In between dodging indictments, Jacques Chirac has made great play of attacking George W. Bush for his supposed arrogance, unilateralism and all-round nastiness. Well, let's take a look at how Chirac has behaved in pushing the candidacy of slimy Guy Verhofstadt for the presidency of the EU bureaucracy. We needn’t waste too much time discussing Verhofstadt himself. He’s the Belgian prime minister, a job roughly on a par with being emperor of Wyoming. Talentless, sleazy and vain, he’s just the latest nonentity to crawl out of the cesspit that makes up that unfortunate country's political establishment. But Chirac wanted him installed as the EU’s top bureaucrat, and what Chirac wants, Chirac often gets, and if he doesn't...

Let the Independent take up the story:

“Another source said of the French President's stance: "It had overtones of Chirac's performance when he told the new countries of eastern Europe to shut up over Iraq. He was trying to bully them into dropping their positions. He was accusing small countries that didn't declare their support for Verhofstadt of moral cowardice."

Or the Daily Telegraph

“Mr Chirac said it would be better if the EU executive were headed by someone from a country with long experience of the EU and which was a member of all its activities, including the single currency and the Schengen open-border agreement. That ruled out contenders from Britain, Denmark, Ireland, Sweden and all 10 new eastern European member states - most notably Chris Patten, one of Britain's EU commissioners, who had won last-minute backing from the centre-Right European People's Party, the biggest group in the European Parliament.”

None of my comments on this issue, of course, should be taken as derogating from my support of the Barnier! campaign for the Commission presidency. Mysteriously, this latter-day Richelieu, this Mazarin, this Talleyrand, was omitted from the Independent’s roll-call of candidates. Just for a moment, why not admit it, I was tempted away from the Barnier! camp by the splendid credentials of Portugal’s Antonio Vitorino (“a Socialist, he is little known outside Brussels and his home country”), but then sanity reasserted itself….

Barnier! Barnier!

However noble in inspiration, some of the foreign policy dreams we have seen touted in recent years are just that, dreams, but ‘realism’ should never be used to kick in the teeth of the defenseless. This comes from an intriguing column by David Brooks:

“Sometimes in the unscripted moments of a campaign, when the handlers are away, a candidate shows his true nature. Earlier this month, Andres Oppenheimer of The Miami Herald asked John Kerry what he thought of something called the Varela Project. Kerry said it was "counterproductive." It's necessary to try other approaches, he added.

“The Varela Project happens to be one of the most inspiring democracy movements in the world today. It is being led by a Cuban dissident named Oswaldo Payá, who has spent his life trying to topple Castro's regime. Payá realized early on that the dictatorship would never be overthrown by a direct Bay of Pigs-style military assault, but it could be undermined by a peaceful grass-roots movement of Christian democrats, modeling themselves on Martin Luther King Jr.”

Even if Kerry were right about the Varela project (I don’t think he is, but that’s a legitimate debate), why say what he said aloud?

On the EU ‘constitution’s’ ratification process (from the Telegraph):

“If a single country fails to ratify the treaty it is legally - though not politically - null and void. In reality, a "Petit Non" by a small country is not the same as a "Grand Non" by one of the big players.”

From Animal Farm:

"All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others."

From the Daily Telegraph today:

"We must take the constitution seriously. Mr Blair has made perhaps the most serious blunder of his premiership by signing it. He should have rejected this mind-numbing, 260-page document on principle. It is the capstone of a federal state, and gives the EU a foreign minister, a criminal code, a European prosecutor and a police force. We face a net loss of vetoes in about 40 areas and the constitution sets in stone an outdated, over-regulated economic model just at the moment that it is failing."

Idiot.

James Taranto on the NRA’s new radio station:

"In a direct challenge to federal limits on political advocacy, the National Rifle Association plans to begin broadcasting a daily radio program on Thursday to provide news and pro-gun commentary to 400,000 listeners," the New York Times reports.”

”In a direct challenge to federal limits on political advocacy, the New York Times Co. plans to continue publishing a daily newspaper to provide news and antigun commentary to 1.1 million readers.”

With the EU Constitution done for now, discussion now shifts to a successor to Prodi as president of the EU Commission. Prodi is as venal as he is ineffective and was thus perfect in the job. Where to look now? Well, here’s the Guardian’s take:

”Neither leader made much attempt to deny the continued deadlock over the choice of a new president for the Brussels commission - with Mr Blair leading a six-nation bloc against the French-backed Belgian candidate and Mr Chirac giving the thumbs down to Britain's Chris Patten. The prime minister said his rejection of the Belgian premier and anti-American federalist, Guy Verhofstadt, meant "no disrespect". Mr Chirac is now promoting Michel Barnier, the lacklustre French foreign minister, against the Portuguese prime minister, Jose Manuel Durao Baroso.”

Barnier sounds perfect. Barnier! Barnier! Barnier!

I’m still getting angry e-mails from readers outraged, outraged, by my remarks on the pronunciation of Cervantes’ epic. That doesn’t change the fact that ‘Don Kwixott’ is how it used to be pronounced (in England). Yup, that’s how it was. Live with it. No comments, interestingly, from these folks so far on that rather awkward ‘quixotic’. Or should that be Keeyotic?

Whilst on this topic, however, lets take a look at the Irish word for ‘prime minister’, taoiseach. It’s a perfectly good word, even a splendid word, but it’s an Irish language word, not an English one. For some reason, probably to do with some vague blend of political correctness and guilt, the British press (particularly its more liberal sections) regularly describe the good Mr. Ahern as ‘Taoiseach’ rather than Prime Minister. That’s odd. The only precedents I can think of for this sort of treatment were Mussolini, regularly described as Duce, and old Adolf, the Fuhrer, and neither of these precedents is exactly, well, flattering.

Leung, the tour guide at Harvey Mudd, said he wanted his parents with him when he was a high schooler visiting colleges "because I wanted them to be okay with my coming to a college that they knew very little about . . . and I wanted to see their reactions during the tour." But for many families, he said, tours without parents would work well because students would be more apt to ask about issues of concern to them, like the social scene, roommates, parties and dating.

BBC, October 28th, 2002:

"Valery Giscard d'Estaing has been heading a 105-member convention aimed at simplifying EU treaties, putting them into a language everyone can understand and bringing the organisation closer to citizens. "

BBC, June 18th, 2004:

"The constitution probably faces a bigger battle to get ratified than it did to get agreed. One of its major problems is that it is so complex that it is completely inaccessible to most EU citizens. "

I have an idea about the torture tapes shown at the AEI the other day.

Just shut up about them because you're making your emotional response to them the issue, not the tapes themselves.

You (NRO) give a general link to AEI which is for all intents and purposes worthless because the site is so big and the tapes apparently so deeply buried that finding them appears to be well nigh impossible.

So either give us a direct link or just drop the matter altogether.

I'm a big boy and perfectly capable of deciding for myself.

What I'm not is interested in is your stream-of-consiousness keening over the horror… the horror of it all.

"This act of revenge is to heal the hearts of believers in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula," the statement said.

"This is God's voice rising in anger... at the treatment of Muslims in Abu Ghraib, al-Hair (prison), Guantanamo, Ruwais (Saudi prison) and others," it added, referring to U.S. military prisons in Abu Ghraib, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Johnson was an employee of defense contractor Lockheed Martin, which manufactures U.S. helicopter gunships.

The statement said al Qaeda had killed him because of "what Muslims have suffered from American Apache planes and their rockets."

Tony Blair, Warsaw, October 6th, 2000:

"It is perhaps easier for the British than for others to recognise that a constitutional debate must not necessarily end with a single, legally binding document called a Constitution for an entity as dynamic as the EU. What I think is both desirable and realistic is to draw up a statement of the principles according to which we should decide what is best done at the European level and what should be done at the national level, a kind of charter of competences. This would allow countries too, to define clearly what is then done at a regional level. This Statement of Principles would be a political, not a legal document. It could therefore be much simpler and more accessible to Europe’s citizens."

