Well, I don’t know, Rod, but that doesn’t seem like too bad a way to check out.

Come to think of it, the millionaire’s death bears some resemblance to the last days of President Mitterrand. If I remember the story correctly, he abandoned treatment of the cancer that was killing him and went on a trip to Egypt with his wife (or was it his mistress?) and then returned to France to be with his mistress (or was it his wife?).

His last meal was, reputedly, with close friends. He dined on oysters and ortolan (a rare - and apparently tasty - bird from southwestern France that it is illegal to hunt, sell or eat).

Mitterrand was a ghastly man, but, whatever else you might say about him, his final days seem to have had a certain style.

I should have said that ortolan is known as bunting in English. Here’s a recipe and some tips as to how to eat it (which is, of course, illegal – NRO does not endorse bunting hunting or munching) that I found on the Web:

“Cooking l'ortolan is simplicity itself. Simply pop them in a high oven for six to eight minutes and serve. The secret is entirely in the eating. First you cover your head with a traditional embroidered cloth. Then place the entire four-ounce bird into your mouth. Only its head should dangle out from between your lips. Bite off the head and discard. L'ortolan should be served immediately; it is meant to be so hot that you must rest it on your tongue while inhaling rapidly through your mouth. This cools the bird, but its real purpose is to force you to allow its ambrosial fat to cascade freely down your throat.

When cool, begin to chew. It should take about 15 minutes to work your way through the breast and wings, the delicately crackling bones, and on to the inner organs. Devotees claim they can taste the bird's entire life as they chew in the darkness: the wheat of Morocco, the salt air of the Mediterranean, the lavender of Provence. The pea-sized lungs and heart, saturated with Armagnac from its drowning, are said to burst in a liqueur-scented flower on the diner's tongue. Enjoy with a good Bordeaux.”

There are two theories as to why the ortolan eater is expected to chew his bunting under a sort of gourmet burqa:

The first? Shame. To hide your gluttony from God.

The second? Good manners. Who wants to watch someone sitting there with a bird’s head sticking out of his mouth?

Mitterrand, an atheist, believed in getting a good meal in before he died. Others have been more optimistic about their chances of a reservation in that great restaurant in the sky. The nineteenth century clergyman, Sidney Smith, described an acquaintance whose “idea of heaven” was “eating pate de foie gras to the sound of trumpets.”

“Down below”, of course, they serve Dr Pepper.

One of the most frustrating aspects of the Western response to 9/11 has been the failure to articulate a secular case for rejecting the Wahhabi death cult. Instead, the administration’s emphasis (which almost certainly reflects its own PC reflexes and a certain tendency, shall we say, to piety) has been to stress moderate Islam as an alternative to al-Qaeda’s Cro-Magnon certainties. That’s all well and good – there are hundreds of millions of Muslims in the Arab world and elsewhere who need to know that the US is not their opponent and that the theological battle against Wahhabism is by no means lost - whatever Saudi-funded evangelists may claim.

However to regard Arabs as a people necessarily defined exclusively – or even primarily - by their religion is no more accurate than the all too often repeated suggestion that they are more comfortable in the embrace of an authoritarian state.

Contrary to the image created by all those pictures of the faithful rallying outside some mosque or other there is another alternative to the chant of the mullah – it’s secular, and, judging by this fascinating, and, I suspect, very important article by Charles Paul Freund, it may be being previewed on video. Here’s an extract:

“Can that be what is happening with Arabic videos? While they are entertaining and titillating viewers, they are also transmitting new ways of being to an apparently receptive audience, new and multiplying approaches to being an "Arab" that combine traditional forms of cultural self-presentation with forms borrowed from an array of other sources. The combinations that promise to emerge would not be mere copies of borrowed foreign models; they would be new and indigenous cultural creations, just as is the case in cultures around the world. This syncretism is already true of the music itself, which not only uses traditional Arabic instrumentation… in new ways but also borrows instruments and rhythms from the Caribbean, Europe, India, rock, rap… and numerous other sources.

What this low, "vulgar" genre is offering, in sum, is a glimpse of a latent Arab world that is both liberal and "modernized." Why? Because the foundation of cultural modernity is the freedom to achieve a self-fashioned and fluid identity, the freedom to imagine yourself on your own terms, and the videos offer a route to that process. By contrast, much of Arab culture remains a place of constricted, traditional, and narrowly defined identities, often subsumed in group identities that hinge on differences with, and antagonism toward, other groups.

For nearly a century, a series of utopian political systems has been advanced in the region to attempt to break this cycle of conflict and stagnation: Pan-Arabism, Ba’athism, Nasserism, Islamism, etc. These have all failed, sometimes disastrously. What may yet work in the region is what has worked elsewhere for centuries: commercialism that does not transmit a regime’s utopian dreams but addresses the personal dreams of the audience. “

Exactly. It’s time to stop appeasing the clerics.

Not for the first time, Orrin Hatch pops up as a member of this never very exclusive club.

Want to stop contraband cigarettes becoming too big a problem? Well, Orrin, sensible cigarette taxes are the answer – not intrusive legislation.

Reason has more.

The Daily Telegraph reports that there’s yet another edition (this time illustrated) of the Oxford English Dictionary, but that’s really just an excuse to mention today’s rainy day (and long put off) reading, The Surgeon of Crowthorne, a truly delightful work about one very intriguing aspect of the production of the OED’s first edition.

