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INSURANCE? [Andrew Stuttaford] Breaking on Drudge... " Senior members of the Saudi royal family paid hundreds of millions of dollars to Osama Bin Laden's terror group and the Taliban in exchange for an agreement that his forces would not attack targets in Saudi Arabia, according to court documents..." If this story is shown to be true and if it spins out the way it seems, it looks to be yet more confirmation that the Saudis were paying off Bin Laden. They were buying insurance and, in effect, American lives were the premium. Something to mention in Crawford, Mr. President? Posted 11:02 PM | [Link] MAC ATTACK (2) [Andrew Stuttaford] A grab-bag of Norwegian busybodies have objected to a new McDonald's product. Check out this story and then read what the Instapundit has to say (and be sure also to click on the excellent link he provides). McDonalds themselves seem to have reacted feebly to the shakedown - another reminder of the prevalence of PC in the boardroom. It would have been far better to have simply told the prattling idiots from Norwegian Church Aid to take a hike. Så dumt… Posted 4:13 PM | [Link] MAC ATTACK [Andrew Stuttaford] The New York Times has a piece today on opposition to a McDonalds outlet planned for the town square in Oaxaca, Mexico. "This is the center of our city, a place where people meet, talk politics, shop and spend time," whines Francisco Toledo, a man described as "perhaps Mexico's best-known living artist", "it's a big influence on art and creativity. And we are drawing the line here against what the arches symbolize." Well, what the arches symbolize are freedom and consumer choice. By contrast, Toledo's stance symbolizes a rather bizarre 'blood and soil' cultural fascism. I think I'd rather have cheeseburgers. Posted 3:42 PM | [Link] BARRING SMOKING IN BARS [Andrew Stuttaford] Nurse Bloomberg's crusade against barroom puffers has received some predictable support - a gaggle of meddling medics, and endorsements from two vehicles of elite opinion: the reliably joyless New York Times and, of course, the snooty (but always readable) New York Observer. In a piece in the latest issue, the Observer now reveals that the Nurse has enlisted a new supporter, Judith Joice, one half of the couple that used to own and operate the Lion's Head, a legendary bar in Greenwich Village. Tragically Mrs Joice's husband died of lung cancer a few years ago, something his widow uses as the rationale for her support of Bloomberg's grotesque jihad. We never learn whether Mr. Joice was a smoker himself, something that is a far more plausible cause of his disease than 'passive smoking', the largely illusory menace that is the justification for this latest exercise in big government bullying. Joice also tells us that she 'lost' two of the Lion's Head's barkeepers to cancer, a sad statistic that has value only as propaganda. For it to mean anything, readers would need to know how many barkeepers she had employed in the course of her quarter century run at the Lion's Head. On the face of it, two cancer deaths over twenty-five years would seem a low toll in any group. What's more, for the information to be of any relevance to the current debate, we would also have to be told the type of cancer that killed these two individuals, and whether they themselves were smokers. The New York Observer, needless to say, does not bother to enlighten its readers on any of these points. The writer of the article merely notes that Bloomberg's proposal may face a rough ride as "the tobacco and bar industries have extraordinary lobbying power" a contemptuous - and contemptible - comment that ignores the fact that opposition to Nurse's prescription is based on far more than commercial considerations. Much more important are pesky notions of liberty, choice and the idea that adults are able to take decisions for themselves. Rudy Giuliani helped halt a similar - but less draconian - effort by the anti-smoking zealots last year but then, as New Yorkers are increasingly coming to discover, the Nurse is no Rudy. Posted 3:15 PM | [Link] AND THE WINNER IS... [Andrew Stuttaford] A reader tells me that one of his friends has circulated a Letterman-style list of the top ten reasons Gadaffi was elected to that UN human rights job. Number one: "Osama Bin Laden was unavailable". Posted 2:40 PM | [Link] B-I-G-O-T [Andrew Stuttaford] In four letters, 'J-E-W-S', Georgia State Rep. James 'Billy' McKinney revealed both spelling skills and repulsive bigotry. The man standing against him in the Democratic primary is John Noel. I know nothing about him other than the fact that he is running against McKinney, but here's his website. Posted 2:33 PM | [Link] LAST EXIT IN QUEENS[Andrew Stuttaford] Depressing start to the day today with the arrival of a leaflet offering reservations at a cemetery in Queens (Mrs. Stuttaford can come too - the offer includes "a predevelopment discount on a companion crypt for two in our newest Mausoleum"). Not for me, I think. I want my passing to be marked with a little grandeur - and an outer borough just will not do. Besides, the description of the cemetery's chapel ("wood-beamed ceiling...imported Italian marble") makes it sound more like a condo development than the Valhalla I have in mind. If death is the final destination (and I can understand the appeal of Ted Williams' mortality hedge), there's no need for humility or "memorial niches" : go for burial in megalomaniacal splendor - and a massive monument that will endure for the ages. Either that or exit in the Viking way, ablaze in a longship. Posted 2:22 PM | [Link] OPIE & DOPEY: THE SMOKING GUN: [Rod Dreher] The Smoking Gun website has the goods on the sicko stunt shock jocks Opie and Anthony pulled on their now-cancelled radio show last week. You can link to audio of the actual live broadcast, in which the show's "spotter," a thug named Paul Mercurio, described the sex act two "contestants" were performing in a St. Patrick's vestibule. Says TSG: "On the tape, Mercurio is heard lying to cops and cathedral security guards, claiming that [the contestants] -- who were referred to on-air by false names -- were friends who he was accompanying on a tour of Manhattan." Opie cheered them on, saying the couple qualified for extra points for having anal sex. And, says TSG: "Contest winners were to be awarded a trip to Boston for a music festival sponsored by Samuel Adams. In fact, Jim Koch, the publicly-held brewery's chairman/spokesman, was actually present -- and apparently enjoying himself -- in the Opie and Anthony studio as the sex contest occurred and official 'spotters' like Mercurio called in with updates from the field. Koch, referred to as the event's 'Grand Marshal,' described the participating couples as 'awesome, all of 'em, better teams. The quality gets better every year.' Sam Adams, we hardly knew ye. Time to drink something else, it seems to me. Posted 10:59 AM | [Link]
KIM CANUTE [Andrew Stuttaford] Here's a story to enjoy. Kim Jong-il, North Korea's killer clown, has been meeting with Vladimir Putin. According to the always, ahem, reliable North Korean news agency, two previous visits to Russia by the little dictator had been marked by the fact that heavy rain had held off until the moment that Kim had left the scene. Well, of course. Fans would expect nothing less of the 'dear leader', a man whose birth was allegedly accompanied by a double rainbow and a bright star. It's no surprise then to learn (the agency tells us) that a Russian official had told Kim the following: "Comrade Kim Jong-il, the sun is yours, as people say. You seem to let the sun throw its rays, when necessary, while going with it kept in your pocket." How did it go this time round? Well, I'm not sure if it ever made the North Korean press, but let's just say that it rained on Kim's parade. Posted 10:22 PM | [Link] EPISODE OF FRIENDS BANNED IN MALAYSIA FOR PROMOTING PROMISCUITY [Kathryn Jean Lopez] They just catch on? Posted 10:16 PM | [Link] LATE ELECTION NIGHT WARNING [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Karl Rove: "I feel good about the House and I think the Senate ... it's going to be one of those great high school basketball games where the outcome is in doubt until the very last second of the game." Posted 10:14 PM | [Link] HOW DO YOU SPELL DEFEAT FOR CYNTHIA MCKINNEY?: [Rod Dreher] According to the father of the outgoing pro-Muslim wack job, "J-E-W-S," whom McKinney the Elder claims "have bought everyone." Writes the amusing Joshua Sharf, "Aside from noting that at least he didn't spell it 'J-U-S-E,' I have the following to say to Mr. McKinney: 'J-E-W-S! Jews! Jews! Jews! Goooooooooooooooooooooooo Jews!" Posted 6:10 PM | [Link] NEVILLE W. BUSH [Andrew Stuttaford] Kathryn, the AP report of the proposed meeting in Munich, er, Crawford makes sorry reading. The report notes that "the ranch visit, a coveted diplomatic plum, is designed to smooth relations with the Saudi government..." That's true - a trip to Crawford is a 'diplomatic plum'. So why invite a Saudi 'prince' there? The ranch is a place for allies, not adversaries. If Bush wants to claim that the Saudis are friends he is sending a signal of weakness to the Middle East and a message of contempt for America. It is equally bizarre to read that the US has to 'smooth relations' with the Saudis. Let's be clear. It is the Saudis who need to 'smooth relations' with the US. They could start by releasing the American women held captive in that country. Reading between the lines of the AP report, it looks as if administration officials are trying to distance themselves from the 9/11 lawsuit. If there's something they know that would exonerate the Saudis, they should say so. If there isn't, they should at least have the good taste to shut up. Both diplomacy and sycophancy are four syllable words ending in 'y'. In its dealings with Riyadh, the Bush administration needs to show that it understands the difference between them. Posted 4:29 PM | [Link] RE: SEX IN ST. PATRICK'S: [Rod Dreher] Ah, Cardinal Heenan and Waugh. Poor Waugh's heart was broken by the Second Vatican Council's trashing of the liturgy, which Heenan promised Waugh he would resist. The cardinal was not a man of his word. On Easter of 1965, Waugh recorded in his diary: "Cardinal Heenan has been double-faced in the matter. I had dinner with him a deux in which he confessed complete sympathy with the conservatives and, as I understood him, promised resistance to the innovation, which he is now pressing forward." One takes it His Eminence grew in office... . Posted 4:16 PM | [Link] BUSH TO MEET WITH SAUDI PRINCE [Kathryn Jean Lopez] To encourage him to take a hardline against terror or suffer the oil fields, no doubt. Posted 3:45 PM | [Link] PERLE BASHING: [Ramesh Ponnuru] Writing in Slate, Chris Suellentrop concludes a profile of Richard Perle thus: "But Perle has also consistently fallen prey to the delusion that if only Saddam Hussein can be removed from Iraq, the seas will turn to chocolate, candy will rain down from the sky, and the international community will sing as America buys the world a Coke in celebration. It's the kind of simplistic, doe-eyed fantasizing that