The Telegraph story also casts a light on another topic, school meals, rarely a subject for nostalgia back in the UK. I can still remember those days of liver and bacon, served tepid and gray with a collapsing boiled potato or two for variety and excitement.

Read then these words from a spokesman for local government in Wakefield quoted in the Telegraph:

"Each term we try to come up with a menu which encourages children to think about different issues. This Easter term we chose information technology and did not even consider putting hot cross buns on the menu."

A menu designed to influence children to think about information technology?

Chips with everything, I suppose.

Hot cross buns are a traditional Easter-time treat in England, traditionally served on Good Friday. They are slightly sweet, emblazoned with a cross and best served hot with a little butter. Unfortunately, that pesky cross is worrying some local authorities over in the UK. The Sunday Telegraph is reporting that schools in a number of regions have been ordered not to serve the buns this Easter lest they “offend” children of a non-Christian faith. It’s yet another reminder that 'diversity' means nothing of the sort.

To its credit, the Muslim Council of Britain has called the decision “very, very bizarre”. One of its spokesmen is quoted by the Telegraph as follows:

"This is absolutely amazing. At the moment, British Muslims are very concerned about the upcoming war with Iraq and are hardly going to be taken aback by a hot cross bun…Unfortunately actions like this can only create a backlash and it is not very thoughtful. I wish they would leave us alone. We are quite capable of articulating our own concerns and if we find something offensive, we will say so. We do not need to rely on other people to do it for us…British Muslims have been quite happily eating and digesting hot cross buns for many years and I don't think they are suddenly going to be offended."

Well said.

Here’s a story that could (I thought) only be explained by being dated April 1. It wasn’t – and the Congresswoman should be ashamed of herself.

As to her suggestion that these American dead are not currently buried in “patriotic” soil, Rep. Brown-Waite needs to read these words by Rupert Brooke. Brooke, an English poet who died whilst on active service during World War I, had this to say about the last resting place of a soldier killed overseas. He was writing, of course, about an English soldier rather than an American, but the truth of his words is not confined to any one nationality:

“If I should die, think only this of me:

That there’s some corner of a foreign field

That is for ever England. There shall be

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,

A body of England’s, breathing English air,

Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.”

This Dixie Chicks thing is getting very, very serious for the group. Mind you, I'm not a big one for boycotts; if I threw away CDs of artists whose politics I couldn't stand off my shelf, there'd be very little left to listen to (a reader wrote to say she'd taken her child to hear the great kids' musician Dan Zanes play recently, and he shared his anti-war politics with preschoolers. Asinine!). However, I completely understand country fans wanting to rebuke severely the Dixie Chicks for that disgraceful comment Natalie Maines made on foreign soil. This thing is turning into something huge. Read what reader Dave in Georgia wrote to me this morning:

Here in the Red Zone, the imminent demise of the Dixie Chicks is a topic of
everyday discussion, not just a Internet thing. And every country radio DJ
is being forced to take a stand. I came home yesterday, and my wife asked me if she was supposed to take her CDs to the radio station, or if I knew where she was supposed to mail them. Radio call-ins range for tearful pleas to
pray for the Chicks, to heavily bleeped suggestion for new names for the group.

This thing is turning into a phenomenal case of career suicide. What on earth could Natalie Maines have been thinking, saying such an idiotic thing, given her fan base? Can anybody think of a similar case of a popular performer collapsing professionally virtually overnight because of something he or she said?

The London Independent is reporting that hundreds of members of Mugabe’s youth militia are fleeing to South Africa. Their complaint? They are tired of “killing for nothing”. Mugabe, readers will remember, was recently welcomed to Paris by Jacques Chirac.

Yes, by that same Jacques Chirac, who is (according to Le Figaro) a “a white knight of peace, a champion of all the oppressed of the Earth.”

Great stuff coming in. One clarification: I'm particularly looking for quotes -- the more famous/prominent the better -- which talk about challenging the racial or gender status quo. Blah blah blah

It's late on Friday, but if anybody can help with this I'd appreciate it. I'm looking for hardcore quotes from critial gender, critical race or other post modern types. Specifically, I'm looking for stuff about the need to "smash the dominant gender paradigm" or "transcend the patriarchal white male" blah blah. The more esoteric and impenetrable the academese the better. The only thing is it's got to be real and from a confirmable source. I'll explain all later. Thanks

From a reader:

Dear Jonah,

I just had to relay this story to you it’s absolutely priceless.

I’m relatively new at this company, where I’m pretty much surrounded by lefties – yeah, welcome to Boston – and where the executives make condescending remarks about Bush and the war effort at meetings.

