The snack wars aren’t going away any time soon. Here are details of research purporting to show that “foods which are high in fat and sugar can cause significant changes in brain biochemistry similar to those from drugs such as heroin and cocaine. Once hooked, the researchers say, many people find it almost impossible to switch back to a healthy diet, often leading to obesity.”

Notice the use of conveniently vague words and phrases such as “significant” and “similar to,” but even if we do accept the researchers’ premise that junk food is somehow ‘addictive’ (and I don’t) all that this signifies is that our notions of ‘addiction’ are so vague as to be meaningless. You can prove this by playing a simple word game. Instead of saying that burgers are, say, as addictive as heroin, turn the phrase round to say that heroin is no more addictive than fatty food. Nonsense? Yes.

Peter, don’t be too sure that, for the Germans, the EU is a way of losing their national identity. It’s far better to see it as a (politically correct) way for them to impose their way on the rest of the continent. It beats Stukas and tanks, I suppose, so there has been some progress. The French are pleased to go along with this because they believe that they can manipulate German strength to pursue their own economic and geopolitical agenda.

Here’s something you might find interesting:

”The only possible aim of economic co-operation must be the establishment of the European Economic Community. The decisive conclusion in terms of economic policy is that Europe is not to be what one would call a major area or market…in which the old structural rules of the Anglo-Saxon world economy apply; rather, the European Economic Community must be shaped in accordance with new political criteria and will consequently appear different from the economic structures of the past.”

Those words come from a compendium of papers by the president of the central bank and others (Europaische Wirtschaftgemeinschaft, Heinrich Hunke (ed)) published in Berlin in, ahem, 1942.

Yes, Peter, that is my father. Here's a shameless plug. Your other question (why the British establishment wants to entomb the UK in an ever more federal EU) is harder to answer. Basically – and very briefly - it’s a poisonous blend of motives. The aim behind the EU has long been the establishment of a corporatist economic system across a continent (the relative economic failures of France and Germany have shown that, in an age of increasingly free markets, such a system can’t survive in one country alone). Including the UK in this project will remove an economic (and intellectual) competitor and will be a good revenge on the hated Thatcher. This managed capitalism (and the revenge on the hated Thatcher) has considerable appeal to the British Left (lest there be any doubt - this includes Tony Blair). Remember that the very structure of the EU offers another advantage – it is not subject to any meaningful democratic review. It is thus, for all realistic purposes, irreversible and so is the economic system it will impose. Elections can be so awkward. It’s worth pointing out that such a regime also implies the existence of a large – and well-paid – apparatchik class, and there are many in Britain who rather like the sound of that.

Of course, all this will mean the destruction of Britain that we all once knew – but for the new ‘progressive’ class that will be no loss at all.

And why did the British people vote for this? That’s easy: they were lied to.

As you might have read in papers, seen on TV and heard on radio, the worst medical situation Africa is going through now is that of the spread of HIV/AIDS followed by malaria and other epidemics such as cholera.

Our dispensary loses almost one person monthly due to AIDS and we have very many admitted due to malaria, most hit are the children.

Last month we lost a victim to AIDS, here is his situation: He was first admitted at the general hospital. When the doctors there knew there was no hope for him, they discharged him. His family could not care for him and they brought him to our dispensary. We took care of him until he died. I was happy to have prayed over him and 30 minutes latter he died. May God rest him in His love.

Now we have another patient but he is not yet badly off. Coughing simply keeps wearing him down. He is a father to five children and cares for two grand children including their mothers. He is a mason and gets very small amount of money. What is worse now is that those who must pay him for services he rendered do not want to pay him. He now cannot buy medicine to keep himself alive. Such medicines here cost a fortune: one month’s dose costs $50 (Tanzania shilling 54,000), in a place where average wage is $30 (30,000) per month and bus fare to go to work costs $20 (20,000) per month!

For our dispensary to be able to take care of its patients we need plenty of antibiotics. USA has a plan to assist Africa with medicines and other medical support in this field of AIDS and malaria. We do need plenty of antibiotics. We, as a small dispensary can hardly have access to this USA Plan from here. Is there something we can do together so that we can get these antibiotics!


If you can help in any of these matters, please contact Father Steven via email at: smosha@EaglePark.org

Fr. S. Mosha

Let’s leave sex and sexual relationships out of the picture. Let’s say that the amendment has passed and the Connecticut legislature has enacted a law granting some of the legal incidents of marriage to any couple. Under this law, a friend and you (or two friends and you) can co-sign each other’s loans, or whatever, if you choose this arrangement. (A thoughtful post by Justin Katz suggested this example to me—unfortunately, I can’t find the link right now.) Would the amendment bar this law? Or prevent a court from giving it effect? I don’t see how. The amendment’s wording suggests that states can, by statute, confer some of the legal incidents of marriage on unmarried couples (or groups); and that courts may construe statutes to confer those benefits.

Let’s take another example. The Michigan legislature decides to permit only married couples to co-sign each other’s loans. The state may have other sorts of domestic partnerships, but this isn’t part of the package. Under the amendment, the court may not construe the law reserving this benefit to married people (i.e., implicitly defining it as one of the legal incidents of marriage) as though it applied to unmarried people. That is to say: Whatever the state has decided, legislatively, to reserve to marriage, the courts may not extend beyond marriage. That leaves state legislatures with a lot of running room.

If one takes seriously the legal threat that the amendment’s supporters do—that without the amendment, the courts will impose same-sex marriage—the amendment leaves states with more running room than they’ll otherwise have.

Here again is the language of the amendment: “Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.” On Andrew and Eugene’s reading, the word “require” is excess verbiage. They read the second sentence as though it were equivalent to the following: “Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to confer marital status or the legal incidents thereof upon unmarried couples or groups.”

