethnic and religious background of the rioting contingent, who burned an American flag (what, were no synagogues nearby?). One suspects this information is pertinent. One suspects the Europeans would rather not know it. Posted 5:19 PM | [Link] IMAGINE [Kathryn Jean Lopez] If Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott had demanded that the cable news networks—or anyone for that matter—cover them more—and not as evil doers. Posted 3:02 PM | [Link] TIMES CHANGE [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Daschle and Gephardt wrote to the three cable-news heads complaining that they cover the White House more than the Dems in Congress. Surprise. Surprise. There’s a war, boys. Oh, how times change though. Posted 2:50 PM | [Link] ”THEY’RE ALL CROOKS” [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Okay, so some of them really are. James Traficant claims he is still going to run for reelection. In fact, he says look for him on the House floor next week (he won’t be sentenced until later June). Posted 2:29 PM | [Link] HOW TO START A REVOLUTION: [Rod Dreher] I've read all the papers, and talked to sources, and here's what I believe happened with Cardinal Law. He sent his resignation to the papal nuncio in Washington on Thursday. Rome rejected it. Though I believe the Vatican intends to replace Law soon, it did not want to be seen as if it were taking orders from the public. Furthermore, the Vatican is terrified of a "domino effect" bringing down a slew of bishops whose hands are dirty in the sex-abuse cover-up scandal. If there's wisdom in Rome's strategy, it eludes me. It seems to me Rome's playing an extremely dangerous game. American Catholics are justifiably outraged over this catastrophe, and from all appearances, those in Church authority, both in this country and in the Vatican, neither understand the seriousness of their malfeasance nor credit the people's anger over the injustice. If I posted to The Corner the kinds of things I've heard in the past 24 hours from solid, faithful conservative Catholics, the bishops' blood would run cold. They're radicalizing the Church's most loyal sons and daughters. And for what? For what? Posted 2:12 PM | [Link] STEYN STRIKES AGAIN [Kathryn Jean Lopez] What do Bill Clinton and the Queen Mother have in common? Posted 1:00 PM | [Link] PEACE-PROCESS UPDATE [Kathryn Jean Lopez] In case you missed it, the Powell-Arafat summit is on for Sunday, since Arafat has denounced terrorism. Anyone else feeling deja vu? Posted 12:40 PM | [Link] UNFAIR BRITTANIA [Jonah Goldberg] How many times have we heard about terrorists who have the soul of a poet? Now, here's a poet withe the soul of a terrorist. Tom Paulin, a poet who teaches at Oxford, feels Jewish settlers should be shot dead. Posted 7:43 AM | [Link] REPAIR THIS: [John J. Miller] Looks like the debate reparations for slavery is over--the IRS granted $30 million in reparations credits to people on tax forms in 2000 and 2001. Now its scrambling to correct the mistakes. Posted 4:17 AM | [Link]
MY GIFT TO ANDREW & JONAH Kathryn Jean Lopez] A woman in Pennsylvania was jailed for late books. She has $120 in library fines piling up and refuses to pay or return the books. One of the books? You guessed it: a Star Trek novel. Posted 10:29 PM | [Link] OY Kathryn Jean Lopez] Nobel Peace Prize winner Koffi Annan wants has the solution to all the problems of the Mideast: Send in U.N. peacekeepers! Posted 10:20 PM | [Link] OUR TOLERANT ALLIES [Andrew Stuttaford] More news from those tolerant fellows over in the "kingdom" of Saudi Arabia. "Arab News" is reporting that in a recent sermon Sheikh Abdul Mohsen Al-Qasim, the imam of the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, said that the Jews had always conspired against Muslims. Presumably this bigoted comment is meant to apply to all Jews everywhere. I'm sure that American Islamic groups will want to distance themselves from this attack on their Jewish fellow citizens as soon as possible. Er, guys, we're waiting... Posted 10:08 PM | [Link] SWEET REVENGE [Andrew Stuttaford] The Beckham foot may have international ramifications. The "soccer savage" (to quote The Sun ) responsible for the England captain's injury comes from Argentina. Could this be revenge for the Falklands? Posted 9:55 PM | [Link] CRISIS IN THE UK [Andrew Stuttaford] Chaos in the Middle East, a coup in Venezuela, and red heifers in Jerusalem, but here in the UK (where I am visiting for a few days) there is another crisis dominating the news. Just weeks before soccer's World Cup, David Beckham, the England captain, has broken his foot. The story is in all the papers, but the best coverage is to be found in two of the tabloids, The Daily Mirror and The Sun, both of which feature large photographs of Mr. Beckham's foot on their front pages. The Sun's coverage of the battered appendage continues on pages 4,5,6,7, 69, 70, 71 and 72 . Elsewhere in the paper, the Sun's "Page 3 Girl" has (as usual) forgotten her shirt but, as a tribute to the wounded hero, she is sporting a rather fetching plaster cast. On a spiritual note, the newspaper called on all readers to "lay their hands" on the picture of the foot at 12 noon Friday ("Even bishops will be joining in") in an attempt at a healing. This now appears to have failed, but the nation lives in hope... Posted 9:52 PM | [Link] NEED A WEST FIX? [Kathryn Jean Lopez] For samples of Cornel West’s see Rod Dreher’s piece on his rap CD. Posted 5:48 PM | [Link] NOT ONLY THE SAUDIS [Dave Kopel] A third article in today's Arab News castigates Arab nations (meaning Egypt and Jordan) which manifest "reluctance to break agreements with the Zionists" and which do not supply arms to the Palestinians. Although the document shows the mendacity of recent claims from the Saudi embassy in Washington that the Saudis do not promote terrorism, perhaps one shouldn't be too hard on the Saudis; after all, the European Union supplies the P.A. with about ten million Euros (about 8.7 million dollars) every month; like the Saudi money, some but not all of the E.U. money is used for terrorism. Posted 5:32 PM | [Link] EXPLAINING TERRORIST AID [Dave Kopel] Criticizing President Bush's statement "I mean what I say when I call upon the Arab world to strongly condemn and act against terrorist activity," another Arab News article explains the Saudi defiance of President Bush: "When the Americans see a Palestinian document signed by Yasser Arafat making financial allocations to his men, they cite it as another example of the Palestinian leader's involvement in terrorism--because, Israel has called them terrorists. We see it differently. We see it as the duty of a leader toward his men who are struggling along with him to liberate their land." (Recently captured documents showing Arafat's approval of the payment of P.A. funds for terrorist attacks, including the bombing of a girl's batmitzvah in Israel on Jan. 17.) Posted 5:31 PM | [Link] THE LINES ARE OPEN [Dave Kopel] As Rod mentioned earlier and the Arab News is reporting, (an English language web paper controlled by the Saudi government), an eleven-hour Saudi telethon has raised 210 million Saudi Riyals (that's 56 million dollars) to support the Palestinian "martyrs" and other Intifada expenses. Substantial personal donations were made by King Fahd, Crown Prince Abdullah, and Prince Sultan. A previous Saudi telethon for terror had raised 40 million Riyals. Posted 5:20 PM | [Link] TONI MORRISON SAYS… [Kathryn Jean Lopez] “Depth, precision and fervor have always characterized Cornel West's work as well as his teaching. Princeton is extremely fortunate in securing him--again." Here’s Princeton’s release on the West hire. Posted 5:18 PM | [Link] THE BLAME [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Sure, Rich, as long as you plan to push me into a higher tax bracket. Posted 4:35 PM | [Link] A COMPROMISE [Rich Lowry] Rich -- If it isn't your fault and it isn't Jonah's fault, then just blame it on Kathryn. Posted 4:22 PM | [Link] POWELL WOKE UP?!? [Kathryn Jean Lopez] The Secretary of State’s meeting with Arafat is postponed. How about for good? Posted 3:44 PM | [Link] WEST GOES TO PRINCETON: [Rich Lowry] Posted 3:24 PM | [Link] IF IT’S NOT JONAH’S FAULT, IT CERTAINLY ISN’T MINE!!!: [Rich Lowry] An e-mail: Rich, You killed my NRO "Goldberg File" for today. I miss it. Please don't do that anymore. Many thanks. Posted 2:27 PM | [Link] I LIED [Jonah Goldberg] I got so angry trying to write a three line intro to the reprint of my old Cynthia McKinney columnI ended up writing a whole new one. K-Lo has it now. For all I know it's all one run-on-sentence, I was so pissed. So don't blame them if the proofing isn't up to snuff. Anyway, me and Cosmo are going