Events may have overtaken me by now, but I think Speaker Hastert needs to hold a “pink-sweater press conference.” That has become code for giving a press conference at which you take any and all questions, answering them exhaustively.

Where do we get this phrase? Back in 1994, Hillary Clinton gave a big press conference on Whitewater. She stayed and stayed . . . and she wore a pink sweater that day.

Hastert should take every question there is, until he can talk no more — until there are no more questions. He is a stand-up guy, and ought to stand up.

I wouldn’t recommend a pink sweater, however.

This election is supposed to turn on the War on Terror — what some have called World War III, what others have called World War IV — and wouldn’t it be weird if it turned on Congressman Mark Foley?

‐I had to smile a little bit when I read this opening line from the AP: “Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday the United States is ‘very concerned’ about the plight of the Palestinians and pledged to improve living conditions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”

This is a very serious matter, so why did I smile? I remember submitting a paper on the Palestinians, back in college, and I quipped to the professor, “I wanted to write the first thing ever on the Palestinians that didn’t use the phrase ‘plight of the Palestinians.’”

That is a stubborn cliché, and I think we use it because of the alliteration — those p’s. And the “plight of the Palestinians” has been with us for — what? Forty years now? It is a shame, and a crime, that these people are still experiencing a “plight.”

And the fault lies, primarily, with Arab leadership — particularly Palestinian leadership: Arafat and associated thugs. The idea that there should be refugees after all these decades . . .

Well, these are old, old points, and arguments.

‐Of course, our guy in the PA is Mahmoud Abbas, “Abu Mazen.” Tells you something about the quality of Palestinian leadership that America’s guy is more or less a professional Holocaust denier (having written his dissertation from that point of view — in Soviet Moscow, natch).

‐I mentioned Arafat: When he was being rhetorically clever, he used to mention Christians, as brothers with Muslims — and co-victims of Jews. He would speak of the Jews’ depredations against the Christians. He would even go on (favorably) about Mary.

Really.

The new bigs in the Middle East aren’t as clever. The AP tells us that a group calling itself “Al-Qaeda in Palestine” posted a web video in which a masked man says, “My speech is directed against . . . those who announce blasphemy against Islam and who are allied with enemies of God and religion, and work in the service of the Jews and the Christians.”

No, not so slick. Jacques Chirac will probably not be holding his hand when he dies.

‐Saw this, out of Baghdad: “Iraqi authorities have taken a brigade of up to 700 policemen out of service and put members under investigation for ‘possible complicity’ with death squads following a mass kidnapping earlier this week, the U.S. military said Wednesday.”

Which is the weightier news — that policemen are in cahoots with death squads, or that the Iraqi government has discovered this and acted on it?

I really don’t know.

‐Every day, for the last several days, I’ve read about Nobel winners — in chemistry, physics, and medicine. And all the winners are American. You have to wonder whether this is purely accidental. Or whether the United States provides the conditions in which such questing and flourishing are possible.

And if the latter is true — why wouldn’t other countries go and do likewise, instead of shaking with resentment?

‐Had an old thought, when reading about John Kerry wowin’ ’em at Ohio State University. He urged the kids, “Take back Ohio! Take back our country!” They went wild, of course.

And the old thought is this — one that I had even when I was in college: Aren’t Democrats ever embarrassed that their best and most enthusiastic audiences are the most stupid people in America — I mean, the most inexperienced, least knowledgeable, and least mature? I mean, doesn’t it ever bother them to know that, if they really want or need an adulatory audience, they can always go to a college campus (as opposed to, say, a chamber of commerce)?

What they tell themselves, of course, is that these are the most idealistic citizens . . .

Yeah, right — not the ones I knew, baby.

‐You may be concerned that the blue blood has been drained from American politics — that the bluebloods don’t participate anymore. Contrariwise, you may be delighted by same: no Cabots or Saltonstalls runnin’ in Modern America.