Indeed, their reading makes even the “construed” bit pointless. Why not just say “Neither the state nor the federal government may confer marital status or the legal incidents thereof upon unmarried couples or groups”? The answer: because that’s not what the amendment is intended to do (although, of course, many supporters of the amendment may well wish that political circumstances were such that they could enact a more far-reaching amendment).

On Thursday, I claimed that Andrew Sullivan had misunderstood the Federal Marriage Amendment. Eugene Volokh and he say that I’m the one who doesn’t get it.

All of us agree that the amendment would ban a state from adopting same-sex marriage—democratically or by judicial fiat.

I said that the amendment would not bar a state legislature from enacting civil unions, but only block any future replays of Vermont, in which a court essentially ordered a legislature to enact them. (Eugene and Andrew don’t bring this point up specifically, but I should have qualified that statement: It depends on the contours of the “civil unions” in question. The amendment would block democratically-adopted civil unions if those civil unions were marriages in all but name.)

Andrew and Eugene argue that the FMA would prohibit legislatures from creating any type of civil unions, recognizing domestic partnerships, or even making employers provide same-sex partners with the same benefits that go to married couples. I disagree.

Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., this week slammed American Civil Rights Coalition head Ward Connerly and demanded the anti-affirmative action conservative quit his efforts to overturn a University of Michigan diversity policy. In a Wednesday letter, Dingell warns Connerly to "go home and stay there," arguing Michigan has "no need for itinerant publicity seekers, non-resident troublemakers or self-aggrandizing out-of-state agitators. You have created enough mischief in your own state [California] to last a lifetime." The blistering attack comes on the heels of a Supreme Court ruling upholding the University of Michigan rule, which allows the law school to make student body diversity a consideration in its admissions policies. Connerly was vaulted to national prominence among conservatives when he opposed the University of California's affirmative action policies in the late 1990s, breaking ranks with other black business and political leaders in the state.

Considering the despondency of this article's tone, may I make a suggestion? I agree with your cultural weather report, 100% chance of rain here and sunny skies in Sodom, however, that does not mean that some rear guard actions--no pun was intended until now--should be left undone. For instance, call them gay unions not gay marriages. At least allow for some culturally recognized distinction between sterile coitus and a life-producing family even if both are legally sanctioned side by side. Besides that, marriage comes from the Latin "marita" which means a woman provided with a husband. A verbal distinction can be a powerful one to sow seeds for later campaigns in the culture war. Also, by privatizing marriage you divorce marriage from the interests of the state, and Jefferson was very emphatic, as with all our founders, that a state that does not support the family and see its protection as a tantamount goal is not a state worth protecting. If you privatize, or if politicians and just citizens roll over and take a coward's comfort in knowing that their religious institutions will soon be forced to disengage from the public sphere, you agree to let the state consider the family as simply another competing interest on par with the NAMBLA and the Teamsters Union. Please keep fighting on this front. I would hate to see the conservative movement win every battle but the war.

Uh, yeah, [a Tenet resignation] would [be bad]. Intelligence is an art, not a science. A lot of it is educated guesses, based on the best, though incomplete information available. Firing Tenet over botching this SOTU line would add more caution, more ass-covering, more bureaucratic inertia and bring down the morale that he's spent his tenure rebuilding. Unless there's a dynamo replacement candidate to replace him, it's best to keep a guy who's got a very solid, trusted, personal relationship with W. and who has some successes to go with his failures (Khalid Sheik Mohammad, the company's role in taking down the Taliban, catching some of the top 55 Iraqi leaders, etc.).

One other thing--throughout much of the 90s, nobody in Washington was all that interested in al-Qaeda. Certainly not the Clinton White House, very few folks of either party on the Hill, China, the Balkans & trade were the big foreign policy issues. The Agency responds to the needs of policymakers, it can't force them to focus on an issue that they don't want to. Almost everybody in Washington dropped the ball on bin Laden; the agency was made a big scapegoat for 9/11.

Keep it in the family - and out of the hands of government. That was the Florida Supreme Court's decision Thursday as it ruled the state cannot mandate parental involvement when young women want abortions.

Since this is Ohio day on the corner I would like to point something out to Jerry Springer's campaign. If he thinks that drawing the unemployed couch potato vote will swing next year's senate election he should think again. In last year's governor's race we saw that not even the power of Star Trek was able to dent the GOP's control of the state (every major state office is held by a Republican along with both senate seats) . Tim Hagen, the Democratic candidate for Governor, was totally unable to capitalize on his wife being Star Trek Voyager's Captain Janeway. Now it seems to me that the average Trekkie has a little more ambition (conventions and all) than the average unemployed Springer fan. Hagan was even running against the insainly unelectable Bob Taft. Then again maybe Springer is more of a motivator than I give him credit. One question though, has anyone (besides Jonah) thought to question if Jerry is doing this solely for the publicity? He's facing an opponent who's very popular, twice elected to the Governor's office and easily won his first senate race. Not a very winable race. His motives HAVE to be drawn into question. He hasn't even lived in the state for a decade. I think George Voinovich is safe unless someone is able to convince Jim Tressel to run against him. If that were the case Voinovich would have as much chance of winning as San Diego State does this fall in Ohio Stadium. But that's another story for another day.

They could have used a number of other examples of people who don't/didn't give up:the holdouts at the Alamo;the troops at Valley Forge;the abolitionists;the 82nd Airborne at Bastogne;the survivors of the Bataan Death March;even Nelson Mandela. But noooo, if you believe it might be a good idea that the parents of a 14 year old girl be notified before she has an abortion,then you're akin to a suicide bomber.

[Y]ou should know that the Blade is an unequivocal supporter of the Palestinian cause. The reference to Hamas in that abortion editorial is simply an example of the way liberals throw around the label of the bad guys du jour without really understanding whether it's appropriate.

From a man at the scene.