The book also records how James Murray, the editor of the first OED, described himself when he applied for a job with the British Museum back in 1867:

“I have to state that Philology, both Comparative and special, has been my favourite pursuit during the whole of my life, and I possess a general acquaintance with the languages & literature of the Aryan and Syro-Arabic classes – not indeed to say that I am familiar with all or nearly all of these, but that I possess that general lexical and structural knowledge which makes the intimate knowledge only a matter of a little application. With several I have a more intimate acquaintance as with the Romance tongues, Italian, French, Catalan, Spanish, Latin & in a lesser degree Portuguese, Vaudois, Provencal, and various dialects. In the Teutonic branch, I am tolerably familiar with Dutch…Flemish, German, Danish. In Anglo-Saxon and Moeso-Gothic my studies have been much closer…I know a little of the Celtic, and am at present engaged with the Sclavonic, having obtained a useful knowledge of the Russian. In the Persian, Achaemenian Cuneiform, & Sanscrit branches, I know for the purposes of Comparative Philology. I have sufficient knowledge of Hebrew and Syriac to read at sight the Old Testament and Peshito; to a less degree I know Aramaic Arabic, Coptic and Phoenician to the point where it is left by Genesius.”

Naturally, he didn’t get the job.

Just how crooked is Diamond Giscard’s constitutional handiwork?

Very, it seems.

Yes, really. Annoying (to use the mildest of adjectives) though the EU is, the Poles should vote yes in this weekend’s referendum (any comment, Commissioner Patten?) whether to join the European Union. A yes vote will further underpin Poland’s long overdue return to the West and the Poles, unless their ruling elite becomes totally corrupted by Brussels – something that is far from impossible, unfortunately, – should be a welcome voice for Atlanticism in Brussels.

With a bit of luck, the arrival of the Poles (and the other East European applicants) should hasten that happy day when the federal model EU collapses (to borrow a phrase) under the weight of its own contradictions and becomes what it always should have been - a free trade zone.

European civil servant Chris Patten has a bizarre piece in this week’s issue of the London Spectator. It’s whiny, intellectually dishonest, over-stuffed and self-congratulatory, much like the man himself. A couple of points need highlighting:

“I hate referendums, which the late and great Julian Critchley used to call the form of plebiscitary democracy favoured by Hitler and Mussolini. Referendums on national issues are offered by governments out of weakness.”

That’s an interesting point, Commissioner Patten. Why don’t you go and make it in all those EU (or potential EU) countries that are holding referenda, either on Diamond Giscard’s ‘constitution’ or on the decision (Poland is voting this weekend) whether to join the EU?

Referenda are, Patten sneers, “popular with unelected newspaper editors.” Ah yes, unelected newspaper editors, a so much inferior species than, ahem, unelected EU Commissioners, eh, Chris?

Then Patten asks whether the UK wishes to “enjoy the notional independence of staying outside the eurozone and excluding [itself] from the decisions that will determine the development of [its] most important market? If anyone thinks that that represents a defence of real sovereignty, they should talk to the Norwegians.”

Indeed they should. The Norwegians seem quite happy with the existing state of arrangements (Norway has an association agreement – the EEA - with the EU, but is not a member). They should also chat to the Canadians. Our friends up North show few signs of wishing to adopt the currency used in their most important market. They must like that “notional” independence of theirs.

I don’t claim to know which party Patten really favors, but whichever it is – he disgraces it.

There’s a lengthy piece in today’s Guardian that, none too subtly, attempts to draw comparisons between the climate in today’s America and the McCarthy era. Among the highlights:

A description by that well-known Sovietophile, Vichy boulevardier and ‘philosopher’, Jean-Paul Sartre, of the execution of the Rosenbergs as:

“A legal lynching that has covered a whole nation in blood”.

Hmmm, Sartre. Could that be the same Sartre that said Khruschev’s denunciation of Stalin’s crimes should be kept secret lest it “discourage” the working class?

And then there’s this:

“Investigations and revelations since the end of the cold war have revealed that Julius Rosenberg probably did pass secrets to the Soviet Union, although nothing remotely as serious as those relating to the atomic bomb.”

Curiously, the article does not cite, for example, comments such as this (from papers summarized by former Soviet spy Vasili Mitrokhin):

“…David Greenglass was recruited through a group of S&T agents run by Julius Rosenberg (codenamed successively ANTENNA and LIBERAL…The members of the Rosenberg ring, who included his wife Ethel…were producing so many classified documents to be photographed …that the New York residency was running short of film. The residency reported that Rosenberg was receiving so much intelligence from his agents that he was finding it difficult to cope. “We are afraid of putting LIBERAL out of action with overwork.”

After hearing three days of testimony last week, Circuit Judge Janet C. Thorpe ruled that Sultaana Freeman's right to free exercise of religion would not be infringed by having to show her face on her license.

Freeman, 35, had obtained a license that showed her veiled with only her eyes visible through a slit. But the state revoked the license in 2001 when she refused to have her photo retaken with her face uncovered.

She sued the state of Florida, saying it would violate her Islamic beliefs to show her face publicly.

(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) APTV 06-06-03 1314EDT

Charlie Gibson: "Yeah, did she ever rationalize why there were these women in his life?"

Barbara Walters: "She, well, we asked her. Let me show you."

Gibson: "Okay."

[Interview clip]

Walters: "At one point you described what your husband had done as a sin of weakness."

Clinton: "It clearly was. You know, a friend who's something of a theologian said to me during this period that there were two kinds of sins -- sins of weakness and sins of malice -- and I think that, you know, my husband is such a fundamentally good person, this particular wrongdoing or sin was something that we could work through together."