Via the bloggers over at EU Referendum who note that the text of this speech is "strangely, no longer available on the No, 10 Downing Street web site."

I wonder why that could be.

There are times when the best response, perhaps the only response, to the hard blows of existence is to embrace each lump as a badge honoring the determined striving that produced it. In 1918, Teddy Roosevelt’s son Quentin (who had left Harvard during his sophomore year to serve in World War I) was shot out of the sky in one of aerial warfare’s early dogfights. German propagandists took photos of his maimed body amidst his plane’s wreckage and, hoping to dampen American morale, sent one to Mrs. Roosevelt. Rather than let herself be cowed, however, she insisted that the picture be framed and displayed over a mantelpiece, a symbol of her family’s sturdiness and their pride in sacrifice for a high cause.

As I traveled across Iraq with our soldiers, I thought of this incident. What Edith Roosevelt did was both a very hard and a very soft thing. She pushed aside her own grief and expressed admiration and undying love for her son by celebrating his bravery--and by refusing to abandon his fight.

Invective to follow.

But before that, it's worth noting that the Treaty has not yet been "adopted", but, hey, I've long since given up hopes of any accuracy from Reuters. Adoption depends on ratification at the national level, and that is where things will get interesting. In the UK, Tony Blair's task will be to persuade a skeptical British public that the white flag he has just waved is in fact tinted a reassuring shade of gray.That won't be easy. The historically-minded, meanwhile, will note that today is the anniversary of the victory at Waterloo. The Iron Duke, one imagines, would not be impressed by the way this June 18th has turned out.

I want to express my deepest condolences to the family of Paul Johnson. We send our prayers and sympathies to them during this very troubling time.

The murder of Paul shows the evil nature of the enemy we face. These are barbaric people. There's no justification whatsoever for his murder, and yet they killed him in cold blood. And it should remind us that we must pursue these people, and bring them to justice before they hurt other Americans. See, they're trying to intimidate America. They're trying to shake our will; they're trying to get us to retreat from the world. America will not retreat. America will not be intimidated by these kinds of extremist thugs.

May God bless Paul Johnson. Thank you.

Q On Tuesday, the American Enterprise Institute held a media event where a video of Saddam's atrocities was shown. The tape showed fingers being cut off, tongues being cut out, and beheadings. None of the networks showed the tape. And few media outlets even mentioned it. Did anyone in this administration ask that these images not be showed to the American people?

MR. McCLELLAN: No, Jeff. But it is important to remind people of the atrocities that Saddam Hussein's regime committed. Saddam Hussein was a brutal oppressive dictator who carried out atrocities over a period of years against his own people and against his neighbors. And it's important that the public --

Q Well, how do you explain a virtual media blackout on these horrendous acts, when every single day there are pictures about what American soldiers have done in Iraq when these things are far worse? How is there any explanation for that? Is there somebody in the administration that doesn't want the American people to see that?

MR. McCLELLAN: I think you're going to see the Iraqi people hold Saddam Hussein accountable for the atrocities that he committed. We will be turning him over to the Iraqi people to face a tribunal by the Iraqis for the atrocities that you mentioned. And I don't think the Iraqi people will ever let people forget those atrocities. It's important to remember that this was a regime that had mass graves, torture rooms, and rape rooms, and engaged in the kinds of atrocities that no one should stand for.

Q There is visual physical evidence out there. Why is not being put out there for Americans to see and make their own judgment against?

MR. McCLELLAN: Yes, I think I've expressed it from our standpoint. If you're talking about it from the media standpoint, I'll leave it to the media to address those issues?

"Since the most important element of a night out in Britiain - an overwhelming sense of impending violence - is already present, all that is needed is the stench of urine and vomit in the street and it'll feel just like Blighty."

Ouch.

Well said, Andy. Now, who was it that signed that disgraceful piece of legislation into law?

Conservative House Members Back Colleagues with Resources

Washington, DC -- Mainstream conservative House members, led by Congressman Pat Toomey, R-Pa., today announced that they have contributed significant resources to fellow Republican Study Committee members and former members who are running for the U.S. Senate.

To date, House conservatives have contributed $88,500 from their re-election committees and their political action committees to four mainstream Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate. They also have commitments that will put them over the $100,000 mark. The candidates for U.S. Senate who will receive the funds are Reps. Jim DeMint, R-SC and David Vitter, R-LA. and former Reps. Tom Coburn, R-OK, and Bob Schaffer, R-CO.

Toomey flanked by several members of the RSC stated, “We all came to Congress, in part because we believe in the mainstream, conservative ideas at the heart of the Republican Party. We are all part of a group -- the RSC -- that exists to help advance these principles within the Republican Conference and within the House. We’ve enjoyed considerable success in moving this agenda forward. However, all too often our momentum is stymied by the Senate.”

Toomey continued, “That is why we decided it was time for us to help several candidates for the Senate, all of whom, have proven their commitment and leadership on Republican principles and are currently, or were recently members of the RSC. To date, we have collected, in-hand $88,500 for these 4 great candidates. All of these funds have come from our own campaign committees or our PACs and we hope to continue to raise more to assist these folks in becoming U.S. Senators.”

All over the wires this morning:

ASTANA, Kazakhstan (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin, in comments sure to help President Bush, declared Friday that Russia knew Iraq's Saddam Hussein had planned terror attacks on U.S. soil and had warned Washington.

Putin said Russian intelligence had been told on several occasions that Saddam's special forces were preparing to attack U.S. targets inside and outside the United States.

"After the events of September 11, 2001, and before the start of the military operation in Iraq, Russian special services several times received information that the official services of the Saddam regime were preparing 'terrorist acts' on the United States and beyond its borders," he told reporters.

"This information was passed on to our American colleagues," he said. He added, however, that Russian intelligence had no proof that Saddam's agents had been involved in any particular attack.

Now I don't trust Putin in the slightest. But if he's lying that's interesting and if he's telling the truth, that's interesting.

From a reader:

Seems to me that Congressional Democrats are more willing to give Saddam the benefit of the doubt over his contacts with Al Qaeda than they are to give Cheney with his post-election contacts with Halliburton.

You can download the whole EU study mentioned in the Journal here. Here's the summary:

If the European Union were a state in the USA it would belong to the poorest group of states. France, Italy, Great Britain and Germany have lower GDP per capita than all but four of the states in the United States. In fact, GDP per capita is lower in the vast majority of the EU-countries (EU 15) than in most of the individual American states. This puts Europeans at a level of prosperity on par with states such as Arkansas, Mississippi and West Virginia. Only the miniscule country of Luxembourg has higher per capita GDP than the average state in the USA. The results of the new study represent a grave critique of European economic policy.

Stark differences become apparent when comparing official economic statistics. Europe lags behind the USA when comparing GDP per capita and GDP growth rates. The current economic debate among EU leaders lacks an understanding of the gravity of the situation in many European countries. Structural reforms of the European economy as well as far reaching welfare reforms are well overdue. The Lisbon process lacks true impetus, nor is it sufficient to improve the economic prospects of the EU.

Two good ones today. Reg Req'd. The first is on the 9/11 Commish. The second on the ever-declining (in relative terms) wealth of Europe. I'll post a chunk of that one because it's harder to get to on the site:

The growing split between the U.S. and Europe has been much in the news, mostly on foreign policy. But less well understood is the gap in economic growth and standards of living. Now comes a European report that puts the American advantage in surprisingly stark relief.

The study, "The EU vs. USA," was done by a pair of economists -- Fredrik Bergstrom and Robert Gidehag -- for the Swedish think tank Timbro. It found that if Europe were part of the U.S., only tiny Luxembourg could rival the richest of the 50 American states in gross domestic product per capita. Most European countries would rank below the U.S. average, as the nearby chart shows.

The authors admit that man doesn't live by GDP alone, and that this measure misses output in the "black" economy, which is significant in Europe's high-tax states. GDP also overlooks "the value of leisure or a good environment" or the way prosperity is spread across a society.