This is not for the squeamish. It's PG, I suppose, but be afraid, very afraid.

Yet those opposed to abortion, like the Hamas organization in the Middle East, never give up. And, imbued with fanatic zeal, they probably won’t. This means that today’s young women, and tomorrow’s, can’t afford to take yesterday’s gains for granted.

Stewart: "It is incredible to think that [Liberia's Charles Taylor] could stay in power that long and actually even win elections while he's hacking people to bits."

Snow: "Well he's a typical politician where he promised not to hack people to bits. He got elected and then he started breaking his campaign promises."

Stewart: "That was Dukakis' big trouble in the election. Real quick, why do you think Bush has raised so much money when this is probably the weakest Democratic field in God knows how many years?"

Snow: "Well that's one of the reasons. Washington is the one place where you can't take friendship personally. People who have been backing Democrats for years are saying 'We've got to get our name on George W. Bush's contributor list.' So they are throwing money at the president. He's got the best fundraising machine in the business."

Jon Stewart: "Fox News right now is like double the other networks. You're crushing everybody. Are the Christmas bonus's going to be Yachts and some of the Krugerrands from Saddam's castle."

Snow: "We're all going to get homes the size of O'Reilly's ego. Palaces for everybody!"

Stewart: "You just made yourself a tough Christmas Party moment my friend. Why has it been so successful? Is it because you actually take a stand, have a point of view. I mean the other networks like MSNBC, lets face facts, they don't deserve all of those letters."

Snow: "There are a couple things. Number one is it's brash, the look is better. One difference with Fox is we like our jobs."

Andrew Sullivan and Eugene Volokh have both responded to my post yesterday about the meaning of the Federal Marriage Amendment (although not to my post about the Defense of Marriage Act). Their posts are not only very civil; they put me on a first-name basis. Is this some blogosphere thing? Anyway, I'll try to respond to Andrew and Eugene later today. First I've got to get up to speed on immigration and prescription drugs for some other things I'm doing.

Also, be sure to check out Eugene's post on an outrageous judicial decision in Nevada.

A new book debunks some Galileo mythology, though the New York Times doesn't buy it. I covered much of this ground here last January.

Byron York's piece is very good too.

Okay,I confess I'm a bit disappointed that I'm the only who is really amused by this whole Jerry Springer thing. But here's the Toledo Blade story on his campaign, in case some of you are interested.

My humble column.

I was too harsh. This is probably more annoying. This has to be close to the most annoying site ever. But
www.mostannoyingwebpage.com is definitively the most annoying web page. In fact, it is so annoying, I implore you not to click "yes" to enter it. Seriously, don't go there. I'm only showing you the link on the chance that you might want to annoy your friends. But if you're curious at least make sure you save all your documents before clicking yes because I had to force-quit to get out of the page. Lastly, if you do go there, DO NOT email me saying you're angry at me because I gave you full notice how annoying it is. And yet, I know some of you will go there because you cannot deny your curious natures.

UPDATEA reader says he thinks there's a virus at MostAnnoyingWepage.com. I guess that just makes it even more annoying. So be careful.
RE-UPDATEIt's not a virus! It's just really annoying -- as I suspected!

I report, you decide.

Interesting storyon how CNN brags that it has richer and more upscale viewers than Fox. What I find intertesting about it is how, if true, such a fact undermines one of the central assumptions of the media-critic left (which includes Al Gore). This crowd is always insinuating that Fox News is the tool of corporate and Republican interests. And yet, Fox is more popular among the "little guys" -- you know the people, not the powerful. If you keep in mind that Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, O'Reilly etc represent the victory of the Republican Party to be every much as populist (not always a good thing) as the Democrats you can decipher a great deal of the grumpiness and confusion of liberals who shriek about "right wing media."

The Primate of Nigeria

Caused utter hysteria

With arguments impassable

Against gays in chasuble.

Andrew Sullivan reprints the text of the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment: "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups." He then says, "Note how the states are effectively barred from providing anything that resembles marriage or any of the 'legal incidents thereof.' It's an attempt not only to reverse any state that wants to have same-sex marriage but to invalidate all domestic partnership laws, any state-provided benefits, or any support for same-sex couples anywhere anyhow. It's a massive power-grab from the states, in an area where states have always had constitutional authority."

There may be sound arguments against the FMA. But Sullivan's claim is ridiculous. What does he suppose the words "be construed to require" are doing in the amendment? The amendment is aimed to prevent a judge (or executive-branch official) from inferring same-sex marriage or same-sex marriage-lite from a state or federal law. It precludes a state's adoption of gay marriage (that's the first sentence). It precludes a judge's imposition of civil unions (that's part of the second sentence). It does not preclude a state legislature or popular referendum from creating civil unions or whatnot. That is, incidentally, one reason the amendment is controversial on the social Right.

To the extent that what proponents say about the amendment is evidence about its meaning, that also points toward my interpretation and not Sullivan's.

From the AP story on Springer's race and his campaign-launching informercial:

The infomercial focuses on a comment by National Review commentator Jonah Goldberg on a Sunday morning CNN talk show several months ago.

In his remark, Goldberg warned of new people brought to the polls by Springer including "slack-jawed yokels, hicks, weirdos, pervs and whatnots."

The infomercial offers that quote on a T-shirt and inserted into a signed photograph of Springer next to a sign for Hicksville, Ohio, in Defiance County in northwest Ohio. In the program, Springer refers to the quote and talks about wanting to reach out to "regular folks ... who weren't born with a silver spoon in your mouth."

I've been getting calls and emails from reporters in Ohio. Apparently Jerry Springer uses a quote from me in his new informercial which he released at a news conference today. The quote, which I offered on CNN, is: "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." Now, what is super-exciting is that he's apparently made T-Shirts with that quote on them as part of his campaign! I must get one.

Anyway, for the record, I completely stand by my comments.