A couple of weeks ago, a co-worker came by my office and saw my copy on dead tree copy of National Review [I read it on the T where I get really strange glances] on my desk and gave me the most horrible look. It fairly screamed: “wow, I never thought you were one of those barbarians?”.

Well, today, I was happily sipping coffee from my newly arrived Cosmo Mug – proudly purchased from the NRO store – and the same person came by. Only this time, instead of sneering, she had a smile on her face and asked “who’s that cute dog?”.

After my initial shock, I replied: “Oh, that’s Cosmo, he’s a famous journalist”. She walked away a bit puzzled – but still smiling as she hadn’t pegged me completely wrong – at least I have good taste in dogs.

I’ve been chuckling about this all day. Friggin priceless.

Saudi Arabia says anyone who thinks there will ever be a Church in his country is a fanatic.

"I stepped down from my leadership position today as a way to demonstrate acceptance of my responsibility for insensitive remarks I recently made."

"I will continue to reach out to the Jewish community and others who were offended by my remarks. And I will work tirelessly for all of my constituents in Northern Virginia, as I have done throughout my 13 years in Congress."

"Most importantly, I will strive to learn from my mistakes and listen to the concerns of my constituents."

Norris: Speaking of multilateralism, do you notice, as many have suggested, that there's an increasing unilateralist bent in the United States government? Blix: Yeah. On big issues like war in Iraq, but in many other issues they simply must be multilateral. There's no other way around. You have the instances like the global warming convention, the Kyoto protocol, when the U.S. went its own way. I regret it. To me the question of the environment is more ominous than that of peace and war. We will have regional conflicts and use of force, but world conflicts I do not believe will happen any longer. But the environment, that is a creeping danger. I'm more worried about global warming than I am of any major military conflict.

Seth Gitell on "Bush's Mideast Misfire."

Admittedly I can't count the emails I don't receive, but so far lots of readers think this smart thing is a lot fishier than appearances and appearances are pretty darn fishy.

A typical email from a reader:

Jonah,

Not only is it peculiar for the mother to invite this homeless bum into her house for work, there are many more strange doins’

The sister waits 2 hours before calling her parents after the abduction

The intruder is able to break into the house and leave with no one noticing.

A 6000 square foot house, but no burglar alarm?

The sister suddenly remembers who she saw/heard – what - 5 months later?

Elizabeth apparently passes up numerous opportunities to escape, call out for help, even on a city street near the police station.

Color me skeptical. I think the 15 year old was much more complicit than an innocent in this whole affair. And the younger sister, too.

And I did not grow up in NYC.

A journalist/Corner reader responds to my "The Palestinian Card" post:

Sure, sure, we all think "Iraq" (I say the word when I'm asked what I'm having for dinner), BUT the Palestinian legislative council is expected to confirm their PM as early as Monday, and senior admin officials who briefed a handful of reporters said they wanted to weigh in before the meeting without appearing to dictate to the Palestinians whom they should pick. They seemed pretty upbeat about the reforms there, and want to keep the incentive structure alive to affect choices by the Palestinians (and the Europeans, who for all their knee-jerk anti-Israel crap have also been pushing for Pal. reforms for some time). So yeah, the announcement is tied to Iraq. But the substance is tied to the events on the ground....

From a reader:

Want to hire a stranger in a giant bunny suit to fix your toilet? I'll gladly dress up in a giant bunny suit (even pink) and fix your toilet for free. It should be noted that I have zero experience working on toilets. If you're worried that I'm some crazed stalker who dresses in giant bunny suits and offers free plumbing work to pundits; fear not, I'm really only offering my services because I'm hoping you'll post this in the corner.

K-Lo, you'd better watch it, or I'll have Julie make her amazing cassoulet, which will further wear down your resistance to all things French. I am pleased to say that my Texas-born bride is a descendant of Claude-Joseph de Lisle Rouget, who wrote the French national anthem. He was actually a monarchist who refused to swear allegiance to the revolutionary regime. History is full of ironies, innit? I've always thought that strictly on artistic terms, the French have the most stirring national anthem. The Star-Spangled Banner will always move me like no other, of course, but the Marseillaise is pretty great. I confess my prejudice comes from repeated viewings of The Grand Illusion and Casablanca, in which the singing of the Marseillaise plays a triumphal, anti-German role in the stories.