The New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT - News), a leading media company with 2002 revenues of $3.1 billion, includes The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe, 16 other newspapers, eight network-affiliated television stations, two New York City radio stations and more than 40 Web sites, including NYTimes.com and Boston.com. For the third consecutive year, the Company was ranked No. 1 in the publishing industry in Fortune's 2002 list of America's Most Admired Companies. In 2003 the Company was named by Fortune as one of the 100 Best Companies to Work For. The Company's core purpose is to enhance society by creating, collecting and distributing high-quality news, information and entertainment.

For my semi-regular Friday morning gig. Should be on around 8:30.

I had a philosophy professor who told me that Heidegger's works were translated into French and then back into German all the time in the hope that a new insight or decipherable sentence might fall out and clank to the floor. I know there are lots of readers out there who quote Heidegger as if Being and Time was a Bazooka Joe comic. But I've got to tell you I thought it's like rolling an egg up the staicase of a skyscraper with your nose.

A true sign Jayson Blair has got mental problems: He gave his first television interview to WCBS in New York. He could have cried for Barbara Walters or Oprah. Instead, he gives his money interview to a local news station outside on the street. Weird.

There will be a G-File today. There's also my new syndicated column which actually includes some reporting a rarity -- unless you think breaking developments with my dog counts as reporting. But I will also be out of pocket for most of the day because I have to head out to the Hillsdale Academy to give the commencement address.

I couldn't resist: Jayson Blair's comment from English to French to German and back to English:

To hear I be true that into this operation sequence are pleased more persons, which I had released. I wish me the roll heads with mine continue.

Wow, I think this is babelfish translating and re-translating idea is the most fun I've had in long time! Thanks alot guys! I'm supposed to be writing essays for scholarship applications, but I'm sure I'll be on the Net all night translating my favorite Simpsons quotes.

K-Lo, John Derbyshire's translation of Ramesh P.'s sentence from English to Chinese and back to English seemed like such fun, I translated Jayson Blair's comment which you reported from English to Spanish, Spanish back to English, that to Chinese and back again and came up with: "I grieve hear, the more people whereabouts in has destraillado this event order. Longs for balanced head stops with me."

I like that MUCH better!

Blair responded to the resignations in a two-sentence e-mail to CNN: "I am sorry to hear that more people have fallen in this sequence of events that I had unleashed. I wish the rolling heads had stopped with mine."

I'm in 100% agreement with John. The only thing I'd add -- for now -- is that I think pro-GM food people are nuts for not emphasizing the fact that GM foods are more likely to save rain forests and the critters who live in them. Much of the world's rainforests are being cleared for shabby range and farm land. If we could grow all the world's food -- never mind wood -- out of a thimble, that would mean the economic incentives for the poor and the rich to clear rainforests would all but disappear. It's similar to why viagra helps save the rhino (no puns intended, required or solicited). The more Asian cultures don't need superstitious remedies -- e.g. ground rhino horn -- to do the voodoo they need done because they have that little blue pill, the better.

As I anticipated, Rich has declared that he who is without sin (or blegs) should cast the first stone. First, as I noted in my recent piece in National Review, hypocrisy in and of itself is not a sufficient argument. If I murder people that doesn't mean I am wrong when I say Rich shouldn't murder people. The same goes for blegging (the solicitation of help from readers in a blog). Indeed, I made that argument in the context of Bill Bennett's recent troubles. Which brings me to the second point. The issue is not whether blegging (like gambling) in and of itself is a sin. It isn't. No, the issue is whether or not Rich blegged too much. Is it causing him trouble in his daily life? Is he leaving the dinner table in order to ask readers how much he should tip? If he were Neo in the Matrix, would he bleg: "HELP - SHOULD I TAKE THE RED PILL OR THE BLUE PILL?"

Prof. Adler says that “Congress always has an affirmative obligation to identify the source of its authority whenever it enacts legislation.” Whence does that obligation derive? Is there a constitutional provision that says that Congress has to do this? Is there a provision that says that the Supreme Court should strike down any law that does not fulfill this supposed obligation? If Adler is not suggesting that the Court must strike down a law on this basis, then it appears that his argument does indeed depend on my argument’s being wrong. My argument, I should make it clear, was not that the Court should uphold a ban on partial-birth abortion because it “might” be constitutional but that it should uphold it because it is constitutional.

Adler claims that even within the terms of my equal-protection argument, a law against partial-birth abortion fails because it does not provide full equal protection to the unborn. I do believe that Congress would be within its constitutional rights to ban any method of killing embryonic and fetal human beings. But to have the power to ban a set of actions seems to me, at least in this case, to imply the power to ban any subset of them. All states would ban the puncturing of Adler’s skull and the sucking out of his “intra-cranial contents,” and the same protection should be given to the unborn, whether or not Congress is yet prepared to provide equal protection in other respects.

I'm off to CNN to discuss NYT and other stuff. Should either be at noon or 12:30.

Boyd and Raines are stepping (falling) down!

He says he is calm at work because he is doing God's work. "But there are many people who faint when they witness an execution. I don't know why they come and watch if they don't have the stomach for it.

"Me? I sleep very well," he adds.

Does he think people are afraid of him? "In this country we have a society that understands God's law," he says. "No one is afraid of me. I have a lot of relatives, and many friends at the mosque, and I live a normal life like everyone else. There are no drawbacks for my social life."