While every single person supporting Jerry Springer may not be a perv, weirdo or slack-jawed yokel, I am at a complete loss to understand how this country's politics would be enriched by massive voter turnout by people who consider Jerry Springer to be their dashboard saint. Voter turnout is not a good in itself, no matter what populists and demogogues claim. Springer says he'll be bringing new voters to the polls. Well, okay. But if these people couldn't be bothered to vote until Springer encouraged them to, maybe we were better off without them in the first place. Leave Springer's audience out of it for a moment; I don't think it's a given that a surge in voting by Klansmen, black racists, pimps, or strippers-who-sleep-with-their-brothers would improve America's politics demonstrably. And I don't think we really need a Senator who sees nothing wrong with giving such people a nationally televised forum.

More to the point, I find it hilarious that Springer -- who has made a fortune off of his exploitation of damaged and deviant people -- thinks I'm the elitist (though I have no problem with being one). But I'm working from the assumption that most Ohio residents are smart enough to see through his schtick. While he actually thinks they're dumb enough to fall for it. So once again he's looking to exploit the little guy for his own career.

From a reader:

Mr. Goldberg

As a college perfesser myself, your comments about the wimpishness of college authorities rang true. I think of the Dean in 'Ghostbusters' who, while throwing Bill Murray out of his lab, accuses him of treating science as a "dodge". The scene always struck me as wildly unrealistic. Not because academia isn't full of scamsters; it is! But because no dean these days would have the cojones to accuse one of his faculty of intellectual dishonesty or incompetence. He would have had to wait 'til the scandal stank so high that he had to fire the guy for, say, sexual harassment.

No one here is ever allowed to judge another colleague's ideas on their merits.

Research into alleviating post-traumatic stress has thrown up a worrying side effect. The drugs that work also numb feelings of guilt - raising the spectre not only of a pill to make soldiers amoral killing machines, but of thieves, rapists and murderers who feel no remorse

What drives me nuts about stories like this -- all too common alas -- is that whenever the school or some other liberal institution gets in hot water, they condemn the transgression on purely pragmatic grounds. Remember the feminists who were outraged Clinton didn't use a condom with his intern? Or remember the administrators at the San Francisco Art Institute who objected to a disgusting "class" involving a gay sex show in which all sorts of repugnant stuff took place, including the free exchange of each others fecal matter? The school opposed the class because it was unsanitary (See my "In Defense of Bob Jones University"). So in this case the administrators are peeved with the professor who told kids to write emails saying "kill the president, kill the president" because it put students at risk. Fine, fine. That's one reason it's stupid. But can't the school's vice president also say that the intended idea behind the project was idiotic and without merit too?

Susan Smith, the woman who murdered her kids is looking for a "non-judgemental" pen pal.

The economic chaos that would follow redefined marriage or household partnerships is not a peripheral concern: it bespeaks the confusion that would attend any aberration of the natural law. Marriage pertains to natural law, and the state has not the right or authority to abrogate it. It is simple as that. Were the state to attempt such, the cultural consequences would be drastic (as with contraception and abortion and the consequent moral degradation of society and the de-population and economic catastrophe now looming in Europe and soon to be realized here). John has one good point, and it is this: these assaults on moral reason will force the Church to position herself as counter-cultural, and that posture has always been a strength. It will also require expulsing decadent elements such as the "cafeteria Catholics" and those merely cultural Catholics who are essentially "suburban atheists." This will be a leaner and stronger Church. It already is happening in the removal of incompetent bishops. The bureaucracy which appointed them has not changed; reality has simply rendered a final accounting. This is the dynamic of natural law fortified by grace: when one denies reality, reality perdures, but the one who denies it self-destructs. "Qui mange du Pape meurt."

A pretty important editorial from National Review if you haven't seen it.

Pat Robertson has ties to Liberia too.

FreeKobe.com

Senator Brownback yesterday reached a compromise with Senators Lugar and Biden that would pave the way for an American law backing democracy in Iran.

But in a compromise to gain the support of Mr. Lugar, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Mr. Biden, the committee’s top Democrat, provisions were dropped stating that “there is not a democratic government in Iran” and supporting an internationally monitored referendum in Iran for Iranians to change their system of government.

The amendment made yesterday in the Senate to the State Department authorization bill states that America supports transparent, full democracy in Iran and the rights of the Iranian people to choose their own system of government, and includes wording condemning the human rights abuses of Iranians expressing political dissent inside Iran.

The original version of the bill sponsored by Mr. Brownback, the Iran Democracy Act, would have funded more pro-freedom broadcasting into Iran.

Under yesterday's agreement with Mr. Lugar and Mr. Biden, no federal spending is authorized. But Mr. Brownback says he intends to make another try for the broadcasting funding soon.

No, it's not Barbra Streisand's latest PAC, it's a silly cartoon which is somewhere between G and PG in flavor but maybe not the sort of thing you want blaring from your computer at work.

Kenneth Timmerman has a useful piece in the New York Post on Jesse Jackson's complicity to Liberia's troubles. Which reminds me of Ryan Lizza's truly outstanding piece from the July 24, 2000 New Republic (not on the web, but it should be) in which he savaged Bill Clinton's shameless Africa "policy." Here's one money passage:

Indeed, confronted with several stark moral challenges, the Clinton administration has abandoned Africa every time: it fled from Somalia, it watched American stepchild Liberia descend into chaos, it blocked intervention in Rwanda. But Clinton's soaring rhetoric has posed a problem that his predecessors did not face--the problem of rank hypocrisy. And so, time and again, the imperative guiding his administration's Africa policy has been the imperative to appear to care. Unwilling to commit American blood and treasure to save African lives, and unwilling to admit that they refuse to do so, the Clintonites have developed a policy of coercive dishonesty. In Rwanda, afraid that evidence of the unfolding genocide would expose their inaction, they systematically suppressed it. And in Sierra Leone, unwilling to take on a rebel group that was maiming and slaughtering civilians by the thousands, the Clintonites insisted that all the rebels truly wanted was peace and a seat at the negotiating table.