liberals sometimes bring to domestic issues. Visions of sugarplums aren't enough to justify a dangerous and deadly pre-emptive war." There's nothing wrong with a little hyperbole. But Suellentrop does nothing to justify the caricature by showing us a reality on which it could be based. He doesn't even try to show that Perle is overselling the benefits of deposing Saddam Hussein. We're just supposed to trust his assessment. Why should we? Posted 2:11 PM | [Link] ROE’S RADICALISM: [Ramesh Ponnuru] Yesterday on the Corner, Jonathan Adler claimed that Roe v. Wade was “much less ‘pro-choice’ than the cases that came after it.” He correctly points out that Roe conceded that the states “could prohibit post-viability abortions, subject to a life and health exception.” But in Roe’s companion case, Doe v. Bolton, the concession was effectively taken away. There, Justice Blackmun wrote that “the medical judgment of the physician from whom a woman seeks an abortion] may be exercised in the light of all factors--physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's age--relevant to the wellbeing of the patient. All these factors may relate to health. This allows the attending physician the room he needs to make his best medical judgment. And it is room that operates for the benefit, not the disadvantage, of the pregnant woman." What Roe and Doe did together was to sweep away the laws of all fifty states to impose a regime of abortion-on-demand through every stage of pregnancy. Posted 1:52 PM | [Link] SNUFFING OUT SPEECH [Andrew Stuttaford] Another government insults its citizens: Blair's administration has decided that the British are incapable of judging tobacco ads for themselves. Posted 1:40 PM | [Link] ICY EDENS [Andrew Stuttaford] Mike, what about Charles Dickens and some of his Christmas writing? Not exactly paradise, but London's good enough. As a child, I always enjoyed the winter scenes in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but then that was a depiction of Hell, not Heaven. Looking at paintings rather than books, I'd guess that Caspar David Friedrich must have come up with something both wintry and heavenly. On a more secular note, how about the most beautiful 'winter' movies? My nominations: Dersu Uzala and, of course, Doctor Zhivago. Posted 1:32 PM | [Link] WINTER WONDERLAND? [Mike Potemra] From Elie Wiesel's new novel, The Judges: "A picture came to Razziel's mind, ripping aside the veils that obscured it. In a faint glow he saw-or saw again-a child on a horse-drawn sleigh, his hair flying in the wind. The child was happy. He was happy because it was snowing. It was snowing in paradise where all is snow." The more conventional iconography of paradise usually portrays it as springtime, and consigns winter to serving as a circle-of-life metaphor for decay and death. I'm with Elie Wiesel on this one, and if any NRO readers can direct me to similar appreciations of the beauties of winter, I'd be very grateful.... Posted 1:08 PM | [Link] KILLER KITTY [Andrew Stuttaford] Rich, as Jonah is away, I thought that it was my responsibility to post this tale of feline aggression. Best part of the story (which concerns a postman repeatedly attacked by a cat) is the fact that the savaged postie left a note after the first assault apologizing for the fact that his blood was smeared all over the letter box. The man is a saint. Posted 1:07 PM | [Link] SEX IN ST. PATRICK'S: [Mike Potemra] I was just reading a book of correspondence between Evelyn Waugh and Cardinal Heenan on the liturgical changes of the 1960s. In a letter of 25 November 1962, Heenan assured Waugh that he would not turn the priest around to celebrate Mass facing the people: "In my Cathedral...nobody will be looking in anybody else's face (except perhaps, surreptitiously, two young lovers)." Cardinal Heenan was a very foresighted man, to be sure, but I don't think this is precisely what he had in mind... Posted 1:07 PM | [Link] WHICH BRINGS ME...: [Rich Lowry] ...to a request. I was reading the other day that skate parks have been opening again because they've found a way to beat the liability problem. If someone has info on how/why these parks were shut down for a while, and how/why they have now found a way around the trial lawyers, I would love to hear from you. Could be a column. Posted 11:25 AM | [Link] LIVING IN DOWNTOWN MANHATTAN... [Rich Lowry] ...has given me a real (if totally uninformed) appreciation for skateboarding. You'll occasionally be walking down the street and see some random act of derring-do by one of these kids that takes your breath away. The other day near the office I was walking by a plaza that is raised a few steps (say three feet or so) above the sidewalk. On one side of the plaza there is a railing that is also roughly three-feet high. Well, this kid with dreadlocks was taking a big running start toward this railing, jumping on his board, then flying over the railing and all the way down to the sidewalk for a huge six-foot drop--right there in the middle of the day, with pedestrains all around and the street full of traffic. (Makes you wonder whether the slogan should be Skate OR Die, or Skate AND Die.) It turned out a friend of his was signaling when the coast was clear. I couldn't help stopping and watching for a while. Posted 11:25 AM | [Link] THE WASH POST HEADLINE...: [Rich Lowry] ...on its FISA story today is "Secret Court Rebuffs Ashcroft." Unfortunately that sets the tone for the piece. You have to read the Post editorial to find a frank statement of why this isn't primarily an "Ashcroft rebuffed story": "Attorney General John Ashcroft is not blamed for these transgressions. Most or all of the misstatements appear to have taken place during the prior administration and the court notes that the department and bureau wrote new rules last year to ensure the accuracy of FISA applications. The judges, moreover, appear to have no complaints about the quality of applications since September 11." Posted 11:18 AM | [Link] IS HE TALKING ABOUT US?: [Rod Dreher] Corner reader Peter Meilaender writes to say that the 20th-century Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper believed that rightly-ordered anger could serve the good by helping us over come moral weakness, e.g. cowardice. But Meilaender points with dread for the West to the following Pieper observation: "Only the combination of the intemperateness of lustfulness with the lazy inertia incapable of generating anger is the sign of complete and virtually hopeless degeneration. It appears whenever a caste, a people, or a whole civilization is ripe for its decline and fall." Posted 10:54 AM | [Link] 401 NOT OK [Andrew Stuttaford] Senator Jon Corzine has just appeared on CNBC claiming that "we" (meaning government) "spend" $60 billion on 401k's. That's a revealing insight into his mentality. Corzine seems to regard 100% of a taxpayer's income as government property. Any tax concession is, therefore, 'spending'. In the case of 401k's, the tax concession is, in any event, not that generous and the amount that can be put into the funds is relatively low. Nevertheless the Senator appears to believe that these feeble tax breaks are enough to justify governmental micromanagement. Well, it's all right for him. Somehow I suspect that the Senator from Goldman Sachs, who is as wealthy as he is left-wing, won't be relying on a 401k to put the glister on his golden years. Posted 9:57 AM | [Link] PASSIVE COMMUTING [Andrew Stuttaford] A new report from University College, London has found that, in the course of a twenty minute commute, travelers on the London Underground breathe in as much pollution as if they had smoked a cigarette. Mayor Bloomberg is expected to call for the Tube to be made illegal shortly. Posted 8:37 AM | [Link] AL QAEDA SIGHTING IN IRAQ [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Posted 7:54 AM | [Link] THIS DOES NOT ROCK [Kathryn Jean Lopez] This certainly does not advance the peace-process: Neo-Nazi "taxpayers" plan concert for the Mall. Posted 7:52 AM | [Link] TRUE [Kathryn Jean Lopez] A number of readers point out that WNEW and Westwood one do not deserve any praise for firing Opie and Anthony. The St. Pat's thing, afterall, wasn't their first offensive stunt. True enough. But these days, you can never take for granted when someone actually fired for wrongdoing. It's way out of style, especially when it is most important. (You know where I am going...) Posted 7:41 AM | [Link] CORNER KUDOS... [Kathryn Jean Lopez] ...to WNEW in NYC and Westwood One for dumping "Opie and Anthony" after their St. Patrick's Cathedral sex stunt. Posted 12:06 AM | [Link] MORE MISPLACED GOV'T PRIORITIES [Kathryn Jean Lopez] DOJ cracks down...on pirated movies and music...? Posted 12:01 AM | [Link]
CAIR TAKES A STAND ON MCKINNEY [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Just thought you'd want to see CAIR's release morning Cynthia's political loss, which went around today: In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE MUSLIMS THANK REP. MCKINNEY FOR HER SUPPORT (WASHINGTON, D.C., 8/22/02) - The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Washington-based Islamic civil rights and advocacy group, today thanked Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) for her past support of the Muslim community and offered encouragement for her future endeavors on behalf of those who lack a voice in our society. On Tuesday, McKinney lost a primary election to a candidate heavily backed by the pro-Israel lobby and assisted by a significant Republican cross-over vote. McKinney's opponents objected to her balanced positions on the Middle East conflict and to her willingness to address the concerns of American Muslims and Arab-Americans. In a letter to McKinney, CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad wrote: "As you said in your concession speech on Tuesday, 'Doing what is right is not always easy. Sometimes you are faced with a choice between doing what is politically safe or doing what is right. Sometimes you have to stand up to seemingly unbeatable odds, speak the truth to the most powerful interests, to do what is right.' "It was this willingness to do what is right, in spite of the consequences, that drew the admiration and support of Muslims and Arab-Americans nationwide. "In Congress, you stood for the poor, the forgotten and the disenfranchised. Your example motivated thousands of ordinary people to get involved in the political process and to fight for their civil rights and human dignity. "The Muslim community wishes to once again thank you for all your efforts on behalf of our nation. We will support you in any future efforts, whether in the political arena or in the private sector, to promote the cause of justice and inclusion." - END - Posted 11:42 PM | [Link] QUEEN VICTORIA MISREPRESENTED [John Derbyshire] Rod: I love Steyn's stuff too, but he is wrong to attribute the phrase "close my eyes and think of England" to Queen Victoria. It was Lady Alice Hillingdon: "I am happy now that Charles calls on my bedchamber less frequently than of old. As it is, I endure but two calls a week, and when I hear his steps outside my door I lie down on my bed, close my eyes, and think of