But a rising tide still lifts all boats, and U.S. GDP per capita was a whopping 32% higher than the EU average in 2000, and the gap hasn't closed since. It is so wide that if the U.S. economy had frozen in place at 2000 levels while Europe grew, the Continent would still require years to catch up. Ireland, which has lower tax burdens and fewer regulations than the rest of the EU, would be the first but only by 2005. Switzerland, not a member of the EU, and Britain would get there by 2010. But Germany and Spain would need until 2015, while Italy, Sweden and Portugal would have to wait until 2022.

Higher GDP per capita allows the average American to spend about $9,700 more on consumption every year than the average European. So Yanks have by far more cars, TVs, computers and other modern goods. "Most Americans have a standard of living which the majority of Europeans will never come anywhere near," the Swedish study says.

There's more, though I'm a bit more skeptical about the numbers in the part on inequality.

The good news: Chicago Tribune (Reg. Req'd) names National Review one of the 50 Best Magazines!

The bad news: Here's what they have to say: "National Review. This right-wing glossy offers smart, certain ideology for these uncertain times. More serious than Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh and less Air Force One-obsessed than the Weekly Standard, the middlebrow NR even manages to squeeze the pretentious arts through its conservative wringer."

Apropos of Rich's post about the Navy, I found this email particularly interesting:

I’ve been an Army interrogator since 1990, and just finished up a hitch as an interrogation instructor and interrogation training developer. I think that was a good piece (Barbarians at the Geneva Gates), but I think there are a couple points people never seem to mention.

But first let me say, Abu Ghraib was idiotic and it wasn’t interrogation or interrogators.

The first thing is that these “harsh” techniques that make the press quite often are not the standard procedure. The US Army has only about 500 interrogators, worldwide, that’s very thin. Even if we wanted to, we really don’t have time to mess with prisoners. The thing that makes an interrogator happy is a prisoner that talks immediately and not with all the psychological ruses that we get trained to use. Thankfully, over 90% of the prisoners talk. We will not even use harsher techniques every time for the truly hardcore prisoners – it really depends on the potential value of the information that the prisoner may have. If he’s belligerent, but useless, we essentially give him the minimum demanded by Geneva and essentially ignore him. Something that bothers me about all this is that all of the techniques adopted by FM34-52 have survived legal review for decades (and DOD lawyers are not stupid – they have a focus towards a war effort where the objective is killing the enemy, as opposed to US civil/criminal lawyers) – all of a sudden all of this stuff is illegal? I am a GW1 vet, with 3,000 interrogations under my belt, nothing was off limits and suddenly we are all wrong?

(FYI, in Gulf War 1 – GW1, we had female MPs and female interrogators – and we strip searched Iraqi soldiers by the battalion…no outcry there)

The second thing which concerns me the most is that now that we’ve had the congressional debates, the WSJ articles and all of the hand wringing, Gen. Sanchez has banned 9 more techniques overseas – and this isn’t the crazy stuff you’ve heard of, like simulated drowning, which we don’t teach – including sleep deprivation, hooding (which is as much a safety technique for us and the prisoner as an interrogation preparation technique). I figure than any more DOD knee jerking and we’ll be reduced to singing “Kumbayah” to guys that we’ve caught either planning to kill Americans or who have killed Americans.

Some parting shots.

Interrogation has saved thousands of US and US military lives – especially in Afghanistan with that thug Gulbudin Hekmatyr, with his 50,000 soldiers (sic), who has publicly stated that his goal is the overthrow of the Karzai Gov’t and the expulsion of all US forces – who daily plots ambushes, road side bombs, and sniper attacks against US personnel. It was two interrogators that got the information that lead to the capture of Saddam. People in my office in 1999 (can’t say where) helped wrap up the millennium plot. Despite the bombings you see regularly in Iraq, interrogations are foiling on a daily basis plans to kill Americans (big country, unfortunately you can’t interrogate everybody).

If you go back a couple years, you’ll find out that there was a document published in the press called the “al Qaida Training Manual” – still available online – its states pretty plainly that the objective of taking prisoners (US, Western, etc) is for the purpose of public execution. No concerns for Geneva of course – Biden can whine all he wants about treaties that protect US personnel, but I can tell you, that proper treatment of US personnel has never been part of the Islamist game plan.

Last shot. I think what somebody really needs to do is to have an educated and rational debate on interrogation techniques. Really, is sleep deprivation that bad? CNN was whining about prisoners being kept up 20 hours a day. So? I do that all the time just as an instructor with papers to grade. Stress positions? The way that we (us and NATO interrogators) train on those during NATO exercises (like ILRPS) is to rotate the prisoners (NATO SF, infantry, etc) out of the position every 15 minutes (into another one). I’ve been in these stress positions and would describe them as aggravating for the most part. If I explained them to you, you wouldn’t be all that impressed – its not torture. Taking away the Koran from belligerent prisoners?

Anyway, thanks for the article, it seemed pretty objective.

[Name withheld]

PS – I’m still active duty, please do not repeat my name anywhere, the military has become pretty hostile with people talking to the press.

In 1983, I was a young man without political interests until my experience in Grenada made me a conservative, and a Reagan devotee. We were welcomed as liberators. I will never forget the gratitude I received from the people of Grenada. When I cam home, and to this day, the American news media refer to Operation Urgent Fury as the “Invasion of Grenada.” Yet, in Grenada, October 23rd is celebrated as “Thanksgiving Day.”

From a reader:

Greetings from a long-time reader of both you and Andrew Sullivan,

I would think that of all the faults that one might (fairly or otherwise) ascribe to Sullivan's writings, among the last would be coyness, indirection or other such subtleties that would make a reader have to parse his sentences carefully to get at his true meaning. I would argue that one of his best aspects as a writer is his remarkably honest and direct polemical style, which enables him to cut through a lot of bull. Then again, what's also his strength is also a very glaring fault at times, in that his rhetorical style leads him into excessive, hyperbolic statements that stretch his arguments at times to absurd levels.

Look for example at the post from today titled "What is Sexy?" where Sullivan turns what had been a fairly reflective and even innocuous discussion over at The Volokh Conspiracy into a tirade of generalizations against the habits of heterosexual men and especially women (not to mention homosexual women).

Look even more at "The Marriage Thing" post, where he claims you have insulted him by allegedly saying that his own writing for a gay magazine doesn't count as being real writing; in his words specifically, "if you write something for the gay press, you haven't really written it".

Look most of all at his attempt in his post "Over at Lucianne" to tie a few really repugnant statements made by some people over at Lucianne's website to broader conservatism (and of course to you and your mother as well).

These are all stretches of rhetoric in the extreme and are all various forms of logic fallacies. Now I think it is a little telling about you that you skipped over that "Marriage" post at first (but then you yourself have said that homosexual marriage isn't a big issue for you, so you are being consistent), but I'm not sure how he can make the leap he did from what you wrote in your initial post on the subject of the Advocate article.

Say what you will about the man, but the meaning behind what Sullivan writes is anything but unclear.

Dear Jonah, If you're serious about getting a raise, don't let Lowry find out that you can afford such luxuries as midday meals.

I just got back from lunch. Yes, yes, yes. I've seen that Andrew Sullivan has taken the time to criticize some postings at Mom's site. No, I don't know if this was intended as a sort of "your mother wears combat boots" jab but I kind of doubt it. I will say I don't agree with, like, or condone some of the things folks over there are saying and, I must say, it feels kind of nice to be in a position to tell mom I think she should clean up her room for a change. Then again, she stopped telling me to do that a long time ago and I'm sure she can defend herself is she decides it's even worth it without help from me.

But, I will say I've always treated Andrew and his arguments with respect and plan to keep doing that. So, if the point of cherry picking some off-color comments from a few LDotters is to make a guilt-by-association claim about where I'm coming from, I think it's a very lame effort and a form of argumentation that could be applied to thousands of sites on the web, left and right, without being particularly revealing or interesting.

Oh, one last thing. As for the social price Andrew has paid for his views compared to my own, I'm sure he's right. I'm just not sure what that has to do with anything I've said, done or believe.