And my son loves both President Bush and The Aristocats. His Franco-Texan sensibilities are developing nicely. He freaked out with joy on the phone last week when I told him that President Bush is from Texas. Julie's down in Dallas with him visiting the grandparents, and they took him last weekend to the Alamo, which he knew all about thanks to Bill Bennett's wonderful storybook for kids. Walking into the old fort, he said, apropos of nothing, "I hate the Mexican army." He's three and a half. Julie said his chin trembled and his eyes filled with tears when he stood before the relic case, looking at Jim Bowie's knife. A few months back, when he was obsessed with the Alamo story and demanded to have it read to him over and over, we heard him crying upstairs in bed. Julie ran up to check on him, and came down saying, "He tells me he's afraid he won't remember the Alamo." Now, if kids' music genius Dan Zanes , who makes the best records for children, would come out with a Texas swing version of La Marseillaise, I think the boy would reach nirvana.

This sounds like a whole new strategy for garnering support for war on Iraq. I'm all for a peaceful settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, including a Palestinian state. If rolling out the plan for doing that now makes sense from where Blair and Bush are sitting, so be it. But it's hard to believe the timing has to do with anything but garnering support for invading Iraq. Very interesting to hear what the French say next.

Yesterday, responses to my column were 95% pro, 4% critical but friendly and 1% anti-Semitic bile. Alas, as the column has been sent around the web -- and the mouth breathers have finally finished reading it -- the nasty stuff is coming in. I won't reprint it, but it continues to amaze me the number of people who feel like 6 million Jews was nothing but a good start. I wish I was exaggerating.

I know this is old news to those who followed the Smart case closely from the beginning. But this paragraph from the Washington Post stopped me in my tracks:

The ordeal actually began in November 2001, when Elizabeth's mother, Lois Smart, encountered a long-haired street prophet, in an ankle-length white robe, preaching the words of Jesus on a Salt Lake City sidewalk. She hired the drifter, who called himself Emmanuel, for a day's work repairing the roof of the Smart home.

I'm all for saving some cash, helping a guy down on his luck etc. But who hires a "street prophet" in an ankle length robe to do roof work? These people have young attractive daughters for Pete's sake. Maybe it's my jaded NYC upbringing, but jeez. Why not hire a stranger in a giant bunny suit to fix your toilet? Or maybe hire a naked guy in a trench coat to grout your tub?

actually, it's being replaced by one where george p. bush says that we're gonna attack iraq real soon now. and then, at the end of the commercial, there will be george h.w. bush.
"wait a minute -- *you're* not the president!"
"no, but i was when this started."

That Elizabeth Smart has been found. And I have great sympathy for her family. But I get the sense her father is running for something. He pings my radar in a bad way. I hope I'm wrong.

A UN weapons inspectorhas been killed in Iraq. So far, it sounds like an accident.

Wow. I'm not sure I've ever seen an email response quite like this. In the last twenty minutes or so, I've received some two dozen emails about my PIRG post. Virtually each one begins with some version of "Where have you been?" Or "Dude, this has been going on for a long time" or, most common, "When I was in college...." Apparently this goes on at dozens -- hundreds? -- of schools and has been for decades. I knew the PIRGs played these games but I had no idea it'd been going on for so long and in so many places. Message received.

If YAF or Eagle Forum or Ward Connerly's outfit tried something like this. A college deducts contributions to Naderite groups straight out of your tuition.

The Elizabeth Smart story could be getting even weirder.

Funny, when I was in college that phrase referred to something completely different.

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) University of Missouri junior guard Ricky

Clemons has been ordered to stand trial April 29 on charges of assaulting a woman in his apartment.

The trial date was set last week after Clemons, 20, waived formal arraignment. He pleaded innocent last month to a charge of second-degree domestic assault.

Jessica Bunge, 20, of St. Clair, alleged Clemons pushed her down, bloodied her nose and choked her the night of Jan. 16 after she refused to watch the movie "Roots" with him. Clemons was suspended from the basketball team for one game.

Another Nobel Peace Prize winner in our column. Lech Walesa endorses the US's campaign against Iraq. The columns are evening out nicely. Nobel winners against: Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu and Yasir Arafat versus Walesa and Eli Weisel. They're still one up, but does Jimmy Carter really count? I mean if Bush were the President of a Third World dictatorship, Carter would be singing his praises.

From CNN:

U.S. officials said Wednesday that surrender negotiations have secretly begun with key Iraqi military officials in hopes that some military units will not fight U.S. and coalition forces if there is war.

The Pentagon is not handling these communications, officials said, but instead other elements of the U.S. government are conducting them.

One senior official said that some parts of the Iraqi military already may have agreed not to fight.

These efforts underscore assessments by the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency that the leadership around Saddam Hussein is brittle. Officials have been making that view somewhat public as part of an effort to publicize what they say is Saddam's vulnerability.