I guess I agree with Ramesh on the Con Law stuff. Though if Adler was able to persuade the federal government to be federalist on everything else, not just partial birth abortion, I could certainly live with that compromise. After all, I agree with Adler that a federal murder law is a bad idea so I'm sympathetic to the idea that a federal abortion law is a bad idea too. However, what I really want to say is that I applaud the testiness of this debate. We need more of it here. Twist the knives, heap the scorn, pour on the sarcasm, hit 'em in the torts. Faster federalists! Kill! Kill!

Bizarrely, quite a few readers seem to think that because I disagree with Rod I must be in favor of cruelty to livestock. I'm not and have said so in the past.

From a reader:

Sorry, Jonah, but I think you are way off base with your argument. Rather than addressing Rod’s true point, you are basically setting up a straw man by interpreting his word choice (“as God made it”) in the most extreme way possible. Yes, yes, cows and other farm animals have been selectively bred for millennia, and farmers have for many years tried to carefully control what these animals are fed – but I think most people see a big difference between such subtle tampering and injecting (or feeding) an animal massive quantities of chemicals. When you carefully breed chickens to obtain ones which lay very large, healthy eggs, you are using “God’s system” to obtain the favorable results you are looking for. When you splice fish genes into your chicken so that it will glow in the dark and make fish oil, then you have entered a completely different territory. Giving hormones to cows may not be quite in this category, but it is nevertheless troubling to many of us. And I’m NOT a crunchy con, by the way.

A Jewish reader notes that I stole a theological base by saying theology is on my side when I say that we are all born in sin. Jews do not believe in the doctrine of original sin, he notes. And he's right. We don't. Click here for the rundown on this point. But Jews do believe that man is born fallible and, in effect, flawed. Jews also believe that good conduct requires understanding God's will and that only comes through instruction and education. That's all I meant. But since I was the one who raised theology, I should have been more precise in my terminology.

I don't want to pick on Rod, but this whole "as God made it" thing has been bugging me. Yesterday, Rod said that he preferred his meat "As God made it," i.e. without hormones or other human tampering. Also, I've been reading The New Atlantis, a very interesting -- though a bit dry -- new journal on technology issues. So this stuff is just in my head.

Anyway, I don't like naturalism of the sort Rod is invoking. I think it buys into some of the biggest propaganda of the left. I say propaganda because much of the naturalism (by which I mean the view that things "unadulterated by man" are always better) is based on a series of lies and deliberate misunderstandings. Take the cows Rod prefers "as God made them." Well, in reality, the cows God made are very hard to find and probably taste terrible compared to what we find at Mortons. Cows have been genetically engineered for thousands of years, through selective breeding programs. The "organic" beef we buy at Whole Foods simply does not occur in nature. Ditto for chicken, pork and all the other tasty animals.

And that goes for even non-tastey animals -- like humans. When people arrive simply "as God made them" they are a mess, physically, emotionally, psychologically, politically and -- trust me on this -- literally. Moreover, I believe theology is on my side on this. We are born in sin after all. It is only through the acts of man that God-made humans improve. How that improvement takes place depends on your individual faith. But the point remains that without teaching, understanding, training and insight or revelation, we remain a mess. Sure God is the conductor directing this whole symphony, but without the very human musicians no one would ever get the tune right. Give a baby a violin without human instruction and you've got an expensive chew toy.

I do believe there is something hardwired into our genetic codes which makes such appeals to nature "as God made it" sound more authoritative than they really are -- and that alone should teach us something about the kind of world we want to live in. But if the choice is to live in any God-made world -- save Eden -- unimproved by man and technology or to live in a society with man's handiwork all around, I'll choose the latter every time.

For more on this you can see my whacky column about my hernia operation. You didn't this post was ending there did you?

There is perhaps no columnist or pundit whose views I have less respect for than Arianna Huffington. I can muster some respect even for the Scheers, Ivins and Conasons of the world whereas for Huffington I have nothing. Anyway, she's been emailing me her column for a while now and each time I've responded with a request -- very polite at first -- to be removed from her mailing list. I've never heard back and the drek kept coming. So today, I finally did the right thing and simply blocked her email from ever coming to my account. It felt good.

I'm a long-time reader of the Corner and NRO (I must admit I've let my NRODT sub. lapse...). I just saw your post on the Corner entitled "MAYBE WE SAW DIFFERENT MOVIES" (8:15pm, Jun 4th), in which you wrote "I always thought the villain in The Exorcist was satan."

Although AFI definitely dropped the ball either reporting the results of their survey or conducting it to begin with, didn't you yourself report Peter Blatty's claim that the villain in the Exorcist isn't "Satan" either, but rather, a "Demon" of sorts[here]?

So call me picky... :) In any event, thanks for keeping it real at NRO...

JonahEmail@aol.com is a dead address. I check it only rarely. My active email addresses are JonahNRO@aol.com and JonahsColumn@aol.com (For reax to my syndicated column) and JonahPorn@aol.com (for feedback on my film work).

I nominate Ramesh to identify everything wrong with Hendrik Hertzberg's staggeringly cheap column . Normally Hertzberg's a lot smarter than this. Here's a money paragraph from his deviation from smart liberalism:

In a way, Iraq has become a theme park of conservative policy nostrums. There are no burdensome government regulations. Health and safety inspectors and environmental busybodies are nowhere to be seen. The Ministry of Finance, Iraq’s equivalent of the Internal Revenue Service, is a scorched ruin. Museums and other cultural institutions, having been largely emptied of their contents, no longer have much use for public subsidies. Gun control is being kept within reasonable limits. (Although the occupying authorities are trying to discourage possession of heavy munitions, AK-47s and other assault weapons—guns of the type whose manufacture Tom DeLay and most of the House Republicans plan to re-legalize back home—have been given a pass.) And, in the absence of welfare programs and other free-lunch giveaways, faith-based initiatives are flourishing. The faith in question may be Iranian-style militant Shiism, but at least it’s fundamentalist.