I've gotten sooo many emails like this in response to my syndicated column. There are good points (though many emails contradict each other) and they're mostly given as constructive criticism in good faith. But what I particularly enjoy is the criticism that my column was too simplistic -- it probably was -- and that I should have included 75 trillion ifs, ands, buts and the like -- all with corresponding sub clauses and whatnots. For example:

Jonah: While your ultimate conclusion on the applicability of the Geneva Convestion(s) to Al Quaeda is correct, the reasoning you set out is a little simplistic, and glosses over a couple of salient points. Since your readers are a sophisticated lot, it might be worth addiind a little more detail. As you pointed out in your syndicated column, Al Quaeda is not a nation state, and is not a party to the Geneva Convention, or any other treaty. However, under the terms of the Third Geneva Convention, that is not necessarily a bar to granting combatants "status" under the convention. Article 4, Section A2 provides that:

Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:

(a) That of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;

(b) That of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;

(c) That of carrying arms openly;

(d) That of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

Now, one could argue that Al Quaeda, through its affiliation with Taliban is in fact a legitimate resistance movement (not in terms of its goals, but rather its status under the Conventions) in Afghanistan. As such. if they fulfill the above-stated requirements, then Al Quaeda prisonsers captured in the course of combat in Iraq would be entitled to POW status. The same argument could be made for the Baathist dead enders in Iraq. This provisiosn is designed to protect members of resistance movements, provided that they follow the laws of war. As good conservatives, we should remember that in some cases these potential resistors are our friends.

So, our examination turns to subclauses (a) through (d),above: (a) is kind of murky, and hard to judge; (b) might be fulfilled by various pyjama-like garments; and (c) is probably fulfilled in Afghanistam (of course, everyone carries arms in that country, so no big deal). Subclause (d) is far and away the most important, and it's here that Al Queada and its ilk lose any claim to POW status. Al Quaeda violates almost all the laws and customs of war, almost as a matter of policy - from cutting the throats of non-combatant hostages (far more serious under international law than the still serious abuse of combatants) to stashing weapons in protected places (mosques and hospitals) Al Queada fails this test rather soundly. Sublcause (d) is the most important because it enshrines the notion of reciprocity - the idea that we'll do unto you as you do unto us (so let's both act humanely) and this is the main reason why Al Quaeda (and Taliban, Baathists, Hezbollah, Hamas, Fatah etc.) members are not entitled to POW status. The treaty is a two way street, and if they are allowed to benefit, the reciprocal nature of the Conventions will be trashed - and this reciprocity is the primary means of enforcement. Without it, the Conventions will become totally useless, instead of merely inapplicable as they are now.

Anyway, that's the long answer - as I said at the outset, your conclusion is correct, but its worth doing a full analysis so that some lefty whiner can't point to Article 4 in triumph to "prove" that you're wrong.

Andrew Sullivan does mention the Advocate essay and my criticism today. I didn't read the post headlined "The Marriage Thing" thinking it was another post about gay marriage. I'm sorry for saying otherwise. As for the case he makes, I'll let it stand for itself.

Yes, yes, Chirac and Schroeder did badly in the EU elections, delightfully so. I’m shedding no tears, but there are hints of some wishful thinking out there in the VRWC, firstly on the implications for Chirac and Schroeder's stance on Iraq (and elsewhere), and secondly, for what the results could mean for economic reform in Germany. Let’s look at some examples:

Here’s William Safire, channeling, well, you know who:

“RN…You saw the results of the European Parliament elections? Schröder is finished. Chirac has had it. Next year they'll be begging Bush for support.”

Alas, no. ‘RN’ may be right that Chirac and Schroeder are toast, but the last thing these wicked weasels will do is turn to George W. Bush for help. In both France and Germany keeping out of Iraq is very popular and keeping in with George W. Bush is very unpopular. That hasn’t changed.

Meanwhile writing over at TCS, Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute concludes an interesting piece on Germany with this:

“For the United States, the latest election is tremendous news. A chastened Schroeder will have to be a more reasonable political ally. And the pressure for the EU to adopt centralized German socialism rather than free market principles is now significantly lower than it once was. This will be a strong boon for the European economy, and will be an even bigger plus for Germany if the voter revolt begins a dramatic overhaul of its economic policies.”

I wish Hassett were right. In fact, the German elections were a vote against the very modest economic reforms Schroeder has been pushing. That’s not a lesson that will be lost on Chirac (his poor results can at least partly be attributed to the unpopularity of his reform program) or other folk who pull many of the strings in Brussels. Don’t be misled by the fact that the center-right did so well in Germany. With a few (possibly important) exceptions, they don’t offer voters much of an alternative to the current German economic model. Remember that it was the center-right (Helmut Kohl only ceased to be chancellor in 1998) who took the decision to impose the high tax/high cost/high regulation model on ex-East Germany with such destructive results.

As always, pessimism is called for.

A reader writes:

"Fowler's actual words on the topic are actually quite inspiring, and deserving of quotation in the Corner:

"The English-speaking world may be divided into (1) those who neither know nor care what a split infinitive is; (2) those who do not know, but care very much; (3) those who know and condemn; (4) those who know and approve; and (5) those who know and distinguish. Those who neither know nor care are the vast majority, and are a happy folk, to be envied by most of the minority classes."

My source is of course the Second Edition, the definitive Fowler.

I'll keep this brief. Andrew replies to one of my posts, but not the other. To my "everyone into the pool" criticism, he responds with a host of complaints about Bush and contrasts them to a column I wrote (and linked to in my original post) as if I'm contradicting myself. Indeed, he makes it sound as if I'm being hypocritical for criticizing Bush myself while criticizing him for doing the same (he also implies that because I'm "institutionally related" to Bush through NR I could never have a truly intellectually honest position).

This is a bait and switch. I didn't say there are not legitimate complaints about Bush. Indeed, I stipulated there were and linked to some of my own. His expasive list of complaints about Abu Ghraib etc are all fine, I suppose, but they are off topic. The point was that Andrew was treating "fiscal conservatives" as if they are creatures who operate on a single issue wearing blinders to every other issue (and I should note that even blinkered fiscal conservatives do like tax cuts, a lot.)

As for my second post about him not mentioning on his blog that he has categorically ruled out supporting Bush, he's said nothing publicly. But a few of his readers and others have noted that Sullivan has publicly said elsewhere that he cannot support Bush and this is not news. And others have pointed me to long passages by Andrew where he details his anguish over Bush's support of the FMA which, if you read between the lines he makes it pretty clear that he cannot support Bush. Again, if you read between the lines. If you don't, they read more like he's building suspense. And the overwhelming majority of folks I've heard from who regularly read Sullivan's site were shocked that he would say something so coyly at home and so clearly elsewhere.

Update/Correction: I posted this above too, but I'd better say it here as well since there are some many permalinks to this post. Andrew Sullivan does mention the Advocate essay and my criticism. I didn't read the post headlined "The Marriage Thing" thinking it was another post about gay marriage. I'm sorry for saying otherwise. As for the case he makes, I'll let it stand for itself.

Si metrum non habet, non est poema.

(Kathryn, you'll be glad to know that a reader has sent me many, many useful Latin phrases.)

I read Andrew Sullivan's site fairly regularly, as do lots of people I know. In fact, I get some grief from some readers -- and Cornerites -- for paying as much attention to Sullivan as I do. That doesn't bother me. I respect Andrew, consider him a friend and I respect his influence which is an objective fact regardless of my personal attitudes.

As even moderate readers of Sullivan's site can attest, his positions of late have been something of a moving target. I get lots of conjecture from our mutual audiences about "what's going on" with Sullivan and it varies in persuasiveness. Whatever his motivations, no one who reads his stuff can deny that he's moved increasingly into the anti-Bush camp, often for reasons that don't seem powerful or at least persuasive enough to match his pro-Bush conviction from, say, this time last year (See my "everyone into the pool" post below).