A friend of mine who's a military ordinance buff, fan of Mack Owens and who works in the defense industry just sent me this IM re Owen's piece on the Mother of All Bombs:

JG, you must stop the presses on the MOAB article. Not to be a nit (though that's exactly what I am being), the Daisy Cutter, and now the MOAB, are not fuel air explosives, as noted by the general media and now Mr. Owens. FAE get their oxidizers from the air; bombs usually provide their own. The Daisy Cutter and the MOAB are NOT FAEs, they are just really, really big bombs.

I have no dog in this fight. I just like the "boom" part.

I've been wanting to write a piece directly on the subject of how containment -- as a moral argument -- is morally offensive for quite a while. Walter Russel Meade does precisely that today in the Washington Post, and brilliantly so. If you want to argue that containment is preferable to war as a national security argument, that's intellectually acceptable. But if you want to make the moral argument that containment is better, you have to demonstrate why more pain and death over a long period is preferable to less pain and death over a short period. And that's a hard argument to make in moral terms.

I'm getting all sorts of nice email from people who attended the debate last night, including from fools who think I lost (just kidding). But this is my favorite so far. Under the subject header "Goldberg Beats Bon Jovi at Wheaton!":

Jonah,

My high school age daughter [name withheld] and I caught your debate at Wheaton last night. Afterwards you were kind enough to sign her "Wimps!!" issue of NRODT. As we were leaving, she turned to me and said, "This is SOOOO cool! My friend [name withheld], she's always bragging about how she went to a Bon Jovi concert and then met the band. But this, this is WAY better!!"

I'm telling you Jonah, you're gonna have to start selling t-shirts. I
can see them now: "Jonah Goldberg World Tour 2003 - Feel the Federalism!".

Thanks for an enjoyable evening, and congratulations on your little one.
Best to Cosmo..."

Ah, Neruda, Ramesh. Here’s a poem by John Kerry’s favorite (a Stalin prizewinner, no less), written on the occasion of Uncle Joe's death:

"To be men! That is the Stalinist law!

…We must learn from Stalin

his sincere intensity

his concrete clarity

…Stalin is the noon,

the maturity of man and the peoples.

Stalinists, Let us bear this title with pride.

…Stalinist workers, clerks, women

take care of this day!

The light has not vanished.

The fire has not disappeared,

There is only the growth of

Light, bread, fire and hope

In Stalin’s invincible time!

…In recent years the dove,

Peace, the wandering persecuted rose,

Found herself on his shoulders

And Stalin, the giant,

Got a slightly peppery e-mail from a Franco-American correspondent, who appreciated the good words I had for the French, but thought I had been wrong not to note that there are plenty of French people who are very conscious of what America did for France in liberating them twice. He says we shouldn't take the actions and views of a minority of Frenchmen for those of the entire nation.

And then he told a great anecdote, about an admirable woman:

One of the most moving things I have EVER seen was my father's 60-something assistant, a wiry, austere, formal French woman, bear down on an American college student who was wearing short-shorts and listening to his boombox in one of the cemeteries in Normandie. She grabbed him by the ear and dragged his face down to one of the crosses and proceeded to explain to him that he owed more respect than that to the 23-year-old who died on a nearby beach to help liberate Western Europe (somehow, this point gets lost) from Nazi domination.

Isn't that great? I got another letter, entirely in French, from a Parisian gentleman. He said the France I love has mostly disappeared, and that his countrymen are a depressed, malcontented people. He doesn't understand Chirac and de Villepin's actions, and complains that the newspapers there are "practically all anti-American. Happily, regular reading of NRO and the Wall Street Journal allow one to stay informed." The gentleman calls The Corner "un bonheur quotidien" (a daily pleasure). Thanks, copain! I won't identify our Parisian confederate by name, for his own protection, but if Rich will spring for plane tickets, I propose that Jonah and I head to Paris and take him up on his generous offer to take us out to dinner.

It's really jumping! Maybe I should leave town more often.

Anyway, the debate went fine I guess. The crowd certainly seemed to like it. Very smart bunch, many conservatives, from all over the area. Lori Wallach is a very smart lady. But we spent much of the night talking past each other. She wouldn't tackle the official debate topic "Does Free Trade Help Poor Countries" in order to beat up the WTO. I wouldn't let her force me to defend the sprawling bureaucracy. I kind of wish we had teams because I am sure a more forceful defense of the WTO could be made by people more comfortable with statistical nitty gritty Wallach got into. My kingdom for a Brink Lindsey! I'll have more details in the AM, but I just thought I should see how things were going here without me.