England." Queen Victoria is generally believed to have enjoyed sex, though she was somewhat confused about the details. When her doctor told her she was entering her menopause, she said: "Does that mean I won't be able to have fun in bed any more?" Posted 11:35 PM | [Link] EMORY'S STATEMENT ON MICHAEL BELLESILES: [Melissa Seckora] "Professor Michael Bellesiles will be on paid leave from his teaching duties at Emory University during the fall semester. The University's inquiry regarding Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture is continuing. Professor Bellesiles and the University have agreed that the results of the University's inquiry will be made public when the inquiry is completed." Posted 5:06 PM | [Link] STEYN: TWO FOR TWO: [Rod Dreher] Here's Mark Steyn on GWB's succumbing to multiculturalism in the conduct of the war: "George W. Bush had a rare opportunity after 11 September. He could have attempted to reverse the most toxic tide in the Western world: the sappy multiculturalism that insists all cultures are equally valid, even as they’re trying to kill us. He could have argued that Western self-loathing is a psychosis we can no longer afford. ... But a year later, after a brief hiccup, the Western elites have resumed finessing and nuancing evil all the more enthusiastically, and the ‘compassionate conservative’ shows no stomach for a fight at least as important as any on the battlefield. The Islamists are militarily weak but culturally secure. A year on, the West is just the opposite. There’s more than one way to lose a war." Read the whole terrific column here. Posted 4:49 PM | [Link] ANOTHER MARK STEYN HOMERUN: [Rod Dreher] Remember my telling you that in Holland, when gangs of Muslim youths violently harrassed Dutch women at public swimming pools, the authorities chose to close the pools instead of arrest or otherwise deal with the foul-mouthed gangs (they called women "whores")? Mark Steyn puts the smackdown on this mentality. He also quotes an Islamic organization's claim that in 20 years, the majority of Holland's youth (defined as under-18s) will be Muslim. Posted 4:11 PM | [Link] ARI FLEISCHER GAGGLES ON IRAQ: [Melissa Seckora] "Let me say this as an observation about the press. The press yesterday and the day before yesterday reached an absurd point of self-inflicted silliness -- The press, yesterday and the day before yesterday, inflicted on itself -- reached a self-inflicted point of silliness that goes beyond the usual August hype. There have been meetings about Iraq in the past. There will be meetings about Iraq in the future. Yesterday's meeting was not about Iraq; the press didn't care. There's a headline in a major Texas paper this morning, "meeting not about Iraq." It's just amusing to watch the press inform the public about what things aren't instead of what things are. And so I say it tongue in cheek, but I say it -- obviously, what's going to appear in a transcript where people can't see my jovial body language -- but there is something -- the press is just -- acts silly at times. And there are legitimate questions about Iraq that should be posed, but the fact of the matter is yesterday's meeting was about another important topic. So -- as I say, there have been meetings about Iraq, there will be meetings about Iraq, yesterday wasn't." Posted 3:45 PM | [Link] REMF REDUX: [John Derbyshire] I've had a number of responses from military readers since mentioning the REMF acronym on National Review Online, as a result of which I think I have a better handle on the professional military mentality. ---A soldier who pulls strings to get a combat assignment is making a nuisance of himself. Posted 3:43 PM | [Link] Big Labor's Arthur Andersen: [Joel Mowbray] Last week, NRO wrote about ULLICO, Big Labor's own Enron. Now, a related scandal is emerging: Big Labor's Arthur Anderson. The culprit this time is Thomas Havey, LLP, widely recognized as union's audit firm of choice. Today, all indications are that the second of 35 Thomas Havey partners will plead guilty to a federal crime. Frank Massey, the audit firm's top union audit man, is reported to be prepared to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud against the United States for encouraging unions to file false reporting statements with the federal government - which is akin to Arthur Andersen's sin of signing off on cooked books. The Massey plea, which will supposedly take place today at 2 p.m. at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, shows how pervasive this scandal may be. Thomas Havey is involved in signing off on the financials of hundreds of unions around the counrty; who knows what could be coming next? Posted 3:16 PM | [Link] IS NORMAN MINETA FREELANCING? [Kathryn Jean Lopez] This reeks of his brand of commonsense. Posted 2:51 PM | [Link] CHAPMAN ON OWEN: [Jonathan Adler] I am not the only one who thinks it is dubious to call Justice Priscilla Owen an "activist" judge. Steve Chapman's latest column takes on Owen's critics quite well. Posted 2:43 PM | [Link] BASHMAN, ABORTION, AND ROE: [Jonathan Adler] Ramesh raises some good points -- and I have no doubt that Howard Bashman can defend himself (he has a whole blog to himself). I do have one comment. It is worth remembering that the original Roe decision, on its own terms, is much less "pro-choice" than the cases that came after it. The majority opinion explicitly rejected the position that "the woman's right is absolute and that she is entitle to terminate her pregnancy at whatever time, in whatever way, and for whatever reason she alone chooses." The original Roe opinion also explicitly stated that states could prohibit post-viability abortions, subject to a life and health exception. It may well be the case that "the public remains much less 'pro-choice' than the Roe regime." There is no doubt, however, that the public is much less 'pro-choice' than current law, as the current law is substantially more "pro-choice" than Roe initially purported to be. The literal holding of Roe would allow far more state regulation of abortion than the Supreme Court has allowed in subsequent cases. (Note: This is not a defense of Roe; it is merely the observation of one who will be teaching this case to his students next semester.) Posted 2:42 PM | [Link] WON'T YOU MISS MRS. ROBINSON, ANDREW? [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Here she is in the Tehran Times. Posted 2:11 PM | [Link] DINESH D'SOUZA ON REPARATIONS [Kathryn Jean Lopez] NPR audio. Posted 1:30 PM | [Link] THE LESSON: [Mike Potemra] Those who live in modernity but think they don't like it got a wake-up call on September 11. There are people out there who really, truly, don't like modernity (which is to say: freedom, tolerance, and religious pluralism) and are willing to commit mass murder to destroy it-and we are now engaged in a deadly war against these evil forces. The Pope was right to kiss the Koran: As the Vatican II document Lumen Gentium pointed out, "together with us [Moslems] adore the one, merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day," and the Koran is a lovely work, animated by this spirit of adoration. But the Pope's gesture was an act of love for what is good in Islam-and implies no endorsement of those who commit grave sins in its name. (He applies the same principle to Christianity, in his apologies for the great sins of Christians over 2,000 years.) When this war is over, Moslems will have to build on what is good in the Koran-just as the Germans built on the strengths of their national character after Nazism were destroyed. Posted 12:36 PM | [Link] WHOOPS! [Mike Potemra] I was reading a debate on the Internet about whether the Pope was right to kiss the Koran, and ran across this nugget: "Is it not possible that the pope was simply acknowledging in a dramatic fashion, the good things we recognize in Islam . . . ? . . . E.g., they oppose contraception and have fairly decent sexual ethics. They even value children, and produce a lot of them! That makes them very traditional in today's world, and we should rejoice in that. In many ways, they are kindred spirits with us, against modernity and the zeitgeist of death." (Emphasis added.) The debate took place in 1999. Posted 12:36 PM | [Link] AND ANOTHER THING: [Ramesh Ponnuru] Bashman notes en passant that “[h]ere in the United States. . . an unelected federal judiciary is responsible for resolving the most politically and socially divisive issues of our time.” He is quite correct about that, but it’s unfortunate that this state of affairs is so taken for granted. Posted 12:30 PM | [Link] A NOTE ON THAT BASHMAN ARTICLE: [Ramesh Ponnuru] Jonathan: It’s nice that Bashman rejects the use of polls to settle issues of constitutional interpretation. But as he elaborates his argument, he leans heavily on the conventional wisdom about the history and politics of abortion. That CW is very open to question. Roe v. Wade was counterproductive, Bashman says: Democratic processes would have yielded the same result, since a majority of the public was pro-choice, without inflaming the anti-abortion minority the way Roe did. Many states, he adds, were already discarding their anti-abortion laws at the time of Roe. For a corrective to this history, arguing that the states were in fact largely rejecting attempts to liberalize abortion laws, see Russell Hittinger’s essay "Abortion Before Roe." Even today, the public remains much less “pro-choice” than the Roe regime. It strongly rejects partial-birth abortion and third-trimester abortions, for example. In many polls, small majorities think that abortion should be illegal except when the life of the mother is at stake or when the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest. There’s a reason the abortion lobby fights so hard to preserve Roe. Without it, they would lose quite a bit of ground. Posted 12:29 PM | [Link] ELSTAIN ON ADDAMS [Kathryn Jean Lopez] I offer here a review by yours truly on Jean Bethke Elshtain’s wonderful biography of Jane Addams. The book got lost in the wake of 9/11 to some extent, which is a real shame. I highly endorse. Posted 12:22 PM | [Link] OVERHEARD [Kathryn Jean Lopez] "We have nothing to do with terrorism" a Saudi banker accused of just this, complains. I would have considered the veracity of his denial until he blamed "a Zionist conspiracy against Saudi economy and Islam" for the accusation, part of that huge 9/11 lawsuit. Posted 12:21 PM | [Link] BELLESILES'S FUTURE: [Melissa Seckora] Word has it that Emory University has made a decision regarding Michael Bellesiles's tenure as a professor of history. Members of the history department are expected to hear the news first thing tomorrow from Dean Robert A. Paul. Let's hope for a public statement, too. Posted 12:13 PM | [Link] NUMBER 2 PENCIL: [Stanley Kurtz] Kimberly Swygert, a Research Scientist at a non-profit, large-scale, high-stakes standardized testing organization has a blog called Number 2 Pencil. Today she endorses key parts of my critique of John Harper's Weekly Standard cover story on the new SAT. Posted 12:12 PM | [Link] I JUST DON'T KNOW ABOUT THIS... [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Some cable channels are going to skip their usual programming on 9/11, instead just a continuous scroll of Sept. 11 victims. Posted 11:21 AM | [Link] THIS ONE'S DEDICATED TO EVERYONE WHO SENT HATE MAIL WHEN I PRAISED THE BEE GEES IN THE CORNER [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Posted 10:42 AM | [Link] BE AFRAID [Jonathan Adler] Howard Bashman of How Appealing fame explains on Slate why poll-watching Supreme Court justices should scare us all. As Howard explains, "Allowing the Constitution's meaning to be determined by public opinion polls not only devalues that historical document, but it also ends up undermining the majority's preferences by allowing a vehemently opposed minority to become much more influential than it would otherwise be." Posted 10:21 AM | [Link] A DOUBLE STANDARD: [Rod Dreher] Today's NYTimes has an interesting story about how money from outside contributors -- in this case, Jewish -- contributed to the recent defeats of Alabama incumbent Rep. Earl Hilliard and Georgia's infamous Rep. Cynthia "President Bush May Have Caused 9/11" McKinney, both of whom were turned out by black challengers. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), head of the Congressional black caucus, is angry. "To have non-African Americans from around the country putting millions into a race to unseat one of our leaders for expressing her right of free speech is definitely a problem," Johnson said. Two things: 1) outside contributors are a fair issue in any race, but Johnson's outrage is selective; why no complaints about the Arab-Americans who donated to McKinney's campaign? 2) "our" leaders -- good grief, will the Afro-fascist attitudes ever end? Artur Davis, who defeated Hilliard, and Denise Majette are both black, but, it seems, not black enough for Johnson, a bully who reserves to herself the right to decide who speaks for black people. When Harvey Gantt, who is black, ran against Sen. Jesse Helms, lots of people from outside North Carolina donated to Gantt, because they hated Helms's politics. There's no crime in that. But if a white Congresswoman had told the New York Times she had a problem with "non-whites from around the country putting millions into a race to unseat one of our leaders," that Congresswoman would have been rightly denounced from the rafters as a racist troglodyte. Will that happen to Johnson? Don't hold your breath. Posted 10:17 AM | [Link] SPEAKING OF BOOKS [Kathryn Jean Lopez] For Labor Day weekend book reading, you’ll want to prep for Sept. 11 and the war on Iraq with Michael Ledeen’s The War Against the Terror Masters and Victor Davis Hanson’s Autumn of War. Ledeen is scoopy and new. And, in case you were wondering, never mentions the phrase, "Faster, please." I think we trademarked that. And Hanson’s will remind you why you love NRO -- it’s a collection of his post-Sept. 11 work, much of it from this site. Posted 9:25 AM | [Link] SHAME ON ME [Kathryn Jean Lopez] A reader writes: "If Jonah were here, he'd turn your observations on Title IX into a chance for a shameless plug for Ms. Gavora's book. And so, in his absence: Buy Jessica Gavora’s book!" Truth be told, I’d be shamelessly plugging it if she weren’t married to Jonah. It’s an excellent book, an authoritative rebuttal to just about every other woman’s take on Title IX (Isn’t to be a woman to be a lefty feminist?). Here’s the link. Posted 9:23 AM | [Link] THOSE AMAZING FRENCH [Kathryn Jean Lopez] They have the power to ban death! Posted 8:40 AM | [Link] GET 4 FREE ISSUES OF NATIONAL REVIEW! That's right: We'll send you 4 FREE issues of National Review at absolutely no risk to you. If you're impressed by National Review's superior writing style, analysis, and wit, we'll send you the next 12 issues — for a total of 16 in all! — for only $19.95. Click here for details. Posted 8:31 AM | [Link] SYRIA BUCKS UP ITS KINGDOM FRIENDS [Kathryn Jean Lopez] JEDDAH, 22 August — Prince Abdullah, the regent, yesterday received a message from Syrian President Bashar Assad. The message was delivered by Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Al-Shara. Posted 7:20 AM | [Link] ANDREW, CHECK OUT THE POWER! [Kathryn Jean Lopez] The Saudis made the dollar drop yesterday. Today's Arab News lead item. Posted 7:17 AM | [Link] DAVE SHIFLETT’LL LOVE THIS ONE [Kathryn Jean Lopez] California might ban under-21 smoking. (You’ll see what I mean—Shif. has a piece going up later this ayem.) Posted 7:12 AM | [Link] IF THIS IS TRUE... [Kathryn Jean Lopez] ...that Libya is providing Iran with chem warheads for ballistic missiles, just remember that their peaceful leader is also the new chair of the U.N. human-rights commission. He must be rewarding Iran for its continuing human-rights excellence. Posted 7:08 AM | [Link] FOR THE "RELIGION OF PEACE" FILES [Kathryn Jean Lopez] "The heads of the two male hostages were found in an open air market in Jolo town along with notes calling for a holy war." The headless were two of six kidnapped Jehovah's Witnesses in the southern Philippines, taken by Muslim, al Qaeda-linked, rebels. Here's the story. Posted 7:04 AM | [Link] TALKING WITH THE ENEMY [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Iraq is not cooperating regarding missing Gulf War pilot Scott Speicher. Surprise. Surprise. Posted 6:56 AM | [Link] I MISS JEFF GREENFIELD [Kathryn Jean Lopez] I, for one, liked his CNN show. A welcome intelligent show. Instead we have Crossfire with Carville and Begala, Connie Chung, Larry King, and Aaron Browne. And somehow these are better than Greenfield? Anyway, here’s Greenfield on Slate on Bush and baseball. Posted 6:51 AM | [Link] ASLEIGH, LARRY, GERALDO, YADA YADA… [Kathryn Jean Lopez] They all actually make Bill Clinton sound not-so-bad. Posted 6:50 AM | [Link] MR. V TAKES ON MSNBC'S GLOBETROTTING GAL [Kathryn Jean Lopez] This seems like such an unfair fight: WSJ’s Tunku Varadarajan vs. MSNBC Ashleigh. Posted 6:49 AM | [Link] DID I MENTION? [Kathryn Jean Lopez] It’s such a relief to know I won’t be seeing Bob Barr and his (R., Ga.) anymore. Posted 6:47 AM | [Link] KILLING THE KILL PILL [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Some groups are petitioning the Bush administration to take RU-486, the chemical-abortion regime (it’s really not the one easy pill proponents claim), off pharmacist shelves. The gruesome prescription has been known to be dangerous (not only to the innocent kid)—even fatal to the mother, too, in a few instances—and shot through the FDA approval process at relative lightening speed. The one good bit of news about RU-486 is that since it’s approval, despite sexy Madison Ave. ad campaigns in women’s glossies playing it up, it’s not catching on, much to the industry’s disappointment. Posted 6:46 AM | [Link]
BOOT THE PALESTINIANS FROM THE U.N.? [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Posted 6:46 PM | [Link] PASSED OVER [John Derbyshire] She Who May Not Be Named declares in the New York Observer that: "I've dated [Dinesh D'Soua], I've dated every right-winger." Hey, she hasn't dated me... Posted 6:41 PM | [Link] THE BUGS ARE BACK [Andrew Stuttaford] True, Jonathan, but this may make the Derb happy, and drive Kathryn nuts... Posted 6:24 PM | [Link] GETTING PERSONAL [Andrew Stuttaford] From the New York Times' coverage of the Linder/Barr primary in Georgia: "Mr. Linder...made his steady demeanor an issue in the campaign. During one debate, Mr. Linder said to his opponent, "I will remind you that I am the one who has been married for 39 years to the same woman," a subtle criticism of Mr. Barr, who is in his third marriage." Subtle? Posted 6:11 PM | [Link] GET YOUR CAMERAS READY [Andrew Stuttaford] Bin Laden fans will be marching in London this weekend. Hopefully the police will have their cameras out. In the meantime it's interesting to see (from this report in the London Evening Standard) that some critics are saying that the British police are being too passive in the face of Muslim extremism. The supposed reason? They do not want to "inflame" moderate Muslim opinion. If that's true, it raises an interesting point. If those moderate Muslims really would be 'inflamed' by a crackdown on their hate-peddling co-religionists then they are, perhaps, not quite so moderate as we have been led to believe. Posted 6:02 PM | [Link] X2 [Jonathan Adler] This should make Jonah very happy. Posted 5:56 PM | [Link] SAM ADAMS AND ST. PATRICK: [Rod Dreher] Seems that this weekend in Boston, Opie & Anthony, whose radio show promoted the stunt in which a couple copulated in St. Patrick's Cathedral, will be broadcasting live from the Samuel Adams Summer Jam at the Sam Adams Brewery. Why does Sam Adams want to associate itself with such Catholic-bashing dopes? If Opie & Anthony had brought about a similar desecration of a synagogue, is there any doubt in anyone's mind that the Sam Adams people would be running away from them? Paging Bill Donohue... . Posted 5:47 PM | [Link] A CATCH-22 CORRECTION: [Rich Lowry] An e-mail: "While you made your point successfully, *all* of the Americans in Catch 22 are officers with the exception of ex-PFC Wintergreen and Sgt. Black. Chief White Half-oat was anything but an absurdist double-talker!" Posted 4:55 PM | [Link] A READER...: [Rich Lowry] ...points out this particularly egregious line in Dowd today (at least, if you want to take her seriously): "We used to worry about a military coup against civilian authority. Now we worry about a civilian coup against military authority." Posted 4:40 PM | [Link] DOWD LOVES THE MILITARY: [Rich Lowry] Maureen Dowd's column today trashing the civilians in the Bush administration for wanting to shape American foreign policy (best left to the generals!), is another example of a phenomenon I wrote about in my syndicated column the other day: "For decades, American military officers have been portrayed in movies, books, TV shows and the press as irrational, narrow-minded, incompetent and perhaps even dangerous and deranged. Nothing so reliably marked someone in the liberal imagination as not to be trusted than a crew cut and epaulettes. In the Cuban Missile Crisis film “13 Days,” generals conspired to cause a nuclear conflagration; in the book “Catch 22,” they were absurdist double-talkers; in the TV show M*A*S*H, unpleasant tightwads; in press coverage, the purveyors of false Vietnam body counts and the buyers of $100 toilet seats. Well, what a difference opposition to a war makes! The Joint Chiefs’ widely reported reluctance to march on Baghdad is suddenly making the uniformed military leadership synonymous, in the minds of the liberal media, with sweetness and light..." Posted 3:38 PM | [Link] GREGORY KANE...: [Rod Dreher] ... has the reparations movement's number. Posted 3:11 PM | [Link] K-LO TRAINED THEM!: [Rod Dreher] This is what she does to NRO scribes who are late with their copy! Posted 3:06 PM | [Link] BLOGGING BELLESILES [Melissa Seckora] Check out James Lindgren's latest review of Michael Bellesiles's Arming America in the June 2002 issue of the Yale Law Journal. It focuses on issues other than the well-known errors in the probate data, and ends with a long catalog of errors in the book comparing Bellesiles's sources with the claims Bellesiles makes about those sources. The piece has