But I must say I was surprised to discover this link from the gay magazine The Advocate. It seems that Andrew had been unequivocal about his opinions on Bush in that publication but not in his blog. In his advocate essay he writes:

But it’s time to say something very clearly: Bush’s endorsement of antigay discrimination in the U.S. Constitution itself is a deal-breaker. I can’t endorse him this fall. Like many other gay men and women who have supported him, despite serious disagreements, I feel betrayed, abused, attacked.

I will be excoriated by the same people who always denounce anyone who doesn’t toe the Democratic Party line. “What took you so long?” they sneer. Hope, engagement, principle are my answers. I do not regret trying to make conservatism safe for gays. It’s still possible to be in favor of small government, low taxes, a tough foreign policy, and to be a proud gay man. My principles haven’t changed. Nor will they anytime soon. But when a president allies himself with forces that really do want to keep gay people in jail, therapy, or the closet, it’s time to break off. The deal is broken. And no amount of rationalization can make it whole again.

Now I disagree with much (but not all) of what Andrew says in his essay. But it's an honest and decent position. Still what baffles me is why, to my knowledge, he's made no reference to this essay or his absolutist position on his site. Maybe, I missed it and he has. But I don't think so. Obviously, there's no binding code of ethics governing the blogosphere and even if there were I doubt it would have anything to say about not linking to articles you've written elsewhere or being obligated to express every significant opinion you have. But still, reading Andrew over the last year, you would have gotten the impression that at least theoretically his mind was open on who to support. According to this piece, it isn't. And that strikes me as an extremely significant silence.

Indeed, last March, Andrew offered this response to a post by Kathryn Lopez:

DON'T RUSH ME: National Review's Kathryn Lopez made the following remark before my spring break: "I do wish Sullivan would save time and come out for Kerry now. In just a matter of time he will come up with the rationalizations, but it's taking him painfully long to get on with it. I'm betting all Kerry will have to do is say that he's against terrorism." I'm mystified by this remark. It has always seemed to me that a political writer is not necessarily partisan. Some of us are actually trying to figure out who's the better candidate for the next four years and haven't made our minds up already. This time in the last election cycle, I was for McCain before I was for Gore. It took till the fall for me to realize where Gore was headed and narrowly opted for W. And one of the unique joys of a blog like this is that a writer can actually think out loud in real time together with the readers. Is that a crime? Am I supposed to stop thinking at all? Now, no one need wonder for more than a few nano-seconds whom National Review will endorse this fall. That's fine. But it's equally fine for others to take a more independent approach. There's a difference between "rationalizations" and "reasons."

I think that's all fine, if a bit haughty. But, Andrew, whatever happened to the benefits of "thinking out loud"?

From the LA Times:

"WASHINGTON — Immigrants are filling nearly three out of every 10 new jobs in the rebounding U.S. economy, a development that may dilute the political dividend to President Bush from an election-year recovery, a study to be released today concludes. The report by the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center found that workers who were not U.S. citizens claimed 378,496 jobs out of a net increase of 1.3 million from the first three months of 2003 through the first three months of this year."

Of course, these numbers may mean less than you first think. They seem to contrast the absolute number of non-US citizens taking these jobs against the net total of jobs created rather than against the absolute number of hires in that three month period. Doing the latter would (I imagine) show a far less dramatic percentage, and thus be less of a story. Still, the report is certainly food for thought, as is this:

"But the Pew study suggested that Latinos, in strictly economic terms, may have more to lose from immigration than other workers."Immigrant Latinos, especially the most recent arrivals, have captured the most jobs," the report said. "Moreover, the improved employment picture has not delivered higher wages to workers overall and to Latinos in particular." The median, or midpoint, weekly earnings for Latinos dropped from $402 in the first quarter of 2003 to $395 during the same period this year, after adjusting for inflation. They lost ground when compared with African American and white workers. "The growth in the supply of labor has surely contributed to keeping wages down," Kochhar said.

Kochar, the labor economist who prepared this study, is surely right about this. Labor is much like most goods. Increase the supply and the price will go down. And this, of course, is one of the many reasons to oppose the bizarre Bush immigration scheme which, by dramatically increasing the supply of legal workers, primarily (I imagine) in already low wage sectors of the economy, might be a good thing for the Wal-Marts of this world, but would be terrible news for blue collar America.

Read the whole thing.

Here's another European politician who may not quite have understood the implications of the EU elections. Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen (not a bad guy, but like so many on the Danish center-right, he has a blind spot when it comes to the EU) has announced that the "most important signal from the elections was that we must bring the EU much closer to [its] citizens."

Well no, Anders. The real signal from those elections was that most of the EU's citizens want Brussels to be kept as far away from them as possible. Try listening.

The correct phrase is to 'party heartily'. Anyone who says 'party hearty' is not doing good. Split infinitives? The rule against them is, as someone who must not be named would say, illogical, Jim. See H.W. Fowler for more on this exciting topic. Finally, mention of Cervantes' great book reminds me that Don Quixote is correctly pronounced 'Don Kwixott'. Any alternative from the mouth of a native English-speaker is, like, Beijing, Kebek, Ni-ha-ra-uah and so on, nothing but an affectation.

And, having now condemned affectation, I shall now try to think of something to say in Latin...

From a reader:

Jonah, Talk about random, but I'm reading Don Quixote for the first time (I'm 28, but didn't get to read much classic literature in school) and today at lunch I happened across the very dog story that you copied into the Corner today. I don't read DQ every day, and then only about 15 pages at a time, so what a very odd coincidence. Thanks for explaining the moral, as I found it a bit puzzling when encountering it in DQ. Although I also found it interesting that you didn't include the last line of the story, since it pertains to your current profession. The man also says, "You think it's easy to write a book?"

Keep up the good work and I'll buy you're book when it comes out, so keep
plugging away at it.

From a reader:

It is possible to party hard(y) without throwing your whole heart into it. I've been to many a shin dig where I was partying hard, but it was not something that I threw my whole self into the swing of things.

It is not possible however to party hearty without by definition partying
hard. If you are partying with your heart (and presumably soul) then you
can't help but be partying hard (or has hard as you personally can muster).

Therefore, this is a matter of degree: to party hearty is to party harder
than to merely party hardy.

I've never been able to read Joyce. But the point that it took him 7 years to write Ulysses reminds me of a story out of Don Quixote.

A man walks to the center of town, and gathers a crowd to watch the show he's about to put on. The man picks up a dog and inserts a tube into its rump. He begins to inflate the dog. The crowd watches, fascinated. The dog grows larger. Eventually, the man pulls the tube out and lots of air noisily escapes. The dog runs away. The man turns to the crowd expectantly, and asks: "You think it's easy to inflate a dog with a tube?"

Moral: Just because someone works hard at a piece of work doesn't mean it's great art.

I'm getting lots and lots of email along these lines:

Re: Sullivan's flirtation with "the pool" -- COULDN"T AGREE MORE. I am one of Sullivan's "fiscal conservatives," and I am FAR from comfortable with Bush on the spending front. However, I am willing to live with my discomfiture as long as I can, well, just plain continue to live, and I need a President who's strong in the WOT to continue doing that. Being in MA and having watched Kerry in action for years now I am more than convinced he doesn't fit the bill.

Furthermore, who's running that Sullivan thinks would be better? Even just one summer in Provincetown should have convinced anyone that again - it ain't John Kerry.....

I agree with this reader on the superiority of "Hardy" but I would assume NR would reject his method. Proper usage shouldn't be a popularity contest. Of course, I am not an absolutist myself on such issues. Anyway, from a reader:

When I want to see which of two variants of something is more widespread, I just google each phrase and see which has more hits. In this case, Party Hearty has a slight lead over Party Hardy. It should, because it makes more sense. Party Hardy seems more fitting for, say, an outdoor party in the Arctic.

The Chicago Manuel of Style has not frowned on split infinitives since 1983. "In this day and age, it seems, an injunction against splitting infinitives is one of those shibboleths whose only reason for survival is to give increased meaning to the lives of those who can both identify by name a discrete grammatical, syntactic, or orthographic entity and notice when that entity has been somehow besmirched."