Abandoning Africans is nothing new. But the Clinton administration has gone further. It has tried to deny them the reality of their own experience, to bludgeon them into pretending that the horrors around them do not truly exist--so that they won't embarrass the American officials who proclaim so eloquently that their fates are inextricably linked to our own. Sierra Leone, a former British colony whose capital was founded in the late eighteenth century by freed slaves, was a pretty nasty place even before the birth of the Revolutionary United Front. After an initial bout with democracy upon gaining independence in 1961, it slid into dictatorship and kleptocracy and stayed there through the 1970s and '80s--consistently near the bottom in world rankings of infant mortality, per capita income, and life expectancy. So the outside world barely noticed when, in 1991, a group of about 100 guerrillas launched a campaign to take over the country. But the RUF--backed by Charles Taylor, a warlord in neighboring Liberia--quickly established itself as a rather unusual rebel group. For one thing, it had no discernible political philosophy or agenda. For another, it was almost unimaginably brutal.

Uday’s Voice: “Dad?”

Saddam Hussein: “Yes, Uday?”

Uday’s Voice: “Qusay here thinks that during that part you might want to go for a kind of restrained anger. You know, like, you love your people and all, but some of them need to be punished and whatever.”

Saddam Hussein: “Got it. Right. I like it. And for the rest of it a sort of warmer . . .”

Consultant’s Voice: “Healing. Think healing. Time for the nation to come together. Time for reconciliation—”

Saddam Hussein: “Except for the mountain of corpses . . .”

You’re on your own.

Shameful.

Some signs of progress in Iraq? Of course, the picture that’s described in this report is messy, and not all of it’s good, but, after all the gloom, it’s difficult not to be a little encouraged to read this:

“Money-changers sit under parasols in the main square listening to Western rock music. Beside them street vendors try to undercut each other on the price of brand-name whisky. It all would have meant jail in Saddam’s day.

As he builds a wall of Australian lager cans on the pavement, one trader admits that people cannot believe what they are getting away with, as long as the goods are not stolen. No one needs a licence.

In “Electric Alley”, there is barely room to move between the satellite dishes on display. Among those long restricted to watching state-run Iraqi television, Baywatch is popular.”

And, yes, some of the posters are on sale are of that monstrous savage, the ‘ayatollah’ Khomeini, but if the choice is between the old Shi-ite or Shauni, the good guys are in with a chance.

It’s a bit quieter in the Corner now (this is being written at 2am). All those new (and rather noisy) visitors have, apparently, gone ‘to the disco’ with the Derb, so peace has, at last, returned to our haven. Proust is forgotten. It’s just the usual late night crowd here now. All those ghosts that Russell Kirk brought in are doing their familiar nocturnal routine in some of the more remote parts of our building, scaring, I fear, those few servants who have not retired to their attic rooms, and making life a misery for the interns who are, naturally, expected to be at their desks 24/7. Stop quaking lads! Walk down one of the grander corridors (just step over our narcoleptic security guard, Mineta) and you will find K-Lo in her command center, working late (there’s a surprise), busily deleting references to Star Trek all over the Web.

And, of course, as always, a light is burning in the dear leader’s office.

[O]ne of the things that made it easy was the great national change of heart conclusively ratified two weeks ago...When Justice Anthony M. Kennedy read the court's majority opinion from the bench, he signaled that the inviolable privacy that makes possible basic human dignity now belongs equally to all.

Another legal blogger gets my back.

Marcel Proust

Could never be induced

To read a review

Of his A la recherche du temps perdu

I'm a strong free trader; would abolish tariffs, quotas, and the like unilaterally if it were possible; and have been tough on the Bush administration's protectionism--see this for example. So I was a potentially easy sell for Luke Eric Peterson's attack on Bush's trade rep, Bob Zoellick, in The New Republic. Yet I'm not sold.

Peterson's complaint is that Zoellick has put trade liberalization with countries that have opposed our foreign policy on hold: "[T]he administration's new thinking on trade is a throwback to the cold war era, when security considerations rather than economic ones dictated Washington's trade policy." I can see that it might be counterproductive to ditch trade liberalization because of larger foreign-policy concerns--even from the standpoint of those concerns. But can we really say that it is never appropriate to let those concerns affect our priorities for trade liberalization? I've advocated getting Britain in NAFTA, and I think it would be a good idea economically. But if I were interested only in economics, there are a lot of other agreements I might choose to conclude first. I want this one for strategic reasons. That doesn't mean I'm less of a free trader.

I should have thought of this before we invited all of the newbies. But wouldn't it be fun if we'd set it up so that once every week or two a Cornerite gets voted off by the readers until this becomes a one-man or one-woman blog? Of course, we could then invite everyone back.

A reader responds to my point from earlier that we would/could still have Miranda laws even if the Supreme Court had never imposed a Miranda rule:

Actually, we do have a Miranda law. I believe it is at 18 U.S.C. 3501, and it was passed ca. 1968-70 to supply a statutory standard for law enforcement personnel conducting interrogations. But the Court a couple years back ruled that observing it is no substitute for complying with the Miranda warnings, which therefore are the only reasonably certain way for DAs to ensure that information obtained from custodial interrogations will not be excluded. This despite language in the opinion itself stating that the warnings were only examples of what officers could say to inform the arrestee of his right to counsel. There is now even less incentive for states to legislate in this area, so the conduct of state law enforcement is now essentially driven, for better or worse, by nine unelected lawyers.

I made this argument in law school and asked why we even need state constitutions, given the incorporation doctrine and decisions like Miranda. Needless to say, I was called out as a fascist.

