EDITOR’S NOTE: “Window on The Week” acts as our weekly, quick-and-punchy, “between-the-issues” survey of some of the hot topics of the day. “Window on The Week” gives you a sense of what “The Week” — a popular feature that appears fortnightly in National Review — looks like.

‐ When you use a credit card, you’ll probably be asked to show photo ID. Likewise when you cash a check or fly on a plane. So why not when you vote? The House of Representatives apparently thought this an excellent question. On Wednesday, it passed HR 4844, requiring that people show photo ID when voting in federal elections and proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote. Democrats call it a poll tax, but their provocative rhetoric is laughable. Photo ID is a practical necessity in our society; voters already have it, and the requirement will hardly disenfranchise them. Elections have been plagued by accusations of fraud (though Democrats, in an odd reversal, are now asking, “What fraud?”); there are approximately 12 million illegal immigrants in this country who have great ability to manipulate the political process but no right to do so; and yet our main means of verifying voters’ citizenship is currently the honor system. The House’s reform is sensible and long overdue.

‐ Throughout his political career, Sen. Lindsey Graham has carefully cultivated the image of a sage on all things legal, particularly where the military and the Constitution are concerned. It’s more than a little ironic, then, that he himself appears to be in violation of the Constitution because of his military ties. Article I, Section 6, a straightforward provision designed to safeguard the separation of powers, forbids members of Congress from simultaneously being executive-branch officers. Graham’s choice to remain a colonel in the Air Force Reserve is admirable. But he has also continued to serve actively, as a judge of the Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals. (This has, naturally, added rhetorical force to his criticisms of the Bush administration’s proposed legislation concerning detainee interrogations and military commissions.) Thankfully, the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces ruled on Wednesday that he is violating the Constitution by performing both roles. Let’s just say we don’t expect him to solve the conflict by resigning from the Senate.

‐ California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger joined last month with Democrats in the state legislature to push through a bill requiring that industries in the Golden State reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by 2020. Right on cue, attorney general Bill Lockyer announced that he was suing six major automakers for “tens or hundreds of millions of dollars” in compensation for the damage their cars have wrought on California over the years. Next up, presumably, will be the power companies that make all that awful electricity. Nor should we forget the oil companies, which maliciously sell harmful gasoline to gullible Californians. Water vapor, too, is a greenhouse gas, so Mr. Coffee’s dangerous weather machine should be on the list. In order to win his suit, Mr. Lockyer will of course have to provide hard evidence of actual harm directly attributable to greenhouse gases from cars. That may be more difficult than Laurie David & Co. have led him to believe.

‐ By a vote of 61–35, the Senate finally confirmed Alice Fisher as assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s criminal division, whose responsibilities include investigating and prosecuting terrorist cases. Fisher was nominated in April 2005. She easily cleared the Judiciary Committee, but Sen. Carl Levin then placed a hold on her nomination. He was unsatisfied that, while in her former position at the Justice department, she had known nothing about the FBI’s criticisms of alleged abusive practices at Guantanamo Bay. (Never mind that she left that position a year before the FBI raised its concerns.) Refusing to permit Levin to cripple the criminal division, President Bush made a recess appointment of Fisher last September. Now the Senate has done the right thing — a year late. (NB: Carl Levin is in line to chair the Armed Services Committee should the Democrats take over the Senate. Just in case you’re looking for a reason to vote . . .)

‐ Speaking of confirmation battles, President Bush nominated NRO contributor Warren Bell to serve on the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which directs federal funding to PBS and NPR. Bell was supposed to have a hearing Thursday before the Senate Commerce Committee, but it was pulled from the schedule at the last minute, when Republicans on the committee caved to Democrats who oppose his nomination on the grounds that he is too conservative. Their position is particularly absurd, given the apolitical nature of the appointment and Bell’s long experience as a broadcasting professional. It’s always bad when Republicans don’t fight to confirm qualified nominees; in this case, given the weakness of the arguments against Bell, it’s disgraceful.

‐ As a social club for scoundrels, the U.N. is wildly successful. As a voice for morality in international affairs, it is less so. Consider Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech before the General Assembly this week. He condemned the U.S. and Britain as aggressors and violators of international law — while representing a government that flouts its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, sows violence across the Middle East, and brutalizes its domestic critics. You’d think all that would disqualify him from showing his face at Turtle Bay; but no, he’s just another respected leader. It was Venezuelan thug Hugo Chávez who really stole the show, though. He called President Bush — who had addressed the General Assembly the day before — “the devil himself,” and quipped that there was still a whiff of sulfur in the air. (Venezuela and Iran are now allies, and could at least get their imagery straight. America is the Great Satan, and Bush is Satan simpliciter?) For the first time — and quite probably the last one — we find ourselves agreeing with Rep. Charles Rangel, who did a nice job of capturing Chavez’s sheer rudeness: “[Venezuela] can do politically what [it] see[s] fit to do. But you don’t come into my country, you don’t come into my congressional district, and you don’t condemn my president.” Well said, Chollie.

‐ Moral blindness is of course not limited to the U.N. The speeches of Ahmadinejad and Chavez were an occasion to scrutinize their radical beliefs, but most of the media missed this opportunity. In interviews on NBC and CNN, Ahmadinejad gave a few answers about his despicable Holocaust denials, but the interviewers let his apocalyptic beliefs about the Twelfth Imam and the end of the world go unmentioned. Far worse was Meredith Vieira of NBC’s Today. She mused that Chavez might be “giving voice to a wider frustration in the developing world” and wondered whether we “need to change the way we act.” It’s annoying when tyrants lecture us from the center of our greatest city. It’s positively insufferable when self-important American journalists join in the scolding.

‐ Here is the latest illustration of the dismal truth that there is no limit to how far you can bend over backward when you have no spine. The illustrator here is Piet Hein Donner, minister of justice in the Netherlands. Interviewed for a book titled Het Land van Haat en Nijd (“Land of Hate and Envy”), the minister gives it as his opinion that if two-thirds of the Dutch population were to vote for sharia law, they should be given it. Said Donner: “It must be possible for Muslim groups to come to power via democratic means. . . . The majority counts. That is the essence of democracy.” Hmm. That is the essence of democracy only if the majority is itself democratically inclined. Otherwise “the majority counts” is the essence of national suicide. Is such an inclination clearly visible among the Muslim peoples of the world? Or of the Netherlands? Seems to us they are more disposed to haat en nijd.

‐ Some great interviewers appear soft-spoken and even dull-witted, inducing their subjects to explain themselves slowly and patiently. That wasn’t Oriana Fallaci’s mode. She was an Ahab of journalism, hurling barbs into everyone from Henry Kissinger to the Ayatollah Khomeini (at the end of her session with him, she peeled off her chador, calling it a “stupid medieval rag”). Politically she was an old-fashioned European radical, opposed to religion and authority; she did not change these views when the clerics and authoritarians started migrating to Europe from other parts of the world. Her last books, written after 9/11, The Rage and the Pride and The Force of Reason, assailed what she called Eurabia — her continent’s destiny if it continued to accept the bigotry of its least enlightened Muslim newcomers. She took to calling herself a “Christian atheist,” and in 2005 she had an interview with Benedict XVI — uniquely for her, in private. Dead at 77. R.I.P.