Charlie Gibson: "We want to give you now an update on someone that you have seen often on this broadcast, someone who has touched millions of lives, talking about 12 year old Mattie Stepanek, one of our favorite people in the world. He is battling a rare disease that has already killed all of his siblings and weakened his mother. Our Chris Cuomo visited him in the intensive care unit at the Children's National Medical center in Washington, D.C. Mattie is there now on a ventilator."

Chris Cuomo: "You all remember Mattie Stepanek, the 12 year old poet fighting off death from a rare form of muscular dystrophy. ... His best selling poetry books have enlightened millions, with messages of peace and love. And of course it was here that Mattie had a dream come true, meeting his hero, President Jimmy Carter, who Mattie calls a humble peacemaker. Well now there's a new book, "Loving Through Heartsongs," the fifth in a series about the power of love.

Mattie Stepanek: "This one explores loving life, loving people, loving God, loving peace."

Chris Cuomo: "With clouds gathering over the Middle East, and voices of peace struggling to rise above the war drums, the pint sized peacemaker comes with a special message."

Cuomo: "What do you think about everything that's going on?"

Stepanek: "I really don't like it; I mean it's sad. And we've gone from battlefields to backyards, from arrows to anthrax. You don't have to go to war, you don't."

Cuomo: "But what if they, if the Iraqi government refuses to turn things over that the American government believes is there? What else are they supposed to do?"

Stepanek: "Don't go and bomb it, because that'll make them say 'Ooh let's bomb them.' We'll bomb back, they'll bomb back, soon there will be nothing to bomb, no one to bomb. Why are we doing this? It's pointless."

Cuomo: "Mattie says just consider this question: Is America fighting for a just cause, or fighting just because?"

[clip of Stepanek reading poem]

Stepanek: "Dear Mr. Bush, you said-"

Cuomo: "One poem is a special appeal to the president, a letter asking him to seek peace."

Stepanek: "We cannot get caught with a bad attitude, or we are not choosing peace."

Cuomo: "Of course Mattie is just a kid, and he may not know the realities of the battlefield, but he knows better than most how precious life is. So fragile, so delicate, so aware of how close death may be."

One point worth clarifying from the initial reports I have seen - the UH-60 Blackhawk is not an attack helicopter, it is a untility helicopter. It is primarily used to transport troops and supplies, though it does have other uses. The Army actually 'codes' the nomenclature of its helicopters. UH-## are utility helicopters, AH-## are attack heilcopters (i.e. AH-64D Apache), CH-## are cargo helicopters (i.e. CH-47 Chinook), OH-## are observation helicopters (i.e. OH-58D Kiowa), and MH-## are modified versions of the basic helicopter.

A significant number of readers have written to say there's no excuse for saying anything nice about France now. C'est la vie, I reckon, but I'm hearing from many more readers who agree with me that the French government is behaving despicably, but there's still a lot to love about France -- and that it's important to remember that in a time of crisis and animosity. So many of you wrote with your own stories of falling in love with France. Here's one of my favorite letters, from reader John Novak:

Thanks for saying exactly what I think about France, too. I hate their duplicitous politics, but the style and beauty of their culture makes me think they are closer to God than even they know. I stole a line from Bruce Paltrow (he used it on his daughter, Gwyneth) when I told my wife that I wanted her to take our 4 year old son to Paris so he would see that city for the first time with a woman who would love him forever.

Regarding my column today praising the good things about France, a Frenchman (with a governmental e-mail address, no less) writes:

Just one word: thank you.

Times will get better, eventually. In the meantime, God bless America for doing in Iraq what it did on our soil, twice, at a horrible price.

I'm so grateful for Frenchmen like this reader. They do exist, and Americans would do well to remember that rather than reducing the entire nation and its people to a caricature.

A longtime emailer comes to Robbins defense:

JG--

While you can certainly read the Robbins thing the way you read it, and react to it exactly as you have, I think, given the fact that Robbins is writing against the war, he doesn't want to see blood either. What he's saying, perhaps, is that given the fact that we can't lose, it is neither noble nor brave to start the fight at all. What we want a big kid to do is refrain from picking on a little kid. It is a given that Iraq can't win, that it will be a 1000 - 1 massacre, like the last Gulf War. Or, if Saddam hides out in the city, maybe even worse. Can't we find another way? In short, Robbins' intent is to shame the U.S. out of picking a fight with an unworthy opponent. No war, no blood.