Makes it possible to cram so much asininity into so little space. Not only is this Doonesbury cartoon shockingly offensive to both Palestinians and Israelis but it even has an ad banner which puts a cherry on top.

Tom Friedman writes:
"The 'real reason' for this war, which was never stated, was that after 9/11 America needed to hit someone in the Arab-Muslim world."

For the record, I made this point in my (epic) Baghdad Delenda Est columns. I wrote: "The United States needs to go to war with Iraq because it needs to go to war with someone in the region and Iraq makes the most sense."

This wasn't my only reason, but at the time I got considerable grief for espousing the "Ledeen Doctrine" as I called it.

Posted at Instapundit.

Had to run some errands over lunch and went home briefly. Turned on Linda Vester's program (i'm sure derb tapes the show), and saw Ramesh...talking with the audience about the junior U.S. Senator from NY's book. I missed the introductions but twice when I saw the caption below Ramesh's name had "New Republic." It's a vast conspiracy.

The "diversity candidate" listing has been changed. Instead of "diversity candidate" they now want an "experienced candidate."

A fair tweak from a reader:

What is your problem with Protestants?

"The average IQ at elite U.S. schools soared as the duller children of privilege were forced to compete with middle-class Jews, Catholics, and blacks in ways they never had before."

You forgot to mention middle-class Protestants. You know. The majority in this country. Was this because middle-class Protestants were too dumb to raise the level of competition? Or is it because we knew some secret handshake and could get into Harvard before the advent of the SAT?

For the record, can we at least agree that not everything God made tastes better without a dash of this and that from the hand of man? I'm agnostic on the issue of hormones, but my guess is that the kind of feed and the kind of cow have a lot more to do with how the cow tastes then whether it had hormones (never mind how it was prepared, how it was stored and the rest). God made grains and hops and all that. Man put it together to make beer and brown liquor. For my cocktail hour I would much prefer a Jamesons or a cold beer than a cup of barley. But that's just me.

In response to my criticism of David Broder's column on diversity in yesterday's G-File, a reader ads:

Jonah,

I enjoyed your column on diversity. I write in response to your quoting of David Broder's outrageous column. Broder's point, though stated quite forcefully, has one problem--not even the lawyers for the University of Michigan believe it.

In their brief to the Supreme Court they write "[a]t this point, however, every race-blind alternative alternative (to affirmative action) requires a dramatic sacrifice of diversity, the academic quality of all admitted students, or both." Source: Page 34 of Michigan's brief to the Supreme Court. Futhermore, Michigan's lawyers write, "There are so many more white and Asian American applicants (than minority applicants) throughout the upper and middle score ranges that no incremental lowering of standards will create a pool with meaningful racial diversity." Source: Page 36 of Michigan's brief to the Supreme Court.

Thus, Broder is dead wrong. Not only is Michigan unable to achieve a diverse student body by "looking within the large pool of qualified applicants", according to what their lawyers told the Supreme Court, no incremental lowering of standards will enable Michigan to achieve meaningful diversity. So much for affirmative action as a small plus factor....

From a reader:

I can be your employment guy.

The "diversity" candidate stuff happens all the time. The wording in the Monster post is a bit cumbersome, as most would state something to the effect that "women and minorities are encouraged to apply".

If the company in question has any business with the Feds, they can discriminate in favor of minorities until the cows come home. The government requires contractors (of any sort) to develop and implement an Affirmative Action plan, which will often mandate a certain percentage of minority representation at each level. The Monster post is for a Controller, so my guess is that the rest of the staff at that level (upper management) are lily white members of Team Dude.

What I always wonder about is whether the "diversity" applicant gets all giddy because they have that singular requirement. "Woo hoo, I could get this job because I'm Black (or Asian, etc.)"! And when they get it, do they then wonder if that is indeed the reason? Can't say I'd feel too comfortable in that job....

Daily Standard has a piece by Hugh Hewitt touting the influence of the Big Four blogs. He names Andrew Sullivan, Instapundit, The Volokh Conspiracy and Mickey Kaus. He's right about their influence. And, surprising as it may seem, I'm not even going to complain about his deafening -- and fairly lame -- silence about NRO and the Corner -- the traffic of both/either being equal to or greater than those excellent sites (woops I guess I just did). But, as a recovering blog skeptic (Yes, that's right I'm changing my views on the whole thing), I should still note that pretty much all previous predictions of the web's role at political conventions and planned (as opposed to sudden and unexpected) major news events have turned out wrong.

I'm writing a column about how to stage an intervention for a certain magazine editor with a dangerous addiction to online blegging. At first, it seemed under control. He'd ask readers for help with obscure economic phenomena or industry practices from hard to find experts in the field. Then he started asking for more general stuff. And now, just the other day, he had to be stopped from blegging:

HELP -- DOES THE MILK IN MY FRIDGE SMELL BAD TO YOU? [NAME WITHHELD]

If you have any idea how to help this brilliant and talented man before he lets the blegging completely take over his life please let me know. Also, if you have tips about how to keep him from lashing out at those -- like me -- who care the most about him I'm interested in that too.

Thank you for telling us this story, as I had not heard it before, As the director of a pregnancy resource center, I often wonder if anything I say matters! Do lives change? Are we making a difference? Some days it can be heartbreaking to see people whose lives are so messed up and who are making choices that will only increase the heartache and sorrow. And yet we never know, do we? So we keep on saying the truth (hopefully in love) and praying for the strength to persevere, reminding ourselves that it's not about us!

