We may have not always liked what they had to say, but one of the more refreshing aspects of the recent election was the emergence of the 527s who threw money, passion and greater popular involvement into the electoral process. In consequence (and regardless of what you thought about the result) as a civic exercise the election was something of a success.

Unsurprisingly, this has infuriated the same Washington barons who brought us McCain-Feingold-Bush. There are now attempts to crack down on the 527s. As I said, no surprise there. What is disappointing is that other previously more principled politicians have now joined in the attempt to suppress free speech. Ryan Sager has more on this topic in an excellent piece that can be found here. As I read it, these words from the end of Animal Farm came to mind:

“There was the same hearty cheering as before, and the mugs were emptied to the dregs. But as the animals outside gazed at the scene, it seemed to them that some strange thing was happening. What was it that had altered in the faces of the pigs? Clover's old dim eyes flitted from one face to another. Some of them had five chins, some had four, some had three. But what was it that seemed to be melting and changing? Then, the applause having come to an end, the company took up their cards and continued the game that had been interrupted, and the animals crept silently away. But they had not gone twenty yards when they stopped short. An uproar of voices was coming from the farmhouse. They rushed back and looked through the window again. Yes, a violent quarrel was in progress. There were shoutings, bangings on the table, sharp suspicious glances, furious denials. The source of the trouble appeared to be that Napoleon and Mr. Pilkington had each played an ace of spades simultaneously. Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

Senator Lott, you can do better than this.

One of the more interesting developments over the next few months is the way in which two issues – ‘Brussels’ and multiculturalism/immigration - may well collide.

A few weeks ago, Britain’s opposition Conservatives were in effect told that in the extremely unlikely prospect of a Tory win in the forthcoming elections, the party's (modest) attempts at immigration reform would simply not be permitted under EU law.

In Denmark, one of the reasons cited by the victorious center-right (there has just been an election) for declining to enter into formal coalition with another party on the right (the anti-immigration Danish People’s Party, which is now the third largest in the country) was the DPP's opposition to the EU ‘constitution’. Now, the Danish People’s Party has many faults, and is not always very likeable, but it has clearly understood what a more federal EU will mean for Denmark’s ability to decide who it admits past its borders. Its more mainstream associates on the Danish right (who while in government have clamped down on immigration) have not.

Meanwhile in the London Spectator (February 5th, subscription required, even for, sigh, print subscribers), the often obnoxious and frequently brilliant Rod Liddle has this to say in the course of a fascinating article on Holland’s problems with integrating its Muslim minority.

“…All of this is aided and abetted by the European Union, its liberal immigration laws, its espousal of multiculturalism and, crucially, it’s implicit disavowal of the concept of a sovereign nation state with a coherent national identity.”

He’s right.

Expect to hear much, much more on this topic.

The Dutch Report blog is reporting that the head of the (doubtless feared, and possibly legendary) AIVD (the country’s intelligence service) has given his first interview since the ritual slaughter of Theo van Gogh. The Dutch Reporter highlights this comment (I have tidied up the English a little):

“I think that we should realize that the way that we sometimes agitate in an extreme way against Islam makes it more likely that people who are already unstable will go in the direction of radicalism than moderate their opinions”

Translation: if you are even thinking about criticising extremist Islam, keep your mouth shout. Over in Britain, Blair’s proposed religious hate crimes law is based on very much the same type of thinking and, somewhere up high, or maybe down below, the ghost of Neville Chamberlain is smiling…

Howard Kurtz's run-down is useful. It's going to be pretty wild to see how some major news outlets which never mentioned the story in the first place must now explain why Jordan resigned.

I also think this illustrates something very significant about the comparative successes of the Leftwing bloggers and the rightwing bloggers. The righty blogs have taken down Dan Rather and Eason Jordan. That is big game. The lefty blogs got this Talon news guy. I don't think this has anything to do with the skills on one side or the other. Give the lefty side credit, they're smart and they're tenacious. They're just as good at digging up old quotes, finding inconsistencies etc. as the guys on the right. In some cases they may even be better. So at that level there's really no difference. But when it comes to going after the mainstream media they really don't have the taste for it. Why is that? Well, the obvious reason is that they don't particularly disagree with the stuff the Dan Rathers and Eason Jordans say or do. Sure they may tear apart a bad poll or criticize a quote out of context if it suits their purposes. But at the end of the day, at the macro level, the fact is that the lefty bloggers and the Mainstream Media are on the same side of things. That is an important distinction which will drive the story of the blogs versus the MSM for years to come.

Update Tim Karr has more. Though in fairness, I was late on this story and really shouldn't be counted as one of the folks who brought Jordan down -- as much as I would like to be.

From a candidate at an Ivy League school:

Jonah, I am in a similar boat as your previous emailer. I entered academia knowing it was left-leaning, but dreamed of engaging in great debates. I never imagined what it would really be like. Academia is everything the Left claims to despise. Foucault wrote about how society demonizes deviant behavior (sexuality) by treating it in a sinful way. Well, the academy has done the same thing for conservatives. No matter where you go, introductory conversations always begin with a recitation of your liberalism and hatred for conservatives; in effect, making those with alternate views feel uncomfortable with their own ideas from the get-go. It is so pervasive and entrenched that you wither get on board or get left behind. For a conservative, it has been amazing to witness a hegemonic force at work, but I doubt the Left would ever admit that they have become their worst fears. As an American, I think it is a disaster for our country on multiple levels - it to some extent limits the number of conservative intellectuals, affects the minds of our youth, and leads to the coarsening of society because an entire institution has become a singular political entity, instead of an arena for dialogue.

From a reader:

Jonah--

Like your former correspondent, I want to finish my Ph.D. but I won't seek a
job in academia unless it's at a small college tucked away in a red state
somewhere. This is a lonely life.

If it were just me, I might try to make it through. But I have a family to
support and I don't feel like playing Russian Roulette with a tenure
committee.

I do take some comfort in the words of Harvey Mansfield, upon learning that
a couple of his grad students were passed over for academic jobs: "Oh
well, I guess they'll just have to go to Washington and run the country!"

Please, obviously, don't use my name.

From a professor at a major university:

To hammer a point home.

There is academia and then there are sciences. If you're a PhD in physics,
mathematics, biology, engineering etc. your political orientation does not
matter one bit. I chair a faculty search, hire a postdoc, and evaluate
prospective graduate students and I don't even know (nor do I care) what
political orientation they have. It does not matter!

The problem is not with the liberals in universities, the problem is with
the liberal arts: they are not objective disciplines, nor are they supposed
to be. Sooner or later they will be dominated by this or that kind of
subjective nons... errr, opinion.

And yes, we liberals do dominate the hard-science departments, but it
has nothing to do with a left-wing bias. I'll change my mind if you
point me to any right-wing think tank specializing in physics. :)

Cordially,

From a reader:

Mr. Goldberg, Sir, you are not being Machiavellian enough. There's no point in applying Machiavellian principles to academia in isolation. You don't want more conservative scholars per se, you want more because they're good for conservatism. But here, Churchill is great. Think about it: imagine that someone wanted to defend the arguments of a hypothetical Middle Eastern scholar, and said something to the effect that he must be right because he's a tenured professor at a respectable university, Churchill allows you to point out that you can be a liberal nutjob and get tenure. Take him away, and whatever the benefits to conservative scholars, non-academics will have his removal thrown in their faces -- "See? Republicans really don't care about free speech!" Conservative intellectuals are winning battles (hell, they're the only ones who've tried to take new territory since the Beatles broke up), and liberal intellectuals have a Churchill shaped albatross around their necks. Don't mess that up.

From a reader:

Hi Jonah,

Last year I abandoned, effectively, my dissertation when I realized I didn’t have a prayer to even compete for a job in academia—simply because I have conservative credentials.

And let me tell you, I was totally gung-ho to go a-pillaging in the academy! But, alas, with what I thought were fairly competitive academic credentials, as far as my research goes, I was never even invited to an interview where I could be told I was a worthless conservative snake.

Sour grapes!

I can't quite see what Senator Reid and the Democrats get out of complaining about Republican criticisms of him as an obstructionist. The criticisms almost all strike me as fair: Most of what the RNC did was to quote the man. He did say that the president's Social Security plan was DOA before Bush even gave his State of the Union address. Calling that obstructionist is accurate. But Reid and the Democrats are complaining that it's terribly unfair for Republicans to beat up on Reid. All the Senate Democrats signed a letter to the president asking that the criticism stop.

Various Democrats--Schumer, Durbin--have been quoted saying that Democrats made a mistake in not defending Tom Daschle when Republicans attacked him. I seem to recall that same fits being thrown about Republican criticism of Daschle, actually. But whoever's recollection is correct, what's the theory here? Does Dick Durbin really believe that he could have saved Daschle's seat if he had just said more nice things about him?

The Reid Democrats risk looking like whiny losers--which, whatever else you think of him, Howard Dean rarely does. They have already drawn more attention to the RNC's criticism than it would otherwise have received. They have in no way reduced the Republicans' willingness to criticize Reid in the future.

Andrew Busch offers a more detailed version of the Kondracke defense of Churchill; Let's not fire him, let's study him:

Instead of being fired, perhaps he should be studied and examined, much as one might probe the victim of a once-rare psychiatric disorder that has become rampant. Ward Churchill might be more valuable to the opponents of the academic left employed than unemployed.

Above all, he can serve as a living window into the intellectual, moral, and political bankruptcy of the left.

To borrow a point made by Brit Hume last night, Churchill isn't there to teach "how to be a parody of a leftwing jackass" or "I hate America 101." He is supposed to be a scholar and a teacher and a role model. It seems to me he's none of these things. Busch writes:

After all, though Churchill is now on the hot-seat, his opinions, or some slightly moderated version of them, are a dime a dozen in the academic world. He is, though he will hardly confess it, a rather tedious commonplace.

Yes that's right. There are lots and lots of characters like Churchill. And they, like Churchill, will eventually fall out of the limelight and continue to do what they do. There is, right now, no social or professional pressure to keep these guys in line. And by "in line" I don't mean they shouldn't "speak out" or "dissent" or any of that kind of thing. I mean there's no pressure on them to be professionals. Or at least there isn't enough pressure. There is bone-snapping pressure of conservative not even to pursue PhDs! I simply don't believe that the "chilling effect" on conservatives can get much worse. Meanwhile, the warm, nurturing, environment for champions of Jackassery couldn't be much more encouraging. Hang Churchill (metaphorically of course). Send a signal. If Free Leonard Peltier or Free Mumia types want to get jobs living off the public teet, poisoning the minds of students, fine. But at the very least let's make it just that much harder for them. It will still be far easier for one of them to get a good job than it will be for a decent, scholarly, professional conservative.

Studying Churchill like he was a lab rat isn't a good idea precisely because he is exactly that -- a lab rat. Typical in every way; the baseline. No one studies lab rats qua lab rats anymore. You only study them after you've done something to them. The only thing that would make Ward Churchill interesting for study is if you cut him loose. See how the other lab rats react. I'm sorry if I sound to Machiavellian about all this, but I've known too many decent, brilliant friends pursue PhDs and then get the shaft simply because they weren't interested in boutiquey leftwing causes.

The taping went fine, I guess. But I probably come out sounding too hard against Bush because we were talking about spending and A) his behavior has been outrageous and B) I could never get around to getting any pro-Bush points before we moved on. It was a very fast segment.

The woman who claimed to have seen a baby being tossed from a moving car fabricated the story to cover up a pregnancy and birth she had been trying to conceal, Broward County Sheriff Ken Jenne said Friday. The baby was never thrown.