to go work off the tension in the park. Posted 2:12 PM | [Link] IT'S OFFICIAL: LAW IS STAYING: [Rod Dreher] The Boston Globe is now reporting that Cardinal Law is not going anywhere. He's sent a letter to his priests saying he's going to stick around. It's possible my sources were wrong earlier -- or it's possible that the Vatican refused to accept his resignation. Whatever the case, the Church in Boston is now being thrust into a terrible, unprecedented crisis because of the vanity of one man. This is going to get very ugly, very fast. In his statement, Law blames the Shanley problem on "inadequate record keeping." The mind boggles. Posted 1:31 PM | [Link] OFF THE HOOK [Jonah Goldberg] My mag piece has been post-poned 'til next issue. But I fear it is too late for a fresh Goldberg File. However, we're going to do a "flashback" of my Cynthia McKinney column, in light of her latest buffoonery. Writing the intro now. I'M NOT FOR US PEACEKEEPERS, BUT... [Jonah Goldberg] Why can't foreigners drive Palestinian ambulances? If the Israelis are right that the Palestinians use ambulances to move bombs and bombers, they're right to stop the ambulances. Why can't the Norwegians (heh, heh) or some other peace-loving people drive the vehicles. I don't trust, say, Belgian foreign policy, but I do trust Belgians not to allow weapons in their ambulances. Posted 1:13 PM | [Link] HELP: [Rich Lowry] If you know about caribou--funny or informative tidbits about the life and times of these obstacles to drilling in ANWR—I would love to hear from you for a piece I’m working on… Posted 1:10 PM | [Link] D.C. FOR ISRAEL [Kathryn Jean Lopez] A number of good people suggest we link to this site, for information on the pro-Israel rally in D.C. on Monday. And so I do. . Posted 12:59 PM | [Link] YASSER'S KIDS: [Rod Dreher] CNN has been airing excerpts from a Saudi telethon to raise money for the Palestinians. They collected $55 million for Yasser's kids, the "martyrs" -- that is, suicide bombers. One Saudi princess donated her Rolls-Royce and ... an ox. Wow. Posted 12:46 PM | [Link] BREAKING: [Rod Dreher] I'm hearing from sources I trust that the Boston Globe report today, which said Cardinal Law is still deciding whether or not to resign, isn't true. Cardinal Law has already submitted his resignation to the Vatican, my sources tell me, and is waiting to hear from Rome before making an announcement. The Pope could always refuse to accept his resignation, however, which would put the Church here into uncharted waters. I'm trying to confirm this, but nobody is talking just now. Hang tight, though, because there could be news from Boston any moment. (Yeah, yeah, that's what we thought yesterday...). Posted 11:58 AM | [Link] MY FAULT, I BLAME RICH [Jonah Goldberg] There will probably be no Goldberg File today, unless I can finish this *@#&! article for the magazine. It's not technically Rich's fault, in the sense that it's entirely mine, but he wants it and I've got to pay the bills. So if I can finish soon: G-File today. Or, if I can get an extension 'til Monday: G-File today. If Rich insists on holding me to my promises: No G-File today. If you think it's irrational for me to blame Rich for my failures, all I can do is direct you to the EU's attitude toward Israel for precedent. Posted 11:20 AM | [Link] PROPER TRANSLATION [Jonah Goldberg] A Norwegian-speaking reader in good standing sends me the actual translation of the article mentioning me: "Jonah Goldberg, in the National Review, writes that he notes that no one is talking about taking the prize away from Yasir Arafat. Goldberg's view of the European political and intellectual elite has now changed from contempt to absolute disgust, he writes." I still think my translation was better. My translator offers these thoughts: "It goes without saying that most Norwegians (though I love them) are political idiots, imbibing Socialism with their mother's milk. What's notable is that these are the sane Europeans. They've never agreed to join the EU, for instance. Posted 10:45 AM | [Link] WEB RESOURCES [Jonah Goldberg] David Brooks, who tried his best to bring Chris Matthews back from the brink of hysteria last night on Hardball, has a useful piece at the Weekly Standard on how to find the other side of the story on Israel's war on terror. Lots of good links. Posted 10:24 AM | [Link] FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH: [Rich Lowry] WASHINGTON, April 11 (Reuters) - The Saudi Embassy in Washington on Thursday denied U.S. media reports that it was encouraging suicide bombings in Israel by sending funds to Palestinian families, saying Saudi Arabia condemned such attacks. Embassy spokesman Nial Al-Jubeir was commenting on references in U.S. media to payments by Saudi Arabia to "martyrs" of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict which compared them to payments by Iraq to families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Official Saudi web sites have reported on millions of dollars given to the Palestinians both for aid and reconstruction projects and from the "Saudi committee for supporting the Intifada", or uprising, of the last 19 months. Some Saudi reports have referred to helping the "martyrs" of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a term which is associated most recently with the Palestinian suicide bombers who have attacked Israeli cities. Al-Jubeir said the term was used in the Saudi statements to refer to Palestinian victims of the conflict in general and was being deliberately misinterpreted in some U.S. reports to refer to the suicide bombers…. Posted 10:12 AM | [Link] ISRAEL'S STALINGRAD [Dave Kopel] In The New Republic Online Seth Gitel compares the defeat of Hamas at the Battle of Jenin to the defeat of the Nazis at the Battle of Stalingrad -- a vicious house-to-house battle which was the decisive turning point in the war. Like the soldiers of the Third Reich, the Hamas soldiers worked for a terrorist fascist leadership which hoped to exterminate the Jews. TNR's Yehudah Mirsky (formerly of the Clinton State Department, and currently at Harvard, but insightful nevertheless) elaborates the parallels between Islamofascists and Hitler facsists -- and the support of both types of terrorism by "flaccid, underemployed, bourgeois intellectuals" as well as by "'useful idiots' in the West." Posted 10:05 AM | [Link] FOXES GUARDING THE HENHOUSE: [Rod Dreher] Three Roman Catholic bishops on the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' committee on sexual abuse have been accused in a lawsuit of helping cover up sexual abuse by priests. They are: McCormack of Manchester, N.H., who was deeply involved as a Boston auxiliary bishop in the Geoghan and Shanley cases; Gaydos of Jefferson City, Mo., the diocese where resigned pederast Bishop Anthony O'Connell served as seminary rector; and Quinn, auxiliary bishop of Cleveland, who in a 1990 speech advised bishops to send potentially incriminating sex-abuse documents to the papal nuncio in Washington, where they would become diplomatic property and therefore unavailable to U.S. courts. These are the bishops chosen by their peers to figure out how to solve the sex-abuse problem. Is there any doubt why American Catholics are losing faith in the hierarchy? Posted 9:55 AM | [Link] FYI [Jonah Goldberg] For readers who haven't heard of Debka.com or think it might not be legit, read their "About Us" section and decide for yourself. The link is on the middle-left-hand side on the homepage, www.debka.com. Posted 9:41 AM | [Link] NO REALLY: WAKE UP COLIN POWELL! [Jonah Goldberg] Debka.com reports that two Palestinian terrorists tried to assasinate Colin Powell today. We'll see if the story pans out, but let's stipulate it will for a moment. If Palestinians killed Powell, would that count for something in the war on terrorism? Or would that simply be the understandable expression of Palestinian "frustration." And if the killing of a cabinet member of our government is an act of war against us, why shouldn't the killing of an Israeli cabinet minister be an act of war against Israel? Well, Palestian terrorist killed the Minister of Tourism just a few months ago. Does that not count? HERE'S THE FULL REPORT FROM DEBKA.COM [Jonah Goldberg] "12 April: Israeli security foiled a Palestinian terrorist attempt to hit the motorcade driving US secretary of state Colin Powellfrom Ben Gurion Airport to Jerusalem Thursday night, April 12, shortly after he landed. The Secretary was accompanied by Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres and heads of the US embassy. Just before 9 pm IT, two hours before the US Secretary arrived, a Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance was stopped by a hidden Israeli