I love reading NRO. It gives me hope!!

Fresh from his endorsement of liberal Republican Arlen Specter, David Keene, head of the American Conservative Union, has written a column on what he calls “[t]he current warfare being waged on the right among conservatives of different stripes.” The column is remarkably obtuse. (It’s also sloppy: It was Russell Kirk whose retort to the John Birch Society was that President Eisenhower was a golfer, not a communist; Keene attributes the line to William F. Buckley Jr.) He says that “the current fight [is] between folks who like to characterize themselves as ‘neo-conservatives’ and the rest of the conservative community.” But very few people characterize themselves as neoconservatives, and I am not aware of anyone who so characterizes himself—or even anyone who is widely characterized as such by others—who is engaged in a fight with non-neos on the Right. At no point does Keene specify what the heck he is talking about.

He concludes, “[T]here are some in the conservative ranks who seem to believe that if one doesn’t share their view of the relative importance of various issues, one ought to be sent packing. A political movement that cannot tolerate differences among people who agree on main principles is a movement in trouble.” Who are these sectarians? Has someone said that no good conservative could oppose the Iraq war? That all conservatives have to support Pat Toomey? I haven't said either of these things. I do think that the leaders of conservative organizations should not have lobbying interests that conflict with conservatism. I also think that it is odd for The Hill to run a regular column by a lobbyist, especially when the columnist in question turns out material as poor as this.

A reader sent me this listing from Monster.com. Am I crazy, or does "Diversity Candidate" sound like code for white men need not apply? If so, how common is this?

I don't agree with everything in here, obviously, but the Corner does not fear diversity of opinion:

First, I liked and agreed with much of your commentary. However- on your comment about Morehouse and blacks benefiting from sharing a room or otherwise getting to know a few Asians and white kids, I think the black experience is different from whites. I can not count the number of white people I know for whom I am there only black or their first black friend and that only because I worked hard to get into law school and then a major law firm- where they meet "one". White people, many anyway, can live their lives without ever knowing any black or non-white in any meaningful way or learning anything about there experiences, culture or life. No black person can say the same about white people- in every part of our lives we are surround by and despite living in as segregated communities as whites- inundated with white culture- and yeah yeah I know blacks today are all over the pop culture scene and sports and else where, but that's not the direct exposure blacks get day in and day out. Considering the enormous number of arrogant and ignorant statements I heard very insulated whites state about blacks and other minorities life in law school, I think whites do benefit from being exposed directly to non-whites. I and my black friends did/do agree that the blacks those whites are likely to encounter thanks to affirmative action or diversity, are more likely to be diverse in skin only or mainly, in that the blacks are likely to be the kid of a black doctor or lawyer like the white person, and not a poor black kid- so opinion or background diversity isn't going to be as strong, given that class matters more than race- as Jeff Goldblum said to Lawrence Fishburne in Deep Cover: "there is no black and white anymore only rich and poor and since we're both rich- we're on the same side". Affirmative action is likely to benefit the middle class black kids who shouldn't need it in the first place, as their parent make the money and they attend the same good high schools as the middle class white kids. On your propanda about the meritocracy of the 50s and 60s ushered in by the SATs, prior to the enactment of anti-discrimination laws, the SAT and the old boy network determined which white guy got to go to college and got the great job, but it was still going to be a white guy. Was to be the "bright" white boy or the "rich and connected" white boy. The SAT gave the very bright but not rich white boy a shot- it added some merit to wealth and connections. Diversity and affirmative action, added women and minorities and now means the pool includes lots of bright white girls and rich white girls and a few bright and middle class/rich non-white boys and girls. The poor (of any color) still get nada. As the SATs helped a few bright white guys compete with middle class and rich white guys, diversity helps a few bright non-white people compete with the middle class and rich of all races. The poor (and stupid and average) are screwed. There never was a meritocracy in the USA or any where, but fine, I agree kill affirmative action and diversity, keep the SATs, then what? The rich of any color can buy their success in school and life, the exceptionally bright will do ok, what about the mass of average and sub-average. With all this fighting over a few lost slots of the white guys, what are we going to do to fix the massive problem of the educationally challenged poor of any color?

The EU's single currency is perfectly nice to look at - in a bland, designed by a committee sort of way - but (despite the Euro's current strength) it's difficult to see these bills as anything other than brightly colored suicide notes. As becomes ever more apparent, one size does not fit all. Writing in the Spectator, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard discusses US diplomacy (not impressed), Neil Kinnock (not impressed), Chris Patten (not impressed) and the Euro (really not impressed):

"...One would have thought that the latest travails of the eurozone would vindicate a little caution on EMU [economic and monetary union]. The economists who actually deal with the euro inside the European institutions — as opposed to the politicians of the ‘College’ — are often as brutally Eurosceptic as the British public. ‘Do they think it is going to get any easier?’ laughed one senior Eurocrat, when I suggested that the government was hoping to have another go at the euro next year.

He, for one, fears that Germany is on the cusp of a deflationary spiral. It needs interest rates of zero and an emergency fiscal stimulus. What does it get? More or less the same mix of policies that shut down the American banking system in the Great Depression. And why? Because inflation in Ireland, Portugal, Greece and Spain is still too high, and because the Stability Pact forces Germany to raise taxes in a slump. Keynes must be weeping in his grave.

