Elfman, not Bush

“I intend to make Scientology as accessible to as many people as I can. And that is my goal,” Elfman said. To do this, she says, it is my “duty to clear the planet.” By “clearing” she means to rid the world of “body thetans” — aliens who Scientologists believe inhabit the earth from a nuclear explosion 75 million years ago. She continued that “the more successful I became, the more suppression I bumped into … especially in the entertainment industry, which really is home to rabid suppression.”

Permit me a bellow of insensitive laughter.

The Norwegian Defence Research Institute (who knew?) has now issued a report of the murder of Dutch film maker Theo Van Gogh. Its conclusion?

”This report surveys in depth the available open source information about the ritualistic murder of the filmmaker Theo Van Gogh on the streets of Amsterdam on November 2, 2004. The report makes the case that the murder of Van Gogh was a terrorist attack implemented by an al-Qaida inspired radical Islamist group within the framework of global jihad, and not an act of religious violence by a lone fanatic. The report also argues that the invasion of Iraq was an important motivational factor for the assassin and his accomplices, in addition to grievances related to the Dutch government’s policies concerning immigration and Dutch counter-terrorism measures.”

Via Tiger Hawk.

In yet more grim news from Holland, it has been disclosed that controversial Dutch MP Geert Wilders – his stance on multiculturalism and immigration has earned him a steady stream of death threats from real or purported Islamist groups - is being housed in a prison for his own security.

Yes, it has come to this.

Via Dutch Report.

It’s election year in Britain, and diligent British expats are registering to vote.

A friend of mine – a former British army officer now living in NYC – takes up the story:

“This link takes you to the official website of the Electoral Commission, something I laboriously have had to do to register as an overseas voter. I noticed the Languages hyperlink, and so, anticipating the usual polyglot mix of tongues to reflect (a) our glorious Imperial past; (b) the inevitable legacy of our immigration policy; and (c) our role as 19th century colonialist oppressors (take your pick) in I went. Imagine my surprise when, nestled amongst the possibly deserving Pakistani, Punjabi and Chinese (?) translations, a sub-site for the "UlsterScots" language.”

Yup, really.

There it is: “An Easie Guide Tae The Votein In Norlin Airlan

Over to you, Derb. Over to you, Scott Burgess.

Kathryn, so the UN has voted to ban human cloning eh? Whatever we may think about human cloning, we should both agree that this really is none of the business of the UN or the ‘international community’ it purports to represent. The US should decide for itself what science it chooses to adopt, reject, or ban. For the UN to get involved is, quite simply, insolence.

To say that the international community has some sort of jurisdiction in this respect makes it far more difficult for the US to reject (with any degree of consistency) the encroachments on national sovereignty represented by Kyoto, the International Criminal ‘court’ or the proposed, and repellent, Law of the Sea Treaty.

What is it about the name ‘Spitzer’?

Here in NYC we have Boss Eliot, thug, due process abuser. Over in Germany they have crazy Manfred. He’s a professor from Ulm and he’s claiming that television claims twenty thousand lives a year.

His main focus?

Oh come on people, you know what it is….

Yup. Ja. ‘Die Kinder’

"Children who watch TV have narrow horizons…It reduces the plasticity of their brains which remain unstimulated and fail to develop properly. Later they smell and taste things differently because their senses are warped, and, as adults, go on to buy unhealthy foods, similar to those they have seen advertised on television."

Legislation, doubtless, to follow.

The inspectors of the International Olympics Committee are in London, and all the stops are being pulled out to impress these grandees. Appropriately enough, given the Olympics’ long association with totalitarian pageantry, this detail, I thought, brought a hint of Speer, a touch of Riefenstahl, to the proceedings:

”At the palace the commission was led through the quadrangle, illuminated by torches…”

The only thing missing? A speech by Prince Harry.

Connoisseurs of the continuing Tory collapse meanwhile will note that Tory ‘leader’ Michael Howard has endorsed the British capital’s bid for Olympic martyrdom.

Paris 2012!

This, rather wonderful, story comes from Kirghizstan:

"It would be either the “lemon” or the “tulip” revolution. Kazbek and his friends could not quite decide. But as they watched Ukraine’s Orange Revolution unfold last year, they were convinced of one thing: Kyrgyzstan could be next. Their mountainous homeland was thousands of miles east of Ukraine, and one tenth of its size, but the political parallels between the former Soviet republics were striking..."

Read it all. And give a cheer to Kazbek.

The famous Baby 81 story has made the rounds for a while. This Sri Lankan writer claims it was largely fraudulent and claims to be a Jason Blair style story.

I have not seen Constantine and I never read the comics upon which they were based. But I thought the least I could do is post this email from a fellow-traveller who disagrees with NRO's review (see homepage for link):

Dear Mr. Goldberg:

I know you've got a little bit of a soft spot for comics and things geeky, and so I was hoping you might take a brief minute, maybe in the Corner, to correct Steve Beard with regards to his review of Constantine. The things he identifies as "comic book"--the cold-war detente between angels and devils, the bet between God and the Devil, the "leaping tall buildings" aspect and worst of all that bloody "holy shotgun"--have nothing to do with the comic Hellblazer, which is generally more informed about Christian doctrine. (When it departs from doctrine, someone diabolic or angelic generally mentions it, and makes a plot point out of it.) There is no "detente" in the comic, the bet is a Hollywood invention, "half-breeds" appear nowhere (and if Gabriel is a half-breed, it begs the question of who isn't a heavenly half-breed), and Constantine rarely casts a spell that has any effect whatsoever.

The movie was lousy--I don't know what Beard saw in it--but please don't let NRO join the rest of the chorus in blaming it on the comics. Just because Hollywood can spoil anything good that it touches doesn't mean Alan Moore or Garth Ennis deserve such calumny.

Breakinging News United Nations voted for Total Ban on Human Cloning

The UN voted today for a comprehensive ban on human cloning. It comes after a two year negotiation and confirms the defeat of the French and German effort to allow for human experimental cloning

“This is a powerful message to the world community that this morally questionable procedure is outside the bounds of acceptable experimentation,” said Austin Ruse, president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, one of the main NGOs involved in the negotiation. “ This should encourage similar bans in legislatures around the world including in the US Senate,” said Ruse

Lots of readers have asked me why I don't think Deep Throat was real. They usually ask because I say things like this "there was no deep throat." I've been meaning to write a column making my case. But Eric Burns basically made it for me. He adds some fascinating details I didn't know, but his conclusion is the same. Deep throat was a composite of Woodward and Bernstein's sources.

K-Lo,

For your sitcom: remember Samantha and Serena on Bewitched? Now that you've changed you signature, you can play yourself as well as your evil twin, "Kay-Jay". Kay-Jay would allow Star Trek postings in The Corner, and... oh, wait a minute... that would make her the good twin. ;-)

If accurately reported, Tandy's remarks are as disturbing as they are patronizing, but they do serve one useful purpose - they are yet another reminder that the 'war against drugs' has long since left the realm of the rational - if it was ever there.

The other day Max Boot walloped Thomas Woods' The Politically Incorrect Guide to American HistorySouthern Appeal is hosting what amounts to a postgame post-mortem on the whole thing with defenders on both sides of the debate. Poke around for the relevant links and what not. I ordered the book from Amazon the other day and it should be here shortly. Until then, I give the benefit of the doubt and the argument to Boot. But there are definitely two sides to the whole thing. ("Man, you weaselled out of that one." -- The Couch).

Justin Katz takes issue with a comment I made the other day. The point I was trying to make was that there is no reason for governments to recognize marriage (as opposed to enforcing whatever contracts individuals happen to make) unless governments have some legitimate role, however limited, in encouraging moral behavior and good character.

We tend to think of public policies in either welfarist or libertarian terms. Many of us reject, or think we reject, the idea that the promotion of morality is a legitimate aim of the government (although I suppose most people would allow that the inculcation of good habits can be a kind of incidental byproduct of, e.g., laws against theft).

But neither welfarism nor libertarianism allows much of a defense of marriage laws. A libertarian conception of marriage law is always going to be vulnerable because people will be making analogies to situations where everyone has the liberty to swing his fist until it hits someone else's nose. "How would those people's polygamous union affect your marriage?" will be the question. If you can't count in cultural effects that occur through subtle influences on people's behavior and beliefs, you've lost that argument.

A welfarist conception of marriage creates another impossible situation for anyone who wants to resist a slide toward a purely contractarian view. You would have to show conclusively that certain types of unions don't promote the public welfare in social-scientific terms. You would have to show, for example, that kids raised by threesomes get colds more often than other kids. And even that wouldn't really work--you'd never be able to show that bad outcomes would happen every time a threesome was recognized as a family unit by the government.

If marriage laws promote liberty and social welfare, as I think they do, they do so precisely by encouraging moral behavior--by channeling sexual behavior, in a pretty non-coercive way, into desirable patterns. I don't think that this point, incidentally, ought to be the exclusive property of either side of the same-sex marriage debate. I gather that Jonathan Rauch, a thoughtful supporter of same-sex marriage, believes something similar to what I've just said. He thinks that the morality that marriage laws promote, and should promote, is a morality of commitment. Same-sex couples can qualify. Opponents of same-sex marriage, on the other hand, tend to think that the public moral good that marriage laws promote is tightly bound up with procreation in a way that means that legal status for same-sex couples cannot serve that good.

If you don't see a legitimate role for government in promoting morality at all, on the other hand, then you would support same-sex marriage only as a move toward a contractarian policy. Ultimately, I think, you would have to say that marriage is none of the government's business.

K-Lo and Coffin: Can a die hard Yankee fan and a long time Red Sox supporter find peace as roommates tune in next week as our duo debates who was tougher The Babe or Curt Schilling.

If Shannen was a liberal it would be a much easier sell.

That's Posse Incitatus's theory of the Summers assault. It's also basically what Harvey Mansfield says in today's Journal. It's payback for Kerry.

I'm off to tape the Carlson show. This Darth Vader costume sure is tight.

From a reader:

Mr. Goldberg,

As a recent graduate of Harvard, I am somewhat amused
by the recent furor surrounding our president but I
can't say that I am all that surprised. I think that
your assessment is spot-on: Summers is in trouble
because he said something that offends the
sensibilities of the Harvard community and therefore
must be castigated, regardless of the merits of his
argument. There's nothing like a "Top University" to
stifle debate.

Although I don't think that this has made the news
year, the release of the transcript has also brought up
a second complaint about Summers' remarks in addition
to the "innate differences" hypothesis: many of my
friends and classmates have told me how upset they are
about his question regarding which gender is more
pre-disposed to putting in longer, more stressful hours
for a job ["So I think in terms of positive
understanding, the first very important reality is just
what I would call the, who wants to do high-powered
intense work?"] While I feel that this is a completely
valid question, these women complain that Summers was
implying that women "aren't willing to work hard"--in
my opinion, a distortion of what he was trying to say.

But as I said before, none of this--the aversion to
open debate on campus, the exaggerated reaction,
etc--really surprises me. The weather has been getting
warmer in Cambridge over the last few weeks, so the
time has arrived for the Harvard community to engage in
its yearly spring semester ritual of staging some
completely misguided protest. A few years ago it was a
Living Wage campaign, more recently it was against the
Iraq War, and now this:

--------------------------------------------------
EMERGENCY PLANNING MEETING to Protest Summers & Sexism
TODAY (Friday) 2:30 pm - Loker Commons

Larry Summers' remarks on women in science at the NBER
Conference are now publicly released. National media attention is
focused on Harvard -- in this climate a student protest has the potential
to capture major news coverage and impact national public
discourse.

WE MUST SEIZE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO SPEAK OUT AGAINST
SEXISM.

* The dining hall workers union is organizing against the hostile environment created by his comments.
* Yale students demonstrated on Thursday in solidarity.
* Senior faculty are challenging him and suggesting his resignation.