security patrol near the gas station on the Modi’in-Jerusalem Highway 443. The driver and his mate had all the necessary permits for transporting a dead Palestinian policeman to the Gaza Strip. However, since Yasser Arafat’s confinement in Ramallah, security has been intensified on all traffic coming from the direction of the Palestinian town, in case of an attempt to smuggle him out. In any case, in a war situation, in which passage from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip has been suspended, all permits are checked for forgeries. The ambulance was therefore opened up and searched carefully. Hidden under the corpse was a large supply of explosives and a suicider’s bomb belt. According to some of DEBKAfile’s sources, the two Palestinians admitted under questioning that they had planned to pull the ambulance up on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv expressway, the route taken later by the Powell motorcade. One of the men was to stay in the vehicle, while the other strapped on the bomb belt and hid in some roadside bushes. When the secretary’s car drove by, the ambulance was rigged to explode. The second bomber was then supposed to leap into the milling crowd of officials and security men and blow himself up. At 22:07 IT, the booby-trapped Red Crescent ambulance was blown up in a controlled explosion, creating a bang loud enough to frighten dwellers in a broad radius and start the rumor of a rocket attack. Israel security is now investigating the provenance of the Red Crescent ambulance and the official permits." Posted 9:26 AM | [Link] WAKE UP, COLIN POWELL: [Rod Dreher] This just in: big suicide bombing at the Mahane Yehuda outdoor market in Jerusalem, where Jews were doing their last-minute shopping before the Sabbath. Do you see this, Mr. Secretary? Do you? Posted 8:48 AM | [Link] OUTSTANDING [Jonah Goldberg] Yossi Klein Halevi, a liberal of sorts, is becoming my favorite writer on Israel. Today he knocks it out of the park in the LA Times. Posted 8:42 AM | [Link] FROM NORWAY, WITH LOVE [Jonah Goldberg] Here’s an excerpt from an email titled, "Hi, Again You Murderer" from a seething Norwegian who can’t seem to stop writing me: "I cannot resist - I just read your article Moral Styrofoam. After reading it I said to myself that this fanatic air head really does not deserve my time, but once again - I could not resist writing again. First off; you are right - that terrorist country Israel has very few friends left here in Norway - in fact, very few friends left in Europe. Why? Because unlike you bloody Americans we do not like killings (the world's worst mass murderers are the presidents - all of them - of the United States). No wonder one murderer (President Bush) supports another murderer, Sharon. Israel could not kill innocent women and children in the Palestine unless the dollars Israel receives from the USA - this makes the USA as guilty as Israel. No country in the world has killed more people than the USA. It is a fact that most Europeans consider the USA as a primitive, horrible country!" Posted 8:28 AM | [Link] OH NO! THE NORWEGIANS HATE ME! [Jonah Goldberg] Apparently, my "Moral Styrofoam" column (I now hate that title), has gotten the attention of the Norwegians. An article in their biggest non-tabloid paper, the Aftenposten, takes me to task for saying I have disgust for the Nobel Peace Prize Committee and the European intellectual elite. Here’s the relevant passage: "I National Review skriver Jonah Goldberg at han merker seg at ingen snakker om å ta prisen fra Yasir Arafat. Goldbergs syn på Europas politiske og intellektuelle elite har nå endret seg fra forakt til direkte avsky, skriver han." A rough translation: "Jonah Goldberg, of famous fascist organ "National Review," has armadillos in his trousers. While he smells like Kitty Litter, Goldberg does not eat his herring raw, which is much barbarian-like." Okay, I admit it’s all gibberish to me. But the article has resulted in lots of email from angry Norwegians -- a phrase which strikes the ear much like "vengeful guinea pigs" or "bloodthirsty teddy bears." Considering I still get threats from Islamofascists who think Hitler didn’t go far enough, the whale-killing snow-jockeys are just gonna have to get in line. Posted 8:12 AM | [Link] THAT DIDN'T TAKE LONG [Jonathan Adler] Within less than 24 hours of the International Criminal Court's ratification, some are already calling for the prosecution of Israelis, the Washington Times reports. Emile Lahoud, President of Israel's friendly neighbor Lebanon, said Israel should be prosecuted for its "massacres" of Palestinians. Baltazar Garzon, a Spanish judge heavily involved in the campaign to prosecute Chile's Augusto Pinochet overseas, charged Israel should be prosecuted for "crimes against humanity." Garzon has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Posted 7:37 AM | [Link] RE: WRONG TO SAY RIGHT: [Rod Dreher] Good point, Kathryn, about the old Democratic ward heeler's dubious credentials as a right-winger. But doesn't that gall you all the same, that "Crossfire" would present Flynn's loyalist beliefs as the "conservative" position? It's not Flynn's fault; Novak shares those views too. But I can't think of another conservative Catholic in the public eye who believes as Flynn and Novak do, and it gets under my skin that a viewer would see that and think, "Typical right-wingers, defending that corrupt cardinal." Buckley, Bennett, Buchanan, Noonan, O'Sullivan, et alia -- the list of Catholics orthodox in religion and conservative in politics, who have called on Law to step down is long and distinguished. Posted 7:23 AM | [Link] THE COURT IS IN SESSION [Jonathan Adler] The International Criminal Court became official yesterday when the 60th nation submitted its ratification. According to the NYT , the creation of the ICC "has been broadly welcomed by most democratic nations, American lawyers' associations and human rights groups." The president opposes the ICC and seeks to unsign the treaty as the Senate has never ratified it. Supporters of the ICC claim it poses no threat to U.S. sovereignty because it "will be staffed by judges from . . . states that are committed to the rule of law." Feel better? U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan adds, "Countries with good judicial systems, who apply the rule of law, and prosecute criminals and do it promptly and fairly, need not fear. It is where they fail that the court steps in." No threat to sovereignty there--so long as we do what the U.N. wants. Posted 7:19 AM | [Link] TALKING SECOND [Dave Kopel] Glenn Reynolds, writing for Legal Affairs (no, it's not a magazine about the Clinton defense attorneys) observes that legal scholars and courts are once again recognizing the importance of the Second Amendment, thereby helping lower the emotional temperature of the gun-control debate. Posted 6:54 AM | [Link] FRIENDS TAKE FRIENDS SHOOTING [Dave Kopel] Eugene Volokh's new weblog explains the importance of taking your friends target-shooting: 1. everyone should know how to use a firearm safely. 2. it helps overcome prejudice against gun owners. Celebrate diversity. Posted 6:02 AM | [Link] WRONG TO SAY RIGHT[Kathryn Jean Lopez] Rod, John, it would be a typo-day free in The Corner when I would refer to Ray Flynn as “right.” Remember: Clinton’s ambassador to the Vatican?! His memoir of the time has some sweet stories about the pope’s sense of humor and such, but to read when he gets deeper—ugh. His conscience was doing somersaults during that infamous U.N. population conference in '94, he says, because he is pro-life and, well, the rabidly pro-abortion U.S. delegates, cheered on by the White House, were not, to say the least. Anyway, Ray Flynn is far from a right winger. I’d be hardpressed to even consider he’s a conservative Democrat. Posted 5:19 AM | [Link] THE MIGHTY THOR: [John J. Miller] The great experimental anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl is reportedly on his deathbed. Posted 5:16 AM | [Link] ANOTHER BATTLEFIELD[Kathryn Jean Lopez] Remarkable wire story about the “fortress mentality” many Jews have been forced into--in France. Posted 5:06 AM | [Link] OFF MEMBERS [Kathryn Jean Lopez] The nutty Natural Law Party—which has nothing to do with natural law, by the way—insists as part of their platform that candidates should submit their CAT scans for the voters to see. Well, maybe a psychological evaluation. Cynthia McKinney (D., Ga.) is floating the idea that the administration knew that Sept. 11 was going to happen. No, not in the “there were warning signs” sense. She thinks they knew and wanted to make some money off it--"persons close to this administration are poised to make huge profits