From a reader:

I live in Denver. I'm following this Churchill embarrassment closely. Loved your article today. About the Affirmative Action issue, a local radio station did a Freedom of Information Request to CU for documents relating to his hiring, promotions, tenure and so on. It clearly shows that, at all steps along the way, his status as an American Indian was a critical component (in face, a requirement) (see KHOW.com). Looks like "resume fraud" together with "academic fraud" will be sufficient grounds to let him go. Hope so.

I understand your point, but I see these Baby Moses laws as the last resort of a society up against a wall to save babies. You may recall that Judge Edith Jones cited these laws as one of the reasons Roe v. Wade's factual assumptions about the burdens of pregnancy and an unwanted child are no longer valid.

I agree that adoption-education should be the preferred course, but I cannot fault a state for having both.

I hear where you're coming from but I disagree. I think Safe Haven laws send the message that the citizens of State X have decided that even if you don't want your baby, we do. We won't charge you with abandonment, we won't fine you, so come on in and give up the baby.

If you hadn't figured out from my column I disagree with what seems to be the consensus view among conservatives about Ward Churchill. I think he should be canned. It would be preferable if they could do it for cause -- i.e. find fraud, or malfeasance or some such -- but if not I still think he should go. I appreciate the arguments on the other side from a lot of smart folks, but at the end of the day he should never have been hired in the first place (has anyone found out if he was hired as part of a "diversity" program on account of his almost certainly fictional Indian status?). And while I understand the worries of a "chilling-effect" backlash, I think academic freedom would actually be better served if he were fired in the long run. Right now the left chills speech it doesn't like with impunity and there is no sign that they see any reason to stop. Perhaps if they realized that this is a two way street we might get some more appreciation for real ideological diversity.

Hi KLO --

Yes, yesterday's Corner was a good one. But it would have been a GREAT day if someone (i.e. Jonah, Stuttaford, etc.) had slipped in at least one Star Trek post, preferably when you had gone to bed.

Just got up-to-date with the Corner, and thus read Derb's last post on the subject (from 6:47 am). Two points:

1) The U.S. would not go to war with any regime because it refused to sell oil to some countries or even because it refused to sell oil to us. The Iraq and Afghan wars do nothing to make this fantastic scenario more plausible.

2) It remains unclear why you're worried about American dependence on Mideast oil given the other premises you've put in place (if, for example, the ability of Mideastern regimes to hurt other countries' economies has been "much exaggerated").

My view remains that sound policy should aim at keeping radical anti-American regimes from being able to sell a large share of the world's oil at state-cartel prices.

Ms. Lopez,

I too have been charmed by Gov. Romney and, as someone who comes from the socially libertarian wing of the GOP, I think that he has the uncanny ability to bring cultural conservatives like yourself and social moderates like me together. The reason is that, as you pointed out, all of his positions seem well-reasoned. Never do you hear the nuance of some Republicans, who are obviously trying to hide their pro-choice position behind pro-life rhetoric or vice-versa. Instead, Mitt's social positions are all based on logic and reason (something all Republicans like) and usually end up as a compromise between both wings of the party that we can all live with.

Moreover, Mitt has proven himself to be a forward-thinking individual, not unlike Newt Gingrich when he was in his prime. When Mitt talks about education policy, for example, he understands that the biggest challenge our nation faces regarding our public schools is to prepare students to compete in what is becoming a global economy and thus maintain America's role as an economic superpower for another generation. This position seems eons ahead of anything Democrats are saying and even trumps GWB's compassionate conservative message on education.

And need we mention the electoral calculus of a Mitt/Hillary race? Romney would almost certainly win his father's Michigan (my native state) and would likely pull Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and hold Ohio. In order for Hillary to win, she'd have to pierce the red/blue divide and win the South, the thought of which is laughable.

And yet, all of this remains speculation, as I am one of those stubborn history buffs who has seen how the GOP selects nominees and remain convinced that either McCain or Rudy will be the nominee largely because it's "his turn." Republicans haven't nominated a dark horse since 1940. Romney certainly has a shot at defying history in New Hampshire, but I'm not putting any money on him just yet.

USA Today has an op-ed today that calls on J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. bank, which the piece says recently disclosed that two of its predecessor entities had ties to Louisiana antebellum plantations, “to seek the descendants of the 13,000 slaves who were accepted as collateral [I guess for the bank’s loans to the plantations] between 1831 and 1865 and make restitution.” (The bank has already apologized and set up a $5 million scholarship program for black Louisianans, but that “doesn’t go far enough.”)

I would be interested in Cornerites’ thoughts on how best to implement this obviously brilliant idea. Some questions: How do you track down the descendants of 13,000 people, most dead for over a hundred years? How do you calculate the check you present them? What if the descendant considers himself or herself to be a white Republican? What if one of the great-great grandsons had been disowned by his parents? What should the bank’s current shareholders think of this project? Since the bank “profited from slavery” but was not itself a slave-owner, shouldn’t we be asking any company (or its successors) that did business with any slave-owner to be making restitution, too? What if the bank also did business with the Union army or abolitionists? And, finally, what of the psychology of people who think it’s really a good idea to divide Americans in 2005 into villains and victims based on events 150 years ago or more?

Do not apologize.... Did it ever occur to you that we readers might need a break, too? And Friday is VDH-Day, therefore a little quiet from the peanut gallery is appropriate.

Subject: Greatest...Day...Ever?

K-Lo,

I've been reading the Corner from the beginning, and I think today might be the greatest day it has ever had. Substance and style, friendly back and forth, interesting detours, all mixed in with the usual good humor, and all at a very high level all day. Congratulations, thank you, and keep up the good work.

On Thursday, rebels attacked Iraqi soldiers with machine-gun fire and mortar rounds in Salman Pak, 12 miles southeast of Baghdad, police said, adding that 14 policemen were killed and 65 were injured in the two-hour gunbattle.

Ramesh - I think you date the crisis years about ten or fifteen years late, though the Coolidge years were a deceptive parentheses. Most of the roots of the New Deal and the National Security state go back to Woodrow Wilson (boo, hiss).

It's no surprise I side with Rich on this, but I would add that staying in Iraq ten years isn't a big deal. Staying in a dangerous Iraq for ten years is. We've had troops in some spots around the world for at least fifty years. Almost no one cares that we're in Germany or Japan because Americans aren't being killed there. If American troops are kept there as a geopolitical stabilizing presence, a la South Korea, but aren't being killed every day this won't bee a particularly controversial issue for us. How it's viewed in Arab countries is certainly a legitimate concern. Also, it's not clear that even if we stayed in Iraq for ten years -- or fifty -- that we'd be doing it with over 100,000 troops. Regardless, if Derb or any one else is keen on pulling troops out of places where they've outlived their utility I can think of lots of places which make more sense than Iraq.

Rachel, Lynne Stewart is, of course, entitled to her views, however repulsive they are, but I think ‘sinister’ is not a bad word to describe the person who said this:

"I don't have any problem with Mao or Stalin or the Vietnamese leaders or certainly Fidel locking up people they see as dangerous. Because so often, dissidence has been used by the greater powers to undermine a people's revolution."

The ‘certainly’ in front of ‘Fidel’s’ name is a particularly revolting touch.

I didn't see the Medved clip you mentioned, but it's true that crisis rhetoric (and moral-equivalent-of-war rhetoric) has often been used to justify expansions of state power, and is better suited to that agenda than to an anti-statist one. I think you can view 1929-1991 as a long "crisis era" in American politics. The country goes through a Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, inflation, a crime wave, rapid and destabilizing social change, and many expansions of government. Then things settled down with the end of the Cold War and the diminishment of various social pathologies.

Interestingly, Republicans lost the House at the start of the period and regained it at the end. Also interestingly, as soon as the period ended, Bill Clinton failed to sell an expansion of federal power based on the idea of a health-care "crisis." Then Republicans failed in somewhat apocalyptic campaigns to abolish departments of the federal government and then to remove Clinton from office. I don't think that the war on terrorism has done much to make crisis politics work outside a narrow range of issues, because it isn't a war of mass mobilization. (And yes, these scattered thoughts do tend to reinforce your point about the utility of crisis talk as the president tries to win Social Security reform.)

This almost makes me want to take a Bush speech where he talks about the global thirst for liberty and replace "freedom" and "liberty" with "Ikea" and "cheap but stylish furniture."

From the BBC last September:

Three die in Saudi shop stampede Ikea

A stampede of hundreds of shoppers in western Saudi Arabia has left at least three people crushed to death.

A Saudi man and a Pakistani man were among those killed, officials in the port city of Jeddah said.

The incident occurred after shoppers rushed into a branch of Ikea to claim a limited number of credit vouchers being offered to the public.

More than 8,000 people had gathered near the store for the $150 vouchers, some of them having camped overnight.

The nationality of the third person killed was not given. Sixteen people were injured.

Ikea opened its doors at 0900 local time (0600 GMT), one hour ahead of the allotted tine, because of the large numbers of people who had gathered outside the store.

Mr. Robinson,

I graduated Summa Cum Laude from the Physics Dept of Moscow U in 1989 and then came here (I now live in Charlotte) after the Wall came down (BTW that was a great speech that you wrote!), so I have some knowledge of the matter.

The situation with science in the USSR was very uneven. Physics was generally considered ideologically safe because, well, it is materialistic, i.e. gives material explanation of the natural world and thus is hardly incosistent with Dialectical Materialism. In the early years of the USSR there were some ideological objections to relativity theory etc., but all that soon got abandoned. I think there were several reasons: 1) physics research was non-threatening ideologically (as long as physicists steered clear of philosophical interpretations), 2) utility of physics for making weapons was soon realized (especially after Hiroshima), 3) physics is a difficult subject about which Stalin and most of his ideologues had no clue, so it was really difficult for them to make any meaningful pronouncements, while those who had the ability and actually invested a considerable effort into learning it generally were not interested in making ideological hay out of it or perhaps just did not want to make fools of themselves by making claims that could soon be experimentally proven untrue.

So my education in physics was virtually free of ideology (although for five years I had to take courses in such wondeful subjects as Scientific Communism), lip service to which was largely relegated to forewords in textbooks which would typically just say that the textbook in question absolutely had to be written because the latest party congress resolved to improve the training of new professionals for the Soviet economy and science. Also, ever since Stalin conducted a campaign against "servility before the West" in the late 1940's, Russian priority in everything (including invention of steam locomotive, radio and airplane!) was discovered and some things were renamed - e.g. French rolls became Moscow rolls and some Russian names were inserted into some physics and math terms (e.g. the Clausius-Clapeyron equation became Mendeleev-Clapeyron equation). But that was about it.

Softer sciences did not fare nearly as well. I suspect that was Derb had in mind was probably the infamous (and bloody) campaign against genetics headed by charlatan Lysenko (who in the process made some outrageous claims very similar to medieval notions that mice could spontaneously appear out of nothing in a pile of dirty laundry). Also, cybernetics used to be call "imperialism's whore". Of course, what existed of social sciences in the Soviet Union amounted to little more than intellectual prostitution on behalf of pimps in the Politburo (to continue with Soviet metaphors).

Fortunately no one died. It's all so bizarre. Who riots for Ikea furniture? "I will kill or die for that cheap swivel chair!"

Five people are in hospital today after hundreds were crushed as the opening of England's biggest Ikea store turned into a riot.