been a huge hit in the blogosphere with over 55,000 downloads since Instapundit posted it last Friday afternoon. Posted 3:01 PM | [Link] CLASSIC RUMSFELD [Andrew Stuttaford] Rummy's on TV, speaking from Crawford. Naturally he's wearing a suit in the blistering heat. Asked why, he claims to have no casual clothes. Splendid. Posted 2:04 PM | [Link] STATE OF PLAY [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Speaking of brave soldiers in the fight against political correctness…Sam Bell and other devoted coaches who continue to fight the fight for guys who want to play sports belong on that wall of honor. This August, as happens every year, many schools will reopen with a few less male sports teams, many of them popular teams. (Always, it's only the male sports teams that get cut, of course.) What’s different this year is that the Dept. of Ed has tasked a panel to look at the state of Title IX and its enforcement. In other words, guys, at last, might have a fighting chance in the sports quota games. Posted 12:17 PM | [Link] BOYS AND THEIR DREAMS [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Sam Bell, who coached the 1976 U.S. Olympic track team writes in an op-ed that appeared earlier this week in the Los Angeles Times: There are few scenes more heartbreaking in sports than a college coach having to tell his players that their team has been eliminated so that the school can comply with Title IX, the federal law applied to gender and athletics. It is a cheerless drama that has played out each year as tens of thousands of young men have been stripped of their programs, scholarships and competitive hopes. Even the fabled Mighty Casey has nothing on these student-athletes who have lost not simply a game but their dreams. Posted 12:16 PM | [Link] VICTORY! [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, a great American who works tirelessly on behalf of our military men and women against the dangerous forces of political correctness, has been bogged down since 1996 with a lawsuit coming from some of the many feminists she’s angered over the years. The suit was filed by a F-14 Tomcat pilot who blamed Donnelly for ending her Navy career. CMR, you see, had issued an investigatory report on “Double Standards in Naval Aviation Training” before another woman, Lt. Kara Hultgreen, crashed and died trying to land on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln. After Hultgreen’s death, Lt. Carey Dunai Lohrenz was taken from the air--for "unsafe, undisciplined, and unpredictable" conditions--and feminists made sure CMR was sued. The court victory this week for Elaine Donnelly and the Center for Military Readiness is an important First Amendment victory. Now, if only the feminists would shut up long enough for Pentagon types to digest her work before tragedies like the Hultgreen one happen—without having to worry about the “anti-woman” whining. Click here for the whole story of the win. Posted 12:16 PM | [Link] LIBERTARIANS DEBATE IRAQ: [Ramesh Ponnuru] Brink Lindsey argues for pre-emptive defense, while Gene Healy opposes going to war. Posted 12:15 PM | [Link] TV UPDATE [Andrew Stuttaford] Bill Clinton is reportedly talking to CBS about hosting a talkshow. James Carville meanwhile (according to Drudge) may be providing the voice for a Disney cartoon character. These developments are unrelated. Posted 12:13 PM | [Link] NO!!!!! [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Evidently Palm Beach County’s new voting machines are “confusing.” Posted 12:12 PM | [Link] TRUTH IN LABELING: [Ramesh Ponnuru] Today’s Times has an editorial commending a new book by Judge John Noonan that criticizes the Supreme Court’s pro-federalism jurisprudence, or at least aspects of it (it's not clear from the Times's write-up). The Times repeatedly describes Judge Noonan as a “conservative.” Actually, he’s a liberal, albeit a pro-lifer and a Reagan appointee. Posted 12:03 PM | [Link] INTERPRETING KISSINGER: [Ramesh Ponnuru] Kurtz also lets Marshall spin Henry Kissinger as an opponent of administration policy on Iraq. John Judis made the argument for this interpretation here. It’s not persuasive. Judis claims that Kissinger’s characterization of pre-emptive defense as a “revolutionary” policy signifies that Kissinger really thinks it is “reckless or irresponsible.” That’s just absurd, given that Kissinger spends the paragraphs after the word “revolutionary” appears arguing that the revolutionary change is justified. But even if Judis were right, Marshall would still be wrong to say, as he does, that “the Times characterization of what Kissinger said is vastly more accurate than the characterization being peddled by the conservative Iraq-hawks.” The Times portrayed Kissinger as someone who was making a “break” with the administration—like Brent Scowcroft. Whatever the nuances of his support for pre-emptive defense against Iraq, he’s not in the Scowcroft camp, and he’s not making any gesture of public opposition. My guess is that the Times coverage of Kissinger will merely have the effect of making him state his hawkish views more clearly. Posted 12:00 PM | [Link] THE TIMES’S WAR: [Ramesh Ponnuru] Howard Kurtz lets liberal blogger Joshua Marshall have the last word in an article on conservative complaints about the New York Times’s Iraq coverage. The Times, Marshall says, is “running articles that point out the downside” of American intervention, which is “pretty much. . . what a newspaper should be doing.” That’s true—so long as the newspaper was also running articles that point out the downside of inaction. The Times isn’t doing that. What it’s doing is campaigning against intervention. Posted 11:56 AM | [Link] AS REQUESTED [Andrew Stuttaford] Kathryn, here's the review: twenty years of King Fahd, twenty years of sloth, corruption, tyranny and failure. Over the past two decades the 'Kingdom' has frittered away its oil windfall and found itself forced to rely on a country it despises for its defense, which it has now in turn alienated through its 'association' (let's be kind) with terrorism. Domestically, 'Saudi' Arabia has moved ever closer to the Eighth Century AD, and in its likely political destiny, to 1917. Full disclosure: I haven't, ahem, actually read the book. I don't think I need to. Posted 10:57 AM | [Link] ABOUT CYNTHIA'S FATHER [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Jon, speaking of her father, Ed Kilgore reports on who he views as the enemy. Apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Posted 10:30 AM | [Link] THAT'S NOT ALL FOLKS [Jonathan Adler] As Greg Greene points out, not only did McKinney lose in ther primary, but so did her former chief of staff, and her father was forced into a runoff. Posted 10:28 AM | [Link] HOLLOW THREATS [Andrew Stuttaford] Saudis pulling money out of the US? I wouldn't worry too much about that. There's a good reason why most of these assets are likely to remain in dollar-denominated assets, which is what counts. What would that be? Well, the Saudis only produce one thing that anyone wants to buy: oil. And oil is priced in what currency? Dollars. Posted 9:23 AM | [Link] MEA CULPA [Kathryn Jean Lopez] From a fine Georgia-born Corner reader: Half-empty, Kathryn? If you were from the great state of Georgia, I doubt you would be so equivocal. There is nothing more frustrating than the Georgia GOP... except for yesterday. I have never been so proud of the Georgia Republicans as I have been watching that display yesterday. I fell asleep in my Manhattan home away from home last night with Ray Charles's "Georgia on My Mind" playing over and over... We Southerners had just figured that Cynthia McKinney was going to be ranting from her anti-American, anti-Semitic soapbox for the next 30 years... Well, not any more. I still can't believe she's gone. Posted 9:14 AM | [Link] MAKING THE CASE FOR IRAQ MOVE [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Propaganda time. Posted 9:01 AM | [Link] MCKINNEY [Kathryn Jean Lopez] I almost feel bad for Jonah that he’s on vacation having a blast on this bright morning in Georgia (unless he's in Georgia--anyone see him?). Of course, yesterday's primary probably means McKinney will move on to bother us all in much more in-your-face ways….(I'm in a half-empty mood, sorry). Posted 8:53 AM | [Link] IF JOHN WALTERS WERE PAUL O'NEILL [Kathryn Jean Lopez] He could do one of those scary antidrug commercials from Saudi Arabia at the site of one of these beheadings. It would bring revenue to the kingdom, so maybe they wouldn't sue us. It'd help fight one of the wars, if not the terror one. And they wouldn't feel so harassed. Posted 8:21 AM | [Link] YES, IT SHOULD SOUND FAMILAR [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Corner Flashback (8/12/02): CRUEL AND UNUSUAL? [Kathryn Jean Lopez] This Yemeni clearly deserved punishment--for rape and armed robbery. Here's how the Saudis did it, though: Beheading, by sword, with an audience. Say what you will about capital punishment, but at least we don't slice off heads on pay-per-view or at Rockefeller Center. Posted 9:22 AM | [Link] Posted 8:20 AM | [Link] IF THEY’D ONLY GET THIS TOUGH ON TERRORISTS [Kathryn Jean Lopez] A heroin Pakistani heroin smuggler has been beheaded in Riyadh. Posted 7:58 AM | [Link] SAUDIS PULLING $$$ OUT OF U.S. [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Hope that includes from terrorist front groups. Posted 7:58 AM | [Link] ANDREW, WANNA REVIEW THIS? [Kathryn Jean Lopez] I'm imagining a different spin than The Corner has on the kingdom in this book: RIYADH, 20 August — Riyadh-based King Abdul Aziz Center has issued the second edition of ‘The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia during the reign of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques’ on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of King Fahd’s accession to the throne. The book sheds light on the major achievements of King Fahd, including the social and economic development in the country. (SPA) Posted 7:52 AM | [Link] STOP THE PRESSES [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Saudis are threatening to sue us for post-9/11 damages. From the Arab News (where else?): "A Saudi lawyer is planning to file more than 15 lawsuits against the US government and other parties for causing physical and psychological damages to his clients, preventing them from completing their studies and damaging their reputation through the media." I bet we'll settle. Posted 7:41 AM | [Link] X2 [Jonathan Adler] This should make Jonah very happy. Posted 6:28 AM | [Link] IN CASE YOU'VE SEEN ONE [Kathryn Jean Lopez] We're always looking for new cool sites for "cool site of the day." Send your nominations here. Posted 5:46 AM | [Link] WOULD HAVE NEVER GUESSED [Kathryn Jean Lopez] This latest 9/11 suspect is from Saudi Arabia. Imagine! Posted 5:33 AM | [Link]