IT'S TIME FOR HARVARD STUDENTS TO JOIN IN RAISING OUR
VOICES!

Students and alumnae are planning a demonstration before the faculty meeting next Tuesday afternoon -- when professors convene to discuss a vote of "no confidence" in Summers.

What issues will we raise? From resignation, to childcare for Harvard workers, to a women's center, to finals clubs, let's get planning and put together an agenda!

Join us if you're concerned about improving the climate
of this campus for women and about a feminist agenda at Harvard.
-----------------------------------------------------

From a reader at Harvard:

Dear Jonah,

I agree with you whole-heartedly about the Summers show trial. As a female scientist, I feel that this situation has made it WORSE for people like me, who has never felt particularly discriminated against (I think, however, that it has more to do with personality traits than the reality of whether one is discriminated against). I am of the generation that will be applying for academic positions in the next, say, two-to-five years, and the "task forces" set up will mean that any woman hired can be considered of questionable quality: were you hired because you excel, or to fill up the diversity quotas? Seems like the same questions one might face if one were of color.

I also hate the notion, which MUST necessarily follow from this kerfuffle, that there are things one cannot discuss. Academic freedom: yeah right!

Keep up the good work!

Several readers have noted that if I'm going to link to exciting geek trailers, I should have put the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy trailer up a long time ago. They're right.

I'll be back on this weekend. Check listings.

I've read the whole transcript including the Q&A now. It seems to me that Summers' sin is that, despite saying he's just being provocative, he really does believe there is a strong genetic component to the cognitive differences between men and women. Of course, he's making a statistical point. There are more male geniuses and there are more male morons while women tend to be in the middle of the distribution. This doesn't mean, at least from what he's saying, that there aren't women who are just as brilliant as the most brilliant men, it's just that there are fewer of them compared to men. He allows that better socialization and tougher anti-discrimination efforts could and should boost the numbers of women at the top, but he seems to believe the underlying statistical difference reflects a basic reality that can never be completely erased.

And there you have it. Because he believes something the Harvard faculty do not want to concede even might be true, he must say it is not true. That fits the pattern of inquisitions perfectly. Recant what you believe to be scientifically true because a sophisticated mob says you must.

Tha the faculty at Harvard is going mad. It's like the Crucible or something. It's approaching an inquisition. Here's an excerpt from the New York Times:

"My best guess, to provoke you, of what's behind all of this is that the largest phenomenon - by far - is the general clash between people's legitimate family desires and employers' current desire for high power and high intensity; that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude; and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination," Dr. Summers said, according to the transcript.

"I would like nothing better than to be proved wrong, because I would like nothing better than for these problems to be addressable simply by everybody understanding what they are, and working very hard to address them," he added.

Over and over in the transcript, he made clear that he might be wrong in his theories, and he challenged researchers to study his propositions.

He also urged research on "the quality of marginal hires" to the faculty when efforts to diversify are under way. How many of these hires, he asked, have "turned out to be much better than the institutional norm who wouldn't have been found without a greater search?" Or are "plausible compromises" that are not unreasonable additions to the faculty? And "how many of them are what the right-wing critics of all of this suppose represent clear abandonments of quality standards"?

Several Harvard professors said they were more furious after reading the precise remarks, saying they felt he believed women were intellectually inferior to men.

Everett I. Mendelsohn, a professor of the history of science, said that once he read the transcript, he understood why Dr. Summers "might have wanted to keep it a secret."

"Where he seems to be off the mark particularly is in his sweeping claims that women don't have the ability to do well in high-powered jobs," said Professor Mendelsohn, part of a faculty group that sharply criticized Dr. Summers's leadership at a meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on Tuesday. "There's an implication that they've taken themselves out of that role. But he brings forward no evidence."

Now look. The guy said he was there to provoke people. He said he was there not as a president but as an academic. He was speaking to an off-the-record session of grown-ups. He said numerous times that he was offering theories he hoped would and could be falsified. And for this the Harvard faculty might vote no-confidence in the guy. And he's already been forced to apologize three or four times (I'm losing count) and appoint not one but two task forces which no one doubts will release reports saying Summers is a neanderthal.

Meanwhile, that no-talent-ass-clown Ward Churchill is a champion of free speech for refusing to apologize or even "back-up one inch" on his statement that the decent, innocent victims of 9/11 were the moral equivalent of the man who sent babies and old women to the gas chambers.

What is wrong with these people?

John Negroponte is a smart, effective, honorable man. He's probably the best man our State Department has produced in a century -- and I mean that as a great compliment to him. He's terrific.

But he isn't the kind of DNI I would have chosen.....

Kathryn, Hope all is well at "the", uh I mean "NRO".

Was watching Survivor: Palau (I admit it!) earlier tonight with the lovely Mrs. Wiffler, and couldn't help remember why I recognized the name "Palau".

It was the site of the battle of Peleliu in 1944. Maybe you could take a look at these links and consider if they might warrant a link on the Corner. It would be nice if people knew about the eight Marines who earned the Medal of Honor for their actions there. If you take a few minutes to read them, their stories are quite moving, and are fading into lost memory.

I had to catch myself from wondering if, 60 years from now, we'll tune into Survivor: Fallujah.

Semper fi,
Maj. Jerry Wiffler
See here and here.

In diameter, the arteries were the size of the tip of a pencil, Reddy said, and the aorta was 3 millimeters, or about one-eighth of an inch, long. His chest was the length of the doctor's finger.

That's what the Kyoto protocol has cost the world in order to achieve the potential of saving us 0.000009899 °C in temperature increases as of this posting. The cost is going up fast. That's according to the Kyoto Count-Up over at JunkScience.com.

Kathryn posted the link below, but I think his opening statement is worth reading right away:

I asked Richard, when he invited me to come here and speak, whether he wanted an institutional talk about Harvard's policies toward diversity or whether he wanted some questions asked and some attempts at provocation, because I was willing to do the second and didn't feel like doing the first. And so we have agreed that I am speaking unofficially and not using this as an occasion to lay out the many things we're doing at Harvard to promote the crucial objective of diversity. There are many aspects of the problems you're discussing and it seems to me they're all very important from a national point of view. I'm going to confine myself to addressing one portion of the problem, or of the challenge we're discussing, which is the issue of women's representation in tenured positions in science and engineering at top universities and research institutions, not because that's necessarily the most important problem or the most interesting problem, but because it's the only one of these problems that I've made an effort to think in a very serious way about. The other prefatory comment that I would make is that I am going to, until most of the way through, attempt to adopt an entirely positive, rather than normative approach, and just try to think about and offer some hypotheses as to why we observe what we observe without seeing this through the kind of judgmental tendency that inevitably is connected with all our common goals of equality. It is after all not the case that the role of women in science is the only example of a group that is significantly underrepresented in an important activity and whose underrepresentation contributes to a shortage of role models for others who are considering being in that group. To take a set of diverse examples, the data will, I am confident, reveal that Catholics are substantially underrepresented in investment banking, which is an enormously high-paying profession in our society; that white men are very substantially underrepresented in the National Basketball Association; and that Jews are very substantially underrepresented in farming and in agriculture. These are all phenomena in which one observes underrepresentation, and I think it's important to try to think systematically and clinically about the reasons for underrepresentation.

Does this really sound like a guy who should be slow roasted for his "insensitivity" to women?

Since Talking Heads have come into it, I wonder if you know whether it's The Smashing Pumpkins or just Smashing Pumpkins? It makes a much bigger difference than putting the article in front of National Review or Talking heads because, in this case, it's the difference between pumpkins that one finds fabulous--"Smashing!"--or the physical act of smashing them against something.

Yes, I think a lot about such weighty matters.

Your e-mailer said, “Sorry to come in late, but dropping the article just sounds "cooler". You could always spot the poseur when he referred to David Byrne's band as The Talking Heads.”

It cycles. "The" was definitely cool, originally: The Who, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones.

Then, inexplicably, it wasn't: Led Zeppelin, Mountain, Deep Purple. I remember from this time that The Carpenters insisted on being called "Carpenters" because "The" wasn't cool any more.

Then, suddenly, "The" became cool again: The Police, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Dead Kennedys. (But yes "Talking Heads" ... the exception that proves the rule.)

Now, I guess, we've come around again, and: Jimmy Eat World, Three Doors Down, ... sigh.

Anyone who has lived on both coasts knows the following:

The East Coast drops the article “the” and the West Coast adds it.

On the East Coast you say, “Take 95 north to 495…”

On the West Coast you say, “Take THE 10 to THE 101…”

Could it be that the people who insist on saying THE National Review are from the left coast?

Hmmmmm….

Sorry to come in late, but dropping the article just sounds "cooler". You could always spot the poseur when he referred to David Byrne's band as The Talking Heads.

From the AP:

NEW YORK (AP) - CBS will televise a one-hour prime-time tribute to Dan Rather the night he leaves the evening news anchor chair, and its producer says it won't avoid the story that has clouded his final days on the job.

"Dan Rather: A Reporter Remembers" will air 8 p.m. EST on March 9, an hour after he anchors his final evening newscast after 24 years, the network announced Thursday.

If you haven't heard, lefty bloggers want Brit Hume's head on plate because of what he allegedly said about FDR's plans for Social Security. Much like Ishtar, the full story is long and uninteresting. Nevertheless, the folks at Villainous Companyhave tried to put this whole issue to rest. Something tells me that A) they won't be successful and B) Brit Hume's job is safe and sound.

For over a year I "turned off" my old JonahEmail@aol.com address because it had become so spamified. I recently switched it so it could receive email again and I'm discovering that many people are still sending email to it. This is a bad idea in that I still almost never check it (thought it's perfect for really annoying press releases and the like). If in the last year or so you were baffled why I never responded to your million-dollar deal or some such and you sent email to that account, you now know why you never heard from me.

By this:

"The group has also been working with a California lawmaker to introduce state legislation that would ban the sale of cloned or genetically engineered pets."

The intervention of a 'California lawmaker' is almost always the sign of a really, really dumb idea.

I don't agree with all this or even most of it, but this is a civil and honest case from the other side. It's not the first one I've received but they are a distinct minority amidst the many emails on the subject:

Jonah: You are probably getting deluged with e-mails from leftists like me, so I want to make one point. I want to focus on what I think the importance of the story is to you as an independent journalist and conservative.

Forget the gay stuff. Forget the alleged conservative hypocrisy. Forget speculative (and absurd, to me) Monica parallels. Forget the fact he was a bad writer. Even forget Plame for now, until we hear more.

The scandal is the fact that Gannon was an administration shill given unprecedented access to the press briefings. Note that being an administration shill is quite different from being a conservative largely sympathetic to the administration (which I assume you are). The purpose of a free and independent press is to act as the watchdog to power, to question and examine the government. A true independent conservative journalist isn't there to toss softballs to the administration -- the administration has plenty of avenues to get its point across. A true independent conservative would press points where he or she felt the administration was not doing enough or not living up to its rhetoric, on such issues as, say, federal spending, faith-based initiatives, troop support, or whatever else you are interested in. It is OK and probably unavoidable to be biased, or even partisan, in favor of the administration, but it is a scandal to pretend to be independent when you are an arm of the administration.

Gannon is a scandal because he was a fraud, an administration plant. All of his questions were designed not to shed light on issues of importance to conservatives per se, but rather to boost and support the administration. The scandal is that he was posing as something he was not, an independent journalist.

You might be behind the curve, but check out the revelations that Gannon got into the press room before the supposedly independent "Talon" ever existed. It appears his only affiliation at the time was with the GOPUSA website. It appears that he was given a hard pass, even before "Talon" ever existed. (Even if the hard pass was not issued, he was routinely issued a day pass, which amounts to the same thing.)