Nine ambulances were sent to the outlet in north London after reports that up to 20 people had suffered heat exhaustion when the opening at midnight descended into chaos. Staff closed the doors after half an hour amid fears the stampede could become a Hillsborough-style crush.

Security guards said they were put "under siege" by customers who attacked them, leaving one guard with a dislocated jaw. The store remains closed and a cleanup operation is under way. Ikea apologised for the chaos and admitted the store was understaffed - but added that some customers "behaved like animals".

Just posted on The New York Times website:

Palestinian Leader Fires 3 Aides After Militants Shell Jewish Area

JERUSALEM, Feb. 10 - In the first serious test of the Israeli-Palestinian truce, the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas fired three of his security chiefs today, shortly after Palestinian factions launched a mortar and rocket attack on Jewish settlements in the southern Gaza Strip.

The move indicated Mr. Abbas's intention to enforce the cease-fire he announced along with Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, at their meeting in Egypt on Tuesday.

In the wake of the shelling, Mr. Abbas held an emergency session of the Central Committee of his Fatah movement, and the body denounced the attacks by Hamas and other factions. The committee called the shelling "irresponsible acts that harm our security and the high national interests of our people."

Mr. Abbas then sacked three prominent security chiefs in Gaza.

The swift action by Mr. Abbas is in sharp contrast to the style of his predecessor, Yasir Arafat, who died in November. After the Palestinian uprising began in 2000, Mr. Arafat did not demand that the Palestinian security forces act to prevent violence against Israel.

There's more.

I seem to recall an argument with someone about the nature of democracy in Iran. Tom Friedman has some thoughts today:

In Iran's sham "Islamic democracy," only the mullahs decide who can run. Over time, Iranian Shiites will demand to know why they can't have the same freedoms as their Iraqi cousins right next door. That will drive change in Iran. Just be patient.

For whatever reason people are always telling me that they saw someone who looked exactly like me. Must be some handsome devils out there.

But in film it doesn't happen that offen. But there was this one time some buddies and I were watching the WWII movie "Memphis Belle" in the theater. At the end of the film there's this tense moment when you don't know if the plane is going to make it to the landing strip. Everybody at the base is worried. They all start looking skyward in unison. One of the main actors puts the binoculars to his eyes and looks heavenwards. Are they dead? Where's the plane? And then, suddenly, from behind him appears this character with no lines wearing Ray Ban aviator sunglasses. He looks skyward and all my friends burst into laughter freaking out the audience. Apparently, this guy just looked like me. It was as if I just walked out onto the screen. It was very weird moment.

I see her in -- she's very consistent what she's always believed. She's always had strong religious faith. She's been a strong Methodist. She does have conservative social values on many issues. But, of course, she's bringing those to the fore. And I think what's really remarkably interesting, Anderson, is that in the early days of her first ladyhood [sic], she sometimes could be tone-deaf. I think she's shown remarkable progress as a political leader, and in listening more and being able to respond in a better way to the political dialogue. She's a much, much better politician today than she was half a dozen years ago. And I think that makes her a more formidable candidate.

Subject: Rich Lowry and Ward Churchill

While watching CSPAN's coverage last night of a Ward Churchill rally a young man in a fedora asking an opposing question looked and spoke similar to NR's own Rich Lowry-- I'm I crazy? If you can find the video please take a look it may be good for a few laughs at the NR office.

My dad chimes in with this email:

This reminds me that if the Windsors during World War One hadn't changed their dynastic name from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the necktie knot would be known as the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha knot. Also, as I told you some ten years or so ago, it's classier to refer to supporters of Charles as Carlists, but nobody has followed my lead on this.

Yesterday - - Wednesday - - the Senate voted on what will turn out to be the critical amendment in its class action reform debate. It was an amendment by Senators Feinstein and Bingaman that would have gutted the bill and which would have eliminated the long negotiated "clean" Senate bill that the House of Represnetatives could accept without having to send the bill back to the Senate.

One, one, Republican voted with the bill's opponents. Was it the almost always against legal reform Richard Shelby? -- no. The one Republican was the new Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Arlen Specter.

Just what does this say about so many future legislative issues and the judicial confirmation process? It could get very ugly.

From a reader:

Hi Jonah,

Maybe I'm a little too late to get in on this discussion. I've been
working all morning instead of reading the Corner... Nonetheless,
having wrested a physics PhD from Cornell in the recent past, I would
note that nearly all the physics graduate students with whom I was
acquainted were left-wingers. Ergo lots of future liberal PhDs. I
don't have any explanation for this, but I don't think it has anything
particularly to do with government funding for scientific research. As
a completely unscientific guess, let me propose two pillars that would
support the leftiness of science PhDs.

1. Unfamiliarity with any life where you don't get paid reasonably
good money to go to school.

2. We solve terrifically hard problems all the time because we're
really clever. We could immanentize the eschaton too if we just get
clever people like us in the government...

From a reader on what he calls the best paper-holding line ever:

"I'll be cold, dead and buried in the ground before I recognize Missoura'" - Grampa Simpson explaining why there are only 49 states on his flag.

Me: Before this becomes a contest to come up with the longest held grudges let me add that for it to qualify in the way I use the phrase, you should offer a good argument or reason for why you've got the grudge. But long-held grudges is as good a Corner topic as any.

From a reader:

Dear Jonah, My great grandfather used to say of Edward VIII and that appalling Simpson woman, "Imagine. He was Admiral of the Fleet and now he is third mate on an American tramp."

Corner readers rule. From a researcher:

Jonah Goldberg, I follow research for our state's highway safety office. Without being able to access that Washington Post article from here, several points on cell phones in cars:

1. The vast majority of evidence indicates that using a cell phone while driving impairs driving. Some estimates place it as high as several drinks. Reaction and stopping times are both slower, but then so are driving speeds.

2. Despite this, I believe that the dangers of cell phones are exaggerated. http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/injury/research/auditorytask/pages/TRD.html is a recent study from the federal government on why most studies are weak. "Phone tasks" are not representative of real conversations, driving simulators are not the real thing, people can choose not to answer the phone in heavy traffic, people who talk on cell phones get better at talking while driving, and most of them are younger people who have better reaction times anyway. The latest piece of research I saw ("Profiles in driver distraction" in Human Factors 46(4)) suggests that young drivers on cell phones have the same reaction times as older drivers not on cell phones. If you ban cell phones because of their effects on driving, you also need to ban either aging or older drivers.

3. The most common distraction in a car is music. When a driver crashes because of not paying attention, the two most common reasons are fiddling with the radio/CD player or no particular reason ("I was just thinking about something else.."). Almost every driver is distracted by it at some point. The most distracting thing in the car is a small child. AAA found that having a young child in the car causes more distraction than any other single item. I have seen no proposals to ban either music or children from cars.

4. The last time I checked a couple of years ago, 5% of the drivers on our state's roads were on a cell phone at the time. I expect that number to have gone up.

5. Cell phones are appearing in crashes less then 5% of the time, which probably indicates under-reporting rather than drivers being safer using cell phones. There is no historical data, since cell phones were only added to reporting forms recently, and officers may not be used to marking it. Also, as others have said, you can turn the phone off and not mention it to the officer.

Obviously, I am picking and choosing my sources, but there is no evidence that cell phones are causing a lot of crashes, and those they are causing are likely low-speed fender benders. Cell phones are not a significant contributor to America's 40,000+ traffic fatalities every year. It would be better if people used cell phones less while driving, but non-use of safety belts, drunk driving, and speeding are the top factors killing drivers.

Actually, the single largest problem for traffic fatalities could be summarized as "young men." Men 16-24 (and 16-34, to a lesser extent) have the highest crash involvement and the worst incidence of almost every driving problem. I have never heard of anyone proposing to raise the male driving age to 30, though it would probably prevent over 10,000 deaths a year.

Sorry for running long. Please don't cite me by name/state if some part makes it into the Corner, since I am our research guy, not our public affairs person. I doubt that she responds to bloggers, so this is going direct to you, unfiltered.

This is the phrase I always use about people who refuse to forget completely old grudges, inconvenient facts, ancient lapses and the like. I mean it in a good way. You don't let the past own you, but you aprreciate the value of owning the past. Derb's comment about his Dad calling the Windsors "those bloody Germans" is what brings this up. My dad, too, is an awe-inspiring holder of paper. Whenever a friend mentions, say, Herbert Matthews I'll say, "Oh, Man does my dad hold paper on that guy." A couple times a week he will send me an email about some long, long forgotten internecine battle between journalists and whomever, between Communists and everyone, about the Black Hand, whatever. My father-in-law is pretty good this way too. Born in Slovakia, he barely escaped the Communists and he can still talk about the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire the way some people talk about NAFTA today. He thinks the break up was stupid. I agree, broadly speaking.

This is one of the things I always appreciated about National Review. It has always been a magazine for paper holders.

Anyway, I'm not really going anywhere with this except that I love this sort of stuff. I shall forever more call the Windsors, "those bloody Germans."

You heard it here first (okay maybe not first).

From my talk to the New York Conservative Party "George W. Bush has...pushed through a Medicare plan which starts with a price tag of $400 billion but will — according to every expert who studies the issue — go up a gazillion-bajillion dollars over the next decade."

I want it noted here. Date and time. There was a post with the word "science" in it, written by John Derbyshire, which I objected to. And Derb said I was right.

It may be decades before such a thing happens again. Which is not to say that Derb isn't willing to reconsider his positions when presented with new information. It is simply that unlikely I would be right and him wrong about anything in even the most distant orbit of the word "science."

A bunch of emailers keep saying that the problem with getting stats on cell phone related traffic accidents is that you can't determine whether the person driving was actually on the phone. "They can just hang up" or "They can just put the phone down."

Maybe I'm confused but I don't see why this should make much of a difference. Imagine, for whatever reason, there was an exploding trend in drivers drinking Nyquil on the road. Everything we know about this sweet elixer is that it would result in people getting into car accidents more than if they hadn't. Similarly with cell phones. We may not know for sure whether a specific accident was caused by phone yakking, but we should see a spike in the overall number or rate of car crashes, right? We know that cell phone use has exploded in this country. It doesn't seem like car crashes have. In fact they seem to have gone down. See here and here. Now I understand that there are other factors which may make it hard to tease data so as to highlight the phone-use issue. But economists and statisticians are really, really good at figuring-out these sorts of issues, so I'm surprised there's no data to support Carrey's point. Or I should say I'm surprised he didn't cite any.

The Network of Enlightened Women (N.E.W.) will be hosting a presentation by Dr. Christina Hoff Sommers on Thursday, February 10th, 2005 at 6pm at the University of Virginia in the Physics building on McCormick Road in Room 204. This is N.E.W.’s inaugural spring event. The title of Dr. Sommers speech is “Sex, Lies and the Vagina Monologues.” The event is open to the public.

Derb - I'm done talking about intelligent design and my guess is you would like to be too. So I'm perfectly happy to ask you about this statement of yours which strikes me as just plain wrong. You write: "If only PH.D.s in the sciences had the vote, we should have Libertarian govt."

Could you, as the scientists say, offer some evidence of that? Define your terms? Does medicine not count as a science? Surely you don't include public health PhDs.

There is a long history in this country of scientific experts trying to short-circuit democratic processes in order to run the show themselves (does anyone remember "technocracy"?). Meanwhile, I am not aware of any movement of science types who pushed for limited government in the name of science or anything else. Also, while I am in favor of government-backed scientific research, I can think of a great number of libertarians who are not in favor of it -- and the few who support it are often a little embarrassed by it.

So, in the hope of moving on to less trampled fields of discussion, what say you?