Like the US Federal Reserve in those crucial months of 1930, the European Central Bank — over-hawkish because unsure of itself — is still fretting about inflation as the economy risks tipping into a deflationary debt crisis. Knowing what we now know about the 1930s, it seems remarkable that any democratic country would again embark on such a destructive course. But the eurozone is not a country, or a democracy."

The Brown Shirts are back – this time in Pakistan’s North West Province. The Daily Telegraph has more details:

“Last Friday, the North West Frontier Province Assembly passed the Sharia (or Islamic law) bill, which would dramatically change the province's educational, judicial and financial systems and bring them in line with fundamentalist Islamic laws. The same day, MMA supporters went on a celebratory rampage in Peshawar, the province's capital, tearing down advertising hoardings showing women, destroying satellite cable television connections and attacking offices of foreign multinationals. The police stood quietly by, refusing to control the mobs.”

Disgusting.

For a long time now, it has been a staple of US foreign policy that closer European integration is a good thing, and, for a long time now, that has been a mistake. Has the penny finally dropped? In interesting – and largely overlooked (well, by me anyway) - remarks in London last month State Department Policy Planning Director Richard Haas may have signaled a change of direction.

Asked whether America wanted to deal with a single ‘European’ foreign minister, Haas said this:

"I would rather deal with five countries that are willing to deal with us seriously".

The Sprout (a magazine based in Brussels that is unlikely to be on the EU Commission’s approved list) has more here. As for the half-century old history cited in the article, I’ve no idea, but in terms of a signpost to the future The Sprout has picked up on what could be – and should be – a significant, and long overdue, shift in direction. All the talk in Paris, Berlin and elsewhere about the EU becoming a ‘counterweight’ to the US may, at last, have been heard in Washington.

The writer of the piece also suggests that America may have “converted to an Imperialist model: divide and rule”. “Imperialist”? Not necessarily - it’s just basic diplomacy. As for ‘divide and rule’, well, to divide something implies that it was united in the first place.

And in Europe, fortunately, that it is still not the case.

From a reader:

J-Go,

Despite the fact that the previous Commander in Chief launched a missile attack at Iraq's chemical and biological weapons facilities, the opponents of the current administration question whether chem/bio weapons ever existed. Where were these people in 1998?

An even better question (in my mind, anyway) is: What part of the Ba'ath dictatorship was worth saving?

Tim Graham of the Media Research Center writes:

Jonah...You may be right about his low profile. The thing that's interesting about Ashcroft and Rudolph is how the AG is doing EXACTLY what the pro-aborts and the Ralph Neases claimed he was incapable of doing, and that is enforce the laws even when it delights the libertine left. In the Ashcroft era, the DOJ has caught James Kopp, Clayton Waagner, and now Eric Rudolph -- all at the top of a Ten Most Wanted list of the Planned Parenthood crowd. A less liberal media would be forcing more kudos out of them -- although PPFA's web site posted congrats today.

That seems like the message in this political cartoon from the Chicago Tribune. Meanwhile, Arafat's a patient man. Here's what the Sun Times had to say about it.

Were I to be polled on Mr. Bush's record on the environment, I also would rate his performance as fair to poor. My reason for that is not because he has assaulted the environment, but because he appointed Ms. Whitman, and because there have been so many new regulations made. The polls rarely reveal what people are really believing, because the choices are so limited in the poll.

From a reader:

Jonah

I think your claim that WMD was just one of several rationales for the Iraq invasion is true, but somewhat disingenuous. Saddam's posession of WMD, and his purported intention to use them or give them to terrorists, was the number 1 rationale for invasion, was used to argue that "time is of the essence" and that it would not do to give inspections more time. I certainly rejoice that the Iraqi people now have a chance to create a democratic state, but that doesn't change the fact that the Bush administration seems to have intentionally and strenuously misled the American people. I'm not a fan of Bush, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt in this and supported the invasion on the assumption that he would not be so low as to play up the danger as imminent just to get what he wanted. I won't make that mistake again. Frankly, the attempts by his supporters to back away from the WMD claims are a little pathetic.

My response: Well, it may be a "fact that the Bush administration seems to have intentionally and strenuously misled the American people." But that is like saying it is a "fact" that a mirage looks like a Dairy Queen. That it "seems" like Bush lied to the American people may or may not be a fact. But it is far from demonstrated that Bush, in fact, lied to the American people. To believe that Bush lied, you have to not only believe that the intelligence communities of the United States and Great Britain were wrong, but the intelligence communities of Germany, France, Israel and Russia were wrong too. That's doable. But, on top of that, you must also believe that Bush knew these intelligence communities were wrong and lied about it. And, you must also believe that Saddam Hussein secretly destroyed his WMD but refused to admit it despite the credible threat of war and the continuation of sanctions.

Meanwhile, I'm not backing off the WMD thing, in part because I never made that the sole focus of my support for the war in the first place (you could look it up). Also, I believe that we'll find WMD.

The Defense Department released the full transcript of Sam Tannenhaus' interview with Paul Wolfowitz. Here's the section where Tannenhaus asks about the alleged Leo Strauss connection which the New York Times takes so seriously:

Q: Believe it or not, because this is a feature magazine, I'd like to ask you a little bit about your background. None of this is going to be personal. I know that you protect the privacy of your family so this has really nothing to do with that.

First of all, the question of ideas. That is, is there anything at all, we talked about this a little off the record, is there anything at all to the Straussian Connection?

Wolfowitz: It's a product of fevered minds who seem incapable of understanding that September 11th changed a lot of things and changed the way we need to approach the world. Since they refused to confront that, they looked for some kind of conspiracy theory to explain it.