off America's new war." There’s this. There’s James Traficant (need I say more?). And we all can name a few more—the House is a big place, afterall. Maybe we need a little closer scrutiny here. Posted 4:58 AM | [Link] BIG STORY: [John J. Miller] The ouster of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez by his country's military is a BIG story--even though developments in the Middle East appear to be keeping it from becoming the lead item on newspaper websites. This will split the Left and Right as sharply as the politics of Chile and Peru have split them. As of this writing, the New York Times (via AP) has the late-breaking news that Chavez left the presidential palace a couple of hours ago; the Washington Post offers more context, though, pointing out that Chavez "has been a constant foreign policy challenge to the United States throughout his tenure. He was the first elected leader to visit [Saddam] Hussein since the Persian Gulf War, and his ideological embrace of, and economic support for, Castro angered the State Department and powerful business interests at home." I'm still trying to learn details of exactly what's going on down there, but my initial reaction is: Good riddance. Posted 4:48 AM | [Link] WRITE-OFF [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Oh, the lengths you'll go to to avoid a deadline! :-) Although there might be something to your idea...maybe a Saturday thing. (We tend to be oh-so prolific on the weekends!) Maybe it could be a fundraiser for NRO--people can sponsor us. Now I am procrastinating...see what you have done? Posted 4:47 AM | [Link] RIGHT AND WRONG: [John J. Miller] Hey Rod, why do you suppose the person defending Cardinal Law has to be the one who's "on the right"? This sort of reminds me of how the media always used to refer to Kremlin hardliners during the 1980s as Soviet "conservatives." Okay, maybe it's not quite that bad. But isn't it at least worth noting that Law certainly isn't a right-winger? And Ray Flynn, though pro-life, is a former Democratic officeholder? Posted 4:25 AM | [Link] RAY FLYNN AND BATTERED WIFE SYNDROME: [Rod Dreher] Amy Welborn wonders why Ray Flynn, the former Boston mayor and U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, is about the only Catholic she's seeing on TV these days. I'll tell you why: he's the only public Catholic who still believes Cardinal Law should remain in office. "Crossfire" called me earlier this week to come on and debate whether Law should resign. "Of course he should resign," I said. Well, that's not what Novak thinks, the producer said, so we probably can't use you. "Good luck finding a Catholic on the right who agrees with Novak," I replied, adding that Ray Flynn is the only one I could think of. Guess who the "on the right" guest was that night. After the Shanley files, there's nobody left to defend Law, and the media feel like "balance" requires putting the Last Pro-Cardinal Law Catholic in America in front of the cameras. Flynn is so far out there he told the AP yesterday that Cardinal Law is really the one suffering the most in all this drama. Hoo boy. If one of you sees him, would you please introduce the ambassador to a former child rape victim of Fr. Shanley or Fr. Geoghan? Posted 1:59 AM | [Link]
FINALLY, FRANCE CRACKS DOWN ON EXTREMISTS! OH, THEY'RE JEWS [Jonah Goldberg] I don't know if the Arab News is legit or a propaganda front. But if this story is true, the irony is amazing. Synagogues go up in flames and Chirac brings down the hammer on Jewish groups. To be fair, I haven't found any corroborating stories from credible outlets, yet. Posted 11:14 PM | [Link] NORWAY, SWEDEN, WHATEVER Andrew Sullivan got himself into some trouble about what country gives out the Nobel Peace Prize. Alfred Nobel was Swedish but he asked the Norwegians to handle everything. I don't blame Sullivan, I get it confused all of the time too. And maybe that's a worthwhile point to keep in mind. I know Americans are sometimes too eager to flaunt their ignorance of Europe (as are the British, I suppose). But doesn't it say something that a lot of relatively educated, informed and up-to-date people don't know where the Nobel Prize comes from? Perhaps that should tell us that it isn't as big a deal as the Nobel Committee thinks it is. I mean, how good could it be if Arafat has one? Posted 10:30 PM | [Link] PLUS THIS: [John J. Miller] Ramesh, this "abstinence plus" reminds me of a term bilingual-education supporters once tried to introduce: "English plus." They knew that bilingual-ed was incredibly unpopular, and so they wanted to invent a different moniker for it. The only thing they intended to change, of course, was the name--not the substance of a program that has been harming Hispanic children for more than a generation. At the same time, they've derided their foes as advocates of "English only," which of course isn't accurate because hardly anybody who supports English immersion in K-12 schools also thinks the study of foreign languages is worthless. This is why I've always liked the name of Jim Boulet's important group, English First. It gets things exactly right: English should come first, though not to the exclusion of all other languages. Maybe we should be talking about "abstinence first"--you can have sex later, kids, after you're married. Posted 9:01 PM | [Link] ABSTINENCE PLUS: [Ramesh Ponnuru] Joel Mowbray has an item on the site about the success of abstinence programs. I'm not a huge fan of federal funding for such programs, or for traditional (so to speak) sex ed. either. But I do love the label opponents have come up with for their own preferred approach: abstinence plus. What's that supposed to mean? You practice abstinence, plus you get to have sex? Posted 5:59 PM | [Link] UNCIVIL COMMISSION: [John J. Miller] Abigail Thernstrom of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights delivered a powerful testimony today during House hearings--condemning the commission on which she serves: “It sullies the drive for civil rights--taints the cause to which every American should be committed. ... It has become a national embarrassment." Posted 5:25 PM | [Link] DEMOCRATS LOVE PUPPIES TOO! [Jonah Goldberg] Great headline at the Washington Post Democrats Against Wildlife Drilling. Here are some of the biased headlines they passed on: "Democrats Oppose Needless Torture of Woodland Creatures." "GOP Doesn't Have Votes to Club Orphaned Kitten." "Dems to GOP: 'Make This Panda into a Coat Over Our Dead Bodies.'" "Daschle Will Filibuster Bill To Legalize Bear Cub Tossing: 'It's just not a sport, Says Majority Leader.'" "Tom Delay Denies He "Hates Anything Cute." Posted 5:18 PM | [Link] SOME NERVE!: [Rod Dreher] You can't make this stuff up. Three Catholic priests in Massachusetts (!) have come out against a proposed amendment banning gay marriage. Said one: ''Especially in light of the present crisis of abuse, we want to make sure that all children are protected and receive equal rights. This amendment would certainly deprive some children of their rights simply because their parents were not legally married.'' Got that? It's for the children. Now, you would think that a Catholic priest in an archdiocese that has become the epicenter of the greatest crisis in the history of the Catholic Church in America, a crisis that is chiefly about homosexual priests molesting male children, would think twice about endorsing gay marriage as a child-positive measure. Wouldn't you? Posted 5:12 PM | [Link] BUT SERIOUSLY [Jonah Goldberg] The cheeky bugger does give me an idea, though. I've long thought it might be fun to have an NRO "write off" (and no, by "write-off" I don't mean the sort of severance package the suits have in mind for me ("Jonah, there’s good news and bad news. First the bad news. You’re fired. The good news: you don’t have to reimburse us for the use of our oxygen or business cards"). What I mean is we could have a "Who’s Line is it Anyway?" sort of thing where readers pick a topic and several NRO people have to write about it in, say, one hour. Might be fun, might be really stupid. Might be both. Oh, I’m still working on this damn article. Posted 4:20 PM | [Link] SCAB! SCAB! SCAB! [Jonah Goldberg] Rich - First of all, the guy who wants to write my article for free in four hours is clearly a scab. If I were outside NR's offices and that little management-toady went by in a company bus, I'd definitely throw rocks at him. Writing for free is like illegal steel-dumping, it may be good for the larger economy but it screws me, so I am against it. Posted 4:09 PM | [Link] ET TU ROD? [Jonah Goldberg] This is how you repay me? I was the one who said we should overlook your numerous mopery convictions -- both here and an