The indispensable Brett Stephens was in the room with Jordan. He offers what some may consider a too "even-handed" account of the comments and the reaction. But I find it all the more damning for Jordan that way. Read the whole thing -- it's brief. But the essential point I took away was that Jordan was perfectly happy to leave the impression in the minds of the world's elite that Coalition (read American) forces were deliberately targeting [American journalists]. That's what people would have been left thinking had not Barney Frank (good for him) not pressed him to back up the statement. As Stephens says, Eason was spreading an innuendo not an allegation. He was playing to his audience and he said something that they -- and no doubt he -- thought was perfectly plausible on its face. Of course, he didn't really think it was true. For if he did, he would have put a reporter on it.

Update: Woops! the part in brackets above originally said "US troops." Obviously I meant journalists. Sorry, wish someone had corrected me earlier.

"I have great respect for John Kerry, but there's no question he did not articulate these issues well," Ms. Feldt said recently. "He seemed equivocal. He ceded the moral high ground to the other side."

In yesterday's Washington Post automotive writer Dan Carney offered what seemed at first to be a pretty good case for banning talking on cell phones while driving. One reason I felt that way is that I'm very sympathetic to complaints about this subject. I watch drivers on cell phones all the time and -- as a group -- they suck. Not to be sexist, but my own empirical observations (which may be flawed) suggest that women are worse than men when it comes to cell phones. I watch them roll through the stop signs in my neighborhood while gabbing all the time. Men and women alike seem to take a lot longer to switch lanes to head for the exits. Etc. I really do believe that cell phone talkers make for more dangerous drivers.

And yet.

The one problem with this op-ed is that it doesn't mention any increase in traffic accidents. Presumably if phone-talking makes drivers more likely to rear-end another car, we'd have some data which showed an increase in such accidents. We know this sort of data is collected by the insurance industry and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. And yet all he does is cite studies on closed-courses and the like. People have been talking on phones while driving in large numbers for about a decade or so, right? Why wouldn't we see a corresponding hike in traffic accidents, injuries and fatalities? Maybe we have, but I haven't heard about it and Carrey would surely mention it if he could.

I still think there's too much gabbing on the roads. But this omission leaves me unconvinced that it should be banned.

From ABC:

Iraqi security forces have captured 18 members of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia and charged them with terrorism.

Iraq's Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib says the alleged Hezbollah fighters were in his country to carry out terrorist attacks.

The Minister accuses Iran of backing the insurgency in Iraq by funding and supplying the insurgents, most of whom he says are Sudanese and Egyptian nationals.

Gunmen have killed a correspondent from the United States-funded Arab TV network al-Hurra.

Abdel Hussein Khazaal and his four-year-old son were shot dead outside their Basra home.

Meanwhile, a bomb has killed four Iraqi policemen and wounded two others near Samarra, north of the capital Baghdad.

The police convoy was travelling near the city when the bomb was detonated.

And a senior official in Iraq's Oil Ministry has been kidnapped in Baghdad.

Tony at Across the bay has interesting details.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The federal appeals court that ruled the Pledge of Allegiance was an unconstitutional endorsement of religion is being sued for allegedly displaying the Ten Commandments on its seal and courthouses.

Scientists announced yesterday the discovery of cells in the heart that can create new muscle cells, raising hopes that doctors may find dramatic new ways to treat heart disease, the nation's leading cause of death.

The team, led by Dr. Kenneth Chien at the University of California at San Diego, showed that the cells, which are similar to stem cells, can be expanded from just a few hundred in a laboratory dish to more than a million, and these cells can be guided into becoming the pulsing muscle cells that power the heart. The finding, published in today's issue of the journal Nature, will probably yield new insights into the heart's development, and might further the quest to regenerate damaged heart tissue -- an idea once thought impossible.

"I think this is a very important paper," said Dr. Leonard Zon, a scientist at Children's Hospital Boston and president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research. "People have not been able to find these cells, and they have been trying very hard."

WASHINGTON -- A mosque established and funded by basketball star Hakeem Olajuwon gave more than $80,000 to charities the government later determined to be fronts for the terror groups Al Qaeda and Hamas, according to financial records obtained by the Associated Press.

Olajuwon said he had not known of any links to terrorism when the donations were made, prior to the government's crackdown on the groups, and would not have given the money if he had known.

''There is no way you can go back in time," Olajuwon said in a telephone interview from Jordan, where he is studying Arabic. ''After the fact, now they have the list of organizations that are banned by the government."

But in an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Romney said that he was strongly against a type of embryonic stem cell research that many scientists consider extremely promising: research that involves creating human embryos specifically for scientific experimentation.

The governor said he would oppose any bill, like the one Wednesday, that would allow that method. And he said he would propose his own legislation that would establish criminal and civil penalties for research like that being planned by labs at Harvard University and Children's Hospital.

"Some of the practices that Harvard and probably other institutions in Massachusetts are engaged in cross the line of ethical conduct," Mr. Romney said.

He added: "My wife has M.S., and we would love for there to be a cure for her disease and for the diseases of others. But there is an ethical boundary that should not be crossed."

Steven Hayward, who regularly cheats on us by blogging elsewhere, makes a good point at No Left Turns:

One aspect of the whole Eason Jordan affair that is bouncing around the blogosphere that has gone unremarked is the fact that two people who continue to corroborate the worst version of Jordan’s remarks are two certified world-class liberals, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd. This suggests that Jordan’s remarks really were egregious and beyond the pale, though of course the wimpy David Gergen could be relied upon to gloss everything over. (Gergen’s role in this sent me scurrying for Michael Kelly’s wonderful description of Gergen back in 1993: "To be Gergenized is to be spun by the velveteen hum of this soothing man’s smoothing voice into a state of such vertigo that the sense of what is real disappears into a blur." Michael, do we ever miss you.)

There's more.

I like this email:

Here's something to toss up and bat around with Derb for a while...

Isn't the conclusion that "some people are just evil" a sort-of "Satan
of the Gaps" position? An abandonment of science in favor of a
faith-based conclusion? Is Derb satisfied with leaving it at "evil",
or does he think we need to keep up the "mad rush to 'understand' evil
people"?

(With respect to the existence of evil, let me say that I agree with
you. Let me also say that I'm not particularly satisfied with
intelligent design although I certainly do find evolution to be a
woeful theory for explaining the emergence and development of life on
earth. I also understand that there's a fair amount of daylight
between your position on ID and Derb's).

From a reader:

Jonah,

I agree with your point re evolution, provided one is operating completely in a rational, objective, and logical framework. For those who believe in God's handiwork in Creation, however, the background assumptions are different. Consequently, their goals in knocking holes in evolutionary theory are different. Creationists assume that God fills in gaps. Evolutionary theorists (at least the ones that Creationists dislike) attempt to fill in every gap with objective scientific rationalist...stuff. Thus, Creationists want to show evolutionists that (1) there are significant holes; and (2) God's handiwork fills in those gaps. Obviously, in a perfectly transparent world, Creationists could show the rational and objective nature of God's involvement. Since a "God wuz here" stamp is not easily found on rock formations, however, they (we) must rely on faith and are quite comfortable doing so. I hope I haven't imputed any arguments to or against you. For what it's worth.

(yes, withhold my name, please - I like my job and would like to keep it)

Me: Okay, I think this is all fair. But here's my point: faith and science are simply different, as Derb has noted. I think people who call for God-in-the-gaps make a mistake rhetorically -- though almost surely not in their hearts. God is in the gaps, sure. But he's also in everything else. He's in the space between stars and atoms but he's also in the stars and atoms. He is the Prime Mover. The alpha and omega. By saying that God is only where science isn't seems -- again rhetorically -- to be a massive surrender of the jurisdiction of the Almighty. If God's powerful enough to create the entire universe he's surely capable of doing it without leaving clues unless he wants to. I believe in God, but I have a hard time believing he burried those clues in the few areas where science remains ignorant. Those clues are hiding in plain sight for those who want to see them. Saying that science will ultimately prove the existence of God almost seems blasphemous to me because it suggests that God was hiding from human investigators for all this time but humans finally got smart enough to see his fingerprints. It's all fingerprints!

I really don't mean any disrespect to anybody in all of this, I just think there is a huge category error going on here. I also don't pretend to be speaking for Derb or anybody else.

Interesting email from a reader:

Mr. Goldbert, before I retired as a social worker I swam upstream against an entrenched idea that with enough money and caseworkers we could make every single person as sweet and honest as pie. Nothing could be further from the truth. I met people who deliberately gave drugs to mothers to get their hands on the children, sold children for gas money, and molested everything they could get their hands on. When you looked into their backgrounds there was nothing there to make these people monsters. You have only to look at the terror young men endured in Sudan, then have them come here and become wonderful citizens to realize that. It takes something more than violence to make a monster. Sometimes people just have to accept that as there are people born without limbs, or other body parts, so there are those born without any guilt or the ability to acquire it. They are monsters because they prey on others. This is one reason I am a conservative. I think that idealism is great if tempered with reality. People on the far left just think love(and high taxes) will cure all. Lots of people loved Ted Bundy. If Michael Jackson's father is such a mean person how is it that Michael is the only family member accused of being a child molester. The other Jacksons have money. It can't just be that. I have no idea if he has done what he is accused of and only know that I would NEVER let any child of mine be alone with a stranger no matter how sweet he acted or how much fame or money he has. I really do not understand human nature. I still can't get over the people who cheered OJ during the chase thru Los Angeles. Fame does strange things to people. They believe their idols are gods. They may just be good at hiding what they really are. Scary.

the latest episode of Sesame Street on our "video on demand" PBS service is one where Grover visits a kibbutz in Israel and helps build a playhouse. Whenever I ask my 2 year old where Grover lives, he says, "Israel"

For Immediate Release February 9, 2005

President George W. Bush announced that he has named William McGurn Assistant to the President for Speechwriting.

“Bill McGurn is an accomplished writer, with extensive experience in foreign affairs and economic policy. He will make an excellent addition to my speechwriting team,” stated President Bush.

Mr. McGurn previously served as an executive in the Office of the Chairman at News Corporation. Prior to that, he was the chief editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal and a member of its editorial board. From 1992 to 1998, Mr. McGurn was a senior editor for the Dow Jones-owned Far Eastern Economic Review in Hong Kong. Earlier in his career, he served as the Washington bureau chief for National Review. Mr. McGurn is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and Boston University.

A correction forwarded to me by reader Kirk from the gentlemen (mis)quoted in the Reuters article:

Kirk,

I understand why you're upset about my quote in Reuters. I was upset too.

For the record, I am a very patriotic American, I support our troops, I
support our President -- in fact I'm one of only 17% of folks in this crazy
city who actually voted for him.

I was misquoted.

What I said was that, in theory I don't like people using patriotism to SELL
BEER, because patriotism, like religion, is not something that should be
USED by marketers to flog a product. It's sacred.

However, I felt Anheiser Busch did a great job, made me cry, and I liked the
spot. It was my favorite of the Super Bowl, which is why I was quoted in
the first place.

Thanks for your email, Kirk. It hurts me that I was misquoted, and have
come across believing the opposite of what I do. By writing, you at least
give me the chance to straighten out the impression with one person.

All the best,

Mark DiMassimo

From a reader:

Shame on you, Jonah! A newspaper criticizes the GOP for spending, so you’re blaming the Democrats? Not a single fiscal conservative (apart from the great Ron Paul and the constant CAGW letters from John McCain) has denounced any spending project in the last four years. The GOP needs some ripping, or the specter of a third-party will rise again.