I mean I took two terrific courses from Leo Strauss as a graduate student. One was on Montesquieu's spirit of the laws, which did help me understand our Constitution better. And one was on Plato's laws. The idea that this has anything to do with U.S. foreign policy is just laughable.

Q: There is something kind of humorous in it because a few weeks ago all we heard was he's been the kind of cowboy, rampaging around the globe looking for evildoers. And now he seems to be in the vehicle of erudite philosophy.

This is very helpful.

Wolfowitz: It sort of calls to mind the joke about the President and the Pope are on a boat, and the Pope's hat blows off. The President says, no, I'll get it for you and walks across the top of the waves, picks up the hat and walks back across the top of the waves, hands the hat to the Pope and the next day the headlines are, "President Bush can't swim." [Laughter]

Q: Let me ask about one other [inaudible], and that's Albert Wohlstetter. A couple of people, believe me, who are not [inaudible] at all, say that Wohlstetter was a far-sighted military strategist whose notions have been about low yield nuclear weapons that we're hearing about today, and different ways of fighting wars. It doesn't have to be an all or nothing, zero sum, no mutually assured destruction. Are there any notions like that on where the military is today or how you look at --

Wolfowitz: Wohlstetter is a much more relevant figure and it's interesting too, by the way, that the same fellow who, or one of the same fellows who discovered the Straussian Conspiracy kind of throws Wohlstetter in as a Straussian when Wohlstetter was actually philosophically a student of Quine.

Q: The analytical --

Wolfowitz: Exactly. If there was anything anathema to Leo Strauss it was analytical philosophy.

Q: I bet.

Wolfowitz: And Wohlstetter was somebody who really just almost painfully resisted being labeled even as to political party. He was so insistent on ascertaining the facts. He had a very fact-based approach to policy. It's very impressive. And indeed, I was his student and often identified as such, and it occasionally troubled me just a little bit that I thought, well, maybe he was also associated with these sort of cold-blooded systems analysts who kind of seemed to leave the moral piece of politics and strategy as though it wasn't part of the equation.

It was terrifically gratifying to me as I got to know him better, to realize that there were intensely moral considerations in the way he approached these issues. Most dramatically in his deep concern about the fate of Bosnia in his late years.

But to come back to sort of more concretely, I mean here's something that I think is quite important, quite relevant. Albert Wohlstetter was one of the first people, most influential people, to understand what a dramatic difference it would make to have accurate weapons. And that in particular what he was really interested in was the ability, two things. Number one, to be able to use conventional weapons in ways that people, that only nuclear weapons could be used, to be able to get out of the nuclear mindset kind of things.

But secondly and importantly, to be able to avoid unnecessary loss of innocent life in war. And in fact there's a fairly seminal document that was done under Fred Ikle when he was Under Secretary of Defense for Policy called Discriminate Deterrence which may be interesting to know if you can find it on the internet. As I recall, even at the time, the State Department didn't like it because for some reason or other it offended some of our allies.

Just Sunday on Meet the Press, Tim Russert asked Dick Cheney, "What do you think is the most important rationale for going to war with Iraq?" It's a perfectly fine question in and of itself, but it underscores the media's preoccupation with bumper-sticker arguments and the administration's desire to provide them. Time and again interviewers ask "what is the best argument for war?"

Well, why should there be only one argument? There's not a single major decision we make in our own lives that we base on a single variable. If you're trying to decide on a college, you weigh geography, cost, academics, social life, proximity to reliable keg distributor — all of the important stuff. If you're buying a car, you consider everything from the price-tag to the MPG to the color. But, because of the sound-bite nature of public debate and the media-culture's obsession with consistency in all things, we demand a single all-encompassing rationale. (Which is why the administration should have dropped the argument that there was a direct 9/11-Saddam link a long time ago).

The reality is that this war is justified because of a long checklist of justifications. Iraq has defied 17 U.N. resolutions. Saddam would rather starve his people under containment than abide by them. September 11 shattered confidence in deterrence. America's prestige and credibility require following through on our threats. Saddam tried to assassinate the first President Bush. We condemned tens of thousands of Iraqis to death on the false promise that we were going to liberate them the first time. And so on. You may think some of these arguments are irrelevant or even outrageous. Others you may think are essential and persuasive.

The capture of Eric Rudolph is great news. But it reveals that things are changing at Justice and the with the administration. I have no inside-info (my wife's been on maternity leave from DOJ). But it seems to me that there was a time when the capture of Eric Rudolph would have brought Ashcroft to the cameras. He issued a statement but was nowhere to be seen all weekend. In fact, when was the last time you saw him say or do anything in public? Sounds like a campaign-mode muzzle on the AG.

All of this hooplah about some low-income families getting left out of the new child-tax credit baffles me. The Dems were against cutting taxes in the first place, so presumably they didn't want these people to get the credit. So, in effect, the Dems are getting their way for the people who get noting, and yet they think it's outrageous the tax cut isn't big enough to include them. Of course, you can't cut income taxes for people who don't pay income taxes. Still, if only the Dems hadn't fought a larger tax cut in the first place, these lower-income folks might have gotten more help.

One of the intentions of the EU’s constitutional convention was, allegedly, to stimulate interest in the EU’s evolution among its ‘citizens’. Here’s how it’s going in Spain:

“A recent survey by Real Instituto Elcano, a Madrid-based foreign affairs think-tank, found only 1 per cent of Spaniards knew the goal of the convention was to write a constitution. A full 90 per cent of the respondents in the survey had never even heard of the convention.”

From the Financial Times, May 31.