Re today's G-File, from a reader:

Jonah,

While I enjoy your work on NRO and National Review, your comments on
Lamisil about the toe nail fungus left me scratching my head.

I had that infection since 1999, and I finally went to the doctor about it,
after my pharmacist wife kept after me about it.He said I had the worst
case of that he had ever seen (thanks doc!) , and he prescribed Lamisil,
but he had to take a sample of the toe nail, to test it to ensure it was
real, because the does cost about $550.00. my insurance did cover it,
fortunately. I was surprised, but am glad our insurance switched to a
medical savings account this year, since I feel it gets closer to a free
market approach.

Anyway, He said the actual infection occurs where the toenails first grow,
somewhere behind where the toe nails are, and that is why it takes so long.
It took about 4 months for my nails to return to normal, but I think it was
worth it. The longest it is supposed to take is a year, but my guess is
that it is less than that for most people.

The only way it could be treated right away is for the nail to fall off,
and I had both of my large toe nails break off late last year. I only knew
because while I was getting ready for work, I noticed a trail of blood on
the floor, and I looked down and saw my nail was gone, while I was trying
to put on my sock. When they finally grew back in, they were still
infected. Only the Lamisil cured it.

So I do agree seeing it in the commercial is nasty, it is a pretty
remarkable product, and maybe one day they will have a faster cure, but it
worked for me, and I was glad it didn't take as long.

Andrew Sullivan rightly zings Bush on his love of big government and overspending. There's nothing wrong with that. Indeed, National Review -- and particularly Ramesh -- has been doing that for a while. In fact I did it again just the other day.

However, Sullivan concludes by asking "No president since Johnson has been so supportive of big government as George W. Bush. Why are fiscal conservatives still supporting him?"

This is surely another example of Andrew's effort to build some sort of eagle-schwarzenegger-McCainiac-Catania-liberal Republican-pro-gay marriage-South Park popular front against Bush. So far, needless to say, the bonfire isn't catching.

And I think I know why. Indeed, I think the answer resides in Andrew's question: "Why are fiscal conservatives still supporting [Bush]?"

The answer is that fiscal conservatives aren't single-issue voters, and I'm kind of astounded that Sullivan thinks they should be. A blog which soared with high-minded rhetoric about how the war on terror is the test for this generation and that Bush was the right man to lead that struggle, now day-after-day tries to whittle away at reasons to support Bush in the fall as if the war on terror were merely another issue which can be trumped by any other issue you happen to feel more passionate about. Maybe "fiscal conservatives" aren't defined by their fiscal conservatism? Or maybe they think this election isn't a choice about a single issue be it the deficit or, say, gay marriage? Maybe the election is about a choice between George W. Bush and the people he would appoint to staff his administration and the judicial branch and John F. Kerry and the people he would appoint and how those respective administrations would govern across a wide array of issues including first and foremost the war on terror? And maybe most conservatives find that a cost-benefit analysis on that question yields a fairly obvious answer. Perhaps conservatives are less afflicted with the identity-politics attitude Andrew seems to be imposing on them?

Some days it really sounds like Sullivan wants to jump into the anti-Bush pool but he just can't muster the gumption if others won't join him.

From an article in today's Washington Times on Kerry's appeal to union-members in New Jersey:

"Asked whether Mr. Kerry's patrician — some say French — face and wife worth an estimated $550 million hurts his ability to relate to the working class, Mr. Mullen replied, 'Yeah, but he's our rich French guy and we got to stick with him.'"

I for one cannot wait for the Democratic Convention, with chants of RFG! RFG! RFG! (that's rich French guy).

What the bejeebers is going on in here? Everyone seems to be whirling-derbish.

A funky drawing doohimuhfragdet.

From a reader:

Jonah: Our politics are quite different, but I certainly agree with you on the academic front. I hope you know that not all of us liberals support the sophistic foucauldian crap that has taken over our universities. I don't particularly like Strauss' readings of texts, but at least he was READING great texts. If you haven't already, read Allan Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind."

New Derb-gear slogan...

John Derbyshire - The Ombudsman's Ombudsman

That Zarqawi letter wasn't legit. From the AP:

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) In a June 14 story, The Associated Press reported that Islamic Web sites posted the text of a letter purportedly to Osama bin Laden from the leader of militants in Iraq saying his fighters were being squeezed by U.S.-led coalition troops.

A comparison subsequently showed that the purported letter from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was the same text intercepted and released in February by the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq.

The text refers to insurgents' efforts to seize control of Iraq ''four months before the formation of the promised Iraqi government ....'' This appears to be a reference to the coalition's turnover of control planned June 30 rather than to Iraqi national elections in January 2005.

From a reader (at the University Of Chicago, known breeding ground for the Straussian bacillus):

Mr Goldberg,

In response to your Corner post on Strauss: have you ever seen a discussion of
the curious phenomenon that Straussians and neocons, when frequently lumped
together as Straussian neocons, are vilified simultaneously as anti-democratic
and hence dangerous, and as foolish spreaders of democracy around the globe,
and hence dangerous?

If the recent EU elections revealed anything, it was the degree to which the EU's political class has succeeded in alienating, boring, and generally irritating large numbers of voters. Under the circumstances, you'd think a little diplomacy might now be called for. You'd think. Well, here's Wilfred Martens, former Belgian Prime Minister and President of the European People's Party (the supposedly center-right grouping in the EU's 'parliament' ), on the topic of the high abstention rates recorded in the Eastern European countries that recently signed up for Brussels.

"For the new countries, Europe is too complicated..."

I wonder what the Polish is for 'patronizing bastard'.

John - I'll take your point under advisement. But some preliminary thoughts:

1) Surely you have no problem illuminating the inconvenient fact that the Red Scare was the product of a liberal Democratic administration. To listen to liberals talk about McCarythism, one would think that such episodes can and must spring forth only from Republican and conservative administrations and politicians. Surely, the fact that the Wilson administration was far more complicit in a far greater crackdown on dissidents, socialists, and "Bolshies" than anything which transpired on Eisenhower's watch or was done by Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn is significant.

2) When I condemn Palmer -- at least in this context -- I'm trying to illustrate that by the standards of the liberal-left Palmer was a very bad guy. For some reason, when the liberal-left commits heinous acts we're supposed to believe they were the product of America's fundamental badness. When "conservatives" do bad things, however, we're told such crimes are a direct and logical consequence of their ideology. In this way, liberals can (or try to) claim that they have always and everywhere been on the right side of history, which is utter nonsense.

Hence "America" failed when a liberal president interned Japanese-Americans. Hence America or, even better, "right-wingers" were responsible for the Red Scare under Wilson when in fact liberals and even socialists deserve much of the blame.

Industrialists, for example, may be partly to blame for the "rush to war" in WWI, but that explanation was in no small part put forward to hide the blame which deserved to rest squarely on the shoulders of pro-war socialists and liberals in America. Indeed, most liberals and socialists in America were very pro-war. And for all the grief conservatives get these days for being “haters,” we can’t hold a candle to those guys. Pro-war socialist Charles E. Russel declared that his former colleagues should be “driven from the country.” J.G. Phelps Stokes insisted that anti-war socialists should be “shot at once without delay.” Etc. Etc.

3) I do not dispute that during the witch hunts of the Red Scare there were real witches. But that doesn't absolve the Wilson administration of everything it did. Truth be told, the Palmer Raids and that stuff doesn't bother me nearly as much as the way Wilson and Creel manipulated the public into war. But that's a subject for another day.

I found a link to this very long essay on AL Daily. I don't know much about the author and the piece itself is much better than I'd expected. But there's nothing in it that shakes me from my general conviction that commentary about the evil influence of Leo Strauss on American politics is almost never worth reading. The upshot seems to be that Straussian rhetoric has infected contemporary liberalism making it more hostile to democracy. The usual dot-connections between supposed Straussian administration officials (who when they are not Straussians are Trotskyites) and the war on terror are presented, again.