On the off chance other people subscribe to this view, let me say I think it's batty. The "pick on somebody your own size" argument has absolutely no place in foreign policy when your national security is threatened, especially in the era of weapons of mass destruction. If one man can inflict the kind of damage that only whole armies could a generation ago, then it's silly to say that America shouldn't "pick" on that one man because it would make us a bully. We don't owe it to anybody or anything to only fight wars we might lose because that would be a "fair fight." Besides, I don't remember Robbins being outraged when we "picked on" and "bullied" Milosevic or Aideed.

The universe is a doughnut!

I found this quote via Andrew Sullivan. It's from the novelist Tom Robbins in the Seattle Weekly:

"Quite probably the worst thing about the inevitable and totally unjustifiable war with Iraq is that there’s no chance the U.S. might lose it. America is a young country, and intellectually, emotionally, and physically, it has been exhibiting all the characteristics of an adolescent bully, a pubescent punk who’s too big for his britches and too strong for his age. Someday, perhaps, we may grow out of our mindless, pimple-faced arrogance, but in the meantime, it might do us a ton of good to have our butts kicked. Unfortunately, like most of the targets we pick on, Iraq is much too weak to give us the thrashing our continuously overbearing behavior deserves, while Saddam is even less deserving of victory than Bush." - novelist Tom Robbins, Seattle Weekly.

Now, I receive the tedious chickenhawk charge from anti-war types almost every day. I think it's mostly a dumb argument or at best a fine debating point stretched to unrecognizable lengths. But tell me? What are we to make of Robbins? As a proponent of war, I would be delighted -- ecstatic even -- if not a single American were killed or wounded. I would love it if only the most brutal members of the Baathist regime were killed or wounded, sparing the lives of innocent Iraqis and unfortunate Iraqi conscripts. In short, I don't crave blood in the slightest. I hope for victory, yes, blood, no. Robbins, on the other hand, craves not merely blood, but American blood. How else to read this? The worst thing about this war is that we can't lose it? What does he think "losing" and getting "out butt kicked" might mean other than the deaths -- probably by chemical and biologoical weapons -- of tens of thousands of Americans?

I will never -- ever -- again bite my tongue when tempted to say that some of these cretins are not merely dumb, but anti-American and unpatriotic.

I'm heading up to Wheaton College in Mass to debate Lori Wallach on free trade stuff. It turns out she's a ringer on this stuff, so I have to do more reading. I also have to finish my syndicated column. So, in short, I will be a light presence in the Corner today and early tomorrow. This is, perhaps, the only place I will be a light presence.

I think you can argue it round or flat whether it was a good idea to take the Iraq issue to the United Nations in the first place. But I think the second-resolution gambit has clearly been revealed to be a disaster -- unless the goal is less to disarm Iraq and more to overturn the international order. I understand that we wanted to help the British by getting a second resolution. But at least before, with 1441 and the dozen-plus other resolutions, the United States could have said it was in compliance with the Security Council by going to war. That was the whole point of negotiating 1 resolution in the first place. 1441 was what we wanted and we got it. If we went to war under its authority alone the Security Council naysayers would be put in the position of having to explain why the US was wrong at a time of war. I doubt they would have been too loud in the face of a fait accompli. Now, we've more or less conceded that we don't have the authority under 1441 and we need more approval from the UN. If we don't get that approval in the form of a second resolution we'll be in defiance of the UN if we go to war.

I don't mind being in defiance of the UN as a matter of principle. But as a matter of politics it's a much riskier proposition.

The email that you just posted describes me perfectly, and I also just subscribed yesterday. Couldn't take the guilt anymore. I had been reading NRO online for several months, but didn't make it over to the corner until Election night 2002. Wow!!! You guys won me over that night. Keep up the amazing work.

Last year I stumbled onto your site looking for great conservative commentary online. After a few months I finally got around to clicking on “The Corner” link at the top of the page. I couldn’t believe just how much of your site I was missing out on. Instead of checking NRO a few times a week, like an addict I was leaving a browser open to refresh every half hour. I don’t know if you were the first to pioneer this concept, but it sure has made me a loyal visitor and eventually guilted me into subscribing to NRODT! Keep up the great work!

The International Criminal ‘Court’ holds its inaugural session on Tuesday. The US, quite rightly, is having nothing to do with it, but Britain is a member, and subject to its jurisdiction. The court will, clearly, be highly politicized. This could become yet another worry for the embattled Mr. Blair as he contemplates participating in an invasion of Iraq that could well lack the approval of the UN. It goes without saying that ignoring the UN in this way is highly likely to antagonize the international bureaucratic class that will inevitably be responsible for shaping the court’s agenda.

Get a lawyer, Mr. Blair, or, better still, take Britain out of the court.