Me: I might argue with the adjective "great" in front of Ron Paul's name (please spare me the email. I know, I know, he's wonderful and I'm a moron). But otherwise I think this reader makes a perfectly fine point. I assume he's referring to elected politicians since conservative writers and activists have, of course, criticized Bush on spending many times. Also, I wasn't trying to say "It's all the Democrats' fault!" Republicans really should be ashamed of the spending they've overseen. I was just going off on a tangent. But let's not kid ourselves about the idea that Democrats are gung-ho to cut domestic spending.

Nan Aron of Alliance for Justice, another critic, suggested Pryor "may have pulled his punches."

Around here over the frontpage story in the Post this morning about Bush's big government conservatism.

Here's the opener:

President Bush's second-term agenda would expand not only the size of the federal government but also its influence over the lives of millions of Americans by imposing new national restrictions on high schools, court cases and marriages.

In a clear break from Republican campaigns of the 1990s to downsize government and devolve power to the states, Bush is fostering what amounts to an era of new federalism in which the national government shapes, not shrinks, programs and institutions to comport with various conservative ideals, according to Republicans inside and outside the White House.

Bush is calling for new federal accountability and testing requirements for all public high schools, after imposing similar mandates on grades three through eight during his first term. To limit lawsuits against businesses and professionals, he is proposing to put a federal cap on damage awards for medical malpractice, to force class-action cases into federal courts and to help create a national settlement of outstanding asbestos-related cases.

On social policy, the president is pushing a constitutional amendment to outlaw same-sex marriage in the states and continuing to define and expand the federal government's role in encouraging religious groups to help administer social programs such as community drug-rehabilitation efforts.

"We have moved from devolution, which was just pushing back as much power as possible to the states, back to where government is limited but active," said John Bridgeland, director of Bush's domestic policy council in the first term. Bridgeland and current White House officials see Bush's governing philosophy as a smart way to modernize the government, empower individuals and broaden the appeal of the GOP.

Me: Here's a whackily optimistic notion. Wouldn't it be interesting if the Democrats actually decide to become a real deficit hawk party and the cross-over Republicans in the Congress end up being not Christie Todd Whitman type wets but more rock-ribbed Republicans? Everyone's been waiting for the "social moderates" to assert themselves the way the Reagan Democrats did. What if the analysts were fighting the last war? Bush is actually pretty socially liberal when it comes to education spending and the like. The people who want to bolt are the budget-cutters and small-government crowd. If the Democrats were credible on that stuff, it might create an interesting coalition. After all, there really aren't that many Lincoln Chafees and Olympia Snowes in Congress to begin with.

When Reid fretted about "the children's" debt burden in his Sotu response and then immediately called for a Marshall Plan for America, he should have fallen through the floor into a tub of water like he was sitting in a carnival dunking booth.

First-term Sen. Mark Dayton of Minnesota, who depleted his fortune as Dayton-Hudson department store heir by spending $25 million in four statewide political campaigns, is being targeted by Republicans as the most vulnerable Senate Democrat in 2006.

Dayton spent $12 million of his own money to provide nearly all funding for his election in 2000, and his net worth is now officially disclosed as $5 million to $15 million. Facing the need to raise money for the first time, he recently fired his top fund-raisers after he finished the third quarter of 2004 with just $271,000 cash on hand.

In addition to money problems, Dayton slumped in the polls after he alone among U.S. senators closed his Washington offices because of an alleged terrorist threat. Former Rep. Bill Luther is considering a Democratic primary challenge against Dayton. The senator's Republican opponent is expected to be a well-funded Rep. Mark Kennedy.

From a reader:

[Eastman's] book, "Reflections on the Failure of Socialism" is quite good. It was not met with many kudos, and he is said to have felt it was far from perfect, but I liked it and thought it made all the right points. Short, a primer.

The parallel case from Britain was, of course, John Strachey. The biography by Hugh Thomas, "John Strachey", was published by Harper & Row in 1973, and is well worth reading. Strachey (of the famous family, and himself a genuine intellectual) was in the 1930s the premier apologist for Communism in GB (and that's saying something), became a complete apostate after the Hitler-Stalin Pact, and went on to an illustrious military career in WWII. Strachey was in most ways a great man; it's a helluva story, well beyond Eastman's.

And I do hope you have read "Out of Step" by Sidney Hook.

[Name withheld]

PS: Strachey's "The Nature of the Capitalist Crisis" (1935) is the only detailed, serious attempt to make the case for Marxist economics that I've ever come across. It fails, of course, but it's a good, honest try by a guy who had done his homework; Strachey was no dilettante, and he seems to have had great integrity in everything he did. (The bible for systematically dissecting the corpse of Marxist economics is, of course, "From Marx to Mises", by David Ramsay Steele. A sheerly wonderful book.)

Somehow rang true?

"Budweiser did best with the patriotic sentimentality," said [Mark DiMassimo of DiMassimo Carr Brand Advocates]. "In theory, I don't like the idea but it was well done and somehow rang true."

More here.

An attempt at "a definitive history."

And so we have to labour and to work, and to work hard, to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for any one of them to imagine that it can live apart. Peace is said to be indivisible, so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and also is disaster in this one world that can no longer be split into isolated fragments.

I bought the out-of-print biography of Eastman by William L. O'Neill on the web and it arrived yesterday. I decided to buy it because Eastman keeps coming up in my research about World War One. Eastman was the editor of the radical magazine The Masses at the time and was tried twice for treason by the enlightened Wilson Administration. He was Trotsky's translator, quasi literary agent and first biographer. Later, when he became disillusioned with Communism he migrated to the National Review. I knew he was a Trotskyite and was familiar with his tempestuous time at NR, but I've grown increasingly fascinated by his earlier career and the short life of The Masses. If anybody knows about anything else worth reading on the subject drop me a line. This isn't a full-blown "bleg" just a line of interest.

Oh, and just to offer a tweak, the next time you hear someone complain that NR has become so "neocon" or how neocons are really Trotskyists, remind them about Eastman (and Burnham and Chambers and .... oh you get it).

I'm getting lots of email about it, mostly from folks nostalgic for the great Julian Simon - Paul Ehrlich wager. If you don't know anything about it, basically Julian Simon bet noted Malthusian Paul Ehrlich that scarce resources would get cheaper -- i.e. less scarce -- over time. Simon won. But the mainstream media continued to dismiss or demonize Simon while Ehrlich won a Genius grant. You can read a more detailed version here.

ROTHSCHILD, Wis. (AP) — Police and city officials say thanks is not enough for Jon Jazdzewski.

Jazdzewski, 52, an employee of Wausau Supply, was driving out of town for business around 4 a.m. Jan. 28 when he spotted something on the road near the Rothschild Village Hall.

"I knew it was a money bag, and I picked it up. But there was no doubt in my mind that this thing was going back to (the village)," said Jazdzewski, of Kronenwetter.

What was inside the locked bag was more than $850,000 in cash and checks, according to city officials.

Vatican officials estimate that in 2002, the most recent year for which statistics are available, about 70 percent of all annulment requests were made in the United States. Worldwide, more than 56,000 Catholics requested annulments; 46,000 were granted. "Requests have jumped enormously in the last decades," said Bishop Velasio De Paolis, a Vatican court official. As recently as 1968, fewer than 350 annulments were granted in the United States.

Sounds like very good news:

University of Toronto researchers have discovered a treasure-trove of stem cells that could one day help repair broken limbs and ease bone marrow transplants.

The source: a region of the umbilical cord that holds an abundant supply of connective-tissue stem cells — the basic building blocks for the body's bone, fat and ligament tissues.

The implications include a range of possible new treatments to repair torn ligaments and fractured bones, or to enhance the effectiveness of bone marrow transplants for leukemia patients.

The findings may also spur greater efforts to preserve the umbilical cords of newborns as a source of treatment in later years for the child, or possibly others.

"We're very excited by this, that's for sure," said J.E. Davies, of the UofT's Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering.

Davies is lead author of a paper describing the research, to be published this week in the journal Stem Cells.

"You can anticipate using these as a source of cells to help re-grow that bone ... or connective tissue in the knee ... which has been damaged in an accident," he said.

Sorry folks, I can't take the email so I'm going to spill the beans on the psychic timewaster below. Here's an email from one of the many readers who got it:

Jonah:

While John Vernon trivia may be too tough for my readers, this particular puzzle is not. There are only nine unique solutions to the problem (x*10+y) – (x+y) where x is between 1 and 9 inclusive and y is between 0 and 9 inclusive. Those 9 solutions have the same symbol each time you try. It’s clever in the same way the “take your birthday, subtract this, divide that, and your result is…”.

Me: What he left out is the way the site changes the symbols after every turn to throw you off. But if you look the possible answers all have the same symbol. Still, use it on your friends.

Encouraging. The opener from the NY Times:

SHARM EL SHEIK, Egypt, Feb. 8 - Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, and Ariel Sharon, prime minister of Israel, held summit talks at this Egyptian resort on Tuesday - the highest-level meeting between the sides in four years - and declared a truce in hostilities.

Mr. Abbas said he and Mr. Sharon "have jointly agreed to cease all acts of violence against Israelis and Palestinians everywhere," while Mr. Sharon said they "agreed that all Palestinians will stop all acts of violence against all Israelis everywhere, and in parallel, Israel will cease all its military activity against all Palestinians everywhere."

Officials said Israel would also pull back its troops from five West Bank cities - Jericho, Bethlehem, Ramallah, Tulkarm and Qalqilya - in the next three weeks and stop the arrests and assassinations of top militants if they agree to put down their weapons.

There was an immediate reminder of the fragility of those declarations when spokesmen for the radical Palestinian group Hamas said the truce was not binding on them.

The summit meeting on the shores of the Red Sea was nonetheless filled with the symbolism of renewed hopes, as the Israeli and Palestinian leaders sat at a round table with their host, the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, and King Abdullah II of Jordan.

In the hall, the Israeli flag was displayed next to the Egyptian, Jordanian and Palestinian flags.

ANNAPOLIS - Marylanders considering filing lawsuits against fast-food establishments for making them fat will have a difficult time under the proposed "cheeseburger law" that prohibits consumers from suing restaurants for injury or death caused by weight gain or obesity.

Del. John S. Arnick's Common Sense Food Consumption Act, also known as the "cheeseburger law," still faces a vote by the House Judiciary Committee. Arnick, D-Baltimore City, said his bill is an important step in stopping frivilous lawsuits. "I didn't make you eat 10 hamburgers," Arnick said…

Cole won't bet because he's morally offended -- or pretends to be. A wager for personal enrichment would be offensive which is why I stipulated from the outset to give any money received to the USO. I'm too exhausted to deal with this in any great detail, but his moral preening as an excuse not to make a prediction convinces me not at all. We make wagers of one kind or another on serious events every day of our lives. The stock market goes up or down as analysts gamble on how events in Iraq are going. Regulators use cost-benefit analysis which is a means of playing the odds-- and lives are cetainly on the line. If his delicate sensibility can't handle this, somebody get him a fainting couch. But the moral lecturing is simply a pose if you ask me.

For example. He says: "A wager on the backs of human beings. Perhaps Mr. Goldberg would like to bring back slavery, as well."

Ignoring the almost abject hysteria and truly ham-fisted moral bullying of this rhetorical fluorish, I do have one question for the good doctor. In all of his language studies did he ever come across the latin phrase "non sequitur"? This may be the dumbest, lamest attempt to play the race card I've ever encountered. Does this schtick really work in the classroom?