Maybe it's because I'm halfway through Richard Wolin's excellent book, The Seduction of Unreason which chronicles the Left's forty year infatuation with fascist thinking and opposition to all the principles of the enlightenment but I just have no patience with liberals who bitch and moan about the damage Leo Strauss wrought. When the academy is overrun with disciples of Heiddegger and Foucault, the idea that Leo Strauss posed the major threat to democratic principles is so brain-poundingly stupid it drives me to distraction. Foucault supported the Islamic Revolution in Iran for pete's sake. Maybe you should get your own houses in order before you scapegoat a scholar most college students and virtually all journalists know nothing about.

Can anyone think of a better candidate for this title than Ramsey Clark?

More on Krugman's partisan hackdom from a reader:

Well, John Mitchell went to jail for things he did in office. He was Nixon's AG. So forget Reno or Palmer (and, to be candid, jailing bolshie's never bothered me) isn't John Mitchell the gold standard of AG malevolence? You are right about liberals not even remembering where they were just yesterday.

I just witnessed something truly touching. I'm in Anchorage on business and I was sitting in a noisy restaurant when some one turned the TV to Ronald Reagan's sunset burial service. The entire restraint went quite. The noisy weekend crowd full of jaded, cynical business travelers like me, went almost completely silent. When they lifted up his casket to carry it to his final resting place, the crowd spontaneously stood up. It was truly a remarkable moment. I don't suspect I'll see anything like it again.

I must respond to your Corner e-mailer who agrees with Krugman, "minus the hyperventalating". This, from recent AG testimony before Senate Judiciary:

***We have leveled criminal charges against 310 individuals. To date, we have won 179 convictions.

***We have broken up terrorist plots all across America-from Virginia to Oregon, from Florida to New York, in the heartland and on both coasts.

***We have targeted the lifeblood of transnational terrorism, launching 70 investigations into terrorist financing.

But the most tangible measure of success is found in this fact for which we are grateful to God, [fellow] citizens, and law enforcement: For more than two-and-a-half years, we have not experienced a major terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

Sorry, I rarely disagree with the cornerites and have never agreed with Krugman, but this time, if you ignore the hyperventilating I think he's got a point. Bush is running on his record as strong on terror. Well, he's got a justice department that competes with homeland security on who can scare us better yet there have been no successful prosecutions, no raids such as happen in Europe every couple of months and they're totally bogged down on this enemy combatant thing -- they don't justify it succinctly -- and they're getting a well-deserved black eye as a result.

I think Krugman makes factual arguments this time and deserves to have those arguments dealt with on that basis instead of lowering to his level of ad hominem attacks.

Sorry.

That Krugman opener is a classic example of liberal historical amnesia. One gets the sense that Krugman didn't even bother to look at a list of former of AGs before he declared Ashcroft is the worst. It's the pragmatic liberal's use of history, if your version works, it's true enough. What about A. Mitchell Palmer? He was the architect of a massive society-wide clamp down on political dissent. Indeed, he was the mastermind of precisely the sort of clamp down Ashcroft haters falsely claim this administration is guilty of and which was far worse than anything that happened during the McCarthy "era." Or, for that matter, what about Bobby Kennedy? He was the one who bugged Martin Luther King -- which we are always told is the highwater mark of government perfidy (they just leave out who was responsible).

Meanwhile, maybe the reason Ashcroft hasn't had too many successful terrorist convictions on his watch is that he's too concerned with preventing more terrorist attacks. There haven't been any on American soil since 9/11 -- which would have shocked everybody three years ago, including Krugman. But I'm sure he's forgotten that too.

No Left Turns has a very interesting post on the Pledge case yesterday. Most interesting is this snippet from Clarence Thomas who writes:

as a matter of our precedent, the Pledge policy is unconstitutional. I believe, however, that Lee [v. Weisman] was wrongly decided. Lee depended on a notion of “coercion” that, as I discuss below, has no basis in law or reason. The kind of coercion implicated by the Religion Clauses is that accomplished “by force of law and threat of penalty.” 505 U.S., at 640 (Scalia, J., dissenting); see id., at 640—645. Peer pressure, unpleasant as it may be, is not coercion.

Until his man is appointed to the Nuclear Regulatory Agency:

In the latest flare-up of a long-running fight, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is once again blocking action on dozens of President Bush’s nominees for executive branch posts until the Senate approves the nomination of one of Reid’s aides for a seat on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Reid’s move threatens to unravel a deal he struck last year with the White House on Greg Jaczko, a Reid staffer and nuclear physicist who has been chosen as a Democratic nominee for the NRC. Bush nominated Jaczko in February for a Democratic slot on the five-member commission, but the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee — after hearing intense opposition from the nuclear-power industry — has not yet cleared his nomination.

That said, I think the psychological impact of 9/11 was, for obvious reasons, far, far worse, and will be infintely more durable, than Abu Ghraib, but I don't think that it's fair to reduce Soros' argument to saying that "he suggested the prison abuse was equivalent to the terrorist attacks.." He's a little more subtle than that, subtle, but still utterly misguided.

Of course, I'm delighted the court dismissed the case, but I would have liked a thorough drubbing better.

Still, this reminded me of something. Reagan's funerals (State and national) were dripping with references to God, the almighty, providence etc. The State funeral was officiated by two chaplains from the legislative branch and the national one was in a church conspicuously festooned with all of the rituals of faith. Did the government pay for any of it? And if so, why aren't the ACLU and Newdow crowd furious?

Of course they probably are hopping mad, but nobody gave them a platform (if an ACLUer shrieks in the woods and nobody hears it...). Nevertheless, as a matter of law and custom, you'd think last week's ceremonies proved the government's position on God in much the same way all of those letters to Santa demonstrated it's position on him in Miracle on 34th Street. Whether your an atheist or not, God's part of the culture -- legal, political and all otherwise. Deal with it.

Ronald Reagan: “I was raised from my childhood by parents who believed bigotry and prejudice were the worst things a person could be guilty of.”

John Derbyshire writes: “I think the same principle can be applied to funeral tributes. GWB's remark was just the cant of our age.”

Actually, how about see these remarks as the “cant” of a simpler age – that of Dixon, Illinois in the early 1900s. We should envision Dixon as a place where you didn’t have to lock your doors at night, where chewing gum in class was the worst of offenses (unlike say, rape, murder, etc… today). In a place like Dixon, perhaps bigotry and prejudice WERE the worst things a person could be guilty of. And, if those were the two worst things a person could be guilty of, we today should envy Dixon’s trivial worries.

Actually, I am for the government cracking down. Had government not forty years ago abandoned its cracking down on indecency, we would all be in better shape today. Now, I would prefer that it be local government doing the cracking down. And I'm sure that government (local, state, or national) cannot bear exclusive or even primary responsibility in this area. Government's role must be subsidiary: supporting the norms informally enforced by families, religious communities, etc. And prudence will sometimes counsel restraint. But what we've leaned over the past forty years, is that when government abandons the field, the institutions of civil society cannot by themselves maintain the norms. Indecency, when tolerated in a society like ours, flourishes; and it imposes large and variegated social costs. But someone will ask: Is it worth sacrificing free speech to avoid these costs? Conceiving the problem as a trade-off between free speech and public morality seems to me to misconceive it. The public display of buttocks, etc., isn't even remotely the subject that is protected by our constitutional commitment to freedom of speech. To suppose otherwise is to trivialize free speech. That free speech is today so widely trivialized in precisely this way is a testament to William J. Brennan's skills at witchcaft.

Nick Confessore writes:

Frequent readers of Tapped know that there are few arguments that I detest more in political punditry than the one that your opponents are crazy. And the evidence is that big-name conservatives do this far more than their liberal equivalents. Among allegedly respectable conservatives, alleged psychiatrist Charles Krauthammer is one of the repeat offenders. Among less respectable pundits, Ann Coulter is an obvious candidate. But you see this pretty much throughout the right-wing press.