Okay, I just checked out Lawrence Solum's thoughtful critique of my column. Let me first say that the undertow of his legal abstraction poses the danger of carrying me far out to sea on a subject I may be unqualified to discuss at his level.

That said, it seems to me the gist of his point is that a dead constitution is not much more useful than a living one if the Justices charged with reading it are arrogant jerks with no sense of responsibility or reverence for the rule of law. I don't have the time at the moment to read his
"Virtue Jurisprudence: A Virtue-Centered Theory of Judging" which even the author concedes has a "high abstraction quotient." So, if I'm doing a disservice to his position I apologize.

That said, I have to say I entirely agree with him except where he says I'm actually wrong. He proposes, as far as I can tell, to emphasize the appointment of truly excellent judges (not in the Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure sense nor in the Monty Burns "E-x-c-e-l-l-l-l-l-e-n-t sense but in the literally excellent sense) who revere the rule of law. He calls this an Aretaic turn. Okay, that's cool by me. I am all for judges constrained by the dogma of excellence, virtue and the rule of law (Heck, I've been down with good dogma for a long time). But, it seems to me, that an excellent, virtuous and rule-of-law-loving judge would consider the Constitution to be far more dead than alive.

In other words, Solum says my theory is useless if we don't have excellent judges. Fair enough. But I say that a good judge would, by definition, not veer too far from what my good theory dictates (barring the occassional exceptional situation). Again, I could be wrong, but Solum seems to be saying in effect traffic laws are useless without conscientious drivers. And I agree with that. But if I were to ask the average person what a conscientious driver is, he'd probably say "someone who obeys all the traffic laws."

I've been reading comics for 30 years now, and let me first say that I share your dismay over what's become of many of them. The current leadership at Marvel Comics in particular has made the creation of controversy for it's own sake one of their guiding principles.

Still, let's count our blessings. At least Spidey is married to the woman he was in bed with.

Now, with regard to what's suitable for an 8 year old these days, I'd recommend the following:

Ultimate Spider-Man: This is a modern "re-boot" of Spidey, starting over from the beginning with his origin taking place in the year 2000. Peter Parker is still a teenager, and so far they've stayed away from sex (just some teenage kissing, which Aunt May always breaks up) and kept the violence to acceptable comic book levels.

Sojourn: If the kid in question enjoys "Lord of the Rings" it's a safe bet he'll enjoy this. Though the main character is a well proportioned blonde woman, she's remained fully clothed throughout the series so far and has a platonic (if slightly flirty) relationship with her male companion. You May want to check this one against your standards for violence first though.

Ruse: about a detective in the mold of Sherlock Holmes. It's victorian so, again, there's no sex or nudity to speak of. Violence is light as well. The stories may go over an 8 year olds head though.

Batman Adventures / Justice League Adventures: these titles are both based on the animated series their named after, and have comparable content.

Finally, keep in mind that most of the books you grew up with are available in reprint compilations known as "Essentials" (Essential Spider-Man, Essential Hulk, etc). They price around $15 and usually contain over 20 unabridged issues worth of continuity. They're an excellent value.

Nick's a good friend (and of fine conservative lineage by the way). A little more background. Nick Schulz and I used to work together along with Ronald Bailey, now of Reason magazine. But I put it to readers of the Corner to pay very close attention to what Schulz writes. For years Ron and I have been trying to claim Schulz for the conservative and libertarian camps (AKA the light and dark sides of the Force, respectively). Nick refuses to disclose his full his true nature (so maybe he's actually a Straussian?). By the end of the summer it'd be nice to definitely settle the issue once and for all.

A clarification from a reader:

No, no, no. Stephen Strange "married" (in some weirdo magic ceremony) his long time Chick friend Clea in the second Incarnation of that series. He also had an affair with a Certain Ms. Blessing afterwards. Also, if you want a really weird Dr. Strange house guest try the Aquamarine Minataur that served as his apprentice.

I was heartened by how many readers were psyched to see a reference to the Marvel comic book character Dr. Strange in yesterday's column. But I feel I must now broach a very sensitive topic. I mean, of course, is Dr. Strange gay?

Let's review some facts. He's a remarkably thin and extremely neat older bachelor who claims when asked to have never married because a woman broke his heart years ago. He's an upscale urban professional who lives alone except for his young Asian manservant and "business partner" "Wong." He and Wong are devoted to yoga and alternative medicine. His brownstone is immaculately decorated with the finest antiques. He is extremely well-kempt with an at times bushy but usually thin mustache. He wears very bright, flashy clothes made from imported silk and other natural fibers including an actual red silk and gold lamé cape and what appear to be skin-tight blue satin pants. His jewelry is ostentatious and right beneath his chin he wears a flashy one-eyed amulet. And, by the way, his name is a synonym for "Dr. Queer."

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Since yesterday's column (and last night's panel) I've had 8 gazillion people (I'm exaggerating slightly) tell me that if the Constitution wasn't a living, breathing document then women would still be second class citizens and blacks would still be living in segregation. There are four responses to this. First: Are you high? Second: Um, women got the vote through a constitutional amendment, last time I checked. And blacks were supposed to get equality under the 14th and 15th amendments. In other words much of the "progress" (and progress-without-quotation marks) we've seen regarding the Constitution came through adding new text to the dead Constitution rather than adding new meaning to the existing text. That is a huge difference. This leads to point three: A "dead" constitution doesn't mean justices can't change their minds or fix incorrect readings held over from the past. "Judicial activism" to restore the true intent of the Constitution is not the same thing as considering the Constitution to be a "living" text. And four: what the hell do you think laws are for? Readers who say that without the "living constitution" we wouldn't have the Miranda rule and the like, might be right to a certain extent. But we might very well have a Miranda law. We pass all sorts of laws in this country without the benefit of the Court's approval, why these people think we wouldn't pass such "essential" laws if the Court went back to doing its job is beyond me.