Here's one reason I think he's full of it. All day long I received hundreds of emails from Cole fans who insulted me in every imaginable way. I don't think one of them said the bet was morally offensive. Some said it was lame, of course. But nobody was offended, let alone "nearly immobilized by disgust and grief" the way the morally dainty Doctor claims to be. Funny thing, that. You would think some of these folks who are so sympatico with Cole, who see nothing wrong with calling me an idiot, a monster and a chickenhawk might have taken the time to express the slightest offense. The only explanation I can think of is that since they didn't need to come up with a strategy to get out of a tight spot it didn't occur to them. Heck, I even heard from several guys in the military, in Iraq, who offered to contribute money if I lost the bet. They didn't seem particularly offended.

Lame doc, very, very lame. I'm going to take my victory lap now. I'm done too.

Art, design and politics meet in Joanna Rytel's jewellery collection "Happy abortion-children". Her earrings, brooches, necklaces and rings formed as aborted foetuses, takes a stand for abortion. The idea can be said to be a continuation of her project "Abortkyrkogard.se" on the internet. There many have told of the guilt they have felt after having an abortion. "I wondered about why this was and I believe that it is society that induces the guilt, particularly for girls. I want to do something about it."....

Despite that it is a little sad to have an abortion. But one does it for the child's sake. It would not have been good to have a child half-heartedly. They have it much better in heaven than if they hade been born. I thought that it would be good to make jewellery, because then people can carry their happy abortion-children with them.

Bat Ye'or will be speaking on "Eurabia" at Columbia U. between 12 and 2 p.m.--Room 1302, School of International and Public Affairs, 420 West 118th St. (south/east corner of 118th St. & Amsterdam Ave: Room 1302 on 13th floor) .

"I must say that I am really uncomfortable with free-market conservatives' knee-jerk opposition to farm subsidies. I understand that many wealthy individuals and large corporations benefit, but so do many farm families. Right here where I live, a family farm that has been around for generations has begun growing pumpkins (in addition to their regular crops) and hosting a month-long fall festival during October. It is really industrious of them to do this, but the reason they do it is because they need the extra income. They happen to be lucky in that they live in town - I doubt a farmer in the middle of nowhere would have any success with such a venture. And the farm I am talking about is pretty successful by the standards of family farms these days, even without the pumpkins.

"The point is this: I -- and I believe many others, as well -- value family farms as an institution. We don't want to see them die out and be replaced with corporate farming operations. Of all the things the French are bashed for (usually with good reason), I have always defended their dedication to their family farms (yes, the 'farmer's unions' over there are out of control, but that's the French for you). Considering all the billions and trillions we spend on complete crap in this country, I see no reason not to help our farmers, especially if the subsidies can be tailored to help family farms. And yes, I'm willing to pay more for food, too. Normally, it's not advisable to subsidize inefficiency. But family farms can never be as efficient as corporate farms, yet what they give us goes far beyond mere agricultural products. They are the lifeblood of rural America, part of our national birthright, and a source of many of the values that conservatives fight for all the time.

"Often in the headlong rush to modernity, it is easy to leave behind that which is close to your soul. Western society as a whole has strayed too far from our agrarian roots, and I loathe the idea of straying farther. Count me in with the farmers on this one."

My response: I'm against the knee-jerk dismissal of knee-jerk reactions. And while I often find this particular correspondent's emails interesting, I am not in great sympathy with this argument.

It is not clear that current farm programs actually do help family farms. Here's how Rich put it in his column today: "Family farms aren't big enough to garner the largest subsidies and are squeezed by the way the federal payments increase land values and stimulate overproduction. 'The subsidies reward the guy who gets higher yields with higher subsidies, and he's able to buy out his neighbor and get even bigger,' says Dennis Avery, an agriculture expert at the Hudson Institute."

If someone were proposing the creation of a federal program that would help family farms, I would oppose it, too. There are a lot of good things that shouldn't get federal money extracted from taxpayers. The fact that my correspondent "is willing to pay more for food" doesn't justify making others--including others who can afford it less--pay more, too.

You just can't beat this:

A Welsh rugby fan cut off his own testicles after his team beat England, police confirmed today.

How could you possibly not read on?

Drop it, sayeth the people. This is the way all of these internet feuds end. Like with beef jerky, you never know when you have had enough until you've had too much. But I agree, I'm done with the whole thing. I will point to blogs like Kramer's and Across the Bay when they have stuff on Cole though. My last three emails:

Geez, let’s stop the hair pull. Cole is an insufferable a** and you are finding out what you have long known: No one emerges spick and span from a mud wrestling contest. As a big fan, I am getting embarrassed that you continue to let this fatally compromised pissant pull your chain. Cease and desist. I want to laugh and stop cringing.

And...

Mr. Goldberg.

I am a 24 year old medical student in Dallas. I spend my lunch break everyday reading NRO and the like. Please allow me to speak for all your faithful readers and say that you won't loose face with us if you stop this nonsense with JC. I assume that is why you have continued the "debate" as you have. You said it yourself in the last piece: it is a waste of your time. And frankly, we are all getting a little bored of having to hear from that guy. I have even followed links to his blog, for the love of God! Stop the madness!!!!

Love,

[Name withheld]
PS You are a lot of fun to read, in addition to being thought provoking. I don't think that you're "dime a dozen," in the slightest. Thanks for your hard work at NRO.

And...

Dear Professor Cole,

Again, I have listened to both sides, considered and the arguments and reflected on the matters before the court. As you and Mr. Goldberg place your arguments before we, the uninformed masses, you are subject to our judgment in the end and here is my scorecard:

1) Goldberg's argument that Cole's claim that Iran's elections were far more democratic than Iraq's was not a sound claim for Cole to make.

Judgment, Goldberg has a stronger case here. (And while I recently learned from an esteemed professor that the arrow of time points forward and that we can thank the second law of thermodynamics for that, as a less learned type, I think evaluating past events by their future results seems to be kind of reasonable, and hence, the wager sounds like a nice touch).

2) Cole's argument that Goldberg has not read a book on the Middle East.
Goldberg won this, if we admit his testimony. I retired to chambers to assess this question and I judge him to be an expert of the books he has read and will allow it. Goldberg wins.

3) Cole's "argument" that Goldberg cannot speak Arabic
Cole wins.

4) Cole's argument that Goldberg has been hired by rich people to "to badmouth the poor, spread bigotry, exalt mindless militarism, promote anti-intellectualism, and ensure generally that right wing views come to predominate even among people who are harmed by such policies. One of their jobs is to marginalize progressives by smearing them as unreliable."

This is wholly unsupported by Cole and was laughed out of my court. Especially since thousands of readers have now made regular visits to Cole's website thanks to Mr. Goldberg's initial and continued exchanges with Cole (hardly marginalzing behavior). I think I am speaking for many of those uniformed masses with no knowledge of Arabic that I had never heard of professor Cole, never visited his website, and was unaware of his opinions until I was invited to examine them by the all powerful, progressive silencing, poor bashing, bigotry spreading, mindlessly militaristic, anti-intellectual CORNER.

Goldberg 3 Cole 1

Final Judgment:
If Cole hopes (as I gather Mr. Goldberg does) to reach not just those who already agree with him, but those thinking people who take ideas and arguments seriously, then he has had a wonderful opportunity presented to him by Mr. Goldberg, as he put an escape hatch in the hermetically sealed walls of right wing opinion and allowed us all to go directly to his website. Its too bad he squandered that opportunity with the above "arguments", revealing without any aid from Mr. Goldberg, that he is indeed, unreliable.

From a student there:

Oh trust me, plenty of people, including myself know that tenured profs here can and often are wrong.

Things I've learned from profs after ONE semester:

"Every U.S. president except Clinton was racist."
"New Deal ended Great Depression"
"Fed gov't was the cause of the post WWII economic boom, not the free
market."

I've been trying very hard to simply ignore or delete the obvious hate mail without responding. But the ones with a hint of reasonableness I've been trying to reply to even as I have a lot of work to do. Here is an exchange I just had which might give a glimpse of what I have to put up with. I've abbreviated his email name to protect his identity:

Email from "Dsander":
Subject: "Just so you're clear"

"You’re going to have a hard time making the case that a professor in any field, any department, who has achieved tenure at the University of Michigan is somehow suspect or incompetent. Wrong school, wrong argument.

Why not stop making a fool of yourself and drop the whole spat with Prof. Cole? People are laughing at you and some of them are those one would think would align with you."

Response from me: "thanks, but i'll take my counsel elsewhere. I don't plan on carrying this on much longer though. But just so you're clear LOTS of people are perfectly open to the idea that a tenured professor at the UNiversity of Michigan can be wrong. That you think otherwise is baffling to me."

Second email from Dsander: "Hint for you Fat Boy … those aren’t “people” … they’re your right-wing ‘droids. Enjoy …"

From a reader:

Jonah,

I’m married to science teacher (and she is neither a hippie nor a first year) who teaches a unit on evolution in an all-girls Catholic middle school with support of both the parents and the administration. Step outside your echo chamber and see that evolution and the scientific method are main-stream, among both the faithful and otherwise, and I thank God for it.

Nobody ever made a semi-conductor by praying over sand.

Me: I think the echo chamber comment is a cheap shot given that I never said the scientific method wasn't mainstream among the faithful. Indeed, the gist of my post was that I don't like the anti-evolution stuff because it gives the opposite impression.

Pima County taxpayers would have to shoulder all the local costs to detain illegal immigrants under President Bush's proposed budget. The budget, released yesterday, kills the $305 million program that helps states and counties offset the costs of keeping illegal immigrants behind bars.

Last year, Pima County received just under $750,000 from the program....

From a science teacher:

This is the second time that I have written to say that I have been wholly entertained by your column -- and with no subtext of derision implied. Good god, Juan Cole, is a simpering offensive little man. I am so sick of my cohorts on the left: when will they get down from the crucifix? Their whining is just so boorish and self-absorbed. I have really had it. With Christopher Hitchens, I may be one of two liberal "hawks," but I didn't expect liberals to lose their minds so entirely with the re-election of President Bush. I believe it would be better if
our country had two viable alternatives to choose from -- but, it doesn't look as though the liberal front will be offering up any worthwhile candidates soon. At any rate, your column makes me think that the right at least makes for better company: sensible and funny, what more could I ask? I will have to subscribe now.

We must celebrate the fact that we have men like Jim Mattis willing to devote (and give) their lives when necessary to commit an act that most of those in our society would be horrified to even contemplate. If you are offended by these emotions, then seriously consider joining an Army or Marine infantry unit so that you can demonstrate how to kill an enemy in a more humane and politically correct manner.

PETA says that a Mercedes car made with faux leather "saves" half a dozen cows. Apart from violating the separation between cattle and state, there is a problem here.

Aren't the cows being slaughtered anyway, for meat? It's not as though the leather from meat cows is always wasted, or the meat from leather cows is always wasted. Every part of the cow that can be used, is used.

The number of cows saved, even if every Mercedes had no leather, would be roughly zero.

No, not that one. Sorry.

I'm debating Peter Beinart at West Virginia University in Morgantown on March 28 about values and politics. Also, I'll be speaking solo at Ithaca College and (possibly) Northwestern U. sometime soon. I'll post dates shortly.

All weekend I was hearing from people calling me an idiot, a faker, a know-nothing. All weekend they were sending me "cluck cluck" taunts to debate Cole. All weekend I heard how Cole is the expert who knows everything.