BYE-BYE CYNTHIA: [Rod Dreher] John Linder beat the snot out of Bob Barr in the GOP primary in Georgia tonight, and Cynthia McKinney is losing badly. You watch: by Christmas, she'll have become a Black Muslim. You read it here first. Posted 11:58 PM | [Link] DOUBLE STANDARDS, AGAIN [Andrew Stuttaford] Here's a piece from today's New York Times on the problems of the PDS, the heirs to the East German Communist Party. It's a classic of its type. Check out the description of the "witty" Gregor Gysi as someone promoted as a representative of "the younger teachers and other professionals who have joined the party in the last decade, and who long ago accepted the market economy". While it is true that this is how the repellent Mr. Gysi was marketed, it might have been worth mentioning that this duplicitous lawyer first signed up for the East German Communist party back in the mid-1960s, when the dictatorship was at its height. Note too that the party is rather less "reformed" than the Times likes to imply. Yes, it's correct that the PDS has attracted younger members (although their attachment to the market economy tends to be heavily qualified, to say the least), but its mainstay remains the stalwarts from the old days, ageing, nasty and not a bit 'reformed'. Had it been written about neo-Nazis, the tone of this piece would have been unimaginable. Different rules, it seems, apply when discussing the successors to Germany's other totalitarian state. Posted 10:38 PM | [Link] UNC, AGAIN [Andrew Stuttaford] Here's a further story on the UNC/Koran controversy, most interesting, perhaps, for one detail about campus life in the days after 9/11. "In the aftermath of the attacks, hundreds of students worse Islamic dress for a day, at the suggestion of the student president, to show sympathy with their Muslim peers." There it is: PC posturing at its self-indulgent, self-important worst. Posted 10:29 PM | [Link] I KNEW, I KNEW [Kathryn Jean Lopez] John: Somehow I knew you wouldn't resist pointing that out! Posted 8:06 PM | [Link] RE: I KNOW, I KNOW [John Derbyshire] Kathryn: You realise, I hope, that "Mugabe" is an anagram of: "Me? A bug?" Posted 8:04 PM | [Link] DEJA VU? [Andrew Stuttaford] Depressed by the feuding over what to do about Iraq? Well, it turns out that we have seen these problems before. Blogger Rand Simberg has located this previously forgotten news report from 1944. Any remaining readers of the Corner in France should avoid Mr. Simberg's discovery in favor of this. Posted 6:51 PM | [Link] A THREAT [Andrew Stuttaford] Bugs or Borg, Kathryn : you choose. Posted 6:10 PM | [Link] OPIE AND DOPIE: [Rod Dreher] Radio station WNEW has for the second day kept its popular drive-time shock jocks Opie & Anthony off the air. These are the two geniuses whose show featured a live broadcast of a couple having sex inside St. Patrick's Cathedral on the Feast of the Assumption. They've crossed Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, who is pushing the FCC to revoke the station's license. The stunt was part of a contest called "Sex for Sam," which has in the past, at least, been sponsored by the Boston Brewing Company, makers of Samuel Adams beer. If the brewery is tied to this disgusting, sacrilegious stunt from the other day, Sam Adams could be opening itself up for a boycott. Posted 6:05 PM | [Link] "I KNOW, I KNOW" [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Rod, that Andrew covered the Mugabe thing in The Corner? Sorry--I'm probably taking out my bug angst on you. Posted 6:05 PM | [Link] OBJECTIVE TESTING? [Andrew Stuttaford] British blogger Peter Cuthbertson turns out to be frighteningly young (he's trying to get into Oxford), but read what he has to say about his 'General Studies' exam. Will plans to introduce an essay component into the SAT mean that we can look forward to hearing similar stories over here? Posted 6:04 PM | [Link] A BOOK FOR THE DERB [Andrew Stuttaford] John, here's something to buy to go with the movie. Posted 5:55 PM | [Link] SHAME [Andrew Stuttaford] Hey, it was Bill Clinton's birthday yesterday. Did I miss the party here in the Corner? Guys, guys... Posted 5:47 PM | [Link] CAN'T THEY GO TO A MOTEL? [John Derbyshire] I am having to try really, really, really hard to restrain myself from buying this. Posted 5:43 PM | [Link] SHH! BLACK RACISM AFOOT!: [Rod Dreher] In Zimbabwe, thuggish president Robert Mugabe's wife has run an elderly white couple off their farm, and claimed it for herself. This kind of thing is an everyday occurrence in that country, which is the scene of vicious anti-white pogroms directed by Mugabe's government. Why isn't this cruel international disgrace more widely covered by our media? Oh never mind, I know. I know. Posted 5:08 PM | [Link] "HILL OF BEANS": [Rod Dreher] Lots of good stuff in Chris Caldwell's column this week, starting with the fact that he approvingly quotes French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut. Quite aside from anything Alain Finkielkraut stands for, I like the fact that there's someone named Alain Finkielkraut. Posted 5:03 PM | [Link] DIRTY TRICKS IN GEORGIA: [Rod Dreher] Some anonymous person has mounted a phone campaign trying to frighten GOP voters into not casting ballots into today's Democratic primary, which, despite the phone calls, is not legally restricted to registered Democrats. State authorities are investigating. Posted 4:32 PM | [Link] CREEPY CRAWLIES [John Derbyshire] Kathryn: What better place for all this talk about flies than... THE WEB. Posted 3:43 PM | [Link] REMF: THE TRUE DEFINITION [John Derbyshire] A military reader tells me the actual, operational definition of REMF: Anyone to your rear. To the guy dashing forward with a satchel charge to destroy an enemy pillbox (he says), the troops in the trench 25 yards behind him giving covering fire, while themselves taking incoming mortar & artillery, are all REMFs. I think this is probably an exaggeration... but probably not much of an exaggeration. Posted 3:42 PM | [Link] GEORGIA REPUBLICANS, DO YOUR DUTY: [Rod Dreher] Republicans living in the Fourth Congressional District in Georgia have a duty today to go to the polls and vote in the Democratic primary (which, owing to local laws, is permissible). Vote early and vote often for Denise Majette, the sane and sensible Democratic opponent of the Farrakhan-loving Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Riyadh), better known as the Southern-fried Maxine Waters. Go! Posted 2:32 PM | [Link] SOME USEFUL INFORMATION [Andrew Stuttaford] Here. Posted 2:21 PM | [Link] JONAH... [Kathryn Jean Lopez] ...is going to be annoyed (bugged?) that he was not responsible for an ongoing conversation about roaches and flies. Posted 2:05 PM | [Link] PEOPLE FOR THE ETHICAL TREATMENT OF ROACHES [John Derbyshire] I post without comment the following from reader Ben Gibbons: "Actually there is a cockroach cheering section, of sorts. In 1992, supermodel (and my teenage dream girl) Paulina Porizkova wrote a children’s book called The Adventures of Ralphie the Roach. It’s the story of a brave little roach who sends for help when some mean ol’ humans decide to wipe out Roachtown. Alas, there evidently wasn’t much sympathy among the reading public for the plight of Ralphie and his friends; reviews were unkind, sales were horrible, and my first-grade-teacher wife threatened to burn the book if I bought it for her." Posted 2:02 PM | [Link] HORRORSHOW [Andrew Stuttaford] John, when it comes to horror movies, The Fly is good, but Candyman and Freaks are both better. I also found The War Room absolutely terrifying, but I suppose that doesn't count. Posted 2:01 PM | [Link] MORE BUZZ [Andrew Stuttaford] Well, John, now you mention it, our little winged pals lent their name to one of the finest - and most conservative - English novels of the last century: Lord of the Flies. Posted 1:55 PM | [Link] ROACH LOVERS (CONT.) [John Derbyshire] Archy and Mehitabel! How could I have forgotten them? Posted 1:49 PM | [Link] DEPENDS ON WHAT YOUR DEFINITION OF SUICIDE IS [Andrew Stuttaford] More on that "suicide," which looks more Albanian by the moment. Posted 1:38 PM | [Link] HELP ME! HELP ME! [John Derbyshire] Andrew: You can say this for flies, at least: without them, we would not have had one of the best horror movies of all time. (Yes, I know it's naff to say that the original is better than the remake, but in this case it really is true: The 1958 Vincent Price / Patricia Owens original is indeed far better than Return of the Fly or the silly Jeff Goldblum remake.) Posted 1:31 PM | [Link] ZIMBABWE UPDATE [Andrew Stuttaford] The expropriations in Zimbabwe continue. The latest beneficiary (according to this report from the Daily Telegraph) is Mugabe's wife. Posted 1:29 PM | [Link] ONE MORE [Andrew Stuttaford] Flies. No-one likes flies. Posted 1:09 PM | [Link] DOESN'T ANYBODY LIKE COCKROACHES? [John Derbyshire] Andrew: It occurs to me that cockroaches occupy one of the few parts--perhaps the only part--of the human & animal kingdoms that don't have a cheering section nowadays. Or am I being naive here--is there perhaps a Cockroach Liberation Front out there somewhere? (And in my comment on Jeff Hart, I forgot to add a link to his book, which you should buy, read, and then give to any intelligent young person who crosses your path.) Posted 12:57 PM | [Link] PERFECT COMPANY [Andrew Stuttaford] John, “cockroach” was used to devastating effect in a poem about Stalin by the wonderful--and wonderfully brave--Osip Mandelstam, who was, inevitably, to die later in the Gulag.The words in this extract also give a pretty good description of Saddam Hussein. His fingers are fat as grubs And the words, final as lead weights, fall from his lips, His cockroach whiskers leer And his boot tops gleam. Around him a rabble of thin-necked leaders-- fawning half-men for him to play with. They whinny, purr or whine As he prates and points a finger, One by one forging his laws, to be flung Like horseshoes at the head, to the eye or the groin. Posted 12:44 PM | [Link] ABOUT THAT EMBASSY SITUATION [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Corner foreign-policy gurus point to the Iraqi National Congress response from that CNN story: "A spokesman for the Iraqi National Congress, an Iraqi exile group that represents a number of opposition parties, condemned the hostage-taking and said it did not represent the Iraqi opposition." Smelling someone other than legitimate opposition leaders behind it. Posted 12:16 PM | [Link] IS BRENT SCOWCROFT AN REMF? [John Derbyshire] Reader Gary Haubold, ex-USAF, noticed a thing about Brent Scowcroft that I noticed too, doing background for my today's column, but was much too nice to mention in the piece: viz., that Scowcroft seems to have no combat experience whatsoever, in spite of having been of the right age for both WW2 and Korea (he was born in 1925), and having gone into the military right out of high school. It is possible, I suppose, that Scowcroft does have combat experience and is just extremely modest about it. He certainly has a chest full of medals. Gary tells me that the military acronym for a person who spends a lifetime in the military without ever firing a shot in anger is "REMF." The "R" and the "E" stand for "Rear Echelon." Posted 11:49 AM | [Link] MORE ABOUT WHAT THE ENEMY IS WORKING ON [Kathryn Jean Lopez] President Bush calls off a covert strike on an al Qaeda poison-weapons lab in Iraq. Posted 11:47 AM | [Link] COCKROACH REGIME [John Derbyshire] A couple of readers have complimented me on the phrase "cockroach regime" (referring to Iraq). Alas, the words are not mine: I borrowed them from my NR colleague Jeff Hart, who used them in conversation a few days ago. I don't just wish I could write as well as Jeff writes; I wish I could write as well as Jeff speaks. Posted 11:17 AM | [Link] THE WORLD'S WATCHING THIS ONE [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Hostage situation at Iraqi embassy in Berlin. Posted 11:14 AM | [Link] NPR BIAS [Stanley Kurtz] Yesterday, for the first time, I was asked to appear on NPR. What occasioned this invitation to a windfall of publicity? It seems that NPR was desperately fishing around for conservatives who agreed with Brent Scowcroft. They were downcast when I told them I thought Brent Scowcroft was all wet. (See Derb’s new column and Kathryn’s first blog of the day for some powerfully good Scowcroft bashing.) Maybe someone suggested me because I’ve pressed the need for a larger military in case an attack on Iraq starts a broader Middle East meltdown. Yes, I worry about a full-fledged “Clash of Civilizations” scenario, and think we need the troops to handle it in case it comes. But I strongly favor a move on Iraq–sooner rather than later. Political reality being what it is, it may take an attack on Iraq to make America wake up to the need for a stronger military. In any case, given the risks of letting Saddam build up his weapons of mass destruction, we’ve got to take him on regardless. So who said NPR is politically biased? They’re only too happy to have conservatives over for tea, so long as they can be used as a cover for NPR’s warmed over anti-Vietnam leftism. I put them onto Doug Bandow. Posted 10:15 AM | [Link] TAILOR-MADE FOR ANDREW STUTTAFORD [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Posted 8:20 AM | [Link] THE IDEOLOGICAL WAR WITHIN THE WEST [John Derbyshire] I strongly recommend John Fonte's article "The Ideological War within the West," just put out by the Hudson Institute. It's long, but well worth the trouble. Posted 7:56 AM | [Link] I DISAGREE [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Rod, in my book, the worst commercial tune goes to the incessant NY Lottery Commercials: "If I had a million dollars..." I think they have been playing for a good year and a half, with some post-9/11 time off. People are gonna have their dollar and a dream anyway, so is the darn song really necessary? How about some shameless help rebuild NY and buy an "I Love NY" scratch-off commercial, with no jingle, just Rudy Giuliani (do people really wanna see Bloomberg?...really) and George Pataki hawking it? Posted 7:56 AM | [Link] U.N.SENSE [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Andrew, that story about Muammar Khaddafi being elected chair of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights is so typically incredible. I wonder, though if there is a weird sign of hope in the fact that the British press has been more on the story than the U.S. media: Maybe some American elites are actually catching on that the U.N. human-rights commission is silly and pointless, based on its membership list (Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Sudan...) and recent idiocies: Jenin, Durban, Mary Robinson... Posted 7:05 AM | [Link] 41 POP-PSYCHOANALYSIS [Kathryn Jean Lopez] The chattering class desperately wants to return to the "political and moral frivolity" of the pre-9/11 world, John Podhoretz says. Posted 6:20 AM | [Link] ALSO, FOR YOUR READING LIST [Kathryn Jean Lopez] New from Victor Davis Hanson: An Autumn of War. Largely a collection of his NRO columns since Sept. 11, even I, who has read each one of them multiple times was glad to do it again, this time consecutively, in one sitting. VDH's Autumn of War is a worthwhile way to commemorate the one-year anniversary--it's a reminder why we are in this war, what we are fighting, what we are fighting for, who we are fighting, and the obstacles in our way. Reading an Autumn of War you'll be reminded why the New York Post chose VDH for their Eric Breindel award this year. The link for Autumn of War is here. At NRO, we're delighted to announce both the Hanson and Ledeen books and are reminded what a tremendous stable of incisive writers we have here regularly. Check in later today, by the way, for the latest Ledeen piece, and later this week for the latest Hanson. That is, after you have purchased their new books, of course. Posted 6:06 AM | [Link] WAR READING [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Got a free few minutes and looking for a good read? Michael Ledeen's The War Against the Terror Masters is hitting the stores. I just finished it, and it's definitely worth getting. You'll understand how we got to Sept. 11 better than any State Department official by the end of it. Come to think of it, you might want to buy a copy for yourself and for a State Department diplomat. If everyone does that, it'll be an important contribution to the war effort. At a minimum, get your copy. Here's the link. Posted 5:54 AM | [Link] STAY TUNED... [Kathryn Jean Lopez] ...For a Derbyshire Scowcroft deconstruction later today. Posted 5:41 AM | [Link] FIRST AT THE GATES [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Just about everyday for the last few weeks I've wanted to rerun this Michael Ledeen piece, which gets Brent Scowcroft exactly right. Just remember,you saw it here first! And, if you didn't, another reason to ALWAYS check NRO. Posted 5:40 AM | [Link]
DRIVE FORD: [Rod Dreher] If I have to hear that stupid end-of-summer car commercial with that Smashmouth "Walking on the Sun" song one more *&%^ time, I'm going to murder a Chevy! I just needed to share that with you. Posted 11:46 PM | [Link] NO EARTHLY USE [Andrew Stuttaford] George Bush has now confirmed that he will not be attending the grotesque 'Earth Summit' due to be held in Johannesburg next week. Quite right. Unfortunately, the luckless Colin Powell will be going in his place, which seems pointless. The summit will likely be a combination of junk science, orchestrated hysteria and left-wing posturing: the US should not dignify it with any presence, other perhaps than Jimmy Carter or somebody in a clown suit. The President's decision will not please a collection of 42 none-too-bright Democratic congressmen who (as Reuters notes) recently warned Bush that his absence "would reinforce the perception that the United States is selective in its multilateral activities and participation in global agreements". Eh? Surely, no-one can reasonably object to this country being selective in its "multilateral activities", or is the US now expected to sign up for absolutely everything that emerges from the international bureaucracies? 42 Democrats would seem to think so. Posted 7:18 PM | [Link] UNITARIAN LOVE: Did you know that the Unitarian Universalists, the liberal church so open-minded its brains sometimes fall out, are looking into ways to bless "polyamory," which is to say, regular rutting with multiple partners (or, as the Unitarian Universalists for Polyamory Awareness put it, "the philosophy and practice of loving or relating intimately to more than one person at a time with honesty and integrity"). David Mills on Touchstone's blog has some wonderfully Chestertonian observations about the news. Posted 7:15 PM | [Link] U.N. BELIEVABLE [Andrew Stuttaford] One of the most predictable - and nauseating - arguments of those opposed to a war in Iraq is their insistence that any action against Saddam's regime needs the approval of the UN to make it somehow 'respectable'. Well, here is an example of that great moral arbiter at work. Thanks to blogger Right Wing News for pointing it out. Posted 6:55 PM | [Link] TEACHING NONSENSE [Andrew Stuttaford] The NEA's plans for 'teaching' the 9/11 anniversary have already come in for criticism here and elsewhere, but the 'guidelines for responsible media coverage of the September 11th anniversary' stand out in their patronizing stupidity. The aim, apparently, is "to explain the importance of the media's responsibility to address the public without causing harm by digging up painful memories" "Without digging up painful memories"? Perhaps these 'educators' feel it would be best not to mention what happened at all. Posted 6:49 PM | [Link] NOT MISSED [Andrew Stuttaford] Jim. I always enjoy a good totalitarian's 'suicide'. A classic of the genre was probably that of the Albanian communist Mehmet Shehu. Shehu had risen to the rank of prime minister and was reportedly seen as too ambitious by party boss Enver Hoxha. His last words (or so the joke goes): "Don't shoot, comrades." Posted 6:36 PM | [Link] DIE LIKE A DOG, WOMAN: [Rod Dreher] An Islamic appeals court in northern Nigeria has ruled that a woman who had a child out of wedlock must be stoned to death for her "crime." But the judges weren't all hard-hearted; they ruled the stoning could be delayed until the unclean woman weaned her eight-month-old daughter. I'm confused by this; didn't our very own president say that "Islam is peace"? Posted 6:06 PM | [Link] DEAD DOGS AND US: [Rod Dreher] If you haven't seen the videotape of al-Qaeda killing dogs in poison gas tests, you can see if on CNN's website, if you're a subscriber, or watch it on the network. I recommend it. It's horrible, but even worse is to imagine your spouse and children writhing on the floor, twitching, screaming and dying like those poor hounds. That's what al-Qaeda has in mind for us -- and what Saddam has the capability to do to us. Think about it. Infinitely worse, of course, is the Islamic terrorist website featuring the video of Islamists butchering Danny Pearl. We won't link to that, but that's what these killers have in mind for you and me too. CNN's showing the torture deaths of these dogs is a public service. Will they now show Americans jumping from the burning Twin Towers? I hope that they do. Posted 5:16 PM | [Link] DEAD TERRORIST IN BAGHDAD [James S. Robbins] Former #1 terrorist Abu Nidal turned up dead three days ago in Baghdad with multiple gunshot wounds. The explanation so far is that he committed suicide. (If true he must have been pretty determined.) Abu Nidal was not a guy who endeared himself to many people, and he had been kicked out of some of the least reputable countries in the world at one time or another (such as Iraq, Syria, and Libya). It's really surprising that he lasted this long. So -- if he didn't kill himself -- who did? If Saddam is the culprit, one might ask why. Could well be that Abu Nidal knew too much about the alleged links between Iraq and al Qaeda. If so he would be far too dangerous to have around. If someone else did it, the most important question is not why, but how did he get to Baghdad and is he available for other work? Posted 4:34 PM | [Link] BAFFLED [Ramesh Ponnuru] Thomas Frank is a left-wing cultural critic who has taken to writing about economics. (Think William Greider without the knowledge base.) In the Los Angeles Times yesterday, he excoriated James Glassman, Lawrence Kudlow, and others who (according to the Times’s subhed) “prophesied an unending bull market.” Did any of these folks ever say that there would never again be a recession or a bull market? If so, I missed it. Frank writes, “Maybe market meltdowns are what happen to a country when commentary on matters economic becomes the exclusive province of business thinkers. When labor unions are systematically crushed. . . . When management theorists take it as their duty to dazzle us with a crescendo of free-market worship.” So no country with strong labor unions ever sees its stock market decline? Whatever else this is, it isn’t economics. Posted 4:17 PM | [Link] A FRIEND’S JOURNEY [Ramesh Ponnuru] Marshall Wittmann deserves credit for leaving the Republican party to become an independent, as Timothy Starks of the New York Sun reports he is doing, rather than hanging around giving damaging quotes about Republicans from a supposedly Republican source, like Kevin Phillips. There is also the chance that the GOP will eventually recapture my friend Marshall’s heart, both because it learns from his insights and because he changes his mind—which Marshall, having been a left-wing radical and a Buchananite in the past, could well do. Posted 3:12 PM | [Link] ALSO…: [Rich Lowry] …from that interview, here’s Hagel at his cogent best criticizing the Axis of Evil speech: “We, the United States, cannot wage a war on terrorism alone; we certainly can't win a war on terrorism alone. It's too complicated, and we're going to need a lot of partners, a lot of friends, and a lot of relationships in order to deal with terrorism. I think the reaction the president has gotten from our allies and almost every nation around the world is that words have meaning, meanings mean commitments, and commitments lead to expectations. And sometimes those expectations turn into unintended consequences.” Got that? Posted 2:16 PM | [Link] HAGEL TO SCREENERS: SEARCH MY SHOES: [Rich Lowry] Here’s a bit from a Chuck Hagel (R., France) interview with “Leaders” magazine, where he seems to voice warm appreciation for the egalitarianism that has airport screeners wasting their time searching his shoes: "Do airport screeners make senators take off their shoes when they're traveling? As a matter of fact, they do. Recently, at the Phoenix airport I was chosen on one leg of my flight to remove my shoes and undergo all the other checks. And that wasn't the first time. Your stature in life makes no difference when it comes to airport and airline security." Posted 2:12 PM | [Link] BUILDING IT REALLY HIGH: [Rich Lowry] An e-mail: "You want height...? Persuade the good people of NY to build one of these (OK, you would need to relocate Manhatten to the equator, but isn't that what the American 'can do' attitude is all about?)..." Posted 1:08 PM | [Link] REGARDING DEPT. OF HOMELAND SECURITY: [Rich Lowry] An e-mail: “Last year Gov Jeb Bush signed legislation that not only allows quicker procedures to fire incompetent state workers but also implements ways to do it with timely review and action. i.e. Verbal notice, written notice, termination. This law was debated at length and enjoyed public support...except for the state workers union it directly effects. This union has now endorsed Janet Reno. I am sure you are as shocked as I am to learn this.” Posted 1:06 PM | [Link] THE CASE [John J. Miller] Byron York notes that Bush's critics are saying the president hasn't "made the case" for attacking Iraq. One of the reasons they're doing this, of course, is because it allows them to be against the administration without being against the administration. That is, they don't actually oppose Bush on Iraq, it's just that Bush hasn't made the case. They're keeping their options open to be pro-Gulf War 2 or anti-Gulf War 2--whatever their unprincipled political expediency requires. Posted 1:05 PM | [Link] THE TRUTH ABOUT ARIANNA [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Ramesh's terrific piece on her from a little bit ago (2000--FOX has had some time to figure it out.) Posted 11:18 AM | [Link] ET TU, FOX? [Kathryn Jean Lopez] From FoxNews.com story on nutty congressman Dennis Kucinich: "Why such fascination with the populist congressman who has a ventriloquist dummy of W.C. Fields, is a vegan and hangs around with the likes of conservative pundit Arianna Huffington?" Conservative Arianna Huffington? Try again. Posted 11:16 AM | [Link] REALITY CHECK [Mike Potemra] A reminder: Iraq is a rogue state under a fanatical tyrant with a realistic prospect of stockpiling and using weapons of mass destruction against millions of people. Al Qaeda is a gang of hate-filled cavedwellers whose lucky day came when they made a Wile E. Coyote use of our technology to kill 3,000 of our people; their luck, if they have any left, is quickly running out thanks to U.S. resolve. To say that we should avoid moving on Iraq so we can focus on al Qaeda is like saying, in 1941, that we shouldn't go after Germany and Japan because we need to be eternally vigilant on the Mexican border. The Mexicans attacked us in the 1840s, didn't they? They have long memories, and they are just sitting there across the Rio Grande, watching, waiting for us to let down our guard-so let's resist the proposed "adventure" against Germany and Japan... Posted 11:09 AM | [Link] WAGGING THE DOG [Mike Potemra] The chief rap against the war on terrorism has been that it erodes civil liberties. But thanks to the comments of opponents of the proposed attack on Iraq, another worry is emerging: The war on terrorism may actually become a threat to our national security. The opponents of an Iraq war are now using the argument that a strike against Iraq would weaken our fight against al Qaeda. Posted 11:09 AM | [Link] PROVING JIM BOWMAN'S POINT [Kathryn Jean Lopez] The NEA makes sure no American public-school student blames any particular group for 9/11. Posted 11:04 AM | [Link] BOYCOTTING U.S. [Kathryn Jean Lopez] The Arab News claims the movement might be gaining momentum. Posted 7:09 AM | [Link] ENRON OLD NEWS [Jonathan Adler] Time reports what many folks have said for a long time: Enron was just as cozy with the Clinton Administration as with Bush's team. Indeed, White House staff were directed to adapt energy policy prescriptions to Enron recommendations. Posted 6:09 AM | [Link] ER . . . I MEANT MOSES? [Jonathan Adler] Andrew is correct. Kirk Douglas was Spartacus. Charlton Heston was Ben Hur, El Cid, Marc Antony, Colonel George Taylor, and some guy from the Bible. Sorry, brain leak. That's what I get for blogging on an empty stomach. Posted 5:29 AM | [Link] STRANGE BUT TRUE: [Rod Dreher] Drudge says Martha Stewart believes the GOP is planning to investigate her sex life. Martha Stewart has sex? Posted 1:57 AM | [Link]
ALWAYS THE TIMES: [Rod Dreher] The New York Times announced today that it will start publishing gay "marriage" announcements. No surprise there. And as long as we're talking about the Times, let it be noted that New York's newspaper did not mention the money quote from the city's own Charles Barron in its own coverage of the reparations rally. I read two separate wire service reports that featured the NYC pol's quote about wanting to slap white people for his "mental health" high up; the Times, paternalistic liberals that they are, didn't report it at all. No surprise there either. Posted 9:59 PM | [Link] JUST THE FACTS [Andrew Stuttaford] There's an astonishingly self-indulgent piece by someone who teaches English at UVA in today's New York Times magazine. Mark Edmundson complains that teachers now have to spend too much time preparing their students for tests. The article is interesting mainly for what it reveals about the state of thinking amongst today's educational elite. Consider this sentence: "Many of us are being told that our primary task is to prepare students for fact-based tests, to stuff our charges with information, like Christmas birds." Hmmm, "stuffed with information" is not how I would describe today's schoolchildren. Mr. Edmundson needs to remember that, in many respects, life itself is a fact-based test. Schools should have more testing, not less, and, yes, making sure that their pupils pass them should indeed be the "primary task" of those who are paid to do just that. As for teaching 'values', that should usually be left to those maligned people known as 'parents'. Posted 4:52 PM | [Link] ELVIS IS BACK IN THE BUILDING [Andrew Stuttaford] Where were you when you heard that Elvis had died? I was (the shame!) in a discotheque in Wurzburg, West Germany, and so perhaps can be forgiven for marking Elvis Sunday with repeated playing of the thoroughly danceable 'A Little Less Conversation', a techno-ish re-mix of an Elvis song - the first that has ever been authorized. Purists will be suspicious (to start with, the re-mix is the work of a Dutchman), but for what it's worth (well, I have been to Graceland, and I did spend part of Friday watching people eating cake in the Elvis-A-Rama museum, Las Vegas) I was won over. A Little Less Conversation was a big hit back in the UK, and if Mrs Stuttaford's attempts to try and find a copy in numerous record stores across Manhattan are any indication the same may be true over here. Eventually the kind folk at HMV on 42nd and 8th were able to help Kristin out: what's more, they still have thirty copies left... Posted 4:12 PM | [Link] THE QUEEN OF MEAN [Andrew Stuttaford] Shallow, flashy and spiteful, Maureen Dowd's columns were in many ways perfect for the Clinton years, but in tougher times, they strike a very false note. Consider this from her New York Times op-ed today: "Bellicose Bushies have yet to offer a sustained and persuasive rationale for jumping Saddam, beyond "yammering" about how "evil" he is, as if had a monopoly on that." "Yammering"? Talk about trivializing wickedness. What next? Is Ms. Dowd going to complain that those pesky gassed Kurds are being "whiny"? Posted 3:41 PM | [Link] SPARTACUS IDENTIFIED [Andrew Stuttaford] Wasn't it, er, Kirk Douglas? Posted 3:14 PM | [Link] COMMIE CHIC [Andrew Stuttaford] More evidence, perhaps, that we still do not take the Soviet holocaust as seriously as we should comes from the Red Square restaurant in Vegas' Mandalay Bay (full disclosure: I swallowed a good meal along with some principles). Actually, the overall message of the place isn't too bad (much of its theme is, in reality, mocking the old USSR) and it's difficult to resist a restaurant where the door is guarded by a decapitated statue of Lenin (the monster's head is kept in the glass-fronted ice cabinet along with a fine selection of vodkas). Nevertheless, it is impossible to witness the hammer and sickle mounted above the bar without feeling uneasy. Could a swastika be displayed in the same way? To ask the question is to answer it. Posted 3:05 PM | [Link] RACISM IN ACTION: [Rod Dreher] At the black rally for reparations in Washington this weekend, speaker Charles Barron, a racist lunatic who sits on the New York City Council, remarked: "I want to go up to the closest white person and say, 'You can't understand this, it's a black thing,' and then slap him, just for my mental health." Now, this is actually a very good thing that the Hon. Barron has done. The David Duke-ish creep has exposed the "reparations" movement for the race-hate shakedown that it is. May he continue to speak his mind, and often. Posted 12:43 PM | [Link] |
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