There’s an interview with EU external affairs commissioner, Chris Patten, in Monday’s edition of the Independent. Much of it covers familiar, if annoying, ground, but this passage is striking:

“Mr. Patten believes things might have been very different had the Democrats clinched more disputed votes in Florida and won the last presidential election. “I don’t believe that America has changed fundamentally. I don’t believe that there has been a sea-change in US public opinion despite the energetic activities of Fox News,” he says. “Clearly, the born-again Christian movement in the US is politically very influential. I think it is wrong to talk about fundamentalism as if it were solely an Islamic phenomenon. I think that alienation touches every great religion.””

Take each sentence individually and, despite the childish jibe directed at Fox News, there is not too much to object to. Put them together, and the underlying subtext is clear, and rather less innocuous: the US government is under the influence of a bunch of religious nuts drawn from a fundamentalist tradition that is not so far removed from the loppers and choppers of radical Islam.

Patten is entitled to his opinions, which are, in reality, little more than a tawdry collection of prejudices masquerading as sophistication, but if they represent the extent of Brussels' understanding of this country, it’s no surprise that US-EU relations are in such poor shape.

Subject: I wish I worked at NR

It appears cocktail time is 3:36 PM...

Some people keep at it till 5 or so... :-)

Everyone keeps asking me if I saw last night's Simpsons. Alas, I missed it. Sorry.

"And the United States asks aid groups in Baghdad for civilian satellite coordinates in Iraq" -- pregnant pause here -- "Is it to bomb them or save them?"

I discussed Tears of the Sun in the Goldberg File on Friday. I should have been clear that I haven't actually seen the movie yet. I was referring to Steve Hunter's review of the movie. I plan to see it this week. I bring this up because lots of people are emailing me with references to scenes that I haven't seen and don't want to hear about until I see the movie. In short, don't spoil it for me.

Rick -- Actually, I don't think C-Span tilts right anymore. I think that C-Span tilts angry. I remember one caller called it "Complaint-Span" and Brian Lamb burst into laughter. During the Clinton years it tilted to the right because the right was angriest. Now it tilts left because they're the angriest. When I've done C-Span in the last year or two, the callers have been overwhelmingly anti-Bush and anti-war and anti-American (which includes some paleo-libertarian types as well).

As I've written before, my favorite C-Span callers are the ones who begin their diatribes with something like "Thank God for C-Span, it's the only program which reports the truth...." who then seamlessly elide into a stemwinder against big corporate media. What's so funny is that C-Span is entirely funded and run by Big Corporate Media. If C-Span's so great for speaking the truth, and media corporations are so evil, why would they fund such a gadfly?

Phillip Bobbit applies it to Iraq.

Why aren't chemical and biological cluster bombs a "smoking gun"? Am I missing something, or have we just moved on past the "looking for the smoking gun" phase of this dog and pony show?

Judging from the use of the phrase "culture things," I assume English is not his first language:

Dear Mr. Goldberg,

I would just like to say that you and all your f--king neo-Nazi, fundamentalist, right-wing Budweiser drinking buddies should go burn in hell, and that’s putting in nicely. Because frankly no one gives a f--k about you or what you have to say about your “200 cheese people”. You don’t understand that you’re just stereotyping things you don’t even comprehend. Hell how could you, you were raised republican and culture things are a little over your head. Have you ever been to France to see the people whom you so avidly criticize? Just think about going and spending some time overseas you uncultured whore.

From Michelle Cottle's New Republic piece (for subscribers only) on Jerry Springer and his possible bid for the Senate:

To run, Springer would give up his much-maligned show, now in its twelfth season (and for which he is paid more than $6 million per year). But he and Ford believe that the lowbrow reputation the show has earned Springer could be a political asset, giving him credibility as a fiery populist battling an elitist political class. While the demographics of Springer fans cross race, gender, and age lines, notes Ford, "the common denominator is income. Jerry's viewers consistently earn less than the national average." Springer adds that, while he may not be the greatest candidate, "I know I can articulate a point of view for tons of people who cannot relate to the Sunday-morning talk shows. I don't know what kind of label you want to put on them: Are they nascar people? I don't want to label, but they're people who just aren't touched [by politics]. And, for all kinds of reasons, I have a connection with them." Springer's voice rises and he fidgets in his chair as he recounts how, on a recent Sunday show, the pundits were sitting around making all the usual jokes about his potential candidacy. "Then one of the guys said, 'Well, if Springer runs, that's the argument against letting everybody vote. Because, if Springer runs--and I think the quote was, 'We'll have all these slack-jawed, low-life hillbillies [voting].'" (The actual quote was from National Review's Jonah Goldberg, warning CNN's Wolf Blitzer of the downside of high turnout: "If Jerry Springer shows up, he'll bring all these new people to the polls. They will be slack-jawed yokels, hicks, weirdos, pervs, and whatnot.") Springer sees his run as "a cultural battle in a sense: elitism versus the mass of Americans." The political establishment, he says, wants you to believe that the only people I would speak to "are the crazies on the show. But it's not. It's the mass of Americans that are just untouched." Only wealthy, politically active voters even show up on the radar of most politicians, he charges. "If every American had to vote, do you think for one second we'd have the laws we have that favor the wealthy in terms of tax breaks and tax shelters and all these things? Of course not. So, when [politicians] give these speeches about how great it would be to have everyone voting, they don't mean it! And they really are scared that, if I run, everyone will come out to vote--then they wouldn't be in office."