So I wrote today's column. It uses Cole's own words to show how their dashboard saint is inconsistent and at times just plain dishonest. I curtailed my own well-known instinct for colorful language and stuck to the facts and the arguments. I even accepted Cole's debate challenge.

So what have I heard in response? From Cole? Nothing.

From his fans, very little. The few who have written are either still hurling insults or claiming that my column was, in the words of several, "too long to read." Forgive me if this makes me wonder if perhaps, just perhaps, they're not as interested in scholarly substance as they claim.

But not one of Cole's disciples has said I'm wrong about Cole's distortions and bizarre zig-zags. Not one has said I quoted him out of context or that the quotes I used don't back up my points. Not one has offered a single solitary rebuttal to any of the substantive points about Iran's elections, Iraq's nuclear program, or Cole's own presumably bloodthirsty support for the war when it was politically expedient.

I at least expected Cole's biggest fan, James Wolcott, to put down the latest issue of Cosmo long enough to fling another zinger for the benefit of the lunch crowd at Sardi's. But even Frostburg State's most famous almost-alum is silent.

Color me unimpressed.

I teach at a community college in Tennessee. So help me, I saw a male faculty member wearing an "Honorary Vagina" sticker on his shirt the other day. The whole college is a swirl with the swill. What is happening to us? Please protect my identity.

I do apologize for letting this story develop as much as it has without commenting. If you haven't heard, Jordan -- the same CNN news honcho who admitted CNN had deliberately downplayed Saddam's barbarism in its pre-war coverage -- allegedly claimed recently that it was American policy to kill journalists in Iraq. This, needless to say, is outrageous. If it's true it's outrageous and American officials should go to jail. Of course it's almost certainly not true, in which case it is outrageous because Jordan freelanced a horrific charge with no evidence. Indeed, if Jordan thinks it is even remotely true he should have assigned countless CNN reporters to cover what would obviously be a huge story. Of course, Jordan and CNN say he was misunderstood. Maybe he was. Maybe he wasn't. Michelle Malkin talked to Barney Frank who was there and he says he did say it.

And of course TKS has been on top of this for a while.

As I try to get back up to speed with the story, I'll have more comments.

Cuba, which evokes images of cigar-chomping revolutionaries, has banned smoking in public places, an uphill struggle in a country synonymous with fine tobacco where more than half of adults smoke.

Cubans are no longer allowed to smoke in air-conditioned areas, offices, schools and sports centres in an island-wide health drive by President Fidel Castro's government.

Castro, once a famous aficionado of Cohiba cigars, gave up smoking two decades ago to safeguard his health.

In De la Renta’s adjoining office, the inauguration is being broadcast over the Internet—there is Laura Bush, pert and stately in a pearly De la Renta cashmere dress, though the designer is currently concerned about the clothes another client, Hillary Clinton, has chosen for the event. “She’s wearing black,” someone points out.

De la Renta frowns. “What?”

“It’s a black jacket, and a—”

He cuts her off. “Oh, I always tell Senator Clinton . . .” He pauses delicately. “Well, I mean, I’m sure she looks beautiful. Hillary is a beautiful woman. But I always tell her not to wear black. She looks tough in black”—he tenses his fists and jaw to illustrate his point—“and she is more than just a tough lady. The problem is that everything else she has, every other piece of clothing that’s not black, is mine, and with Mrs. Bush also wearing something of mine today . . . ”

After a moment, De la Renta simply laughs. The designer, who grew up under a dictatorship, seems to find politics most compelling, not as an engine of policy and social change, but as a theater of bombastic personalities kept in line by social formality.

“I’m a nonpartisan voter,” he says with a smile. “I vote for the man, not the party. I voted for Clinton, but I voted for Bush. I also voted for Reagan.” He pauses. “Black! I cannot believe she’s wearing black!”

"When you consider that the skins of four to 15 cows are needed for each car this means thousands of cows will be spared," said PETA researcher Edmund Haferbeck. "This is a huge victory for animal rights."

1.) Don't assume all country artists are from/live in Nashville. George Strait and many other performers live in Texas, Keith Urban was born/raised in Australia, Merle Haggard would never live anywhere but California . . . you get the idea.

2.) Don't assume that all people connected with country music are conservative. While a good mix of artists are Republican or conservative, there are quite a few that eagerly participated in the activities sponsored by the Music Row Democrats, a hard-core collection of extremely influential country music executives/insiders from all aspects of the industry that were very visible during the 2004 election. So while Tennessee and many of the country music artists may be "red," the country music industry itself - just like its rock and hip-hop counterpoints on either coast - is decidedly "blue."

Pity the handful of us that furtively sneak peeks at the NR website during the day . . . strictly as a means of self-preservation, we're a pretty silent minority.

I've read Brooke Allen's fiction reviews in The New Criterion and the New York Times for years. I've never had any idea what her politics were. Her recent essay in The Nation gives us a hint. Here's how it starts: "It is hard to believe that George Bush has ever read the works of George Orwell, but he seems, somehow, to have grasped a few Orwellian precepts. The lesson the President has learned best--and certainly the one that has been the most useful to him--is the axiom that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it. One of his Administration's current favorites is the whopper about America having been founded on Christian principles."

If the "lie" that America was founded on Christian principles is a "favorite" of an administration that believes in repeating its lies often, then the president and his principal subordinates must make that claim all the time. I can't remember a single occasion when they have made the claim. For Allen to accuse the administration of being prone to lying and utter an untruth of her own in the same breath is not an auspicious beginning to her essay.

The great silence by left-leaning Western feminists, and other large parts of the left, to human rights abuses carried out in the name of Islam is, to see it as its kindest, caused by an overdeveloped sense of tolerance or cultural relativism. But it is also part of the new anti-Americanism. Look at American Christian fundamentalism, they say.

Dislike of George Bush's foreign policy has led to an automatic support of those perceived to be his enemies. Paradoxically, this leaves the left defending people who hold beliefs that condone what the left has long fought against: misogyny, homophobia, capital punishment, suppression of freedom of speech. The recent reaffirmation by Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie has been met by virtual silence; as has the torture and murder in Iraq of a man who would be presumed to be one of the left's own - Hadi Salih, the international officer of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions. The hard left these days is soft on fascism, or at least Islamofascism.

I was in the army and stationed in Germany in the early 80s. The day after the super bowl was a holiday for us since the game was on so late over there. So it is (or at least was then) a federal holiday of sorts.

I'm a Field Artillery officer stationed at Camp Stanley, South Korea. Because of the 14-hour time difference, the Super Bowl actually falls on Monday morning. Fortunately, today also marked the beginning of the Korean Lunar New Year festivities, and our chain of command has seen fit to give us the day off (our Korean soldiers get most of the week off). Unfortunately, after the Steelers' tragic loss, I really didn't have a dog in this fight. And all of the commercials were replaced with Armed Forces Network pablum about visiting national parks and what happened on this date in Eighteen-Hundred-and-Who-Gives-a-Damn. But we're still way ahead of you on the 3-day weekend issue.

You guys are trying way to hard to be cool. I'm a 28 year-old musician, and the half-time show was the best that I've ever seen. Most years it's completely forgettable crap, with medleys using some combination of old washed up rockers (Aerosmith, Gloria Estefan, Phil Collins) and whatever happens to be in the top ten that week (Nelly, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Enrique Iglesias, New Kids on the Block, etc.). This year, they let a real professional do the show, and it was great. It was fun, it was entertaining, and it was a spectacle, everything you could possibly ask for in a half-time show.

Animal Planet ran it -- twice -- last night. I loved it. It was inspired. This reader summarizes well (though he leaves out how the "refs" came out when there was a "puppy foul" to clean up after them. That has got to be the worst job in television):

Jonah, as a fellow dog lover I hope you we're able to catch "The Puppy Bowl" on Animal Planet last night. It was AP's low-cost fodder going up against the Super Bowl. The Puppy Bowl was simply a mini football field set up in the studio with a bunch of real live puppies of varying sizes and breeds romping about with one another. There was a Bowl Cam which was a tiny camera set in the bottom of the water bowl (I guarantee no one has ever seen a dog drink water -- or better yet, step in -- water from that vantage point). Apparently the broadcast flew under the radar of the FCC as there was no effort made to censor scenes of butt sniffing, licking oneself, and the occasional leg-lift. Every so often a referee would come out with some disinfectant and paper towels to call a penalty whenever a puppy soiled the field. The whole thing was a hoot and a half. We called the kids into watch it and they were in stitches the entire time. Cosmo would've loved it.

This is nice to hear:

Thanks! for today's column on Cole. Brilliantly done, superbly executed--especially the way you used Cole's own words against himself. Reading it made my day. I might add that the way this debate has played out has larger significance than the argument between you and Cole. Your besting of Cole in this debate has a moral for larger questions regarding the the pretensions of politically prejudiced academia, common sense vs. expertise, and others as well.

(anonymity requested)
Oxford University

The good doctor's Cole-ectomy is here.

By the way, when I alerted my wife to this whole brouhaha, she checked out Cole's site. She hadn't heard of him before--and, if it makes a difference, Dr. Cole, she has a masters in foreign relations from SAIS and speaks Russian. She couldn't believe that a professor from a distinguished university would have such a rabidly partisan, unprofessional, and un-scholarly website. After five minutes she declared, "That's it," our daughter "is going to be home-universitied."

I just wanted to pass along a short story from last night. I am currently doing a Ph.D. in History at a prestigious northeastern university, and with one possible exception (aside from myself) everyone in my department (staff, faculty, grad student) was crushed that John Kerry lost. In any case, last night a few of my friends who I was watching the game with were complaining every time a vaguely patriotic image came on the screen. One ridiculed the reading of the Declaration of Independence (which I had missed), then continued during Alicia Keyes, and then the National Anthem. When the Anheuser-Busch commercial came one, they just shook their heads and exclaimed that they wanted to move out of the country.

They were truly disgusted by the displays of love for America, feeling that it was nothing more than militaristic/jingoistic/nationalistic/neo-fascistic pap. These are the next generation of professors, teachers, and text-book writers by the way...

The majority of secondary school teachers believe pupils should be told where to obtain an abortion, according to a survey published today.

More than two thirds (69%) of staff who teach 11 to 18-year-olds said pupils should be taught how to arrange termination of an unplanned pregnancy. Some 59% of all the 700 teachers polled by the Times Education Supplement supported practical advice on abortion being included in sex education lessons.

Support was higher among headteachers and deputies, and more men (65%) than women (56%) were found to be in favour....

Yes, Kathryn you make a good point. Why, I often read the Corner on weekends and I'm the most normal guy I know. There's just nothing like putting a fresh pair of Kleenex boxes on your feet and spending the day on the web.

Regardless, I meant no offense to Andrew, but to make amends I offer him this story about Castroite Cuba banning smoking in public places. The irony of this occurring almost exactly on the anniversary of Bloomberg's smoking repeal should be just compensation for any slight.

(Videotape, December 8, 2004):

SPC. THOMAS WILSON: Now, why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles and why don't we have those resources readily available to us?

SEC'Y RUMSFELD: As you know, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.

And if you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up. And you can have an up-armored Humvee and it can be blown up.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: Now, Specialist Wilson did acknowledge he worked with a journalist in crafting that question.

SEC'Y RUMSFELD: Yeah, but wait a minute. Let me get into this a little bit.

MR. RUSSERT: Sure.

SEC'Y RUMSFELD: That was unfair and it was selectively taking out two sentences from a long exchange--there it is--that took place. And when you suggested that that's how I answered that question, that is factually wrong.

MR. RUSSERT: No, we...