in Bolivia -- and bring you into the NR family. I didn't waver in my support when we discovered that you'd been kicked out of school for night-putting with the dean's daughter! Well, when the Vatican's Mossad comes looking for ya, don't come a-knocking here (I'll still be working on this damn article). Posted 3:23 PM | [Link] A GENEROUS OFFER: [Rich Lowry] Rich, Give me the topic, and four hours, and I'll write you Jonah's piece. For free. I should point out that: a) This may be an extremely cheeky thing to offer...but I am not joking. b) I write well. c) References available on request. Posted 3:22 PM | [Link] HOW LOW CAN HE GO?: [Rod Dreher] Sen. Edward Kennedy, who not long ago expressed support for Cardinal Law to remain in office, today declined to repeat it, saying he prefers to keep his thoughts on the matter private. Egad. What a sad day it is when Teddy Kennedy has the moral high ground over and against the cardinal archbishop of Boston. Posted 3:19 PM | [Link] SAY WHAT, BOSS?: [Rod Dreher] Whaddaya mean caning is not possible at NRO? Did no one send K-Lo the memo? She's been lashing me with wet bamboo since day one for being insufficiently deferential. Anyway, the truth about Jonah, says a spy of mine in DC, is that he rode home from a five-martini lunch at Capitol Grille saddlebagged across the back of a red heifer. Posted 3:09 PM | [Link] I’M SORRY! [Jonah Goldberg] Rich –I ran out of gas! My toilet over-flowed! I lost my tux at the cleaners! I locked my keys in the car! An old friend came in from out of town! Someone stole my car! I thought that pill was aspirin! My great aunt’s coin-operated dialysis machine stopped and I ran out of pocket change! Cosmo ate my article! I ate some bad oysters! Ramesh said he was going to do it! Kathryn told me I could have an extension! I thought it was due next week! I’ve been busy beta-testing software on the side! I’m having trouble translating my notes from the original Sanskrit! I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue! I made my promise in English (you should have had me issue it in Arabic)! Interns from the Weekly Standard erased my hard drive! It’s not my fault!!!!! Posted 3:03 PM | [Link] NAMING NAMES[Kathryn Jean Lopez] Perhaps someone at the state department could prepare a fact sheet for the Secretary of State. Gersten points to another page on the state website, with the list of terrorist organizations Powell put out in October: Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, PLO, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. We’re still supposed to be fighting a global war on terrorism, right? Posted 2:42 PM | [Link] ANOTHER ISRAEL E-MAIL: [Rich Lowry] But Rich, remember that Israel is NOT dropping bombs or prosecuting these battles in the same way that we did in Afghanistan. They are sending people in on the ground to do very dangerous work, when they could more easily do the same job with much less risk from 30,000 ft. So, one could argue, and I would in fact argue, that they are being very humanitarian in the current conflict. Posted 2:42 PM | [Link] MORE ON JONAH: [Rich Lowry] OK, OK. I KNOW Jonah is in the park. But when we say “Where’s Jonah?” around here at the office—which EVERYONE is asking at the moment—we mean “where is Jonah’s piece?” Suggestions so far on how to get an earlier delivery range from caning to giving him a raise, both of which are out of the question. Also, support for Jonah is running pretty high, despite his delinquency and insubordination. Writes one e-mailer: “Jonah may be the greatest thing ever to happen to the word processor (notice that by using the term "word processor", one avoids having to note that Jonah is not actually as good as Waugh, Swift and some others).” But another e-mailer who cares more about the welfare of NR writes: “Rich...since he said earlier that he was off to the park with his laptop and his dog, Jonah is no doubt lounging outside in the sun on this beautiful spring day in Washington (hopefully for those around him, not shirtless) writing clever observations about Cosmo's squirrel chasing. He's probably drinking too. I'd be more than happy to drive across the river and force him back into his house and back to work. I'd consider it giving something back to the magazine that has given me so much.” Posted 2:40 PM | [Link] NO FOG ON STATE SITE [Kathryn Jean Lopez] David Gersten of the Center for Equal Opportunity points out that if Colin Powell would browse to his department’s counterterrorism office on the state website he would find: "First, make no concessions to terrorists and strike no deals; second, bring terrorists to justice for their crimes; third, isolate and apply pressure on states that sponsor terrorism to force them to change their behavior; and fourth, bolster the counterterrorism capabilities of those countries that work with the U.S. and require assistance." Sounds like a much better policy than the mission he’s on. Posted 2:32 PM | [Link] E-MAIL…: [Rich Lowry] …on my assertion today on NRO that Israel hasn’t made any broad humanitarian gestures in the current conflict: “You're wrong, it's just not reported widely. We don't need to airlift food. We lift the curfews on a regular basis, so people can restock on food. There's no danger of hunger. The Palestinian medical centers are also allowed to restock on medicine, and our medical services have been helping them get blood donations from Israeli Arabs. Jordan has been allowed to airlift medical supplies for the Palestinians for the past couple of days. They've used it to try and smuggle in anti-Israeli propaganda leaflets, but we caught it and filtered that out. Also, our army has been fixing some of the civilian infrastructure (power, water) that's been damaged during the fighting. Unfortunately, false stories about the supposed "war crimes" that our army is committing are a lot more interesting to the international media than telling stories about humanitarian gestures Israel is making.” Posted 2:28 PM | [Link] RED HEIFER READERS WRITE: [Rod Dreher] Thanks for all the e-mail, good and bad, about the red heifer story. One reader pointed out that it's not just the media who have ignored or downplayed the religious elements in the current conflict. Our own government has done the same thing. Another reader writes: "Just wanted to make a minor correction to your article today. While Orthodox Jews (including myself) believe that a Messiah will come who will be the future king of Israel, this person will not simultaneously be the high priest in a rebuilt temple. The kingship of Israel and hence the Messiah must come from a person of patrilineal descent from David, who was from the tribe of Judah, while the high priest and all of the temple priests are patrilineal descendants of Aaron, who was from the tribe of Levi." Thanks for clearing that up, and being so polite about it. I believe one reason media types shy away from religion stories is because if they get one thing wrong in a complicated story, they have to hear from blowhards who assume the worst about their motives. Some nut wrote me the other day about my dispensationalism piece, which she didn't like, and ranted that I was "obviously" a secular humanist liberal. This is not only ignorant (I mean, come on, this is National Review Online), but it's not the way to encourage honest writers of goodwill to pay more attention to religion. Posted 2:27 PM | [Link] SOURCE: LAW RESIGNATION "IMMINENT" [Rod Dreher] A well-informed source in Boston relates that Cardinal Law's resignation is "imminent." Watch this space for more details... Posted 2:11 PM | [Link] WHERE IS JONAH?: [Rich Lowry] Dear Gentle Readers, It’s 3 p.m., and Jonah is about 18 hours past his deadline for his magazine piece and counting. If anyone has any idea when he might be delivering, or—more importantly—how to get him to deliver this piece ASAP, I would appreciate hearing it. A baffled magazine editor... Posted 2:00 PM | [Link] SOWELL, RIGHT AS USUAL: [Rod Dreher] Thomas Sowell observes in his latest column: "While we fight the war against terrorism all out, the way we fought World War II, we seem to be insisting that Israel fight its war against terrorism the way we fought Vietnam -- restricted by political considerations and pulling our punches to appease those who indulge themselves in kibitzing from the sidelines about life and death issues that they have never bothered to study seriously." Posted 1:25 PM | [Link] GO, SISTERS, GO!: [Rod Dreher] I checked in with Amy Welborn's blogsite today to see what was on her mind, and if there was anything worth linking to. It's all great! And Eve Tushnet's discourse on the Church, sexuality (she's an open-but-chaste bisexual) and Andrew Sullivan is first-rate -- be sure to scroll down to read it (not that the rest of her current stuff isn't worth reading). These mackerel-snapping soul sisters are daily must-reads. Posted 1:10 PM | [Link] GOD BLESS BRITISH JOURNALISM: [Rod Dreher] Nobody writes obits like the Brits. Cud'n Larry Lebowitz of the Miami Herald passes along this gem of an obituary, published in the Daily Telegraph. It's a sendoff for a Fleet Street sod who, we learn, "was in the 1980s the drunkest man in the Coach and Horses, the pub in Soho where, in the half century after the Second World War, a tragicomedy was played out nightly by its regulars." This magnificent send-off concludes with the following description of its subject's final year: "[W]ith almost all his friends dead, he sat imprisoned by emphysema in his flat, with a cylinder of oxygen by his armchair and bottles of white wine by his elbow, looking out over the Thames, still very angry." Posted 12:59 PM | [Link] RELIGION DE LA PAIX UPDATE: [Rod Dreher] A school bus full of Jewish children came under attack in France by stone-throwing people of indeterminate ethno-religious background. At least you can't determine it from the news report. Gosh, who on earth could the villains be? Posted 12:46 PM | [Link] HO HO, HEY HEY, WESTERN CIV HAS GOT TO STAY! [Jonah Goldberg] I'm with ya Stan! Someone find an email address and we shall let the appeasers eat NRO-spam! (but don't send it to me. I'm going to the park with my laptop and my dog and won't be able to post to the Corner from there). Posted 11:52 AM | [Link] CORE FIGHT [Stanley Kurtz] For those who cherish what is best in American higher education, the University of Chicago is sacred ground. America’s colleges and universities will always draw strength from their variety. Having said that, I think it is also fair to say that the University of Chicago’s famous core curriculum is the most important existing model for what higher education in this country can and should be. Yet for the past three years, Chicago’s renowned core curriculum has been under a slow but steady assault by the administration of president Hugo Sonnenschein. Now the jewel of the university’s core curriculum, Western Civilization itself, is under threat, and may soon be killed. Only at the University of Chicago can you find a student organization created for the purpose of protesting the dilution of course requirements. Readers are invited to visit the website of Education First, to read its press release about the imminent destruction of the University of Chicago’s Western Civilization course. Alumni of the University of Chicago, in particular, should give serious consideration to withholding contributions and writing letters of protest. I hope to follow this issue in the future. Consider this the first notice of a battle worth fighting. Posted 11:34 AM | [Link] OFFENSIVE TET OFFENSIVE REDUX [Jonah Goldberg] It seems Colin Powell, Yasser Arafat and the media are determined to make the Israeli operation a Tet offensive for Sharon -- an obvious military victory but a public relations disaster. Just keep in mind that it is an obvious military victory. Posted 11:33 AM | [Link] WAR ON CERTAINTY CONTINUED [Jonah Goldberg] By the way if you think I’m kidding about the war on certainty, here’s what The New York Times’ nastiest columnist, Anthony Lewis, recently said was the over-arching lesson he’d drawn from 32 years on the Times’ Op-Ed page: "Certainty is the enemy of decency and humanity in people who are sure they are right, like Osama bin Laden and John Ashcroft." Of course, Lewis isn’t sure about that. Posted 10:46 AM | [Link] HAIL COSMO! [Jonah Goldberg] Theories about Cosmo’s affinity for the cable wire are pouring in. Lots of people think Cosmo might believe it is a snake "playing dead" and Cosmo is simply being ever-watchful. My favorite theory so far is from a reader in Toronto: "Jonah. You were bound to find out sooner or later. Cosmo is one of several "dogs from space" whose goal is to overtake their human masters and rule the world. My Airedale, Fergus is their leader. They communicate via cable cords. Don't ask how it works. It’s beyond our tiny minds. Resistance is futile. Resignation is the only option. The big consolation will be watching them pick up after us on our daily walks to the park." Posted 10:38 AM | [Link] BEING PRO-SOMETHING DOESN'T MAKE YOU WRONG [Jonah Goldberg] I just got a couple emails about the Peretz piece linked below. These folks suggest that Peretz is "Pro-Israel" and therefor discountable. Others have made a claim about me as well over the last week or so. This is something of a longstanding peeve of mine. Simply because one is "Pro-Israel" (variously and often amorphously defined) doesn’t automatically mean one is wrong, does it? I’m extremely pro-America does that mean I’m wrong? Is everything I say in favor of America to be dismissed? It is a symptom of the ongoing war against certainty, truth and – most of all -- the making of moral judgements that so many people reflexively assume that having a conviction is the result superficial rather than serious thinking. If you provide arguments and facts to support your position you are not showing bias, you are explaining it and therein lies a world of difference. Posted 10:30 AM | [Link] ARAFAT PRIMER [Jonah Goldberg] Martin Peretz has an excellent piece on Arafat and his aims in the current New Republic. Posted 9:36 AM | [Link] EXILE IN PEDERAST PARADISE: [Rod Dreher] Lavender mobsters Fr. Paul Shanley and his gay lover Fr. John White have apparently fled to Thailand to escape justice. Child prostitution is big in Thailand. Cardinal Law must be so proud. Posted 8:45 AM | [Link] ONE MORE PALESTINIAN "KILLED" [Jonah Goldberg] A suicide bomber in Beersheba accidentally went off prematurely today. Several people were injured but only the bomber died. Keep in mind that this guy will undoubtedly get added to the Palestinian "death toll" when reporters refer to XX numbers of Israelis killed and YY number of Palestinians. People constantly ask "Are Palestinian lives worth any less than Israeli lives?" Of course not. Except, that is, when they place no value on them themselves, except as a means of killing other people. Posted 8:27 AM | [Link] SEVENTH MONTHS LATER[Kathryn Jean Lopez] The House Judiciary Committee voted (32-2) to abolish the INS yesterday. Posted 8:12 AM | [Link] BY THE WAY [Kathryn Jean Lopez] The Brookhiser piece in City Journal is a taste of what he is working on now: His next book, on Gouverneur Morris, "The Forgotten Founding Father," as his City Journal piece is titled. If you haven’t yet, you might want to check out his latest book on the Adams family, America's First Dynasty: The Adamses. For a taste of the Adams book, here’s NRO’s interview with him about it. Posted 8:11 AM | [Link] DOG QUESTION [Jonah Goldberg] Cosmo the Wonderdog (A.K.A. Notorious D.O.G) has a strange habit. We sometimes have to lay a cable wire across our living room floor in order to watch TV in the bedroom. Whenever we do this, Cosmo feels compelled to sleep on the cable cord, sometimes with his head uncomfortably rested on top of it. Other times he feels the need to keep just a paw on it. My wife is flummoxed. My own theory is that he has some kind of inborn strategy, born of the forest primeval, which makes him think it is a tree root that can carry vibrations and hence serve as an early-warning system if interlopers are afoot or apaw. If anybody has other theories please let me know. That way, my wife can stop saying "Jonah, what is up with your dog?" (he’s always mine when acting odd or strange). Posted 8:03 AM | [Link] READ THIS, TOO [Kathryn Jean Lopez] A new issue of City Journal is out. It is a magazine that cannot be recommended enough. Much like The New Criterion in that sense. Check it out—with Rick Brookhiser, Victor Davis Hanson, Heather MacDonald, Theodore Dalrymple, John McWhorter, Myron Magnet. It’s a treasure trove! Posted 7:53 AM | [Link] SAY IT AIN’T SO [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Robert A. George (as opposed to Robert P. (Princeton) George) on Al Sharpton: "Sharpton may have a good shot at becoming a national "player." Posted 7:46 AM | [Link] LISTEN FOR YOURSELF [Melissa Seckora] The radio show Lindgren is talking about is available online here. It’s an hour long, but Lindgren says listen to the first 33 minutes, especially the end of the first 33. Posted 7:42 AM | [Link] LINDGREN RESPONDS, II [Melissa Seckora] The rest of Lindgren’s e-mail: What is just as devastating to his new claim is that I read the crucial 9/19/2000 email to Bellesiles when we appeared with Randy Barnett and Jack Rakove on WBEZ public radio on Jan. 16, 2001. I read back to him the very passage that he now says he didn't write--where he claimed that the probate records were all on microfilm at the East Point, GA National Archives and that he went there to read them. He defended and excused having made those statements in his earlier email, repeating on WBEZ that the probate inventories "are all available on microfilm" and that he "did in fact, ah, look at them at the National Archives." He appeared to recognize that they were not in the collection of the archives, but pleaded as a general excuse: "I must admit I was in a hurry to be done with your email because I had so many and I didn't know who you were." He did not deny that he wrote the email; in fact he defended most of what he wrote in the email and offered an excuse for whatever errors were in it, his haste in replying. He now says that the very words in his email, which he defended and excused having written in haste on the radio in Jan. 2001, are not his words. Indeed on the History News Network, he says, "They are incorrect and contradict what I have written many other places as far back as 1991." Posted 7:32 AM | [Link] LINDGREN RESPONDS [Melissa Seckora] From Lindgren: Some of you may have seen the latest History News Network exchange in which Michael Bellesiles implies that emails he wrote to me were fabricated. For those interested, there is a comment section after the piece by Sternstein at www.historynewsnetwork.org. It is getting really sad to see how desperate his claims are. I have Bellesiles' disavowed emails on my home or work computers in their original, pristine condition, just as he sent them to me. And I don't know how to alter them without showing alterations. Perhaps he was betting that I didn't retain the originals unarchived, but I did. Posted 7:32 AM | [Link] THE "FABRICATED" BELLESILES'S E-MAILS [Melissa Seckora] In his latest response to his critics, Emory University history professor Michael Bellesiles denies that he wrote e-mails to Professor James Lindgren of Northwestern University claiming that he did his research on microfilm at the National Archives in East Point, Ga. (see Dave Kopel from yesterday). Posted 7:20 AM | [Link] YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: [John J. Miller] The state of Georgia is spending $25,000 to preserve the Civil War uniform of Jimmy Carter's great-great uncle. Posted 4:37 AM | [Link]
BRITISH ROYAL HUMOR [John Derbyshire] British Royal Humor would be the title of a very thin book. But George V's wife, Mary of Teck, was a grim specimen even by these standards. It was she of whom the coal miner in The Road to Wigan Pier was thinking when, invited to offer an opinion about his monarch, he said: "I'd rather tup my missus than his." Posted 7:02 PM | [Link] V'S RECORD [Andrew Stuttaford] John, George V may have made at least one other attempt at a joke. Not long after the First World War there was, for obvious reasons, an increase in demand for "nonviolent" playthings. The UK's leading manufacturer of toy soldiers reacted by making a "village" set (cow, a farmer, and so on). On being shown this, George V commented that it was not possible to have a village without a village idiot. In response, a dim-looking yokel was added to the set for a while (and is now highly prized by collectors). Of course, some claim that it was not George who was responsible for this remark, but his wife. This would be even more remarkable as Queen Mary was never even known to smile. Posted 6:47 PM | [Link] CHENEY FIGHTS BACK TOO [Jonathan Adler] Further evidence that the administration is getting serious about judicial nominations came this week when Cheney spoke at the ground-breaking ceremony for an annex to the U.S. courthouse in Washington, D.C. "The federal courts of the District of Columbia are among the most important in the land," said Cheney, and yet many nominees have waited months for confirmation hearings. "As we begin the work of expanding this building, it's worth remembering that a courthouse is not a court," Cheney explained. "Only judges make a court, and one-third of the seats on this Circuit Court are empty." Decrying the "vacancy crisis" on the federal bench, Cheney noted that the war on terrorism will be hampered if judges are not confirmed, particularly on the D.C. Circuit, the exclusive venue for certain terrorism-related cases. If Cheney's remarks were a sign of things to come, the fight over judicial nominations is just getting warmed up. Posted 6:16 PM | [Link] ONE FOR THE SECOND [Dave Kopel] The Ohio Court of Appeals has declared that Ohio's near-total ban on the carrying of firearms for protection is unconstitutional. The unanimous three-judge opinion upholds the Ohio constitution's right to arms, and rejects claims that near-prohibition of a constitutional right can be a "reasonable" regulation. Posted 5:16 PM | [Link] "GOD, OUR LOVER" REVISITED: [Rod Dreher] Remember my blog a few weeks back about my Long Island friend who couldn't stand his parish priest going on about "God, Our Lover" from the pulpit? Well, this priest made the paper today. "That's it, we're out of that parish," fumes my friend. Posted 4:15 PM | [Link] CLONE THIS PRESIDENT! [John J. Miller] A very good speech from President Bush, on human cloning: “Human cloning is deeply troubling to me, and to most Americans. Life is a creation, not a commodity. Our children are gifts to be loved and protected, not products to be designed and manufactured. Allowing cloning would be taking a significant step toward a society in which human beings are grown for spare body parts, and children are engineered to custom specifications; and that’s not acceptable.” Posted 4:14 PM | [Link] STUPID TV, BE MORE VIOLENT [Jonah Goldberg] Interesting piece on the recent study "showing" that TV causes violence over at TechCentralStation. (Man, do I hate that name). It's a good piece, but general proposition I don't agree. To believe that art -- broadly defined to include my friend the television -- doesn't influence pepple negatively means one must believe that art cannot affect someone positively. It's funny how anti-censorship arts-types believe art can save the world, but refuse to consider that art can have the opposite effect (but at the same time, these people hate "hate speech"). I'm not saying the cause-and-effect has to be simple: see violence, do violence. But to dispute there's no cause-and-effect at all is silly. If TV cannot send messages, how come people pay millions of dollars on commercials? Posted 3:34 PM | [Link] DEATH OF THE WEST, AGAIN [Jonah Goldberg] I don’t know how many Corner readers read my syndicated column. But I’m getting a real rough time over at my other email address for it and I don’t have time to reply to everybody retail. So I’ll do it wholesale here. I wrote a column about Pat Buchanan’s population arguments in light of the latest UN data. If you hadn’t heard, the United Nations has been forced to revise its population projections sharply downward. It turns out some of the most populous countries in the world will have below-replacement birthrates by 2050 or sooner (I’d bet a lot sooner). Anyway, without rehashing the whole thing, I’m getting deluged with people mocking me for citing UN data to criticize Buchanan. What’s funny about this is I’m using the same UN data as Buchanan – which he calls in his book "authoritative." My data’s just more current than his. I don’t think – or claim – that this refutes everything Pat writes. But his interpretation of the data is, in my humble opinion, bizarre. Posted 3:22 PM | [Link] NETANYAHU IN FULL[Kathryn Jean Lopez] Here’s the full Netanyahu speech. Thanks to Chris Messner for sending the url. Posted 2:39 PM | [Link] THE NECESSARY QUESTION: [Rod Dreher] There's so very, very much to read in the Boston papers today about the Church scandal, all of it incandescently angry at Cardinal Law for protecting the pro-pederasty, pro-bestiality Father Shanley. I won't even begin to link to it all here. However, there's one very important column from Eileen McNamara at the Globe, who asks: was Shanley blackmailing the archdiocese? As I mentioned in this space yesterday, one of the Shanley documents quotes him as saying he was molested while in seminary by a predecessor of either the cardinal archbishop of Boston or the cardinal archbishop of New York (Shanley doesn't specify which). Shanley was ordained in 1960. If he's being truthful -- that's a big if -- his alleged cardinal-molester would have been either Boston's Richard Cardinal Cushing or New York's Francis Cardinal Spellman. Now, I have written on several occasions (including in the current print edition of NR) that there is a "lavender mafia" of gay priests who protect and promote each other, and who, say priests and secular experts, are not above using blackmail to protect themselves. The mainstream media aren't going to be able to look away from this forever, and good on McNamara (and, to a lesser extent, Howie Carr in today's Herald) for being the first ones in Boston to make the connection. Posted 2:37 PM | [Link] SAUDI "PEACE" PLAN? [Jonah Goldberg] Rich, that is an amazing story. If Saudi Arabia shipped grenades and rockets to the Palestinians we'd see it for the violation of the "spirit of Oslo" that it would be. But paying people to blow themselves up is a convenient loophole. Talk about the corrupting influence of Big Money! Posted 2:34 PM | [Link] MORE KRISTOL/KAGAN—GOOD PT ABOUT THE ISRAELI MILTARY SUCCESS: [Rich Lowry] In military terms, Palestinian terrorists are losing badly in the current Israeli operation to destroy the terrorist infrastructure in the West Bank. Palestinian militants, far from welcoming martyrdom, as the American press insists must be the result of the Israeli offensive, are instead surrendering in droves to Israeli fighters. In the last couple of days, hundreds have surrendered in the West Bank town of Nablus and in the refugee camp of Jenin alone. This can’t help but put a dent in the terrorists’ ability to carry out future attacks on Israeli civilians. Unfortunately, at the same time, the Palestinian leadership may be winning a great political victory, courtesy of U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. Palestinian leaders are hailing as a great triumph Powell’s decision yesterday to drop all conditions for meeting with Yasser Arafat -- three weeks after Vice President Cheney had refused to meet with Arafat unless he agreed to move against terrorism. Palestinian leaders around Arafat are crowing over the defeat they have thereby handed to the Israeli government’s efforts. Arafat advisers insist that the very fact that Arafat will shortly be meeting with “the foreign minister of the most powerful nation in the world” is proof that Arafat is winning the war, even as Israel wins the battles. Posted 2:33 PM | [Link] TALK ABOUT A REAGAN MONUMENT[Kathryn Jean Lopez] A reader points out there is an emoticon for Ronald Reagan. In case you have the need, it's here. Posted 2:29 PM | [Link] WE COULD REALLY BE HEADED TO IRAQ [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Well, at least on a fact-finding mission to figure out if Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher, shot down during the Gulf War, is still alive. Iraq has succumbed to a U.S. request to have inspectors “discuss” the case. (For more on the case, see Bob Stumpf’s piece on the case—Stumpf was commanding a sister squadron into Baghdad when Speicher was shot down.) Posted 2:26 PM | [Link] WE COULD HAVE SAVED THE POWELL CARFARE[Kathryn Jean Lopez] Benjamin Netanyahu said all the things the administration needs to hear at the National Press Club today, from the sound of this wire story. “It won't amount to anything," he said about Powell’s talks with terrorist Arafat. "Arafat is beyond deterrence,” Netanyahu said. “He is in fantasy-land. Because he cannot be deterred he has to be dismantled." Posted 1:42 PM | [Link] SORRY…: [Rich Lowry] …for the very long post, but this is an important story from UPI yesterday: Saudi Arabia sets aside $50M for 'martyrs' WASHINGTON, April 9 (UPI) -- The Saudi Arabian government has paid out at least $33 million to families of Palestinians killed or injured in the 17-month-old intifada and in December 2001 earmarked another $50 million for the payments, according to Arabic news agencies and the Saudi Embassy's Web site. Similar payments promised by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein have drawn sharp condemnation from U.S. President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The Saudi Committee for Support of the Al-Aqsa Intifada distributes payments of $5,333 to the families of the dead and $4,000 to each Palestinian receiving medical treatment in Saudi hospitals. The fund is managed by Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz, according to the embassy. The sum is far less than the $10,000 Iraq offers to the families of those killed and the $25,000 it gives to the kin of suicide bombers, but is nonetheless significant to the average Palestinian whose annual income is $1,575. Saudi Arabia makes no distinction in compensation to families of suicide bombers and those killed by Israeli military action. There have been more than 50 suicide bombings since the intifada began in September 2000. According to Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Washington-based Council on American Islamic Relations, the Islamic faith enjoins Muslims to take care of widows and especially orphans. The families of suicide bombers are just as needy as those killed by military attacks, he said. "They want to make it sound like (all the money is for) the families of suicide bombers," Hooper told United Press International. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld professed ignorance of the Saudi fund Monday. "I have no information whatsoever that suggests that the government of Saudi Arabia is doing what Iraq is," he said at a Pentagon news briefing. Saudi Arabia created the fund in October 2000 at a conference of Arab nations held in Cairo, Egypt. It donated 25 percent of the $1 billion fund, $200 million of which goes for direct payments to families of the dead and injured and $800 million to fund economic development in the Palestinian territory. As of January 2001, the Saudi government had paid $33 million to families of 2,281 prisoners and 358 "martyrs," as well as to 8,000 wounded, 1,000 handicapped and another 102 Palestinians who have been treated in the kingdom's hospitals. In addition, food hampers were distributed to more than 200,000 families, according to the embassy Web site. The Bush administration avoided commenting on the Saudi fund but has decried the Iraqi payments -- especially to suicide bombers -- as inducement to murder.… Posted 12:23 PM | [Link] AT LEAST THIS ONE’S A BRITISH EXPORT [Kathryn Jean Lopez] "I felt rather stressed out after watching the show." That’s Thailand’s Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra about Thai’s Weakest Link, which is being blasted as “immoral.” Wildly popular—the show gets 100 applicants a day—it is running up against a culture clash in "the Land of Smiles." A producer told Fox: "There's a long way to go before Thais can put on a smile when they lose face or make mistake…It's just an Asian value." Posted 6:39 AM | [Link] BE SURE AND HUG A FEMINIST TODAY [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Today marks the sisters' annual " equal pay day.” A day set aside for bogus whining about making less than men. Here’s a nice myth-bashing fact sheet (from last year, thus the different date), courtesy of the gals at the Independent Women’s Forum. Posted 6:03 AM | [Link] LET THE HEIFER JOKES COMMENCE [John Derbyshire] In his only known attempt at humor, the late Queen Mother's father-in-law, King George the Fifth, on being told that Samuel Hoare had resigned as British ambassador to France, quipped: "No more coals to Newcastle, no more Hoares to Paris." May I kick off the inevitable round of heifer jokes by commenting that those fundamentalists down in Mississippi who were breeding red heifers for the Second Coming need now not bother: It would just be sending heifers to Haifa. Posted 5:52 AM | [Link] YOU CAN JUDGE A MAN BY HIS METAPHORS [Kathryn Jean Lopez] I missed Letterman last night, but here’s John Ashcroft in an interview with Jeffrey Toobin in this week’s New Yorker: “There are only two things necessary in life--WD-40 and duct tape…WD-40 for things that don’t move that should, and duct tape for things that do move but shouldn’t.” You want the men fighting the bad guys to talk like this. Something very Macgyver-esque about it. Posted 5:38 AM | [Link] DIGGING DEEPER [Dave Kopel] The History News Network website, based at George Mason University, features some astonishing new developments in the Michael Bellesiles Arming Armerica case. In "Are Michael Bellesiles's Critics Afraid to Say What They Really Think?" Professor Jerome Sternstein (Brooklyn College) begins with the question, "Has the time come to ask if Michael Bellesiles's Arming America is an example of scholarly deceit?" Sternstein summarizes the William & Mary Quarterly's "scathing appraisals of his book's misuse of sources and evidence which some might regard as consistent with academic fraud, such as repeatedly misquoting, distorting, falsifying, or perhaps even deliberately inventing evidence to support one's thesis." Part of Sternstein's crit | ||||||||||||||||||||
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