Me: Fair enough, I say. It's a legitimate gripe, though I think he might be too quick to over-read a stylistic fluorish for an actual charge of mental illness. Still, considering Tapped's -- and progressives' -- far more entrenched tendency to ascribe racism to their opponents, you would think there'd be a little less righteousness on the point. After all, I would certainly prefer to be called crazy than racist, and I should know since I get called both all the time.

But even more to the point, I assume Nick condemns the five decades old tradition in the social and medical sciences in (liberal) academia (starting with Adorno) to brand political conservatism a mental defect. See, here for example. Or, wait for my book.

From a reader:

Your latest Corner post is slightly off in that it misinterprets Churchill's somewhat famous "United States of Europe" remark.

When Churchill said "We must build a kind of United States of Europe", he wasn't referring to a Europe containing Great Britain. He wanted a Europe that would tame the more reckless ambitions of Germany and France. Churchill did not want Britain to be involved in the USE (United States of Europe) save as its "friend and sponsor." That's why he set about creating the rather benign Council of Europe (which still exists).

Churchill reflected traditional British foreign policy of never subscribing to a permanent alliance. The United States of Europe was necessary for Europe, a group to which Great Britain, geography notwithstanding, was not a member.

Here's a nice compilation of what a bunch of folks (including yours truly) would like to read in Clinton's new book.

Here’s how it’s going…some early (and shamelessly selectively chosen) statistics from the EU elections:

Poland: turn-out estimated at, ahem, 21 percent;

Sweden: Votes for the (fledgling) euroskeptics of the Junilistan: 14 percent (three seats);

Holland: anti-EU corruption crusaders: two seats;

UK: anti-EU UK Independence Party 17 percent (12 seats), the (generally) euroskeptic Tories 27 percent (25 seats); and

Czech Republic: the euroskeptic Civic Democrats come top with around 29 percent of the vote.

Ha ha ha.

Daniel Hannan, MEP:

“Lack of accountability is inherent in the EU. You will sometimes hear it said that the Commission, the EU's governing body, is undemocratic. In fact, uniquely in the Western world, it contrives to be anti-democratic, in the sense that you generally have to lose an election to be sent there: witness Neil Kinnock or Chris Patten.”

Ouch.

Again, it’s too early to decide on the merits of Spitzer’s case, if not his (reprehensible) motives, but this letter I received in response to yesterday’s post makes interesting reading:

“Since I am pharmaceutical research scientist, I could be accused of bias. On the other hand, one might take the position that I might happen to know what I am talking about. Spitzer's attack on GlaxoSmithKline is my opinion wrongheaded and misguided. He alleges that the company failed adequately to promote a study that cast doubt on the utility of one of its anti-depressant products in adolescents.

“The problem is, clinical studies in depression are notoriously difficult to complete… It therefore requires multiple, repeated studies to get reliable, authoritative information. Some antidepressants were studied for many years before definitive decisions could be made. After many, many clinical trials. The results of one clinical trial should always be interpreted cautiously. …In the case of the particular study referenced by Spitzer, there were clear methodological problems. In fact, when the study was publicized by one of the investigators at a national meeting, it was for the purpose of underscoring and discussing these methodological issues.

“Whether a drug works or not [should] be decided, for regulatory purposes, by scientific experts at FDA, and not by state attorneys general.”

Spitzer’s intervention may well prove (in the precedent it sets) disastrous and, medically speaking, catastrophic in its chilling effect on research. All I can say is that he had better be right on the facts of this case. High stakes, Mr. Spitzer, high stakes.

John, he sounds like a tremendous doctor. Amongst the numerous doctors in our family, we always enjoyed the spectacle of great uncle Tom, a splendid, if faintly eccentric, individual who lived amongst his patients in the Fleggs, a remote and marshy part of Norfolk. As an old man, he was joined in his practice by a keen young doctor (my father). Not long after he started, the keen young doctor returned from calling on one of his patients (those were the days), who I’ll call Mrs Smith.

Great Uncle Tom: “How did you get on with Mrs Smith?”

KYD: “Fine, there’s nothing wrong with her, she’s just a little depressed.”

Great Uncle Tom: “Did you give her anything to take?”

KYD: “No, there was nothing wrong with her. She just wanted a chat.”

Great Uncle Tom: “That won’t do, that won’t do at all. Patients expect a pill. You’ve got to give ‘em a pill.”

At that point, he pointed to some large medicine jars filled with brightly-colored pills. The nearest thing they had to an active ingredient was sugar.

Always did the trick, he said.

It’s a rare mullah who will consider his work well done without a little censorship. The health mullahs are no exception. The issue of censoring smoking in movies has been around for a while now, particularly so far as, yes, you know what’s coming, you can hear their little feet just about now, yes, ‘the Children’, are concerned, but now there are fresh moves afoot in the UK to restrict youngsters’ access to films that fume.

Much of the research on which such initiatives are allegedly based (in reality, they are, of course, nothing more than an opportunity for a proclamation of ‘virtue’) is dubious, but it’s a shame too for what such censorship could mean for the little historical accuracy that remains in the movies.

As the Independent notes, “the initiative has received a mixed response from film critics, who raised the possibility of "anachronistic film- making" where scenes set in the 1940s or 50s would show no one smoking. Will Self, the Evening Standard's film critic, said: "In LA Confidential, which is a good film, there's one scene set in a 1950s Los Angeles police squad room, and no one is smoking. Already films are becoming anachronistic in their treatment - you get working-class pubs where no one smokes."

And then there’s this:

"England football stars have been criticised for promoting snacks and drinks at the root of Britain's obesity crisis. The England squad is sponsored by McDonald's and Coca-Cola. David Beckham promotes Pepsi and Wayne Rooney helps advertise Pringles crisps."

Sigh.

From the Independent today:

“A 19-year-old soldier is to be recommended for the Victoria Cross, Britain's highest gallantry decoration, after driving his blazing vehicle through an ambush, saving the lives of its injured commander and crew in southern Iraq last month.”

British history buffs will know that the most Victoria Crosses (11) won at a single engagement was at Rorke’s Drift, the battle later immortalized (and, inevitably, somewhat fictionalized) in Zulu, one of the finest, possibly the finest, war movies ever made. The medals themselves are made from Russian guns captured in the Crimean War.

That's the history. And now there's Iraq, history being made today:

“Though still being hit by machine-gun and rocket-propelled grenades, the driver succeeded in crashing through the barrier and led the way for the rest of the convoy to get to safety. He then unloaded the wounded and made sure they were tended by medical orderlies before remounting his burning vehicle and driving it to where it could cause little harm if the fuel and ammunition still aboard blew up. He drew a fire extinguisher to tackle the blaze before he was taken away to have his own wounds treated.

“When a platoon of Argylls still trapped in the first ambush position ran out of ammunition, they then carried out a bayonet charge to clear their positions.”

'Hero' is an often debased label these days. Not on this occasion.

Results for elections to the EU’s ‘parliament’ are due out tonight, and in the UK the focus will be on the size of the vote for the UK Independence Party, a party that advocates withdrawal from the EU. For a one issue party – and one with a good percentage of oddballs in its ranks - UKIP did surprisingly well in the local elections, winning two seats in the London Assembly and doing pretty well in the other local elections it contested, both indications that it might be celebrating tonight.

The worry for the Tories? That support for the UKIP will siphon off some of the votes that they could otherwise expect. Well, that’s as may be, but a shift by the Conservatives in the direction of outright opposition to the EU would be a mistake. It would allow Labour to portray them as extreme and unfit for government, and the voters would almost certainly agree.

The answer is for Michael Howard to continue to stress his eurosceptic policies: opposition to the proposed EU ‘constitution’, UK adoption of the Euro, and further regulatory overreach by Brussels. And then to make clear that if those policies cause a crisis in relations with the EU, well, that’s just too bad. Promising to try and renegotiate the treaties would, however, be a step too far.

This report from The Observer has more. Note the comment from one Lucy Sykes of the pro-Brussels ‘Britain in Europe’ pressure group:

'We cannot take it as read that people in this country understand or are passionate about Europe…"

I’ll say, Lucy.