SEC'Y RUMSFELD: That is not how I answered that question.

MR. RUSSERT: But, Mr. Secretary, it clearly represents the exchange and...

SEC'Y RUMSFELD: It does not.

MR. RUSSERT: All right. What is missing?

SEC'Y RUMSFELD: You want to hear the exchange? There is it. It's right here. I'll read it to you.

MR. RUSSERT: I just...

SEC'Y RUMSFELD: If you're going to quote pieces of it, I'll give you the exchange. He asked that question, and I said, "I talked to the general coming out here about the pace at which the vehicles are being armored. They have been brought from all over the world, wherever they're not needed, to places where they are needed. I'm told they are being--the Army is--I think it's something like 400 a month are being done now. And it's essentially a matter of physics. It's not a matter of money. It isn't a matter on the part of the Army's desire. It's a matter of production and capability of doing it. As you know, you go to the war with the Army you have. They're not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.

"Since the Iraq conflict began, the Army has been pressing ahead to produce armor necessary at a rate that they believe--it's a greatly expanded rate from what existed previously but a rate that they believe is the rate that can be accomplished. I can assure you that General Schumacher and the leadership of the Army and certainly General Whitcomb are sensitive to the fact that not every vehicle has the degree of armor that would be desirable to have, but that they're working at it at a good clip.

"It's interesting. I've talked a great deal about this with a team of people who've been working hard at the Pentagon. And if you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and the tank could still be blown up. And you can have an up-armored Humvee and it can be blown up. And you can go down and the vehicle--the goal we have is to have many of those vehicles as is humanly possible with the appropriate level of armor available for the troops. And that's what the Army's been working on. And, General Whitcomb, is there anything you want to add?" And then he spoke.

Now, that answer is totally different from picking out two lines. And I think it's an unfair representation and it's exactly what some of the newspapers around the country did. Now, let's go back to Susan Collins' comment, Senator Collins...

If you're a normal person who enjoyed his or her weekend you may have missed the dust-up between Juan Cole and myself. I'm not going to clog The Corner with more of this stuff, but if you want to get up to speed, you can start here and scroll upwards.

Or you can wait a little while for my comprehensive response.

"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil . . . it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them."

The language wasn't elegant. But we don't need prissy military leaders. We need generals who talk straight and shoot straight, men who inspire. And I guarantee you that any real Marine or soldier would follow Gen. Mattis.

The Iraqis are Griping about America less:

BAGHDAD Through 22 months of occupation and war, the word "America" was usually the first word to pass through the lips of an Iraqi with a gripe. Why can't the Americans produce enough electricity? Why can't the Americans guarantee security? Why can't the Americans find my stolen car?

Last week, as the euphoria of nationwide elections washed over this country, a remarkable thing happened: Iraqis, by and large, stopped talking about the Americans.

With the ballots still being counted, the Iraqi candidates retired to the back rooms to cut political deals, leaving the Americans, for the first time, standing outside. In Baghdad's tea shops and on its street corners, the talk turned to which of those candidates might form the new government, to their schemes and stratagems and to Iraqi problems and Iraqi solutions.

And for the United States, the assessments turned measured.

"We have no electricity here, no water and there's no gasoline in the pumps," said Salim Muhammad Ali, a tire repairman who voted in the Jan. 30 election. "Who do I blame? The Iraqi government, of course. They can't do anything."

Asked about the U.S. military presence, Ali chose his words carefully.

"I think the Americans should stay here until our security forces are able to do the jobs themselves," Ali said, echoing virtually every senior U.S. officer in Iraq. "We Iraqis have our own government now, and we can invite the Americans to stay."

Update. I should also post the very end of the story:

Hachim Shahir, an 83-year-old bricklayer standing in line for hours to vote, was asked how it had been possible for somebody like him to arrive at such a late stage in life without ever having voted, and now finally to have cast a ballot. He thought for a long while, then answered: "America - it was America that did it."

And how did he feel about that?

"America will be good if it completes what it came here to do, to bring us democracy, and then it goes home," Shahir said. "The main thing now is that they keep their promises, and leave. Personally, I believe they will do it."

Toilet Penalties and Seat Fouls. Every time the boys leave the seat up, girls get a 2 minute reprieve from the football talk. Feel free to bring up any non Super Bowl related topic for two whole minutes without being shushed!

Hasn't anyone made the comparison. Larry Summers is one of America's most esteemed economists and the former Secretary of the Treasury. At a closed door free-for all confab among scholars at which everyone was encouraged to think unconventionally he gave a talk in which he said their might be some innate differences between the sexes. A noted activist female academic in the room quite literally got the vapors and had to hie to her fainting couch -- or the Today Show, whichever came first. NOW demanded he resign. He was called a Nazi. One hundred members of the faculty called for his mortification through nonstop apology. Etc etc.

War Churchill, has no PhD. He allegedly has made up his Indian ethnicity to game the system here and abroad. His scholarship is next to non-existent and he makes his way through life saying appalling and idiotic things to make money from the controversy.

And yet, the liberals who email me on this are frightened by what the Ward Churchill backlash says about academic freedom of speech in this country.

CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- A couple whose frozen embryo was accidentally destroyed at a fertility clinic has the right in Illinois to file a wrongful-death lawsuit, a judge has ruled in a case that some legal experts say could have implications in the debate over embryonic stem cell research. In an opinion issued Friday, Cook County Judge Jeffrey Lawrence said "a pre-embryo is a 'human being' ... whether or not it is implanted in its mother's womb."

Bravo to Anheuser-Busch for their "applauding the returning soldiers in the airport" commercial. I don't have to see any of the others -- that's the best I could ever imagine.

A good number of readers were (rightly) none too happy with the nature of the comparison Martin Jacques was making between the US and China.

Here’s a comment from Germany:

“This argument looks astonishingly similar to the good, old romanticist rejection of America. "It's artificial, it has no "national" culture." etc. That's also what the German right wing used to say about America in the 19th and first half of the 20th century, when they tried to contrast American "lack of culture" to the noble cultural tradition of the German "volk". I think that's just another proof for how un-left the left really has become.

While others took issue with the very idea that the US is indeed ‘artificial’, arguing that it too was part of a tradition that had evolved over the millennia.

Remains the bomb. Here's his opener:

At tough times in my life, with the landlord tossing my clothes and record collection out on to the street, I could have used an aunt like Benon Sevan's. Asked to account for the appearance in his bank account of a certain $160,000, Mr Sevan, executive director of the UN Oil-for-Food programme, said it was a gift from his aunt. Lucky Sevan, eh? None of my aunts ever had that much of the folding stuff on tap.

And nor, it seems, did Mr Sevan's. She lived in a modest two-room flat back in Cyprus and her own bank accounts gave no indication of spare six-figure sums. Nonetheless, if a respected UN diplomat says he got 160,000 bucks from Auntie, we'll just have to take his word for it. Paul Volcker's committee of investigation did plan to ask the old lady to confirm her nephew's version of events, but, before they could, she fell down an elevator shaft and died.

Mark Leonard, EU-phile director of the Centre for European Reform, has just written a remarkably revealing article contrasting the power of the EU and the US. There’s plenty in it to disagree with, but this, alas, is all too true:

“Europe's power is easy to miss. Like an 'invisible hand', it operates through the shell of traditional political structures. The British House of Commons, British law courts, and British civil servants are still here, but they have all become agents of the European Union implementing European law. This is no accident. By creating common standards that are implemented through national institutions, Europe can take over countries without necessarily becoming a target for hostility.”

With the referendum on the EU’s ‘constitution’ coming up, these are words that need to be repeated again, and again, and again.

And let’s get some of that 'hostility' going too.

Via the EU Referendum Blog.

The New York Times, always reliable cheerleaders for big government meddling, have come up with a puff piece (sorry) marking the second anniversary of Nurse Bloomberg’s smoking ban. Equally predictably, the Washington Monthly’s Kevin Drum applauds this “triumph of pragmatism over libertarianism” with a judicious selection of quotations culled from the article.

But there are others that are worth considering too:

“There are still those cursing the ban as an affront to their civil liberties, and some bar and restaurant owners say that it has undoubtedly caused a decline in business. City officials say they doubt that contention, pointing to data from the first year of the ban showing that restaurant and bar tax receipts were up 8.7 percent over the previous year's. They said they were still waiting for more detailed and current data from the state.”

That 8.7 percent is a pretty meaningless statistic for any number of reasons. To start with: (1) it includes all restaurants even those (the majority, in fact) that prohibited smoking before Bloomberg’s final ban. A more interesting statistic would be to compare the tax receipts from bars that allowed smoking before, but prohibit it now; (2) it is not adjusted to reflect the increase in restaurant prices (the tax, remember is paid on a percentage of the total bill); and (3) it takes no account of the impact of the general recovery in the economy since then.

And then there’s this:

“Mr. Crooks, an owner of Toad Hall, said he was far more worried about a falloff in business of at least 10 percent, which he said was a result of the new smoking ordinance. "It hurt the volume of business," Mr. Crooks said. While such complaints were once more common, and perhaps more heated, there are still plenty of them. "It hurts," said John Mulvey, owner of Bridget's Public House on Staten Island. Public acceptance of the ban has "come around a little bit," Mr. Mulvey said. Business was off 25 percent right after the ban took effect, he said, but now that decline has stabilized at about 5 percent. And while Mr. Mulvey is no longer furious over the anti-smoking ordinance, he says it bothers him that he is not free to run his business as he sees fit - without government intervention.”

Mr. Mulvey is right to be bothered. Bars were always free to ban smoking and, if their business had suffered because their customers really cared about all the smoke, they would have done. But the customers didn’t care that much. The people who did care were either those sad, hapless neurotics who genuinely believed that ‘passive smoking’ was a meaningful threat to their health, or those bullies (Bloomberg, I’m talking about you) who wish to make a public demonstration of their virtue by pushing other people around.

Unfortunately, they won.

But the triumph, Kevin, was not of pragmatism over libertarianism, but of authoritarianism and hysteria over compromise and commonsense.

My email box is now constantly overflowing with email from fans of Cole, Wolcott, Atrios etc. Nothing like waking up on a lovely Sunday morning to a steady stream of entirely unprintable expletives, deranged screams of "chickenhawk!" and more than a smattering of really astoundingly anti-Semitic tirades. It's not all like that of course. Lots of people think Cole has made a fool of himself, which is still my view. One very illuminating element is that for all of Cole's alleged scholarly brilliance, the people who take his side seem almost completely unconcered with the substance of any of this. It's all personal insults. Then again, considering Cole's original post, the fish rots from the head down.

Nonetheless, I don't think anybody's mind has really been changed. Those who thought Cole was a pompous poseur who lets his ego and childish anti-Bush ideology run the show (or who thought Wolcott is a preening sponge) still think that. Those who thought I'm a know-nothing war monger before this spat, still think it now. For the most part, folks who were introduced to me through him, agree with him and vice versa.

So, since I've got several deadlines and a Superbowl to contend with, I'll probably take a break from all of this until at least tomorrow. But for you Cole or Atrios fans, if your testosterone levels have dropped too low and you think cursing at me some more will push them back into the safety zone, by all means keep doing it. Anything to help your self-esteem.

True, there is all sorts of religious extremism all over the place, but the reason for this partly has to do with the fascist attitudes and language of absolutism coming from Washington. It's challenging for people outside of America that Bush was re-elected. It means we're all going to have to work a lot harder to understand what so many more Americans than we thought really want. It's an identity shift in our minds about America and maybe for many Americans as well.