For the record, Springer's got a pretty good handle on my position. Though, just to be clear, I've never thought or said that high voter turnout would be a good thing.

Yes, yes I think precedents are important. But the precedent here is a bit different than the one described by opponents of war. First, we've negotiated with Iraq through the UN for 12 years with nearly twenty binding resolutions. We tried sanctions and containment. We have allies. The UN agrees on the ends of disarmament not the means of how to achieve. Etc etc. The notion that this is a sudden, unilateral, unexplained assault on one country by another defies all reality. That is the precedent we are working with.

On ABC's "This Week" they billed their exclusive interview with Chretien as a conversation with the Prime Minister of "America's closest ally."

My draw dropped at this bit of inaccurate editorializing until it dawned on me they meant geographically. Sort of like saying "Jonah Goldberg is one of America's biggest conservatives."

This weekend, Canada's Jean Chretien trotted out the "bad precedent" argument again in his opposition to a war with Iraq. Telling George Stephanoplous that China might follow America's example and simply opt for regime change in Taiwan. While I do believe precedents are important and matter it seems to me this misses the mark in two key aspects.

First of all, the idea that China hasn't invaded Taiwan yet because it lacks a solid precent to invoke is absurd. It isn't the lack of a supporting precedent which primarily keeps China out of Taiwan, it's America's security guarantees. The lack of a precedent didn't keep tanks from rolling over Tibet. I'm sure China cares about what the world thinks to the extent it cares about foreign investment and trade. But, it cares about its core national interests more. And the threat of American retaliation is a greater deterrent in terms of national interest than world opinion is.

Second, the precedent these people are really worried about isn't that other countries might violate the UN some day, but that America might continue to thwart the will of the UN -- which has become a kaisersbund dedicated to curtailing American influence.

Prompted by the post on the North Korean MiGs, a number of readers have written in with reminders of an incident that occurred during the crisis over the USS Pueblo. Apparently the American sailors detained by the North Koreans quickly discovered that their captors did not know the meaning of ‘the finger’. Naturally they made full use of the gesture, explaining to their guards that it was a “Hawaiian good luck sign”. It was only when photographs of them doing that reached America that Pyongyang found out the truth and responded, needless to say, with the usual brutality.

Prompted by the hot dog debate, a reader provides this link to some helpful fine food mavens. Needless to say, they have a view on the Gray’s Papaya/Papaya King controversy.

“One of the things New Yorkers debate loudly is which is better, Papaya King or Gray’s Papaya. No contest as far as I’m concerned. Gray’s is all about value, Papaya King is all about quality and presentation.”

I think that says it all…

Is Tony Blair in deep trouble? Not yet, probably. In a recent piece John O’Sullivan did the math. His view was that the Prime Minister could hang on, at least for now. British journalist, Stephen Pollard (in a WSJ article reproduced on his always highly readable website, just scroll down) seems not to be so sure. But his key, and correct, point is that Iraq is not really the issue:

“The Iraq crisis has provided the glue by which disparate strands of the Labour party – the dispossessed and the never in possession, the anti-Americans, the left and the dross – have been able to join together in their opposition to a prime minister who is viewed by the public as a near-deranged warmonger, and the poodle of a trigger-happy Texan moron. That Iraq is merely the pretext is obvious from the complete failure of the rebels to provide any sort of plan for how they would deal with Saddam.”

But even if the vultures are waiting, it’s still too soon for Blair to feel really threatened. If anything goes wrong, all bets are off. That’s a statement of the obvious, of course, but there is, probably, one other moment of danger for the prime minister. If any invasion is preceded by a prolonged bombing campaign, it is likely that the resulting images of devastation will be broadcast night after night on British TV (Saddam will be only too happy to assist) and, without the political support that is likely to kick in the moment that British troops are actually in battle, a few key resignations from the Labour front bench could provoke a crisis.