On July the 4th I wore my NR T-shirt to Seaside Park in Bridgeport, CT. The gates were closed to traffic, 'cause the park had become too crowded. I asked a cop at the gate if I could just drive in and drop off some picnic stuff and come right back out. "Nice magazine," he said. What the hell was he talking about? He registered my blank stare, and said "Nice magazine on your shirt." "Oh, thanks," I said, hoping this might have given me an "in". Sadly, no; he still wouldn't let me in the park.

Later that evening, the kids and I paid a buck to go in to the amusement park midway. We left to go get mommy, and asked the ticket taker if we needed a hand stamp to leave and return. "No, I'll remember you," he replied "we don't get many conservatives around here."

Derb- That post was the techie equivalent of pouring honey all over your body and then lying down in the midday sun in the Amazon. Every creature great and small is going to feed on you now and your email box will never be empty of what you consider computer pests (For the record: I consider such people to be the greatest, most handsome, noble, kind and intelligent human beings on this earth).

...and boy is it crowded with newbies in here. Maybe us old-timers should stand on the top tiers and yell "fresh fish!" over and over again -- like the cons in Shawshank Redemption -- as Peter Robinson, Terry Teachout, et al carry their clothes and toothbrushes to their cells? Or maybe we should just all clap and spit? (like in every other (male) prison movie)

Anyway, welcome aboard everybody. Yesterday, I visited the DC office of National Review for the first time in years. It hasn't changed too much. Grandeur and opulence like that never fades. In the afternoon I spoke to the America's Future Foundation "DC-7" group (why they call it that I don't know). It was mostly a bunch of interns from the Hill and various think tanks. Smart bunch. Then, later that evening, I spoke on a panel organized by Margaret Carlson. The audience were members and supporters of something called "Project Children" and the panel was part of a program which brings Protestant and Catholic Irish college students to DC for internships. Generally a very nice, earnest bunch of folks, but the most resolutely (and occasionally sanctimoniously) liberal and lefty bunch of people -- the American Irish especially -- I've spoken to off-campus in a very long time. Kate O'Beirne tells me that Irish Americans tend to be liberals. I never thought about it before, but golly it appears to be true.

I do not think you can use the ninth amendment unless you know something of what it means. For example, if you had an amendment that says “Congress shall make no” and then there is an ink blot and you cannot read the rest of it and that is the only copy you have, I do not think the court can make up what might be under the ink blot if you cannot read it.

Let's be sweet to them And day by day repeat to them That sterilization simply isn't done. Let's help the dirty swine again To occupy the Rhine again, But don't let's be beastly to the Hun.

At least we had power and security [under Saddam]. Democracy is not feeding us. -- Uday Abdul al-Wahab, a shop owner in Baghdad

Going out on raids, busting up things and shooting people tend not to win you many friends. -- A top foreign-policy adviser to the first President Bush

Outreach to Hispanic voters should not be determined by reading press releases from the National Council of La Raza or meeting with officials for LULAC. Hispanics are not an undifferentiated mass awaiting instructions from their self-appointed leaders in Washington. There are a good many Hispanics who proudly salute the Stars and Stripes rather than the flag of Mexico. These people will repay Republican outreach efforts with their votes--if the GOP simply treats them just like other Americans.

While the continued existence of "Hispanic rights" groups like La Raza and LULAC depends on convincing Hispanics that they will never be real Americans, the Bush administration should not follow their lead.

There is an inherent truth in battle. It is hard to disguise the verdict of the battlefield, and nearly impossible to explain away the dead, or to suggest that abject defeat was somehow victory. Wars are the sum of battles, battles the tally of individual human beings killing and dying. . . . To speak of war in any other fashion brings with it a sort of immorality: the idea that when hit, soldiers simply go to sleep, rather than are shredded, that generals order impersonal battalions and companies of automatons into the heat of battle, rather than screaming nineteen-year-olds into clouds of gas and sheets of lead bullets, or that a putrid corpse has little to do with larger approaches to science and culture.

Because of an editing error, an article on Sunday about a bill to limit jury awards in medical malpractice cases gave an incorrect surname at one point in some copies for the Nevada Senator who is the bill's chief sponsor. He is John Ensign, not Edwards.

From a reader about G-File:

I submit that never before in the history of the language have Doctor Strange and the Supreme Court of the United States been referenced in the same sentence. Congratulations!

Derb, I've also seen translations of the guy's name which translate to "the all-powerful rooster who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, will go from conquest to conquest leaving fire in his wake." But maybe that's just water cooler talk by all those super-satisfied hens.

G-File is up. Chesterton and pop culture references galore.

I have two speaking engagements (I'm speaking at an event for the America's Future Foundation and then I'm on a panel for some visiting Irish students), and two pieces to write this morning (three if you count the G-File, but that's done already). And since both gigs are on the Hill a place designed specifically to get me lost, I'm exceedingly short on time and neurons this morning. So I will be visiting the Corner only sporadically. In short, the rest of the gang is especially encouraged to kick it in here.

The same undersecretary on German MEP Schulz (the man who triggered Berlusconi’s comments):

"Schulz…probably grew up taking part in noisy burping contests, after drinking gigantic amounts of beer and gorging himself on fried potatoes.”

Schulz is Al Bundy?

The undersecretary for the Italian industry ministry has now done his bit for Italo-German relations by writing a letter to a newspaper in which he described i Tedeschi as “hyper-nationalistic blonds” invading Italian beaches. In response, German chancellor Schroeder has threatened to cancel his planned summer vacation in Italy.

The real reason for Schroeder’s fury? The reference to hair color.