We don't know how Gannon got into the room. How did a non-journalist, not affiliated with any news organization, get a coveted press pass? (Remember, even if you consider Talon a legitimate news organization and not a site devoted to cut-and-paste summaries of administration and GOP press releases and talking points, Gannon was allowed in before Talon existed. Compare with Maureen Dowd's column today concerning her inability to get a pass issued.) Someone pulled strings, circumvented the rules, because they knew Gannon would be an appendage to the administration. He was given favorable treatment specifically because he was NOT an independent journalist. As an independent journalist yourself, doesn't this cause concern to you? When seen in the larger context of Armstrong Williams et al and the fake newscasts the administration circulated, wouldn't this pattern of misleading and non-disclosed administration propaganda posing as independent journalism constitute a fairly big scandal, regardless of who is President? You are in the class of people who should be most concerned, if you value the perception of being independent, because the more that instances of stealth propaganda emerge, the more that all pro-administration journalists will be called into question, fairly or not.

Then you have all the lies. Gannon lied about his relationship to the websites, lied about first attending the briefings under the aegis of Talon, about not getting a hard pass, and other things. All of this strongly points to some sort of cover up. It is hard to avoid suspicion that he is covering up who gave him permission to enter the press briefings and his other ties to the administration.

I am somewhat appalled by the focus on the gay prostitute angle, especially the glee and mocking coming from some on the left, and I think efforts to pose this as conservative hypocrisy instead of administration propaganda misses the mark. This isn't a liberal or conservative scandal at all. It is a scandal that points to the erosion of the free and independent press.

For backup of the claims that Gannon was given a hard press pass (apparently solid, but not 100%) before Talon existed, or at least was at press briefings before Talon existed (100%), see these Kos diaries:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/16/155840/912 (Gannon in briefings before Talon existed)

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/2/17/125328/435 (hard pass)

Also check out Blumenthal in Salon today, and see what you think: http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2005/02/17/gannon_affair/

Face it, you guys have become "the" National Review. There are no others, be it on dead tree or online. You are a monolith, the only review of the nation in existence. Or as Jonah would say the "Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu waza Banga"

I’d consider “the” a blessing in disguise. When someone verbally says “the National Review,” it sounds just like “the national review.” In other words, the speaker is subliminally equating your magazine with the national review of the way things are. Not a message I’d think you’d want to dissuade.

From today's Hotline:

Last week CNN's news director Eason Jordan resigned from his post after a remark he made at an allegedly off-the-record session at the Davos conference in Switzerland. Jordan had said he felt U.S. troops had been targeting journalists in Iraq. A blogger at the conference published Jordan's comment on a Davos blog. It was then picked up by the National Review online, reprinted on a blog of a radio talk show host and finally appeared in the Washington Post. That's the Washington Post's new motto 'You heard it here, Twelfth'" ("Daily Show," Comedy Central, 2/16).

One more tidbit for Geraghty. He must rehearse his answers to the question "What do Americans think of Turkey."

I predict he will be asked this 8 hundred katrillion times.

From a reader:

Good news and bad news. During lunchtime just now I went to the local Borders to buy the latest issue with your Groundhog Day article. The good news is there was only one copy left which means plenty of $$ into NR's bank account. The bad news is that the lower right corner of the cover was torn away so that only half the UPC remained and the price was nowhere to be seen, rendering it unpurchasable (or at least, un-quickly purchasable). I didn't buy it because I had to get back to work and there was a long line and I didn't want to wait for the clerk with the blue hair, black lipstick, and pierced everything to do a price check. I hate to assume the worst in people but my spidey sense tells me some angry lefty ripped the cover deliberately in order to stop the plague that is the spread of conservative thought.

Jim Geraghty of Türkiye'de Konumun Sütunu (TKS) is trying trying to figure out how to deal with America-bashers when he goes to Turkey. I don't have any great advice. Besides, my one extended stay abroad was in Prague in the early 90s, and it wasn't that extended. Most of the anti-Americans I met were, uh, Americans. And that requires a whole different social etiquette.

(If I remember it right) I did like the line the French ambassador used on John Miller at the Fox green room when he learned that John had co-written an anti-French book: "We have much to discuss."

This could serve well in situations where politeness is required but time is short. It establishes that you disagree with the person without sounding too condescending. It also suggests that you might be open to give-and-take while at the same time upholding the reality that the guy is flat-out wrong.

Of course, this all depends on what the person says. But my guess is Jim will be travelling in fairly polite elite circles. Even if not, I've been to Instanbul -- I went there by train from Prague (remind me to tell you that story) -- and I found the people incredibly gracious and friendly.

I do think that Hugh Hewitt's suggestion that Jim bring some extra copies of a pro-America book is a good one. But it might be more practical to bring something shorter, like an extended article which he can make copies of. Not sure what that article would be though. If you have ideas, tell Jim.

New intelligence information strongly suggests that Al Qaeda has considered infiltrating the United States through the Mexican border, top government officials told Congress on Wednesday.

Blogging changes how business is done in American journalism. The MSM isn't over. It just can no longer pose as if it is The Guardian of Established Truth. The MSM is just another player now. A big one, but a player.

From a reader:

This line amused me

"I've never seen anyone less amenable to listening to our point of view."

Come into my office bypassing security. With airhorns. Screaming.

I don't care if you are hawking NRODT, I'm not going to be "amenable" to
your point of view, or for that matter, you.

This reminds me of an old, possibly true story of Koch v. Herman Badillo in
the NYC Mayor's race. Koch finds his Kew Gardens/Forest Hills support is
down, he's still leading Badillo but not as much as he wants. So his staff
loads up a flat bed truck with young Koch for Mayor volunteers and drives
through the area at 7:30 a.m. in the Saturday morning before election day
chanting "Badillo! Badillo!"

And Koch wins the area handily.

Or so the legend goes.

From the Times of London:

Kyoto protest beaten back by inflamed petrol traders

WHEN 35 Greenpeace protesters stormed the International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) yesterday they had planned the operation in great detail.

What they were not prepared for was the post-prandial aggression of oil traders who kicked and punched them back on to the pavement.

“We bit off more than we could chew. They were just Cockney barrow boy spivs. Total thugs,” one protester said, rubbing his bruised skull. “I’ve never seen anyone less amenable to listening to our point of view.”

Another said: “I took on a Texan Swat team at Esso last year and they were angels compared with this lot.” Behind him, on the balcony of the pub opposite the IPE, a bleary-eyed trader, pint in hand, yelled: “Sod off, Swampy.”

There's more.

This is worse than New Coke. If there's one issue which should mend the left-right divide on the web, this is it. Bang the war drums.

They...are...ruining Bugs Bunny!

They are making him "futuristic" with to-be-named-later super powers.

They are also mucking with Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote, the Tasmanian Devil, Daffy Duck and some broad named Lola Bunny who I could care less about.

In the new cartoon called "Loonatics," reports the NY Post, "the six characters are being projected 700 years into the future, given superpowers, and outfitted in tight-fitting, slenderizing space gear."

"Slenderizing space gear"? Wile E. Coyote is famously emaciated to the point of anorexia. The Road Runner works out -- a lot. And Bugs has such a girlish figure he can pull of a woman's dress.

Come on, is nothing sacred? See picture of the "new" Bugs Bunny here.

Bang the war drums.

...you finally cleared your brain of that Romanian pop song, here it is again.

Bwahahahahahaha!

Update Maybe we could raise many for NRO by promising if we reached a certain target various NRniks would agree to lipsync the song?

Prof. Bainbridge whacks Joe Conason for trying to make and even bigger deal out of the Gannon story.

On that point: I'm still getting email from left-wing sites or the people who read them about what a huge deal the Gannon story is. I'm starting to feel the same way I do when I look at one of those posters with all the tiny dots which if you look at the right way you can see space ships or unicorns or whatever, because I just can't see it. Nothing anybody has said has made this come into focus for me. So he may or may not have had a gay/sketchy/weird past. I agree he probably shouldn't have been credentialled. But beyond that I just don't get it. Conason et al. make a big deal that the guy was a bad writer, by their lights. Having never read his stuff, I'll concede the possibility. Hacky writing from someone with a day pass to the White House briefing room! What a scandal!

The only angle that seems legit to me is the Plame issue. Allegedly he's been subpoenaed -- though he denies it. He's alleged to have had access to a document that undermined Joe Wilson's credibility. But it seems more likely that he merely had access to the Wall Street Journal which described the document. Evidence that this aspect of the Gannon story is a dud, comes in Conason's fairly brief and uninteresting treatment of what he calls a "cameo appearance" in the Plame affair. Regardless, investigate away on that front. Though it's not like journalists haven't been paying attention to that stuff already.

But meanwhile I've had several people try to explain to me that the gay sex angle makes this story no less significant than the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Jeff Gannon = Commander-in-Chief. I don't see it.

But most people just say this proves what hypocrites conservatives are. I don't get that either. I'd never heard of Gannon/Guckert before this story. I'd hazard to guess that's true of most people on the right. But now we're all supposed to be ensnared in this guy's peccadilloes? If we never heard of him, how were we supposed to know he was supposedly gay? And if he was gay, so what? Nobody on the right has said that gays can't be journalists or even "Republican dirty tricksters" (no pun intended). Was he trying to marry another male reporter? I just don't get it and the more people explain it to me what a huge story it is, the smaller it gets.

University of Massachusetts ethicist Marjorie Clay said stem cells created for research and treatment are not really embryos, since they cannot grow alone. “A fetus will not happen unless that clump of cells is implanted in a uterus,'' Clay said to the legislative panel, adding that excess embryos from fertility procedures are discarded regularly. ``If we thought they were really persons, would they pitch them?''

[Wikipedia entry for John Derbyshire]

John Derbyshire is a British-born author and polemicist who lives in the United States and is an American citizen. He is a columnist for the conservative magazine National Review Online. His commentary is well-known for being inflammatory (though not as well-known as Ann Coulter's.) Blogger Andrew Sullivan gives out a so-called "Derbyshire Award" "for statements by public figures or writers that amount to right-wing hyperbole, hate-speech or manic paranoia". Derbyshire writes on a broad range of topics, including immigration, China, history, mathematics, culture, and politics.

As of 2004, his latest book is Prime Obsession, detailing the history of the Riemann Hypothesis for a popular audience.

[Wikipedia entry for Ward Churchill]

Ward Churchill (born 1948) is an activist who claims to be of mixed white and Native American heritage. He is co-chairman of the American Indian Movement of Colorado (Colorado AIM), and a tenured professor of Ethnic Studies at University of Colorado at Boulder. He is very vocal on Native American issues, the FBI and police states. His published work characterizes the United States as an imperialist power with a history of genocide.

I think Shannen makes a good point. As he notes there are two cliches that Dean is buying into, the first is that the Republicans are lilly-white, the second is that waiters and busboys are automatically black and Hispanic. There's obviously truth to both, at least in Washington DC where hotel staffs are generally black and Hispanic. But they aren't everywhere. As for who should be outraged and why, I'll leave that up to people who can muster outrage over such things.

However, I do think that once again Dean is demonstrating how much of a blue-state limousine liberal he is. This strikes me as the sort of comment Democrats routinely mocked Republicans for.

Indeed, he is essentially a country club Republican who simply believes in taxing the rich, affirmative action and state-run healthcare. He even comes from a wealthy Park Avenue Republican family. And remember how he talked about the South during the primaries -- prompting John Edwards' most effective moment of his entire campaign when he smacked Dean for his northeastern liberal arrogance. Culturally, Dean is a Democratic version of what Democrats most derided about Poppa Bush (actually, so was John Kerry). That's not what the Democratic Party needs to change its image. He may learn as he goes, but he's got a lot of learning to do.

Dan Drezner has a very helpful round-up. (Nod to Instapundit)

From a reader:

Jonah:

Good column on Howard Dean.

I can say this: as a person of faith, the idea of leaving a congregation over any issue is serious, and not to be taken lightly. So for Dean to leave over the bike path indicates his weak/non-existent commitment.

Also, as a working journalist, Howard Dean would be the FIRST Democrat on my
call list, if for no other reason than he gives great quote. Pelosi is too crabby and Reid too vague, but I know I can always get a money quote from Howard. That alone will make him the party spokesman, regardless of what anybody says.

More email like this keeps pouring in:

Jonah,

The answer is the same as why we don't have nuclear attack submarines that
can sail two miles below the surface of the Pacific - pressure increases
with depth. In rock, both pressure and HEAT increase with depth. Get in
touch with someone from the American Petroleum Institute and ask them what
the temperature and pressure is at some of the lower wells drilled in the
Anadarko Basin - it'll astound you. Rock at that temperature is 'elastic'
- it will actually flow. At a depth of between 8 and 40 miles, it's a
thick semi-liquid mass that's in slow but constant movement (that's why,
when the Indus plate slipped down under the Burma plate, it will eventually
cause the earthquakes on the backbone of Sumatra to erupt - an eddy current
will form, increasing the heat in a narrow zone along the new bottom edge
of the subducted plate - ask a geophysicist or geomorphologist).

We don't have a submarine that can withstand the depths two miles down. We
certainly don't have the capability now to build machines that can work two
to six miles under the earth's surface through solid rock!

A very nice column, though it's not clear to me where Rick comes out in the end. If I read him right, Rick's in the "no big loss" if Churchill gets the boot column.

If so, I welcome him to the fold.

He asks:

1) "Would we achieve significant actuarial improvements in the health of the Social Security system by (a) changing the method by which the benefits is calculated from being based on wages to one based on prices . . . and (b) increasing the retirement age?" The answers are yes and yes. I gather that you'd have to raise the retirement age pretty high to attain the same improvements that a shift to price indexing would yield.

2) "If we can achieve significant savings and ensure the health of the system with the changes mentioned in # 1, is there a non-ideological reason for introducing private accounts? Even proponents of private accounts concede that the transition costs will require trillions of dollars of government borrowing. Do we conservatives really want revenge on FDR and the New Deal at that price? Personally, speaking as a small government fiscal conservative kind of guy, I'd give up personal accounts if any money thereby saved was spent on deficit reduction or, better yet, an income tax rate cut."

My answer would be: It depends on what you mean by "ideological." I suggested two possible justifications for personal accounts in my previous post: the "lockbox" justification and the softening-the-blow justification. The lockbox justification depends on some assumptions about government. A third argument that I think could be made--that it is a good thing for various reasons to see to it that almost everyone owns some capital--could also be seen as "ideological," especially to the extent that one of the reasons it's a good thing is that it might make the public more tolerant of sound economic policies. Even if it is an "ideological" reason, that doesn't mean that it's not a good reason (or set of reasons).

I would add that people like Bainbridge might want to think of personal accounts as a kind of payroll tax cut--a tax cut made conditional on the money being invested in certain ways, to be sure, but still a decision by the federal government to let people retain ownership of their money.

3) "Why aren't conservatives talking about other entitlement programs, such as Medicare, which reportedly is scheduled to go broke long before Social Security does?" Beats me. I suspect that the answer is that a reform of Social Security that reduces its future costs looks more achievable than a reform of Medicare. If it is true that Social Security reform will yield an electorate more disposed to such policies as a reform of Medicare, then it certainly makes sense to tackle Social Security first. That could be either because of the investor-class theory or because Social Security reform had demonstrated that entitlements can be reined in without destroying whoever proposed it.

Robert Samuelson argues that the Supreme Court case of Flemming v. Nestor “demolishes” Bush’s case for personal accounts. The Court held in that case that a claim on future benefits isn’t property. People don’t own their Social Security benefits. Congress can cut them at any time. Therefore, reasons Samuelson, it is not accurate to say that personal accounts merely make the government pay earlier for costs that it would have to pay eventually. It doesn’t have to pay those benefits at all.

There is substantial truth to what Samuelson is saying. The unfunded promises of Social Security aren’t exactly debts--which is why most reformers talk about them as “implicit debts” rather than explicit debts. Maybe Samuelson would say that even the modifier leaves the phrase too strong (although those promises aren’t nothing). If so, then presumably it’s wrong to talk about future benefit “cuts” as well--those future benefits don’t exist yet and aren’t obligations of the government. These terminological changes would, I think, suit Samuelson just fine. I gather that he wants to solve Social Security’s fiscal problem largely by paying less to senior citizens--today’s and tomorrow’s.

But most reformers are talking about a package deal that includes both personal accounts and a cost-saving change in the way benefits are calculated. Obviously the package doesn’t assume that future benefits are set in concrete. The assumptions rather are 1) that there is no free lunch: the growth of benefits has to be moderated and 2) that personal accounts will soften the blow for tomorrow’s retirees. The personal accounts don’t just shift costs from the future to the present. They’re part of a deal that reduces those costs while shifting some of them.

One of the arguments for personal accounts is that they are a way of pre-funding retirements. Precisely because the accounts would be the account-holders’ property, it would be more difficult for the government to divert this funding to pay for other government operations the way they have diverted the Social Security surplus. The accounts would function as secure lockboxes. Flemming v. Nestor strengthens that argument for the accounts--which is why proponents of personal accounts have been far more likely to bring up that case than opponents have over the last ten years.

He wants the truth!

Sorry, going for bad A Few Good Men reference. Anyway, this cries out for Ramesh.

I could have sworn there was such a machine in Journey to the Center of the Earth. Maybe in one of the remakes? And I remember Crack in the World. It scared the dickens out of me as a kid. Anyway, the email:

First, Jonah, there is no earth-boring machine in Journey to the Center of the Earth...James Mason and Pat Boone and Alrene Dahl (like the characters in Verne's novel) simply folow the trail of an earlier explorer through a series of caves associated with a volcano in Iceland.

Second, giant earth-boring machines are magnificently depicted in the H. G. Wells film "Things to Come" (1936), in the sequence where scientists have supplanted the warlords, leading to a new age of invention, discovery and construction, which climaxes with the scientists shooting their children to the moon in a giant bullet...an unfortunate concept that Wells stole from Jules Verne's "From the Earth to the Moon" (filmed in 1958 or so with Joseph Cotten).

Third, for a really entertaining take on boring through the earth's crust, check out the 1965 English film "Crack in the World", where a team of scientists led by Dana Andrews cleverly shoot a nuke into a deep hole in the earth (somewhere in Africa where the crust is supposedly extra-thin), the idea being that the resulting explosion will allow energy-producing magma to come to the surface, providing heat for electricity. Well, it works, but it also creates a crack in the crust that spreads with devastating consequences in a circle until a chunk of the Earth breaks off and becomes a new moon (while incredibly the lead characters look on in amazement, when they should have been sucked into outer space along with it). Best-laid plans and all that...

I don't want to relaunch last night's thread on Japan, but this seems fair closing comment:

Jonah, A thread has run through the posts re nukes and Japan that I find incredible. Starting with the unsually sound Krauthammer, everyone commenting on this issue starts from the assumption that we can tell Japan what to do, or that we somehow control what Japan can do.

Japan has the world's 3rd largest Navy, and probably it's second most powerful. Japan is the 2nd largest economy and arguably as advanced in most fields as the US. It is probably able to assemble nukes in weeks, and it's probably close to the US in capability to build things like ABM's.

Japan may act humble and deferential to the US, but I would not want us to fall into the habit of presuming on that. We need to see them as an ally fully as deserving of respect as Great Britain.

Here's what I've learned. A great many readers are concerned with waking up or otherwise disturbing slumbering beasts, morlocks and the like within the earth. Also, Winston Churchill was fascinated with the idea of a trench-digging tank of some kind. A few folks say we're working on this sort of thing on the QT (nudge, nudge, wink-wink). As for the technical reasons we probably can't do it, these emails are representative:

Hi Jonah,
The difficulty is not in the drilling, it's what to do with the spoil you've dug. It's gotta go somewhere, and since you are excavating very compact earth and rock and chewing it up, it takes even more space after removal so you can't just 'dump it behind you' like the one escape attempt in the movie The Great Escape. Secondarily, it takes a hell of a lot of power for that; a fully self-contained vehicle would most assuredly be nuclear, but stuck underground like that you would have no reasonable method of cooling the reactor without access to large thermal mass like bodies of water or long, long pipelines behind the vehicle for liquid sodium cooling systems, etc.

Hope it helps,

And...

There was a Tom Swift Jr. book with this kind of device, too.

Serious answer -- earth boring is difficult. It took years to develop good
tunnel boring machines, and the first halfway good ones came in the 1930s.
Remember that the 19th century had a *lot* of uses for tunnels, and was an
age of big machine invention -- but this job was too much for them. (I
think the American Heritage magazine of Invention and Technology ran a
history of tunnel machines last year, but I can't remember the date).

It's not just that rocks are hard (ductility counts as much or more than
hardness in some circumstances; some rocks are actually slightly elastic,
complicating drilling technology no end). There's the problem of spoil --
all that ground up rock takes more space than the solid stuff did. Then
there's the problem of the shaft collapsing....

And then there's noise. The faster you go, the louder it would be.

Melting your way through would be nominally more quiet (until you hit
ground water that flashed to steam and cause a phreatic explosion), but the
energy cost would be immense.

Nope. I think we'll get transporter beams before we get mole machine troop
transports.

And...

Jonah, I've emailed you before about this, but your post evokes the previous question. We live on a vast blob of molten rock, gazillions of degrees hot, covered with a cooled crust. I'm imagining chocolate pudding that's been on the table for a half hour. Yet, I say YET, we have an energy shortage. I figure all of those UFO sightings are aliens who fly by for a big laugh. I posed this thought to my brainy petroleum engineer little brother and he just got annoyed. Lectured me for a bit about "what it's like down there". Turns out it is pretty weird. Natural gas is sometimes in liquid state on account of heat and pressure. Solid rock is not as solid as you'd think, and other silly excuses. Still, call me crazy but this sounds like something that Halliburton should be all over.

*Surprisingly, the name of the ship Carter is replacing, the USS Parche (SSN 683), hasn't been mentioned. Parche is the most decorated ship (I think) in the U.S. Navy, certainly the most decorated submarine. Parche was decommissioned a couple of months ago at the Bremerton (WA) Naval Shipyard and is on her way to becoming razor blades. She earned nine Presidential Unit Citations - not awarded lightly. Go here or here.

* The "naming" of submarines is a very touchy subject with many submariners. A class of submarine is designated by the name and hull number of the first ship of the class, hence the "Seawolf class" or "SSN 21 class". The remaining submarines of the class receive names of the same type. Naming the first submarine of the 21 class the USS Seawolf was a much heralded (among submariners) return to naming submarines the original way. Not to denigrate America's major cites, but they ought not be names for submarines - let the skimmers have those. ("Skimmers" or "targets" is how submariners refer to all surface ships.) The names of the three Seawolf class boats are an embarrassing example of the lack of consistency, integrity or even common sense among the leadership of the Navy.

USS Seawolf (SSN 21) --- Superb!!
USS Connecticut (SSN 22) --- Poor
USS Jimmy Carter (SSN 23) --- Abysmal

At the start of Australian author Birmingham's stellar debut novel, a United Nations battle group, clustered around the U.S.S. Hillary Clinton (named after "the most uncompromising wartime president in the history of the United States"), is tasked in the year 2021 with stopping ethnic cleansing by an Islamist regime in Indonesia. When an experiment goes horribly wrong on a special ship doing research on wormholes, most of the battle group is deposited in the middle of the U.S. fleet on its way to Midway in 1942. The WWII carriers and supporting vessels attack a Japanese Self-Defense Force ship, triggering devastating computer-operated defensive fire from the 21st-century fleet. While the action sequences are outstanding, this book really shines in depicting the cultural shock that both navies experience. The Clinton group reflects a multicultural society that finds the racist and sexist attitudes of 1942 America almost as repugnant as those of the Axis powers, while the mere thought of non-whites and women not just serving in uniform but holding command drives many Allied officers and civilian officials apoplectic. The author also subtly shows the ways in which 20-plus years of the War on Terrorism have changed our attitudes. Unlike many alternate histories, the novel avoids the wish-fulfillment aspect inherent in the genre. This is the first of what should be a hugely (and deservedly) successful series.

Okay, in the grand spirit of airborne-laser-volcano-lancing, I would like to ask why we don't have really cool underground drilling vehicles -- a la Journey to the Center of the Earth or (for younger readers) the third Matrix movie. We're currently researching ground penetrating nuclear weapons because our enemies have learned to bury their nuclear facilities deep, deep underground. Well, why can't we have a really cool drill-tipped winebago that can tunnel underground and come up right in the middle of the floor of the nuke labs? Special armored tanks and troop carriers could follow behind.

I suspect the answer is quite simple. Rocks are too hard. But I think this is a cop-out for such a can-do people.

From a reader:

As a proud alumnus of the General Dynamics - Electric Boat nuclear submarine yard, I can guarantee that they will deliver one of, if not THE most absolutely sophisticated weapons platforms on the planet today.

Electric Boat also has an unparalleled safety record of never having lost one of their boats to anything other than enemy action. That yard is second to none in the world.

While naming this boat for Carter resounds with irony, it will be lost on most of the fleet and crew. More than 98% of those who will initially crew her are already far too young to know or care. As years go by, that irony will lessen to become a minor historic curiosity.

In the meantime, THIS crew (actually 2 crews for each submarine -- an alternating Blue and Gold crew) will have the unquestioned honor and privilege of 'owning' the best boat in the fleet until a successor is delivered. You won't be able to club the grins off them.

From the Donovan:

If I was selected for command of a submarine, I wouldn’t care if it was named the USS Clinton, and tied up to the sub-tender USS Lewinsky for servicing. Commands like that go to very, very few people. If I’ve got to suffer rabbit jokes, so be it.

Prediction – absent mechanical problems – the USS Jimmy Carter will be *The Best* submarine in the Navy, precisely because of the jokes.

Cheers,

The Donovan, yer Military Guy.

You do have to feel sorry for the crew of the USS Jimmy Carter. I'm sure they'll be very well qualified and all that. But as several readers have noted, they're just never going to hear the end of it. Here's one email:

Jonah

I was an officer on the USS Haddock (SSN-621) from 1988-1991. I’m sure the crew of the Carter will be endlessly ribbed by other crews about serving on the Carter. And I’m guessing the Commanding Officer will also hear it from other COs in his squadron as well.

From the Financial Times:

Murdoch executives to map out net vision By Aline van Duyn in New York and Tim Burt in London

About 50 senior News Corporation executives, including Rupert Murdoch, the chairman, will meet in New York on Wednesday to map out an internet strategy for the global media company.

News Corp which owns satellite broadcasters in the US, Europe and Asia, the Fox cable channels and movie studios, and newspapers around the world will determine after the day-long brainstorming session how it should tackle the sharp growth in internet advertising and changing viewing habits.

According to Jim Dunnigan's "How to Make War" web site the USS Jimmy Carter will be the designated SPY SUBMARINE for the US Fleet, taking the place of the USS Narwhal and others. That means that Jimmy Carter's namesake will creeping about violating other nations sovereignty and SPYING on them! Considering Mr. Carter's credentials, I believe that this is the cruelest and best revenge possible by the Navy on one of its alumni.

My buddy Scott asks:

"Will the U.S.S. Jimmy Carter be hammered together by weekend volunteers?"

Sooooo many emails like this:

The USS Jimmy Carter?!? My mind is starting to explode with all of the comedic possibilities. What, will the sub break down in the middle of the ocean on its way to rescue operations? Will everyone on the sub have to wear sweaters? Instead of a morale officer, will the boat feature a "malaise official?" What if the sub comes across a rabbit in the water? Will there be a "moral equivalent to combat operations" on this sub? These jokes just write themselves.

Yes, I've received the email. I saw Kathryn's post.

A couple things I want to know:

*Are they going to issue Warren Christopher Assault Rifles -- delicately designed to shoot the enemy only in the leg or arm?

* Will battle sound like this:

Skipper: Load tubes 1 and 3!

Ensign: Tubes 1 and 3 loaded sir.

Skipper: Release the diplomats!

* If a Russian sub attacks undefended ships, will the USS Jimmy Carter immediately boycott the US-Russian softball game in Guam?

You see, for all the carnage in President Bush's budget, one program is being showered with additional cash - almost three times as much as it got in 2001. It's "abstinence only" sex education, and the best research suggests that it will cost far more lives than the Clinton administration's much more notorious sex scandal.

Mr. Bush means well. But "abstinence only" is a misnomer that in practice is an assault on sex education itself. There's a good deal of evidence that the result will not be more young rosy-cheeked virgins - it will be more pregnancies, abortions, gonorrhea and deaths from AIDS

''Banning it or prohibiting it, making it illegal, would be a major mistake," Kennedy said in an interview with the Globe. ''It's a big opportunity. We are in the life science moment of research on this planet. This is the time, and now is the moment, and Massachusetts is the place."

"In some respects, the closest analogy I can think of is Prohibition " Prohibition was passed, it was a law that did not enjoy the support of the masses, so people found a way to get around it by making gin in a bathtub or whatever, and so then we repealed that law and said 'OK, the best way to handle this is not to prohibit it but to regulate it,' " he said. "That seems to have worked reasonably well when it comes to alcohol consumption."

Gets its due:

NEW YORK (AP) _ A pair of paintings from the famed series depicting dogs playing poker fetched nearly $600,000 at auction Tuesday.

The two works _ ``A Bold Bluff'' and ``Waterloo'' _ were among 16 paintings that artist Cassius Marcellus Coolidge was commissioned to create for a Minnesota-based advertising company in 1903. Of the 16, nine are of dogs playing poker.

The two works that sold Tuesday for $590,400 capture moments in a poker game played by five dogs, among them a St. Bernard that ends up collecting the pot on a bluff.

The winning bid set a new auction record for Coolidge, whose previous top sale was $74,000, said Alan Fausel, director of paintings at Doyle New York, which handled Tuesday's sale.

The winning bidder was a private collector from New York.

Doyle had estimated that the two paintings would bring in between $30,000 and $50,000.

The sale was part of Doyle's annual ``Dogs in Art'' auction, which coincides with the Westminster Kennel Club dog show.

A thorough meditation on same here.

From a reader:

This is in response to the Korean-American reader who wrote to you. As a Korean-American whose parents suffered under Japanese rule, I totally disagree with the previous person regarding Korea/China/Japan. Maybe you should get everyone to read Sharansky's book on democracy. China in 50 years will be a threat to Korea, both militarily and economically, unless it becomes a full democracy. China has already impacted Korea's economy by siphoning off a large chunk of foreign investments. Letting short-term outlook and past grievances affect your policy is a foolish view in my opinion.

Again: I so don't have a dog in this fight, but I find this stuff very interesting. Another reader -- with a Japanese first name -- chimes in:

Dear Jonah,

I read with interest the e-mail you posted decrying Japan. One
sentence in particular was the dead giveaway: "I'd take that anyday
over the last 700 years Japan has been looting, pillaging, and raping
Korea." This is the kind of gross distortion of history the far left
creates and then condemns Japan for not facing squarely. During its
Edo period Japan was looting, pillaging, and raping Korea? NRO readers
are too smart and they have seen it all before to buy into this kind of
myth-making. The same kind of forces that turn Jenin into a holocaust
have been busy at work the last sixty years creating a Japan that makes
communist China and North Korea seem the world's saviors of personal
liberty and justice. It is no coincidence that after Tianneman the
authorities in China saw fit to ratchet up the numbers, by hundreds of
thousands, those massacred by the Japanese in Nanking. And that a few
years later a "scholar" toeing the new party line would publish a
widely read, and highly deceitful, tract on the same topic. None of
this is to dismiss the actions of Japan during a very brief and
unwelcome period in its history, but it is difficult for well
intentioned Japanese conservatives to address that history when the far
left and state sponsored propaganda machines continue to rewrite it in
order to mask ongoing terror and crimes and solidify the base. In any
case, it is important for America to understand who its real allies
are. Look back over the period in which Reagan was bringing down the
Soviet Empire, it was not only Thatcher, but as importantly Nakasone at
his side. Look back over the last four years and see what Japan has
done and said. And when you have a lot of time look back over the
period from the coming of Perry and the opening up of Japan in the
second half of the nineteenth century until the beginning of WWII and
try to discover when and why things went wrong. Hint: neither America
nor Japan, if not allies, had the ability to hate (and fight) both
Stalin and Hitler at the same time. This being the greatest tragedy of
that tragic war.

From a reader:

Update: Wright responds here.

The recent developments in North Korea prompted me to dust-off (or virtually dust-off) this column from 2003 by Charles Krauthammer. Some of the details have changed but basically we've still got the same terrible hand we did in 2003 and as Krauthammer wrote then:

What to do when your hand is so poor? Play the trump. We do have one, but we dare not speak its name: a nuclear Japan. Japan cannot long tolerate a nuclear-armed North Korea. Having once lobbed a missile over Japan, North Korea could easily hit any city in Japan with a nuclear-tipped weapon. Japan does not want to live under that threat.

We should go to the Chinese and tell them plainly that if they do not join us in squeezing North Korea and thus stopping its march to go nuclear, we will endorse any Japanese attempt to create a nuclear deterrent of its own. Even better, we would sympathetically regard any request by Japan to acquire American nuclear missiles as an immediate and interim deterrent. If our nightmare is a nuclear North Korea, China's is a nuclear Japan. It's time to share the nightmares.

Let's give China a timetable for Japan's nuke acquisition and see if they can't get the North Koreans to play ball.

MAHER: Because he's Bush the resolute, the one people think is going to protect them. He's sold the story and they bought it. Like I said, you can't work backwards from our disdain for George Bush. I never liked this guy either, but I have to admit, he pulled off a pretty good election victory there in Iraq, and it could work. It could work. I think that was a huge moment for the Iraqi people. I don't think as so many liberal friends of mine are finding ways to dismiss that. Oh, anybody can have an election. They really didn't vote for anything. Who cares what they were voting for. The point is, it wasn't about voting. It was about them going outside their homes. It was hands across Iraq. It was showing each other, we're real people who want a real country. And these insurgents, they're not part of us. That was a huge moment, and... KING: People were knocking the election. MAHER: Oh, poo pooing it. Making it seem like it wasn't a big event. And it really was a big event. Now, of course, what it proves is that freedom is so powerful that it could even work when you've screwed everything up until the day they had the election, as much as you possibly could. I think the question is, does this absolve George Bush, even if it works in Iraq. Does this absolve George Bush of all the mistakes he's made leading up to it? Does it cab absolve Abu Ghraib Prison. Does it absolve freezing on 9/11. Does it absolve ignoring the warnings leading up to 9/11, all of his other mistakes. And also, does this administration get the fact that even if Iraq works, al Qaeda, which is, let's not forget, the real enemy, has morphed and evolved now into a sort of different kind of enemy. It's more of a lifestyle than it was before. And there's no denying that fighting the war in Iraq has energized the Jihadis. Those are the people we really have to fear, and really attacking us. Even if Iraq works, I would give him credit for it, does not necessarily make us safer and that's the issue.

Poppa Goldberg has a fun piece at TCS on art and "the gates" in Central Park.

MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish prosecutors are seeking a total of 222,000 years in prison and nearly $1.17 billion in fines for three suspects accused of aiding the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

Judith Miller and Matt Cooper lost their appeal:

A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld a ruling against two reporters who could go to jail for refusing to divulge their sources to investigators probing the leak of an undercover CIA officer's name to the media.

The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with prosecutors in their attempt to compel Time magazine's Matthew Cooper and The New York Times' Judith Miller to testify before a federal grand jury about their confidential sources.

"We agree with the District Court that there is no First Amendment privilege protecting the information sought," Judge David B. Sentelle said in the ruling, which was unanimous.

I still think it's the right decision.

From a reader:

I’ve been disappointed to discover that Snopes has a vague lefty bias, because I rely on them heavily to debunk or verify quirky stories among friends and family. Since I’ve discovered their slant, I read their reports – especially those with a political angle – much more carefully. You’ll note that Snopes begins its “debunking” of the brothel story by addressing the political angle, explaining that it had “struck a chord in many readers as an example of liberal morality and bureaucracy run amok”. I would say they go too far defending “liberal morality and bureaucracy”. I don’t claim that the brothel story is true, but I find Snopes’ debunking of it unconvincing.

Snopes declares the story “False” without even addressing the truth or falsity of the core allegation. They identify the TAZ article that is the basis for the Telegraph article, and allege that the original article didn’t claim that unemployed German women, as a matter of policy, must accept employment in brothels or face the loss of unemployment benefits. But they admit that the original article DID claim that this had happened in some number of cases. Snopes dismisses this statement because the newspaper didn’t “provide any source or documentation” to support it, but the only evidence they present for the Telegraph article’s inaccuracy is the Telegraph’s apparent distortion of a completely distinct issue.

So, for what it’s worth, I declare the German brothel story’s veracity “Undetermined”, Snopes notwithstanding. The only trouble is that I can’t decide whether I hope it’s true or hope it’s not….

Best regards,

Several readers have dissented from Snopes' conclusion that the German brothel story is untrue. Others have launched a broader attack on Snopes itself.

Point 1:

Jonah,

It seems to me that the German brothel story is somewhat in limbo right now, but not disproved. Reading through the Snopes piece, I get the distinct impression that what the Telegraph article describes could happen, even if it hasn't quite yet. So the people who are upset about this possibility are claiming that tomorrow is here today, while German apologists are claiming that this is all a fraud. Specifically missing from the Snopes piece is any mention of anything that would prevent women from being forced to take jobs as sex workers. If it's not happening already, it will be soon. And to men, too.

And point 2:

Dear Jonah, I have mixed feelings these days about Snopes.com (which you used Tuesday AM re the German brothel story). I think they're very accurate when it comes to non-political news, but they can no longer be trusted blindly on all issues. For example: Snopes has never revised their dismissal of the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth charges re Kerry, despite my request that they balance their citations at http://www.snopescom/politics/kerry/swift.asp with pointers to the Swiftboat vets website (http://www.swiftvets.com/index.php) and to O'Neill's book Unfit for Command. Unwary readers reading Snopes' entry might well conclude that Kerry's stories about Vietnam never faced a serious challenge. If you can't trust Snopes all the time, what about About.com's Urban Legends website? The entry for Swift Boat Veterans also reveals a pro-Kerry bias: http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_swift_boat_veterans.htm although it does, at least, link to the Swiftvets, but not to the O'Neill book (but only after prompting from readers such as yours truly). I still refer to sites like these for non-political issues, but as these examples show, the major gatekeepers of fact vs fiction online have a very hard time keeping their political biases from coloring their selection of facts, links and treatments of issues. Blessings on you, the Fair Jessica, Lucy, Cosmo and (last but not least) the couch.

Yes, I'm still scheduled to speak there on Feb. 28. I know I'm having dinner with some students at 5:30 and then speaking at 7:30. I don't know exactly where this will all take place and I'm not sure whether it's open to the public. But these things usually are. When I know, you'll know. After-talk beers a possibility for NRO fans and students of legal drinking age.

An excellent whack at Ward Churchill and the affirmative action ethos which got him hired in the first place, from CU Law School prof Paul Campos (nod to Instapundit):

Academics claim to despise censorship, but the truth is we do a remarkably good job of censoring ourselves. This is especially true in regard to affirmative action. Who among us can claim to have spoken up every time a job candidate almost as preposterous as Churchill was submitted for our consideration? Things like the Churchill fiasco are made possible by a web of lies kept intact by a conspiracy of silence.

The University of Colorado hired Churchill onto its faculty because he claimed to be an American Indian. Anyone who has the slightest familiarity with research universities can glance at his résumé and state this with something close to complete confidence.

Churchill thus represents the reductio ad absurdum of the contemporary university's willingness to subordinate all other values to affirmative action. When such a grotesque fraud - a white man pretending to be an Indian, an intellectual charlatan spewing polemical garbage festooned with phony footnotes, a shameless demagogue fabricating imaginary historical incidents to justify his pathological hatreds, an apparent plagiarist who steals and distorts the work of real scholars - manages to scam his way into a full professorship at what is still a serious research university, we know the practice of affirmative action has hit rock bottom. Or at least we can hope so.

If Jordan ever harbored thoughts that U.S. forces had targeted journalists, a position that could be supported by the Kurtz story, then it was his duty as a newsman to pursue the story by assigning a CNN investigative team to it. If he did, I'd love to see the results. But it's fairly obvious that he didn't. Jordan's dereliction is less a mistake than it is proof of brain rot. The supreme editor of a news organization can't expect to make unsupportable inflammatory statements and maintain the respect of his truth-seeking troops at the same time. CNN did the right thing to show him the door. I would have done the same.

But I'd tell the marines that I didn't hear too many Europeans giving specific ideas on how to make Iraq a success. Instead, I heard too many speakers evading this current pivot point in history by giving airy-fairy speeches about their grand visions of the future architecture of distant multilateral arrangements.

I heard the German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, in his soaring, stratospheric mode, declaring that we need the "creation of a grand design, a strategic consensus across the Atlantic." We need a "social Magna Carta" to bind the globe. His chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, proposed a vague commission to rebuild or replace NATO. His president, Horst Köhler, insisted, "Unless we tackle global poverty, long-term security will remain elusive."

Fine, let's tackle global poverty and have new arrangements. But maybe democracies should be contributing to Iraq now. That's called passing the credibility test.

It occurred to me as we left Shannon that it's always been true that American and European politicians have different historical experiences and come from divergent strands of the liberal intellectual tradition. But now there's something else different. American politicians meet combat veterans all the time. They make the calls to bereaved families.

That concentrates the mind.

Here's how today's Washington Post describes Hezbollah -- a little outfit I could have sworn we called a terrorist group until recently:

Lebanese government officials linked Hariri's killing to mounting international pressure on Syria to withdraw its troops from Lebanon and to end its sponsorship of Hezbollah, an armed Shiite Muslim political movement that operates in the south.

I can't remember when we posted the original story about women being forced into prostitution by the government, but it's not true apparently.

A reader dissents:

Jonah,

Your Corner remark "we should all keep in mind that Chris Dodd and Barney Frank really did stand-up for truth and justice in this whole Eason Jordan thing" gives the slithery Senator too much credit. Unlike Mr. Frank (who did at least talk to Michelle Malkin, though making no on-camera statement himself), Sen. Dodd only had his office issue a short, bland, statement, just enough to cover himself in case anyone else actually did anything about the matter. Contemptible as ever!

For years those of us who defended Matt Drudge against his more unhinged critics would grind our teeth when people would say "Oh you heard that on Drudge" when they really meant "You found the link on Drudge." Obviously Drudge did real reporting. But as an Ur-blogger much of his stuff was merely links -- and that remains the case now. But by calling attention to a wire story he could move it to the top of the media chatter. I remember when Alec Baldwin issued a statement condemning some "Drudge story" when really all Matt did was link to an interview in (I believe) a German magazine.

I predict we'll hear a similar refrain more and more from the MSM. "Oh, you just heard that on a blog...." This isn't new (long before the pajamehedeen Krugman was calling Sullivan's site "too vile to read"), but I think it will get more intense.

Venetian gondoliers, enraged by a ban on boating at night, have gone on strike - spoiling many a couple's dream of a Valentine's Day boat trip.

Bloggers are to journalism what "Entertaiment Tonight" is to television news -- nothing more than infotainment and gossip. Furthermore, someone who relies on bloggers for information (or newspaper columns) is performing the same quality fact-checking that led to situations such as Jayson Blair and Dan Rather's early retirement.

From a reader:

Probably a lot of other people have reminded you of this, but wasn't Trent Lott's demise as majority leader an early accomplishment of bloggers, of left and right? And that shows that conservative bloggers have principles but leftist ones don't. I can't imagine leftists joining the chorus to oust Eason Jordan the way conservatives did to Trent Lott.

Me: Lots of folks have mentioned the first part, but not that many the second part. It's certainly true that if conservatives hadn't come out of the block very early -- almost immediately really -- to condemn Lott he probably wouldn't have stepped down as Majority leader. It's hard to think of a similar situation working out the same way on the left. That said, we should all keep in mind that Chris Dodd and Barney Frank really did stand-up for truth and justice in this whole Eason Jordan thing. I doubt this would have happened had they not. We should also remind people that the collection of scalps is not first and foremost the primary job of conservative journalists or bloggers. It's a by-product of what they do in a few specific circumstances.

Court of Appeals:

Terrence W. Boyle (4th Circuit) (first nominated May 9, 2001)

Priscilla Richman Owen (5th Circuit) (first nominated May 9, 2001)

David W. McKeague (6th Circuit) (first nominated November 8, 2001)

Susan Bieke Neilson (6th Circuit) (first nominated November 8, 2001)

Henry W. Saad (6th Circuit) (first nominated November 8, 2001)

Richard A. Griffin (6th Circuit) (first nominated June 26, 2002)

William H. Pryor (11th Circuit) (first nominated April 9, 2003)

William Gerry Myers, III (9th Circuit) (first nominated May 15, 2003)

Janice Rogers Brown (District of Columbia Circuit) (first nominated July 25, 2003)

Brett M. Kavanaugh (District of Columbia Circuit) (first nominated July 25, 2003)

William James Haynes, II (4th Circuit) (first nominated September 29, 2003)

Thomas B. Griffith (District of Columbia Circuit) (first nominated May 10, 2004)

District Courts:

James C. Dever, III (Eastern District, North Carolina) (first nominated May 22, 2002)

Thomas L. Ludington (Eastern District, Michigan) (first nominated September 12, 2002)

Robert J. Conrad (Western District, North Carolina) (first nominated April 28, 2003)

Daniel P. Ryan (Eastern District, Michigan) (first nominated April 28, 2003)

Peter G. Sheridan (New Jersey) (first nominated November 5, 2003)

Paul A. Crotty (Southern District, New York) (first nominated September 7, 2004)

Sean F. Cox (Eastern District, Michigan) (first nominated September 10, 2004)

J. Michael Seabright (Hawaii) (first nominated September 15, 2004)

Also formally nominated were:

Jennifer M. Anderson, of the District of Columbia, to be Associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia for the term of fifteen years, vice Steffen W. Graae, retired.

Laura A. Cordero, of the District of Columbia, to be Associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia for the term of fifteen years, vice Shellie F. Bowers, retired.

A. Noёl Anketell Kramer, of the District of Columbia, to be a Judge of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals for the term of fifteen years, vice John M. Steadman, retired.

Juliet JoAnn McKenna, of the District of Columbia, to be Associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia for the term of fifteen years, vice Nan R. Shuker, retired.

Gretchen C.F. Shappert, of North Carolina, to be United States Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, for the term of four years, vice Robert J. Conrad, Jr., resigned.

Earl C. Aguigui, of Guam, to be United States Marshal for the District of Guam and concurrently United States Marshal for the District of the Northern Mariana Islands for the term of four years, vice Joaquin L.G. Salas, term expired.

If you sent me an email. The box filled up at 1,000 again while I was out attending to Valentine's Day related issues. I cleared away some of the white feathers.

BTW, am I the only one around here even remotely surprised there's been zero anti-Valentine's day posting around here?

How can public schools celebrate "Valentine's Day" without explaining to impressionable youngsters who he was and how he became a saint -- before their teachers encourage them to create and distribute the very symbol of Valentine's sainthood?

Didn't Jesus Christ also mention something about love? How would the separation-of-church-and-state crowd react if those children also were told about Jesus before they were encouraged to create and distribute Christmas cards?

"Valentine's Day" is no different than "Xmas." Everyone knows who we are talking about.

March 17 will be here before you know it. Will your public school be able to teach impressionable young minds about the Irish culture without mentioning Ireland's patron saint?

If you're not a fan of The Prisoner, this is still cool. I mean how far behind can airborne laser volcano lancing be? From the Telegraph:

A large black ball, originally designed by Swedish scientists for use on Mars, could be the latest weapon in the war against burglars. Mortgage Services

The device, developed at the University of Uppsala, acts as a high-tech security guard capable of detecting an intruder thanks to either radar or infra-red sensors. Once alerted, it can summon help, sound an alarm or pursue the intruders, taking pictures.

It is capable of travelling at 20mph, somewhat faster than a human being. Even worse for intruders, the robot ball can still give chase over mud, snow and water.

The ball relies on an internal pendulum to control its motion which, when shifted, changes the centre of gravity and starts it rolling.

Other devices, including microphones, cameras, heat sensors and smoke detectors are mounted on its central axis.

HUTCHINSON, Kan. - For 20 years, Sarah Scantlin has been mostly oblivious to the world around her — the victim of a drunken driver who struck her down as she walked to her car. Today, after a remarkable recovery, she can talk again.

How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a "star" we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model?

Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails. They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer.

A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.

A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.

A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.

We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

Sick and tired of losing, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee seems to have adopted a new and very basic recruiting tactic for the 2006 elections: Simply call the Republican Member you are hoping to beat and ask him who the best candidate would be to run against him.

Think we’re joking?

Just ask Glenn Rushing, the DCCC’s national field director, who last week left an ill-advised message for Mike Brady, the chief of staff to National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Reynolds (N.Y.).

“Congressman [Rahm] Emanuel asked me to give your boss a call to see if he knew of any potential candidates in New York 26,” says Rushing, according to a tape of the voicemail obtained by HOH.

No one knows why Rushing did what he did. One might assume that Rushing is a kid, but he’s not. He’s been at the DCCC since the start of the 2004 cycle, around the same time that Reynolds became chairman of the House GOP campaign committee. Reynolds has held the Buffalo-area 26th district since 1998.

Though the damage was done, Rushing babbled on in his voice mail message to reveal a bit more of the Democratic playbook.

“Right now we have one name on our list,” he said. “We are trying to get some additional names so that we can make sure we are getting the best candidate we can in the field.” Then, before signing off, Rushing dug the hole even deeper: “Just for your information, Congresswoman Slaughter is also looking for us,” he said before providing his work number.

That would be Democratic Rep. Louise Slaughter, who represents a district to the north of Reynolds that includes Niagara Falls.

A reader responds to that Reuters piece on Valentine's day in Saudi Arabia:

[Quoting Reuters:]"Florists say the move is part of an annual campaign by the committee -- whose members are known as 'mutawwaeen' or volunteers "

The muttawah are more than just "volunteers" they are the religious police and are the scourge of the Magic Kingdom. They walk around with sticks in hand striking at women who aren't fully covered, or making sure folks close their shops at prayer times.

in my time in the kingdom I never heard them referred to as a "mutawwaeen"

typical Reuters disinformation.

A very interesting review of "In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs" in yesterday's New York Times. Here's the opener:

IN the prosperous northern Tehran suburb of Elahiyeh, ladies who lunch visit a French-trained psychologist downtown (to talk of their adulteries, no doubt), while their teenage daughters (''matchsticks marinated in Chanel,'' in Christopher de Bellaigue's pungent words) get nose jobs, hang around the pizza parlor and perform oral sex on their boyfriends so they'll still technically be virgins when married off to their first cousins. Occasionally the ''morals police'' stop by in Land Cruisers to check handbags for condoms, but Elahiyeh honors the age-old Iranian principle of veiled surfaces and highly embroidered interiors. Indeed, when de Bellaigue and his Iranian wife invite one of the Ayatollah Khomeini's former hoodlums to lunch -- an Indian meal -- the man and his wife marvel over the apartment's interior design.

From a story on public schools in Newton, Mass:

According to benchmarks for middle school education, the top objective for the district's math teachers is to teach "respect for human differences." The objective is for students to "live out the system-wide core value of 'respect for human differences' by demonstrating anti-racist/anti-bias behaviors."

Italics mine.

The guys at ABC's the Note offered an interesting A very useful rundown on the differences between the GOP and the Democrats -- from a non-conservative perspective. I found it at Tapped:

Witth the Democrats gathered in Washington for Dean's coronation and in the wake of Bill Clinton's delivery of a Delphic roadmap at the Terry McAuliffe send-off last night, let's examine what separates the Republicans from the Democrats (with apologies to Ralph Nader):

One party has political elites who revere and respect its recent presidential candidates; one party can't even be bothered to stop chatting and, err, partying to listen to its candidates speak.

One party has a clear programmatic agenda that has been relentlessly pursued in a well-organized fashion for five years; one party is still trying to build a credible war room (both materially and culturally).

One party never apologizes and never shows weakness; one party is on its fourth day of cry-babyish "defense" of its Senate Leader, after a run-of-the-mill GOP "attack."

One party is already organizing for 2005/6/7/8; one party is still trying to figure out what changes a yet-to-be-elected chair will make on the Wisteria Lane of politics — Ivy Street, SE.

One party would know that electing a national chair with a net negative approval rating is at a minimum problematic; one party thinks it's a virtue.

One party can whenever it wishes take off-the-shelf opposition research (video and text) and turn it into talking points that drive the friendly and (sometimes) mainstream media; one party considers 36 hours to be "rapid response."

One party will air its dirty laundry to whatever lowest-common-denominator media outlet comes a-sniffin'; one party engages in cock-fight-style drag-'em-outs in their headquarters' basement.

One party is on offense; one party is on . . . something else.

On party learned the lessons of the '90s; one party unlearned them.

One party knows the press is its "enemy"; one party mistakenly thinks the press is its "friend."

One party is expending resources to expand the base and broaden the tent; one party says it is planning to do those things, but is distracted defending demographic and geographic turf.

One party owns national security; one party can't figure out how to own health care or the environment in a way that would help win elections.

One party figured out how to keep its "extreme" party platform on abortion and still make electoral gains; one party hasn't.

One party is trying to use its general unity to hold together and pass Social Security reform; one party is trying to figure out how to extend and build on its unity over opposing personal accounts to a general strategy.

One party has been taking the long view for a long time; one party can't see past yesterday.

One party has members who will take these words to be gospel; one party is dominated by people will quickly dismiss it as mean-spirited.

One party would agree with what we wrote above; so would the other one.

This is the landscape as the DNC winter meeting continues today...

There's all of this hullabaloo about us using spy planes and drones to monitor Iran's nuclear program. Why is this even remotely controversial? The only major controversial aspects I can think of is that it was reported in the press and to a lesser extent that we were using Iraq as the base for these operations. I can see why that might be diplomatically problematic. But I want -- nay demand -- that the US government keep tabs on anti-American regimes as they pursue nuclear weapons. It would be a monumental scandal if we weren't doing this.

Happy Valentine's Day:

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia Reuters:) - Saudi Arabia's morality police are on the scent of illicit red roses as part of a clampdown on would-be St Valentine's lovers in the strict Muslim kingdom.

The Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, Saudi Arabia's powerful religious vigilantes, have banned shops from selling any red flowers in the run-up to February 14.

Florists say the move is part of an annual campaign by the committee -- whose members are known as "mutawwaeen" or volunteers -- to prevent Saudis marking a festival they believe flouts their austere doctrine of "Wahhabi" Islam.

"They pass by two or three times a day to check we don't have any red flowers," said a Pakistani florist in Riyadh's smart Sulaimaniya district. "Look, no red. I've taken them all out," he said pointing to a dazzling floral collection covering every color of the rainbow except one.

There's more...

Lots of corrections on this point:

Jonah,
I'm sure by now you have received gadzillions of e-mails with this niggling correction. You wrote:
"Every morning I get these emailed images of white feathers sent to me by folks who think I should sign up. The reference is to WWI when women would give young men not in uniform feathers to shame them into enlisting."
Actually, this comes from The Four Feathers, a 1902 adventure novel http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/002-7134070-3764064 which has been made into a movie at least three times http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/002-7134070-3764064 . As far as I'm aware, Mason made up the entire idea of accusing someone of cowardice by giving him a white feather. On the other hand, the phrase "showing the white feather" as a description of cowardice seems to have a long history. I find it listed as a phrase used in the Civil War and I think it shows up in one of Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey-Maturin novels.
In any event, don't let those bastards get you down!

I won't turn this into an all day affair. But it is nice to hear after the relentless drubbing I've been getting. So indulge me:

Mr. Goldberg, I have been a long subscriber of NRODT and have followed your writings on NRO before and after 9-11. As a professional Army officer and physician who has been to Iraq twice (1991, 2003) and looking at a third tour later this year I want to express my gratitude to you for the support you have given us in the miltary with your writings and words during imnummerable debates. But now I think it is time to return the favor. I can tell you that reading NRO on my laptop in Iraq even as the mortars impacted on our camp or after taking care of wounded soldiers was enough to buck up my morale. Your support and those of other Americans was just as valuable to me as the body armor I wore and the kevlar plating on my ambulance.

Please do not let this chickenhawk business get under your skin. I do not even think it deserves a response. I'm very unimpressed with the left's and MSM's new found affection for the common soldier. My take on it is that they want to protray professinal soldiers as some sort of new class of victims, be it the whole armored humvee business or the almost daily TV news show about a struggling amputee.

I do not expect, or want, you or any other supporter to feel obligated to join the military. The military is doing okay in Iraq. Yes, it's tough. But the battle for Iraq will not be lost in Baghdad or Mosul. It will be lost when the majority of American people lose their nerve. That's why I need you and the rest of the NRO staff to stay where you are and make the case for our mission. And as a doc, thanks for seeing the wounded guys at Walter Reed. Keep up the good fight.

Mike

I get a lot of notes like this. Indeed, I should have mentioned how enormous NRO's military readership is and how much pride we take in the fact that NRO is the homepage to so many in the military. Regardless, it's nice to hear:

Jonah,

First, the military is a young man's business. The Marine Corps is a pyramid with the young (18-21 yr olds) at its wide base. As a 33 yr old field grade officer who finds it harder and harder to keep up with the young guys, I can attest to the attrition that is built into the promotion system. The Corps does not need old men.

Secondly, as I prepare to deploy to Iraq, I am glad that not all right thinking men are deployed to Iraq. I am thankful that we have Jonah Goldbergs back home to keep everyone straight. I look forward to reading The Corner from Iraq.

But the bottom line in the chickenhawk debate is: Dick Cheney v. Jimmy Carter? Who thinks that Jimmy Carter (Naval Academy grad, nuclear submarine officer) was wiser in foreign policy than Dick Cheney?

(If posted -- please allow me to be anonymous)

The Wall Street Journal comes to the defense of Eason Jordan. Excerpts:

By now, everyone on the Good Ship Earth knows that this particular story ended Friday with Mr. Jordan's abrupt resignation from CNN. This has certain pundits chirping delightedly. It has been a particular satisfaction to the right wing of the so-called "blogosphere," the community of writers on the Web that has pushed the Eason story relentlessly and sees it as the natural sequel to the Dan Rather fiasco of last year.

But Easongate is not Rathergate. Mr. Rather and his CBS team perpetrated a fraud during a prime-time news broadcast; stood by it as it became obvious that the key document upon which their story was based was a forgery, and accused the whistleblowers of the very partisanship they themselves were guilty of. Mr. Rather still hasn't really apologized.

And..

More troubling to us is that Mr. Jordan seems to have "resigned," if in fact he wasn't forced out, for what hardly looks like a hanging offense. It is true that Mr. Jordan has a knack for indefensible remarks, including a 2003 New York Times op-ed in which he admitted that CNN had remained silent about Saddam's atrocities in order to maintain its access in Baghdad. That really was a firing offense. But CNN stood by Mr. Jordan back then--in part, one suspects, because his confession implicated the whole news organization. Now CNN is throwing Mr. Jordan overboard for this much slighter transgression, despite faithful service through his entire adult career.

Sorry for reopening what may be for most folks an old and tedious argument. That’s not my intention. Unfortunately, my recent spat with Juan Cole has launched a second front of hate mail, spam and blog flames. And since I don’t have the time or energy to respond to every email or ever blog post, I figured I could respond here and then I’d at least have a link I can send back to folks.

As you may recall, Cole advocated the position that every able bodied male in America who supported the Iraq war should have enlisted. In response to these and similar “chicken-hawk” arguments I mentioned in passing that “a few” of the reasons I never signed up before the war were my age, my financial situation, my brand new baby daughter and my physical condition. The blogger Atrios considered this an “incredible” admission as have several other leftwing bloggers. The moral outrage seems to be based on what I can only figure to be several misunderstandings and one fair point. The misunderstandings include the fact that I never said these were the “only” reasons I didn’t sign up. Merely that these were among them. I never expected Atrios to be a fair reader (he’s too concerned with my looks). But apparently this misreading has now become the official one among many on the web. I’ve received lots of email from folks who sincerely believe – for one reason or another – that I was saying my family or my financial situation was more important than those of the soldiers, marines and airmen in Iraq who also have families and, often, even greater financial challenges. So let me just say here that this was never my intention nor my meaning. If I gave that impression, I’m sorry. While obviously my family is everything to me, I have never thought in those terms. And I have never done anything but marvel at the contributions of America’s warriors. And, having gone to Walter Reed this weekend to meet with wounded vets, my gratitude and admiration for their sacrifices is even greater. What I was trying to say was that it doesn’t matter what my reasons for not enlisting were, it wouldn’t matter to people who think it’s more satisfying or effective to hurl insults than engage in arguments. Indeed, the fact that I am too old to enlist seems to bounce off of most of these people (to serve at my age I would need to have already served before or be in the reserve).

But as for the larger argument, I still think it is absurd. Every morning I get these emailed images of white feathers sent to me by folks who think I should sign up. The reference is to WWI when women would give young men not in uniform feathers to shame them into enlisting. It’s a clever bit of web-bullying I suppose. But the analogy is stupid. Those women supported the war. The people reprising the role of WWI prim ladies on the homefront do not. Daily Kos’ reaction to the mutilation of American contractors in Iraq was "I feel nothing over the death of the mercenaries [sic]. They are there to wage war for profit. Screw them."

That’s not the sort of thing one says when in support of the war effort.

The lefty blogs love pointing out conservative hypocrisy. Fair enough. But this chickenhawk nonsense itself is grotesquely hypocritical. Recently many on the left took great umbrage at Peter Beinart’s suggestion that much of the left opposed the Afghanistan war. No we didn’t! They declared. Well, okay. But if they didn’t oppose it, why didn’t they sign up? What about for the first Gulf War? Or Bosnia?

Look, in the age of the all-volunteer military, and in a country which prides itself on civilian control of that military, there is no shame in not signing up. Or even if there is shame, it’s personal not political. We have, by my rough estimate, some 70 million men of military age. Should they all join-up the moment they agree the military should do something dangerous? I favor aggressive law enforcement at home, does this mean I should become a cop? Of course not.

I supported the war and I support the work the military is doing there now. I make no apologies for that. I do not believe they’re there on a fool’s errand nor do I consider them to be hapless dupes and slaves to a cause not worth fighting. About the folks sending me these feathers, I know no such thing.

Note: I fixed a couple typos from the version I originally posted.

From The New York Times:

The new Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, said in an interview this weekend that the war with the Israelis is effectively over and that the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, is speaking "a different language" to the Palestinians. Mr. Sharon's commitment to withdraw from Gaza and dismantle all Israeli settlements there and four in the West Bank, despite "how much pressure is on him from the Israeli Likud rightists," Mr. Abbas said, "is a good sign to start with" on the road to real peace.

"And now he has a partner," Mr. Abbas said.

In a 40-minute interview in his Gaza office late on Saturday night, Mr. Abbas spoke with pride about persuading the radical groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad to respect the mutual declaration of a truce that he and Mr. Sharon announced last Tuesday at their first meeting, in Sharm el Sheik, Egypt, which was the highest-level meeting between Israelis and Palestinians in four years.

Mr. Abbas said the war with the Israelis would be over "when the Israelis declare that they will comply with the agreement I made in Sharm el Sheik, and today our comrades in Hamas and Jihad said they are committed to the truce, the cooling down of the whole situation, and I believe we will start a new era."

From a reader:

Jonah Goldberg -

I rarely disagree with you but I do here. So much of the opposition to Bush's policies are shallow personality politics rather than thoughtful disagreement that it's quite possible some Democrats watching Pat Buchanan voice opposition to removal of a tyrant could be forced to see all of this through a different prism. Do these people really want to be on the same side as Pat Buchanan? I don't think so. Such exposure could make at least some of them recognize the reality of their present position which is fully captured by that precision-guided description, "post-humanitarian left."

Tim Russert had Pat Buchanan and Natan Sharansky on. Buchanan's a great talker and a great debater. Sharansky is neither, though I don't think he did that bad.

But what, exactly, was Russert's thinking? President Bush faces significant political opposition from the Democratic Party and its leftwing base -- not from the Buchanan wing of the Buchanan Party. Ted Kennedy or Michael Moore would be more accurate and representative of political reality. Is it that it's unseemly to have Democrats shown-up for their lack of democratic idealism? Or did Democrats simply refuse to come on? Or, was Russert more attracted to the box-office appeal of Sharansky and Buchanan trading punches? Of course, as anybody could have predicted, they ended up trading punches over Israel more than they did over Bush's foreign policy. Entertaining, maybe. But not exactly a debate which reflected where the policy-makers or the two parties are.

Here’s a remarkable piece of economic illiteracy or, perhaps, something worse, from the Guardian in which Neil Clark appears to wax a little nostalgic for the good old days in Eastern Europe:

“The statistics speak for themselves. GDP in the former communist states fell between 20% and 40% in the decade after 1989 - an economic contraction which, in the words of Budapest economist Laszlo Andor, "can only be compared to the Great Depression of the 1930s".

Um, Neil, those old statistics were meaningless. Let’s take one simple example. An Eastern European factory in the communist era might produce, say, a refrigerator, and that would count towards its country’s production statistics. But if that refrigerator was typically faulty what did that ‘production’ really amount to? Nothing. My memory may be faulty, but I don’t recall Eastern European household appliances as models of reliability. Looking at the real world, as opposed to the dodgy math of socialist statistics (back in the 1970s I can remember people claiming that East Germany was roughly as prosperous in the UK), many factories in the old Soviet bloc were, in fact, value destroying. Their output was worth less than the cost of its inputs: the steel, say, was worth more before it was transformed into that faulty fridge.

Predictably (we’re talking the Guardian here, people), Clark also raises the question of inequality:

“Inequality has risen sharply. Countries that not so long ago prided themselves on their egalitarianism now challenge Britain at the top of the European income inequality tables.”

Oh, come off it. The old Socialist states were paragons (if that’s the word) of privilege and inequality, but that inequality was hidden, concealed beneath the privilege of access to scare goods and resources for the party elite. Yes, there is inequality now, but it’s open – and there’s less of it.

This is not to say that the transition from Communism has been easy; far from it, particularly for the elderly, but after half a century of economic insanity how could it not have been?

Here’s a lovely article from Spiked on smoking:

“…cigarette smoking wasn't only about good and bad; it was also about the awareness of death. (Clean-air fanatics might go much further and insist that smoking isn't about death but murder and suicide. That feels a little overwrought to me.) Though I gave it up years ago, I still miss it, and certainly don't hate those who continue to smoke. Partly thumbing one's nose at death, partly flirting with it, part defiance, part acceptance - each breath of smoke was all of these, and when we smoked together in bars and clubs, at parties or at home, the consciousness of our mortality may even have coaxed us into making the most of the limited time that we knew we had.”

And this..

“What worries me is the hum of panic that I sense underneath the public ordinance, a panic engendered by a cult of health that's taken so many forms over the past 30 years that it's become the single religion of much of Western society. You run across it everywhere: in our preoccupation with diet and exercise; the endless ads in the media - in the US at least - promoting new drugs for an increasing number of exotic diseases; and the inclination to turn all eccentric behaviour into a 'syndrome' that can be treated medicinally. While none of these is alarming in itself, they add up to a new Puritanism that turns the old paradigm on its head: now instead of tempting the Fates by being bad, we put all our efforts into being good. If smoking was about being grown up, the new Puritanism is about being a perpetual child, and living in a protected world that has never existed except in fantasy.”

Too true, too true.

Hat-tip: Radley Balko

At the risk of damaging his credibility in the liberal street with a favorable mention in our corner of iniquity, Matt Yglesias has, I think, read the Saudi elections just right:

“…The decision to prohibit political parties was a boon to the Islamists since they have, in the mosques, an institutional network of support that's legal even in the absence of political parties. To make a long story short, Abdullah did everything possible to ensure that Islamists would win the election. He also managed to ensure that no matter what the result, he wouldn't lose any real power. Upshot -- articles in the western press calling him "reform-minded" and that build the case for him not to engage in further democratization since, as we just saw, Abdullah's earnest efforts at reform are counterproductive since they just bring Islamists to power. It's everything an absolute monarch could dream of in an election. He keeps absolute power, gets credit for being a reformer, and gets off the hook in terms of pressure to reform.”

Sad but true.

Spain will be voting in the EU referendum on the 20th. The vote will be a yes, but the turnout will probably be low, not something that Brussels will like too much (remember that the constitution was meant to rekindle popular enthusiasm for the European ‘project’), and so Spanish PM Zapatero has bringing in, um, celebrities such as Jacques Chirac to stir things up a little. One of these guests, Daniel Cohn-Bendit (1968’s ‘Danny Le Rouge’), a prominent member of the European Parliament, had this to say:

“If the EU constitution fails, they will be toasting with champagne at the White House. A weak Europe is what the US wants.”

Actually, Daniel, a free market Europe made up of sovereign nations would be far stronger, but Cohn-Bendit’s comments are just another reminder that the foundations of this new, deeper EU are profoundly anti-American. In a way they have to be. The EU cannot define itself by what it is (who would rally round a corrupt, and pointless, bureaucracy?), and so has to define itself by what it is not.

America.

More from the low countries, this time Belgium. There’s an article today in the NY Times on the rise of Belgium’s far right ‘Vlaams Belang’ . It’s interesting enough, so far as it goes, but there’s one point that the Times touches on but does not elaborate, merely noting that the party had changed its name (from Vlaams Blok) last year.

Well, as more skeptical readers of the New York Times will be unsurprised to discover, there’s more to that 'name change' than that paper chooses to disclose. Basically, early last year Belgium’s supreme court upheld a government ruling effectively banning Vlaams Blok (the party’s access to state funding – essential in Belgium – and television was barred) on the grounds that it was ‘racist’. The Vlaams Belang is the successor party specifically designed to get round (for now) this ban.

Now, as a political party, the Vlaams Belang leaves quite a lot to be desired and it certainly contains some unpleasant elements, but it would, one would have thought, have been of interest to Times readers to learn that it is the successor to a popular political party ‘banned’ in Belgium last year, the sort of ban that should be unacceptable in a free society.

And that in turn raises another question. Why is no longer fully democratic Belgium permitted to remain in NATO and the EU?