Well, check out an article about the Rhode Island Senate race: here. This is Lincoln Chafee versus Sheldon Whitehouse. (Just think if the latter ascends to the presidency: President Whitehouse in the White House.) Their fathers were roommates at Yale. And the two families are . . .

Anyway, just see what you think, if you’re interested. I know that our guy — the Right guy — lost in the Republican primary. But the R.I. Senate race is not without interest (sort of).

‐So, the U.S. Congress decides to put up a 700-mile fence, and the new president of Mexico says the following: that we, humanity, “could stop more migrants with a kilometer of new roads and development [in Mexico] than with a wall.”

Could that possibly be true? Or is it just . . . nonsense talk?

‐Continue with Latin American affairs: The president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, has called Donald Rumsfeld a “dog of war.”

You know, every time I hear Chávez talk, I get a little homesick for my hometown of Ann Arbor! (Only Chávez is more fun and colorful. He is a merry Marxist, not a grim, dull one.)

‐Gotta tell you something — if you don’t believe me, I won’t blame you, because this is so perfect . . . suspiciously perfect: The other day, in Central Park (I think it was), there was this guy walking toward me: and he was the ideal image of the young American lefty. He was a skinny, pale guy in a black T-shirt, and I think he had a little goatee. He looked like he had Chomsky in his head — you could tell by the air, the gaze.

I mean, straight from Central Casting.

And, as he walked by me, I saw what his T-shirt said: San Francisco Mime Troupe.

I swear. Now, I know it sounds like I’m making that up, because it’s so perfectly satirical: San Francisco Mime Troupe! But that’s what his T-shirt said. Honest to goodness.

We all know — we most certainly know — that you can’t judge a book by its cover. Still . . .

‐Speaking of San Francisco: As many of you know, we had a fundraiser there the other week — NR/NRO, I mean — and the visit confirmed my long-held view that San Francisco is the most beautiful city in America. (Big city, I’m talkin’.) Even with the derelicts and the filth, it’s marvelous. And you can imagine how it was, once upon a time.

Along the Embarcadero, I walked past a series of quotes in praise of San Francisco. I remember one, but can’t remember the source (and I will paraphrase): “Good thing the settlers arrived first on the East Coast, instead of coming to San Francisco. Otherwise, they never would have left and developed the country.”

I have put that clumsily, but that’s the gist.

And where was our fundraiser? At the Olympic Club, that glorious place. Home of U.S. Opens and other important golf tournaments. As I told the audience — a wonderful bunch, incidentally — I had always wanted to go to the Olympic Club as an Open participant. I had to settle for magazine fundraising.

But that was fine. At least I got there!

A final word, related to this trip: In an earlier column (here), I talked some about the Olympic dinner, and said that Jonah Goldberg had never been “cuter, gigglier, or smarter.” A reader wrote in to say, “Maybe you guys could sell a Tickle Me Jonah doll.”

Now there’s an idea for the NRO Store if I’ve ever heard one!

‐Let’s have a little music criticism: For a review of Gounod’s Faust at the Metropolitan Opera, published in the New York Sun, go here .

‐Feel like a letter?

Jay:
Okay, in a couple of Impromptus you’ve hit on a nerve related to Hispanics. My parents came to this country legally from Mexico in the ’50s and taught themselves to speak, read, and write English. They became citizens, they vote, and they don’t have any problem pulling out a picture ID or reading instructions in English. As my father would say, “Germans, Italians, and Poles came to this country, and they didn’t require special signs. Mexicans come here and now they have signs in English and Spanish. Are they saying Mexicans are too dumb to learn English?”
But the bigger issue, which often gets lost in our debates, is the economic impact of failing to learn English. One side of my family learned English, moved out of the barrio, and assimilated to American society. The other part of my family never fully adopted English, stayed in Mexican-American neighborhoods, and shopped at Spanish-speaking stores. Guess which side of the family became part of the American middle class and sent their children to college?

‐Last, a friend of mine sent me the below passage from John Stuart Mill. Mill is no conservative favorite, that’s for sure, but this is arresting:

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature, and has no chance of being free unless made or kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

Check you later.