I really never had an opinion one way or the other on the guy. I never heard his radio show and I never watched his TV show for more than 30 seconds at a time. He may be a brilliant radio show host and for all I know he's got a supple and subtle mind, but he struck me as an awful television host. But that at least gave me hope that the bar was low enough for me to get a TV show of my own one day.

Here's a fun email from a reader:

I thought you might find this interesting. I recently met a very nice Berkeley woman who started an organization for conservative singles here in the San Francisco Bay Area (long overdue!). We just had our second meeting at a brewpub in Berkeley, and after she printed an innocuous little promo piece on the Internet saying how well the event went, she got a couple of pieces of completely unprovoked, spontaneous hate mail, including this lovely evocation of the modern "liberal"'s heart and soul:

>From: [Name withheld]
>Reply-To:
>Subject: RE: (politics) Single Conservatives Club
>Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2003 10:53:54 -0700

Hey idiot, Republicans are not Conservative, they are rushing pell mell to kill all the life on the planet weather animal or vegetable or mineral. Conservatives conserve. When Republicans have nothing left to destroy, they invariably turn on each other and start humiliating and defiling weaker republicans. And get your stinkin' asses out of Berkeley for christ's sake!! Who the hell let you barbarians into town in the first place? We need a militia which will guard Berkeley and refuse creeps like you from entering town in the first place. Do not continue to meet in Berkeley!

As my friend says, "Isn't it nice how tolerant liberals are?"

Bob Pryor / kanislupus359@wmconnect.com

(If you find this interesting enough to mention, feel free to reference my name. And my e-mail address for that matter, since hatemail doesn't bother me, and we can use all the publicity we can get in recruiting conservative singles out here in Mordor. Best to the Fair Jessica & Lucy & Cosmo.)

From a reader:

So, wait, are you saying you don't find "Abdoulaye Wade" just rolls off the tongue? "Yoweri Museveni"? Of course, I eagerly await the day Bush pronounces Botswana's president's name "Festus Mogae."

Since the pres. disappointed me by never saying "monkeypox," I'm hoping for a really rich "Festus." Mmmmmmmmmm. Festus.

I know Charles Taylor is an evil and brutal SOB, but can we at least take a moment to lament the fact that the one African leader with a name we can all pronounce is being forced out of office?

Yesterday the Washington Post did a big profile of Howard Dean in which he defended his (awful) performance on "Meet the Press" a couple weeks ago. Here's the relevant graf:

So far, Dean, who agrees that he is blunt, is brushing off the critics. "I didn't like how I did in the first debate, because I was nervous and cranky," he said. "But I disagree about the 'Meet the Press' interview. I thought I did great. Tim Russert asked really hard questions. No other candidate would take that kind of questioning for a full hour."

This raises, yet again, one of the most consistently asked questions of the Democratic presidential contest, "What the Hell is Howard Dean talking about?" Surely he doesn't mean that Joe Lieberman or John Kerry would have walked off the set. Surely he doesn't mean that Dick Gephardt would have simply refused to answer the questions or would have melted under Russert's withering interrogation. And, since most of the questions which tripped Dean up were about his policies and his experience it's a mystery as to why he thinks his more seasoned competitors would do worse explaining their policies and record. These were hardly trick questions.

But if Dean is serious about mounting a challenge to McAuliffe after New Hampshire then we really could have an all-out Civil War in the Democratic Party between self-described centrists (Clintonistas) and "progressives" (a rag tag army of all Dems who don't consider themselves Clintonistas). And that would be fun to watch. I think it's all very, very unlikely though.

Drudge has a story about Dean's desire to get rid of Terry McAuliffe as head of the DNC. A few thoughts. First, I'm sure Dean would like to see McAuliffe go, but the high-minded motives attributed to the Dean camp in the Drudge story don't scan for a moment. McAuliffe is widely known among Democratic insiders as Bill and Hillary's boy. The whole senior leadership of the DNC were put in by the Clintons in order to ensure their interests were protected. It may be true that the Dean camp thinks McAuliffe has done a terrible job, but that's simply the truth. The real reason Dean would want McAuliffe gone is if he thinks he can really win the nomination and doesn't trust that McAuliffe would then do what's best for the nominee. As several Dem operatives have told me (the benefits of spending so much time in CNN green rooms), it's still Bill Clinton's party.

Why do President Bush's many domestic and foreign critics ignore his Africa initiative? They do so because it clashes with their mantra concerning the Bush administration's supposed lack of interest in foreign affairs outside of the war on terror. It would, quite simply, produce too much cognitive dissonance….More cynically, critics of the Bush administration cannot afford to recognize current progress in Africa policy. For Democrats, an absolutely critical priority is to hold on to the African-American vote, which is overwhelmingly Democratic. Any effort by the Bush administration to adopt policies that might appeal to African Americans has to be strenuously denied by the Democrats because even mild Republican inroads into such a core constituency would swing some elections toward President Bush's party. Analogously, the French and some other countries have defined much of their foreign policy as being opposed to American unilateralism and, sometimes, to whatever initiative Washington undertakes. Giving full credit to the Bush administration for its Africa policies would so undermine the appeal of opposing America that it is almost an imperative that the current Africa initiatives be ignored.

At the end of an (interesting) piece in today’s New York Times on how patriotism has been used as a marketing device, there’s the revelation that following the gift by the US Smokeless Tobacco Company of Skoal and Copenhagen snuff to troops in Iraq, “some legislators are complaining that the company violated military policy against distributing free samples of tobacco products, calling the giveaway reprehensible.”

Pathetic. While snuff is on no one’s list of healthy products, taking it is vastly safer than smoking tobacco. More to the point, if service people are adult enough to go through a war they are quite capable of deciding for themselves whether to chew some free chaw.
Posted at 09:52 PM

PARALLEL UNIVERSE WATCH (4) [Andrew Stuttaford]

From an interview in today’s New York Times magazine with Canadian author Naomi Klein, author of the no good book No Logo: