Another of the remarkable, um, recent ‘achievements’ of EU bureaucrats was the antitrust action against Microsoft. This will lead to the sale in Europe of a version of Windows without Mediaplayer. The Guardian is now reporting that Brussels has “rejected out of hand Microsoft's initial suggestion of calling the "degraded" version of its operating system "Windows reduced media edition" - viewed as a serious deterrent to consumers.”

Of course it has. For such a name would be, well, honest. Microsoft should stick to its guns or, better, follow the advice of the folks over at EU Referendum. They think that Microsoft should simply label the degraded product the "EU version" with a prominent "ring of stars".

”As the EU is a by-word for corruption and inefficiency, such a version would readily fit with the EU brand image and happily remind the "citizens of Europe" of the benefits of EU membership.”

Ha ha ha.

MADD was an organization begun with the best of possible motives, but over the years its mission has quite clearly expanded to embrace a quasi-prohibitionist agenda. Now it turns out that this agenda has been bankrolled in part by GM, something of dubious benefit to GM’s shareholders and which reflects very poorly on the company’s own priorities.

Now, people are beginning to object. MADD at GM has been formed by an organization representing owners and operators of bars, taverns and liquor stores. Their website is well worth a visit, and notes this:

"As part of its agreement with MADD, General Motors has become a vocal opponent of any drinking before driving. Think about that before your next car or truck purchase."

Indeed. Friends don’t let their friends buy GM.

A professor in economics from the University of Iceland asks himself what exactly the EU is, and then answers his own question:

"It's a customs union. It protects itself from outsiders with walls of tariffs. It is in many ways very reactionary. Those who control everything, the Central European states France, Germany, Spain and Italy, are not the countries of the free market and have never been. Those are countries which have cetralised their economy very much. Their economy is in many ways incomplete with much rigidity in the labour market. They have a very complex and wide-ranging system of subsidies and grants. State interference in the economy is vast. And in many ways the European Union is driven by dreams of past greatness; dreams of keeping Europe as a superpower. The result of all this is that growth in the EU is rather small compared to America and Asia."

Wise words. For suggesting that the current evolution of the EU is not altogether a good thing, the good professor will now doubtless find himself described, much to his surprise, as a ‘neoconservative’. I know I was. Who knew?

Hat-tip North Sea Diaries

As usual, there’s plenty of good stuff over at the EU Referendum blog. Most interesting today, perhaps, is the discussion of comments from a minister in the German government that the draft EU constitution will be the launch pad for even deeper integration. True enough, but not very helpful for Tony Blair who is busy telling Brits that signing up for the constitution will represent the end-stage of the process of European integration.

It’s worth noting that one of the reasons for the bitterness of the EU debate in the UK is the sense among many Brits that they have been consistently lied to over the nature of what it is they have signed up for. At almost every stage of the EU process, going the whole way back to the accession debates in 1972, ‘pro-Europeans’ (inaccurate description, but it will have to do) have downplayed the possibility of any further integration.

And at almost every stage of the EU process they are later shown to have lied.

Recent claims that smoking bans have no negative effect on business are based on statistical manipulation so shabby that it makes the science of ‘passive smoking’ look reliable. Here’s one story (from New York State, rather than City) that points the other way.

“ITHACA -- For now, the smoking room in the Fraternal Order of the Eagles No. 1253 is two green metal chairs and a tin can that greet visitors outside the front door. Within weeks, though, the club will become the first establishment where smoking is permitted since the Tompkins County Legislature passed a law in August 2003 outlawing smoking in bars and restaurants. The Tompkins County Board of Health Tuesday approved its first waiver to the New York State Clean Indoor Air Act. The board ruled that the Eagles were able to show a loss of income since the smoking ban took effect, and were able to provide a separate room where smoking will be allowed. "They showed they had a significant decrease in income since the enactment of the ban," said John Andersson, director of environmental health services at the Tompkins County Health Department. "They clearly had a loss of income." According to figures submitted to the Health Department, the Eagles revenue dropped from $92,343 in 2003 to $57,327 in 2004. The revenue drop almost crippled the organization's ability to donate to charitable causes, members said. Donations went from $60,000 before the ban to $12,000 after it went into effect. “

Of course you can’t build a counter argument (so to speak) on the basis of just one bar, but this story is a reminder that the costs of smoking bans can run beyond the small things like, oh I don’t know, freedom, personal responsibility and the right of a proprietor to run his establishment in the way he sees fit.

Via Radley Balko.

Your "Dead Zone" emailer is quite obviously a Corner newbie. Fridays, for whatever reason, are ALWAYS slow around there. I never questioned it; I just assumed slacking the day before a weekend was a blue-state thing. Sort of like how you whine about weather.

90 minutes??

Kathryn, that's about how long it's been since the last post in The Corner!!! I guess that shindig at WFB's must have been some blowout! Everyone hung over today or what? ;)

Chicago (AP) -- A man who says his former lover deceived him by getting pregnant using semen obtained through oral sex can sue for emotional distress — but not theft, an appeals court has ruled.

Dr. Richard O. Phillips accuses Dr. Sharon Irons of a "calculated, profound personal betrayal" six years ago, but she says they had the baby through sexual intercourse.

A top aide to Al-Qaeda's frontman in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has been arrested along with a man who was Zarqawi's driver, the Iraqi government said Friday.

In an effort to halt blatantly partisan and personal attacks on many of the President’s nominees to the Federal Courts, the Judicial Confirmation Network is circulating a national petition and is partnering with more than seventy citizen and grassroots organizations across the country calling on Senators to bring the President’s judicial nominations to the floor for respectful debate and timely votes.

Passed on with no further comment - for now:

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A consumer group sued the federal government Thursday, saying that salt is killing tens of thousands of Americans and that regulators have done too little to control salt in food."

Via Drudge

And he made clear that he is in no hurry to reconsider the appellate court nomination of William H. Pryor Jr. of Alabama, one of Bush's most controversial judicial choices.

On an otherwise quiet day on the Hill, 100 journalists and jostling photographers jammed the Senate TV studio yesterday for a sighting of that most exotic and endangered of species: a moderate in the United States Senate.

Schumer told reporters that Senate Democrats see no reason to back Myers and other nominees who were turned back last year "unless there's new and dramatic information. . . . I think the president nominating them [again] is, sort of, a poke in the eye." Of the nominees sent back by Bush, Schumer said, "I think [Myers] would have the easiest chance of all of them, and I don't think he has the votes yet, either."

Liberal groups also signaled no letup in their campaign against conservative judges. "Rather than starting a new Congress with judicial nominees commanding bipartisan support, they immediately renew the judicial wars with polarizing nominees who were blocked in the previous Congress," said Ralph G. Neas, head of People for the American Way.

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat who scored a surprising win in 2002 but is a top GOP target next year, won't appear with Dean during his two-day visit. An aide noted that Sebelius remained neutral in the DNC race and backed Kerry in the presidential primary. Rep. Dennis Moore, the state's only congressional Democrat, is traveling out of the country and won't return until next week. A Moore spokeswoman declined to comment on Dean's trip. Aides to other Kansas Democrats, including state Sen. Janice Lee and Kansas City Mayor Carol Marinovich, also declined to comment on Dean's visit. Dean is likely to face a similar reception next week in Mississippi, where Rep. Gene Taylor, the state's only white Democrat in Congress, has been openly critical of his party's new chairman.

I had to read this one twice to make sure I'd got it right:

"Dear John---They are teaching Macbeth, at least in the 11th grade at our
son's school (private, Christian). But they do so using sock puppets. Our
son had to make Siward and Malcolm last night.

"I thought you might like to file this under your 'American Education Today'
miscellany. Good luck filling the holes in Nellie's and Danny's education;
my wife and I have to do our share."

Macbeth with sock puppets! "Before my body I throw my warlike shield!"
[Flip finger across palm]....

Why does this make me think of that Monty Python sketch: "Wuthering Heights
in semaphore"?

I just received my first issue of National Review. Although I have been reading Newsweek and Time for years and always end up throwing the darn things in despair, it is wonderful to finally have a lively, thoughtful, and intelligent magazine to read. I don't know why I waited so long. I think it's important to read what the liberals are reporting so I will continue reading the Newsweek and unoffensive liberal blogs. Speaking of which, thank you so much for the wonderful 2004 campaign and election coverage at NRO. I continue to visit your website several times a day.

NEW YORK (AP) -- A federal judge ruled Thursday that The New York Times has a First Amendment privilege to protect the confidentiality of its sources by denying the government phone records in certain instances.

Noting that secrecy in government appears to be on the increase, Judge Robert W. Sweet refused in a 120-page ruling to toss out a lawsuit the newspaper filed last year to stop the Department of Justice from getting records of phone calls between two veteran journalists and sources.

re your comment:

"YOUNG ADULT USED TO MEAN 12 TO 18," HE SAID. "NOW IT'S FOR READERS AS OLD AS 25." [K. J. Lopez ]

I suspect this says more about the reading comprehension of 25-year-olds than it does about the maturity levels of 12-year-olds. ------

I think this betrays your (understandable) ignorance of why Young Adult publishing exists. It's a publishing category holdover from when libraries refused to put science fiction and fantasy on the "adult" shelves because librarians believed all science fiction and fantasy works were/are juvenile in nature. Many libraries still do this: I've been to libraries where unabridged versions of Heinlein’s "Stranger in a Strange Land" sit on the juvenile stands near Dr. Seuss's more advanced books.

Anyway, young adult was a way to get science fiction and fantasy out of the juvenile shelves and into another category somewhere between juvenile and adult. Ursula K. LeGuin's first three Earthsea books were marketed as "young adult." The latest three Earthsea were marketed as "adult" because 20 years later publishers and libraries finally realized that science fiction can be aimed at adults. The Young Adult market now contains many non-fantastical works, but it’s really a label reflected more of compromise than content.

(Hartford-WTNH, Feb. 23, 2005 7:35 PM ) _ At the Connecticut capitol, a powerful legislative committee has just approved civil unions for the state.

I'm heading to NYC for the NR swank bash at WFB's will be on the train for the next few hours. Keep hope alive.

Interesting point from a reader:

Dear Jonah:

I can’t speak for all gays, but I have some familiarity with what I would call the ‘theological left (Catholic version)’, and I can tell you that most gays in this group support abortion because they are heavily invested in the divorce between intercourse and procreation. If the primary goal of intercourse is the production of children, as traditional Catholic theology insists, then both abortion and gay sex are wrong. But if sex is about the expression of love between two people, then homosexual intercourse is not only licit, it is a positive moral good. That pesky little fetus that is sometimes the product of intercourse is in fact a nuisance, not a blessing…

Of course, I’m painting with a very broad brush, but essentially, that is the thought process underlying support for abortion in one group of gays I am familiar with.

The problem is further compounded by its media which gives out only filtered news preventing the people at the grassroots level from gaining an insight into the real issues. “When I was in the US some years ago, I was shocked to find that the people there were having AM/FM radios and not the short-wave radio. That means they are only interested in knowing things concerning them and have no interest in the world beyond.”

Many Democrats believe that it will be impossible to stop her from securing the party nomination in 2008. The Crystal Ball disagrees for one very important reason: Senator Clinton is likely to win the general election only if 2008 turns out to be a strong Democratic year when any major Democrat would have prevailed. Despite her attempts to moderate, Senator Clinton is firmly fixed in the public's mind as a Northeastern liberal from a deep blue state--rather reminiscent of another recent nominee from Massachusetts. Those Arkansas days are far behind her, and few in the Razorback State believe she could carry the only Southern state where it is plausible she might have a chance.

Why is Clinton's ideology seen as so rigidly left, given the fact that National Journal's voting studies show her to be more moderately liberal than commonly thought? Bluntly put, Senator Clinton will never escape the stifling confines of her husband's controversial administration. A feminist in the 1992 campaign who wasn't going to stay home and "bake cookies," and who was sold as a co-president, she will always be associated with the "Hillary Care" health plan that failed disastrously, the scandals that plagued the Clinton administration from start to finish (Whitewater, Vince Foster's suicide, the missing billing records, the last-minute pardons), and the searing Monica Lewinsky impeachment debacle that raised uncomfortable questions about the Clintons' marital arrangement.

Assuming the marriage is now stable, the unavoidable fact is that Bill Clinton would be moving back into the White House with a President Hillary Clinton. Surveys have consistently shown that both Clintons still bear many scars from their time at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., and what has been forgotten about their many controversies will be re-investigated and refreshed during the course of a long 2008 campaign. Only a decisive rejection of the Bush regime and GOP actions in Congress could convince the electorate to overlook its raw feelings about the Clintons and to revisit that chapter of American history--one that was closed with considerable, widespread relief in early 2001.

You've got to find email like this at least a bit interesting:

I am a gay conservative living in the liberal bastion of New York City (Chelsea, for that matter). I have always wondered how being pro-choice is a matter in which gay rights groups needed to be involved. Certainly, the thinking within the community cannot be monolothic. I often began asking if they believed that it was morally correct to abort babies because of their gender. I would bring up South Korea and China, where women often will abort their child because the child is female. The response would always be that although it is unseemly, it is a matter of choice. I would then follow it up with the gay gene hypothesis - namely, if there is a gay gene and it is determined, would it still be a matter of choice for a woman to abort a child knowing the child would be gay. I would then ask if the pro-choicer believed that most women would give birth to a child knowing that the child would grow up to be gay. The answer is obvious; many would not. Thank you for putting this in the corner today. The pro-abortion stance of the left and the Democratic party is one of the reasons that I am as staunch a Republican as I am. Although gay marriage is an issue that deserves discussion, it pales in comparison to the gruesome death that unborn gay and lesbian children currently endure (and would endure in far greater numbers if a gay gene were discovered). Great post.

But Artificial Life has already run into delays in introducing Vivienne to men in Asia and Europe. It originally hoped to have her flirting on cellphone screens by last Christmas.

The problems have ranged from the cosmetic--Vivienne is being reprogrammed not to bare her navel or display body piercings in conservative Muslim countries like Malaysia--to the technological.

It's been something of a minor talking point on the right that should the "gay gene" ever be found, homosexuals would become pro-life in a flash. I've been hearing this for years. And for the record, I've never heard anyone on the right say that if the gay gene were found that conservatives would become pro-choice.

Anyway, Rush Limbaugh was discussing the first point recently on his show and now a Republican lawmaker in Maine has introduced legislation to protect fetuses from orientation-selection abortions. Gay Patriot has more. This is probably just a small harbringer of all sorts of political shifts the biotech revolution will introduce. It will be very interesting to see how right and left are defined in the world of liberation biology.

Of course, it's just that attitude that almost cost Specter the chairmanship in November. His post-election comments that a Supreme Court nominee who opposed abortion rights was not likely to win Senate confirmation was reported as a warning to the president, and the groups that had hoped to unseat the moderate Specter in favor of a more conservative Republican then mobilized in an effort to deny him the chairmanship. Or, as Specter not so diplomatically put it, "the far right was ready to pounce on me if I'd done nothing but said the Lord's Prayer, and that was a crevice and they went after it."

Very useful, if number-heavy, Foreign Affairs article on why America isn't about to fold like a cheap hooker who got hit in the stomach by a fat guy with sores on his face.

[Okay, I promise that is the first and last reference to "Friends" for the year.]

The Palestinian legislature has allegedly purged the Arafat loyalists and cronies.

From a reader in the military:

I happened to see this at the local Hajii shop here at the FOB Freedom CMOC the other night. It was in Arabic, of course, so the Iraqis translated for me. They were pretty excited and happily fired-up about this guy getting captured. The locals accept it as common knowledge that the Syrians are the primary source of the terrorist activity around Mosul and in Iraq in general.

From my new "CMU Guy":

Jonah,

I'm a Junior at CMU, so here's what I know-

Basically, no one thought bringing the Shabazz guy to campus was a
good idea. There's a discussion board (electronic, that is) where
people argue over stuff like that, and once everyone had seen what the
guy has actually said on his own website, there was no one, right,
left, or far left, who uttered a peep in this guy's defense, which is
obviously a good thing.

The Hillel article implies that the University brought the Shabazz guy
in. Not really true. They are bringing Norman Finkelstein, but Shabazz
was brought by a student organization. "Who payed for it?" is somewhat
complicated. Student groups get money from whatever they fundraise
plus some money from the student government, which gets its money from
a fee every student has to pay them if they want to be in any student
group. The student government has total control over this money, and
it demands all kinds of bizarre accounting to try to separate what
student government pays for and what groups pay for through
fundraising. The university administration has no say anywhere in this
system. I don't know how the fundraising/student government money
works for the group in question, so its possible that the student body
as a whole theoretically footed the bill, that the organization payed
for it out of its own, non-student government pocket, or most likely
some combination.

CMU did "play host" to Shabazz, and the administration sent out a mass
email today about their speaker ploicy and Shabazz in particular. I'll
quote the whole thing below, but the bottom line is, they think
Shabazz is a pretty loathsome guy and would never have brought him
themselves, but they didn't ban him because they have a policy of not
banning anyone brought by a student group. I personally think this is
a pretty reasonable policy.

Now, I didn't actually see the guy as I was at CPAC that weekend (and
I'm evil whitey, so apparently I couldn't have seen him anyway). so
I'm taking Hillel's description of the event at face-value. From what
I've heard, the bit about them basically keeping whitey out of the
auditorium is true. I don't know about the rest of it, but I'll go dig
up the campus newspaper and find some people who were there. If it's
exactly as written , the CMU police really should be ashamed.

I do think the Hillel article is being more than a bit overblown about
Jews being particularly put-upon at CMU. I'm not one myself (although
I'm pretty philo-semitic), but this doesn't fit with what I know about
CMU. I know the president of the CMU Hillel chapter, and I'll ask her
about it in case I've completely missed the boat and get back to you
with an update. The article doesn't mention it, but the night before
the Shabazz speech, A group called "Tartans4Israel" hosted a
speaker/panel event called "IDF: Breaking the Myth," in which the
speaker, a former IDF officer, talked about how the IDF actually
works, its rules of engagement, etc. They asked the College
Republicans to co-sponsor it (I'm an officer in the CR's), which we
agreed to do. I didn't personally get to go (as I was traveling to
CPAC that night), but it's definitely the type of event needed on more
campuses.

You can use my name if you like, but I think it be much cooler to be
your "CMU Guy"

Two emails:

If conservatives were calling for Larry Summers to resign – or apologize, or both - because he publicly expressed an opinion about Social Security that they disagree with, then Mr. Iglesias would have a point.

And..

Ask Yglesias if he pays attention to John Mccain when Mccain is talking about Iraq or abortion or any other issue Mccain might still be conservative on.

From a reader

So, the World Council of Churches wants us to divest from companies that profit from Israel’s “control” of Gaza and the West Bank eh? I eagerly await their call to divest from Red China for it’s conquest of Tibet, Iran for it’s oppression and murder of dissidents (and hanging of school girls), European companies pursuing oil leases in genocidal Sudan….etc, etc. Surely these actions will be announced soon!

Cynically yours,

An alleged Syrian officer confesses Since this appeared on a US-backed Iraqi TV station, I really, really hope it pans out as authentic. Here's the opener:

BAGHDAD, Iraq Feb 23, 2005 — Iraqi state television aired a video Wednesday showing what the U.S.-funded channel said was the confession of a captured Syrian officer who said he trained Iraqi insurgents to behead people and build car bombs to attack American and Iraqi troops.

The video also showed an Iraqi who said the insurgents practiced beheading animals to train for decapitating hostages.

Syrian officials could not immediately be reached for comment on the claims.

Clarification: Contrary to some tendentious email, let me be clear what I meant. I hope that this story doesn't turn out to be fake in the sense that I would hate for America's credibility on Syria's threat to be undermined.

Indeed, as the pope's weakness becomes more pronounced, critics wonder if the Vatican's bureaucrats will be doing his bidding, or making up their own policies in their own interests. After all, if John Paul dies or resigns, their own power in the church hierarchy is likely to evaporate. Hence the suspicion with which some theologians view the new doctrines about sustaining terminal patients through extraordinary means. "The right-to-life types want to renounce brain death and keep everyone going forever," says John Paris, a Jesuit theologian at Boston College who has been writing about end-of-life issues for 30 years. "It seems that Lenin's mausoleum will be the model for the future. The entire enterprise is mischief-making at the Vatican."

"I must lead her with suffering," he said. "The pope must suffer so that every family and the world should see that there is, I would say, a higher gospel: the gospel of suffering, with which one must prepare the future."

From a reader:

personally I think if K.LO is going to carry on about Romney and 2008 elections, just three months after the last presidential election, you should be free to carry on about a litany of forbidden subjects, Star Trek, FF, your liking the new Battlestar Gallatica series (despite making starbuck a woman), etc.

Matt Yglesiaswrites:

STRANGE NEW RESPECT. Now that Larry Summers is suddenly garnering strange new respect from conservatives, I can't help but wonder if his new friends on the right will start paying attention to his views in his actual areas of expertise. Social Security, for example. It seems to me that when he talks about that stuff, the wingnuts don't much care for him. But he really is an economist and not a biologist. Just saying.

Despite the cutsey tone -- or maybe because of it -- this strikes me as profoundly lame. If Summers agreed with the privatization crowd, he would be treated as the right's pet Harvard hack and conservative support would be written off as Popular-Frontism. But since Summers opposes privatization, Yglesias insinuates, conservatives must be hypocrites for coming to his defense. Yglesias surely knows how cheap and lame this point would be if put in the form of serious argument, so he does it with a light touch, perhaps to make it sound more clever than it really is.

Ramesh - Just to add a few more: I seem to recall deep skepticism about the Depertment of Homeland Security, the new Director of National Intelligence, Bush's faith-based initiative and the entire rhetorical construct of compassionate conservatism appearing in articles by you, Rich, Kate O'Beirne, myself and others appearing many times in both the print NR and NRO.

In fact, it would be very helpful if Sager could back up his sweeping claims with some examples of what he is talking about. If his interpretation of NR's position on big government is so penetratingly accurate perhaps he could provide some quotes from NR's in-house writers and editors lauding big government conservatism.

(Unless I've lost count.) I think it's not quite fair for Sager to say that I'm happy to live with "big government conservatism" "so long as it keeps Republicans in power. "I wrote a cover story for NR criticizing big-government conservatism and big-government conservatives. Nor is it fair to associate big-government-conservatism-for-Bush's-sake with NR generally. The magazine opposed Bush's education bill, his steel tariffs, his expansion of national service programs, his regulation of campaign finance, his agriculture bill, and probably a few other initiatives that I'm not thinking of at this moment. It even opposed his federalization of airport security. (And I agreed with all of these positions.)

Perhaps more to the point--and I'm responding here to Andrew Sullivan, too--for seven years I've been arguing that a strategy of expanding the new investor class is conservatives' best bet for creating a constituency for limited government--and thus strengthening some needed libertarian elements within the conservative coalition while also strengthening the coalition overall. This strategy is certainly open to criticism. But it seems a more intelligent way to go about shrinking the federal government than wishing away political realities.

Here's what I know. I'll be there Feb 28. I'm speaking at 7:30 in Harris Hall (room 107). They want me to discuss web journalism, politics and whatnot, though I intend to work-in as much nude mopery as possible. It is supposed to be open to the "community." I think that you people count.

The World Council of Churches divides to divest from Israel. Here's the opener:

The World Council of Churches, the main global body uniting non-Catholic Christians, encouraged members Tuesday to sell off investments in companies profiting from Israeli control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The Council's Central Committee, meeting in Geneva, praised the United States Presbyterian Church for examining the possibility of divestment in Israel similar to the financial boycott it used against the apartheid regime in South Africa two decades ago.

The Presbyterian threat, which echoes divestment debates at some U.S. universities, has set off a wave of dissent in the church and angered American Jewish leaders.

But the Central Committee, in a document approved at a week-long meeting at WCC headquarters that ended on Tuesday, highlighted the divestment push and encouraged other member churches to consider doing the same.

"This action is commendable in both method and manner, uses criteria rooted in faith and calls members to do the 'things that make for peace'," it declared, quoting St. Luke's Gospel.

"Economic pressure, appropriately and openly applied, is one such means of action."

From a reader:

Maybe the most interesting thing about this story is that he's head of the Progressive Socialist Party and he's making an analogy to the fall of the Berlin Wall? Intriguing. Thanks, Z

Okay, since last time I posted something like this I got so many complaints from people with heart conditions and the like it wasn't really worth it. So here this is with the full disclosure that it's shocking (if it won't play, you can downloadit). Send it to your friends as you see fit. You've been warned.

As you might imagine I get a lot of email I don't post. Indeed, there are whole categories which almost never see the light of the blogosphere. One interesting sub-category which comes along every few weeks is a form of argumentation about Israel and the Palestinians. It goes like this: The Palestinians are simply doing what we would do if Texas was being invaded by Mexicans trying to take our land. Now, I havve used a similar argument to defend Israel's self-defense against Palestinians. So as an analogy, I don't have huge problems with it even when used for exactly the opposite perspective to my own. What I find interesting is what comes next.

I will, if the emailer seems reasonable enough, point out that the more apt application of the analogy would have the Mexicans play the role of Palestinians. After all, white Europeans came and took Texas (and lots of other land) from Mexicans and indians. Indeed, the Europeans were more alien to North America than Jews who've always been in the region and have a historic claim on the land.

Now, keep in mind, I don't buy all the implications of this counter-analogy, I just think it's useful to point this fact out to some emailers. What is amazing to me is that on occassion I'll hear back from these people complaining "How dare you question America's God-given right to this land?" After that the nastiness usually commences. Though sometimes I do try to ask where in the Old Testament God promised the Scots-Irish a big chunk of North America, since I know where in the Old Testament God promised Israel to the Hebrews.

Now this has only happened in one form or another a half-dozen times, so I want to be clear I'm not trying to create a strawman or apply to broad a brush. But it seems to me that this does illuminate a certain strain of cognitive dissonance. There are lots of folks out there who dislike Israel and believe its claim to its land is tenuous while they have an unquestioning, pretty much theological, conviction that white America deserves our slice of North America. Now, don't get me wrong. I think America should hold on to its real estate against all encroachments. I just think the inconsistency is fascinating and revealing.

The photo at the upper left was taken in the village of Hamada on Jan. 15, right after a Sudanese government-backed militia, the janjaweed, attacked it and killed 107 people. One of them was this little boy. I'm not showing the photo of his older brother, about 5 years old, who lay beside him because the brother had been beaten so badly that nothing was left of his face. And alongside the two boys was the corpse of their mother.

Lots of email like this:

The main problem at this time with the EU establishing a military is the fact that there are 3 main centers of military production and R&D in the EU and they are all running their own programs with little integration and so the price per unit goes up.

There are 3 Main Battle Tank R&D and production lines - France with the
Leclerc, UK with Challenger 2, Germany with Leopard 2. While they share some
common systems, mainly the main gun, their production is low-volume across
all three lines.

There are now 2 fighters being produced in the EU, EF-2000 Eurofighter and
JAS39 Gripen, while the F-35 JSF will be the light fighter to replace
Harrier and F-16 and F-104.

If one takes into account the Eastern European EU states, it's a hodge-podge
of American and Soviet gear now, with some new purchases of Gripens.

They have limited heavy-lift cargo in the C-17s the RAF leases, no bombers,
no internal development of JDAM class weapons, no long range SAMs like
Patriot or the S-300 from Russia.

I could go on for an hour about the technical problems of the EU's military,
but I won't bore you.

They need to do a lot of work to become an equal of Russia or China, and
tons of work to become an equal of the US.

However, we have more than one reason to hope that Jumblatt's conversion is real. Some excerpts from Steven Stalinsky's December 16 NY Sun piece:

Mr. Jumblatt is known for his vehement anti-American statements and antagonistic attitude toward America. On November, 19, 2003, it was reported that the state department cancelled Mr. Jumblatt's diplomatic visa following revelations that he expressed regret that the deputy secretary of defense, Paul Wolfowitz, was not killed in a missile attack during a visit to Baghdad.

More recently, Mr. Jumblatt gave an interview to Al-Sharq Al-Awsat on February 12, 2004, in which he said: "We are all happy when U.S. soldiers are killed [in Iraq] week in and week out. The killing of U.S. soldiers in Iraq is legitimate and obligatory." The Progressive Socialist Party leader has also said he felt "great joy" at the 2002 destruction of the U.S. Space Shuttle Columbia, because it carried an Israeli astronaut.

The Lebanese MP is also known for espousing conspiracy theories against America. On April 28, 2004, he gave an interview to Al Arabiyya TV, in which he detailed how America was really behind September 11: "Who invented Osama bin Laden?! The Americans, the CIA invented him so they could fight the Soviets in Afghanistan together with some of the Arab regimes. Osama bin Laden is like a ghost, popping up when needed. This is my opinion."

Mr. Jumblatt was asked "Even 9/11?" and answered: "Even 9/11...Why didn't the sirens go off when the four hijacked planes took off?...The U.S. always needs an enemy...According to this plan or ideology of the born-again Christians who formed an alliance with Zionism - Islam is the monster, Islam is the target."

In addition to hating America, Mr. Jumblatt has also spoke against the countries that support America. Lebanon's Daily Star published a February 3, 2003, article quoting him as saying that the true axis of evil is one of "oil and Jews," calling President Bush a "mad emperor," and insulting Prime Minister Blair, Prime Minister Berlusconi, and Jose Maria Aznar, the former Spanish prime minister: "The oil axis is present in most of the U.S. administration, beginning with its president, vice-president, and top advisers, including [Condoleezza] Rice, who is oil-colored, while the axis of Jews is present with Paul Wolfowitz."

In the interview, Mr. Jumblatt described President Bush as someone who "considers himself God's deputy on Earth, threatening and classifying the world [into different camps], and relying on his imperial power...How dangerous emperors are when they go mad... In the same axis we have the trustworthy servant, the imperial servant...pleased with himself and his idiotic laugh, his peacock appearance, none other than Tony Blair...Also joining this axis is the comprador Mussolini of the 21st century, the prime minister of Italy today, Silvio Berlusconi, who seems to want to renew the empire of the Caesars...To complete the picture, we have Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, the Spanish neo-rightist...Aznar and Blair spend a lot of time in front of the mirror every morning, it seems, so that their hair is parted perfectly...People who pay that much attention to their appearance are fascists by nature. Or they have psychological or sexual complexes."

Jim's right:

QUOTE OF THE DAY

From David Ignacius' column in the Washington Post today:
The leader of this Lebanese intifada [for independence from Syria] is Walid Jumblatt, the patriarch of the Druze Muslim community and, until recently, a man who accommodated Syria's occupation. But something snapped for Jumblatt last year, when the Syrians overruled the Lebanese constitution and forced the reelection of their front man in Lebanon, President Emile Lahoud. The old slogans about Arab nationalism turned to ashes in Jumblatt's mouth, and he and Hariri openly began to defy Damascus...

"It's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq," explains Jumblatt. "I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world." Jumblatt says this spark of democratic revolt is spreading. "The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it."

Overshadowed by its parent and the events planned, National Review Online observes its 10th anniversary in July. We have yet to settle on an appropriate way of observing this milestone, but you can bet we’ll come up with something appropriate.

We’ll celebrate NR’s 50th anniversary with a gala party at the Building Museum in Washington, D.C. on October 6. That will be followed by a commemoration of [WFB's] 80th birthday with a bash at the Pierre Hotel in New York City on November 17. The plans for both events are still in the works but I think our readers would like to mark those dates on their calendars.

The cost of this administration’s heartlessness will be measured in lives. Not only in the lives of people battling fatal illnesses or spinal cord injuries, but in the lives of family members and loved ones, who watch helplessly as bank accounts are drained to finance the desperate hopes of someone who simply doesn’t want to die yet. It’s doubtful that any of them will be comforted by religious homilies coming out of the White House.

After five weeks of mea culpas for his remarks about women in the sciences, Dr. Summers issued yet another apology. He promised professors that they would no longer experience the intimidation, anger and hurt feelings that many of them have reported in his three-and-a-half-year tenure.

If you believe in the U.N. charter's promise to promote "justice and respect for obligations arising from treaties," along with "the dignity and worth of the human person," then the real scandal--less racy, but colossally more devastating in human cost--has been the UNHCR's failure in recent years to stand up for refugees fleeing North Korea. The problem here is not, as far as I am aware, one of embezzlement or fraud. Nor is it on a par with any amount of sexual harassment in the comfortable Geneva headquarters of the UNHCR--however upsetting that might be. The true horror is the way in which the well-mannered nuances of U.N. bureaucracy, structure and management have combined to dismiss demurely the desperate needs of hundreds of thousands of human beings fleeing famine and repression in the world's worst totalitarian state.

The findings drew immediate criticism from some feminist groups and scholars.

"This reminds me of that saying, 'lies, damn lies and statistics," said Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women. "There's no question that boys and girls have disadvantages in different ways, but the variables they have chosen seem designed to show girls are doing better."

Contradicting both sides in the long-running debate on whether boys or girls have it better in America, the most comprehensive examination of the overall well-being of male and female children has found that the sexes are faring about equally. Although boys have the advantage in some areas and girls score better in others, they are doing about the same in a broad array of measures assessing essential dimensions of life, such as health, safety, economics and education, the researchers found.

An essential part of the EU project is the denigration of the very idea of the nation states corralled into the ‘Union’. They are redundant, useless, past, relics that need to be replaced by the bureaucrats and braggadocio of Brussels. For a good example, here’s the Belgian Prime Minister, Guy Verhofstadt, explaining to George W Bush why a federal Europe is necessary:

"…Europe can do little or nothing unless it is united and cooperates. To paraphrase my illustrious predecessor, Paul Henri Spaak, Europe consists solely of small countries. There are some who know it. And there are some who are now beginning to understand - just like James Madison and George Washington understood in 1787 in Philadelphia - that a loose confederation must be forged into a strong union."

Solely of small countries, Mr. Verhofstadt?

Well, speaking as you do, as the prime minister of a petite, not-quite-country (ask the people of Flanders what they think of your ‘Belgium’) which is no longer even a full democracy, I can see why that’s your perspective. Other countries (ahem…) might see themselves in a rather different way.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - An Iranian journalist was jailed for 14 years on charges ranging from espionage to insulting the country's leaders in an unusually heavy sentence in Iran, where tens of journalists have been tried in recent years.

I don't think this reader is right about libertarians being happy with totalitarianism. But I think he does make an important insight about some faux-libertarians, left-libertarians and libertines in all parties. There is a growing tendency in America to think government is oppressive it steps on what *I* like but not if it steps on what you like. Anyway, from a reader:

[I wrote:] "I know lots of small government types who love government funded scientific research..." Actually, many libertarians will tell you that the government _should_ be involved in things that individuals don't have an incentive to contribute towards, i.e. scientific research (usually specified as Manned Space Exploration) and also national defense.

Which is part of the reason why libertarianism is such a deeply hypocritical philosophy--most of them wouldn't really care _what_ size government there was, and some would even _favor_ a large government. They just want government to be invisible. A libertarian would be perfectly happy in a totalitarian society, as long as none of the stuff he liked was against the law...

I don't how I missed Ramesh's excellent post from earlier this morning. I would just chime in on one point that he speaks to only indirectly. There is a notion much championed by libertarians that if you believe in small government you are automatically a libertarian and not a conservative. This would be news to many Goldwaterites, Buckleyites and Reaganites. There's a related claim that Sager implies when he complains about all the whining about Will & Grace. Depending on the policy prescription that comes with such complaints, it's fairly absurd to suggest that libertarians cannot actually be very socially conservative when it comes to values.

Moreover, to expect normal Americans to accept philosophical denominations whole is entirely unreasonable. Heck, we can't even get most of NRO's readers to agree on what's conservative and what isn't, never mind the writers. Ramesh demonstrates this in the aggregate by discussing issues as net gains and net losses. But it's important to remember that individual voters are also deeply schizophrenic. I know lots of small government types who love government funded scientific research or even farm subsidies. And there are more than a few pro-life libertarians. Lots of people call themselves libertarian about sex and drugs, but would be horrified by privatizing the schools. The number of actual, honest-to-goodness, Cato-style libertarians in this country is very, very small. And, whatever the actual number of Christian Conservatives who want to make the Bible the platform of the GOP may be, I can guarantee it's much, much, much, much smaller than the number of self-described Christian Conservatives who would like a smaller government.

Dear K.Lo.,

Could I chime in here with my two cents on the post? Why does it have to be baby or college? Why do women think these are their only choices? It infuriates me that women justify their reasoning for abortion with such claims. This is not an either or situation, I can speak personally from experience. I became unexpectedly pregnant my second year of college. The father decided maybe he wasn't ready to marry me after all and shortly disappeared. I was devastated, but could not even consider abortion - this was a life, period. I played with fire and knew the possible consequences, so took the responsibility. It was not easy, it was a bit humiliating - the pain I caused my family, the looks I endured from people and the comments, and having to take a semester off to hide myself which led to gossip about me back at school. But I survived. By the grace of God and the love of my parents. My intention was to give my child up for adoption, but must confess I was too selfish to do so. My parents supported me, but made it clear this was my choice and I would have to shoulder the responsibility. I went back to college with my son in tow. It was not easy, it was incredibly hard at times, several nights of crying, but I learned so much. I learned the real meaning of friendship. I learned that majority of college students and several professors are self-centered, oblivions. I learned the true meaning of God never gives us more than we can handle. And I learned that I had choices. That the only limits to my choices were the ones I imposed on myself.

One clear memory was sitting in a Spanish conversation class after my return, we were to debate a topic in class in Spanish - the topic was abortion. One girl's comment was 'I support abortion - I don't want to be fat for 9 months'. I was dumbstruck - this is what they were thinking? So I provided a testimonial. I think the only person who 'got it' was the teacher. Now I only have pity for such people as that female student - if their life is centered around how they look when they are pregnant, then they have very little moral foundation.

Maybe I am an anomaly, but it still burns my bum to hear women justify abortion through such flimsy means and then to have them brainwash a child, who inherently understands that abortion is killing a baby, that abortion was the only way they could go to college - what a cop-out, what a horrid parent.

Thank you for the vent and please keep up the excellent work! Love you and NRO!! Sincerely,

[Name Withheld]

PS. By the way, I graduated from college two years after I returned and my son is now preparing to go off to college. :) Life can have a happy ending if you want it to.

An excerpt from a letter to the editor (no link) from Louise Antony -- a feminist philosophy professor at Ohio State -- to the Columbus Dispatch about my column on Churchill v. Summers:

Finally, there is the notorious Ward Churchill. What columnist and professional whiner Jonah Goldberg forgot to mention in his pity party for Larry Summers (Forum column, Monday) is that Churchill is in danger of losing his job because of his political incorrectness, whereas Summers has only to endure polite rebuttals of his ignorant remarks. His job is secure.

Me: Um, I wouldn't be surprised if Summers is fired/forced out before Churchill. Moreover, the differences between the two are more extensive. Churchill is a buffoon and a fraud. Summers is not.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - A Virginia man arrested in Saudi Arabia nearly two years ago has been returned to the United States to face charges of providing material support to al Qaeda, a designated foreign terrorist organization, the Department of Justice announced today.

Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, 23, formerly of Falls Church, Virginia, arrived in the United States late Monday from Saudi Arabia. An indictment returned by a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia was unsealed following Ali's arrival in the United States. The six-count indictment charges Ali with: conspiracy to provide material support and resources to al Qaeda, a designated foreign terrorist organization, in violation of 18 U.S.C. Section 2339B; providing material support and resources to al Qaeda, in violation of 18 U.S.C. Section 2339B; conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, in violation of 18 U.S.C. Section 2339A; providing material support to terrorists, in violation of 18 U.S.C. Section 2339; contribution of services to al Qaeda, in violation of 50 U.S.C. Section 1705(b) and 31 C.F.R. Section 595.204; and receipt of funds and services from al Qaeda, in violation of 50 U.S.C. Section 1705(b) and 31 C.F.R. 595.204...

...The indictment, returned by a federal grand jury on February 3, 2005 and unsealed today, alleges that in or around September 2002, Ali advised a co-conspirator whom he had met on previous travels to Medina, Saudi Arabia, of his interest in joining al Qaeda. The indictment alleges that Ali intended to become a planner of terrorist operations like Muhammad Atta and Khalid Sheik Muhammad, well-known al Qaeda terrorists associated with the September 11, 2001 attacks. The indictment further alleges that between September 2002 and June 9, 2003 - the day Ali was arrested in Saudi Arabia - that Ali and another co-conspirator discussed plans for Ali to assassinate U.S. President George W. Bush. Ali and the co-conspirator allegedly discussed two options for assassinating President Bush: an operation in which Ali would get close enough to the president to shoot him on the street; and an operation in which Ali would detonate a car bomb. Ali allegedly received a religious blessing from another co-conspirator to carry out the plan to assassinate President Bush.

Your piece on John Negroponte in Honduras is accurate and well-informed. He is a good man.

I think the way the media discusses Hillary Clinton is just astounding. Every time she makes a hawkish utterance or expresses a vaguely pro-lifish sentiment, her friends in the media immediately talk about how she's brilliantly "positioned" herself.

Here's one typical example from this weekend's Meet the Press:

MR. RUSSERT: Andrea Mitchell, you heard Hillary Clinton say that we should not have a withdrawal of troops at this time. There should not be a timetable, that that would be a green light to the terrorists, totally separating herself from Ted Kennedy and other Democrats; quite striking.

MS. ANDREA MITCHELL: Very striking. Hillary Clinton, since she joined the Armed Services Committee, which was her choice and what she wanted when she went to the Senate, has positioned herself very smartly for her own political future, both in '06 and potentially '08. And she has made herself very much a moderate Democratic voice on these defense issues.

I keep seeing this sort of commentary everywhere, every time she says something moderate. What is so amazing is that even mainstream journalists cannot bring themselves to even pay lipservice to the idea that Hillary is actually expressing her feelings or convictions on these issues. I'm not saying she isn't, but if I were her press people I'd be mighty peeved that no one says "Hillary is a moderate." They all say Hillary is "positioning herself as a moderate."

DUNEDIN, Fla. (AP) -- A Florida appeals court has cleared the way for the husband of a severely brain-damaged woman to remove the feeding tube that has been keeping her alive for 15 years.

My 9-year-old son overheard my friend telling me about her situation, and he was worried on her behalf. Days later, when I reported my friend's good news - everything looks healthy - to my son, he replied, "Good, then she doesn't have to have an abortion. I mean, if she'd had to have one, that would have been fine, but it's not a good thing."

In a previous conversation about our friend, my son had reasoned that "between one and four months, it's not a baby." But now he was saying he saw abortion as bad. I asked why he thought abortion might be a bad choice.

"Why would you say no to having a baby?" he countered.

I took one moment to consider whether I was going to get into this with him. I took one deep breath. Then, I told him that I have had two abortions. Of course, he wanted to know all about what happened.

As I started to describe my senior year of high school dilemma (baby or college?), he leapt in: "College."

I told him about being 20 and having had a birth control failure. I told him I wasn't at all sad about those choices because I had the family I wanted all along: a loving papa with three wonderful kids, something that would not have been possible had I become a mother before I was ready.

Reproductive freedom - abortion rights; freedom of sexual consent; motherhood - is essential to women's equality. Far from being tragic, abortion ensures us agency over our lives.

Every euphemism and every apology about abortion is really another apology for being female, as if over and over, that pesky fertility gets in our way.

The tapes tell us little new about the character of the president, but they speak volumes about the character of Doug Wead. He's a former Pentecostal minister, so surely he was taught that it profits a man nothing to sell his soul, even to gain the world. Alas for poor Weadie, who settled for the front page of the Times!

Re my comment that it might have reflected John's respect for "property rights," I wasn't questioning his fealty to Lockean principles. Nevertheless, I should have included more forcefully the more logical possibility that this was a misunderstanding. My apologies to John.

I appreciate a practical joke as much as the next person, but not when the one played on me at CPAC threatens to spread around the blogosphere and the joke takes on elements of an urban legend.

To set the record straight: The story is that I sat down and used the computer of a noted blogger named Robert Cox at CPAC without his permission. Jonah Goldberg says this might shed light on my respect for property rights. Not when you know what actually happened.

It was a practical joke, at my expense. This is the first CPAC ever where there was a Blogger's Corner set up in the exhibit area. For several years, however, there has been an Internet Alley sponsored by Town Hall for use by anyone who was willing to stand in line--to use the computers to check e-mail, etc. I passed by the Blogger's Corner in the exhibit hall at CPAC, did not notice the sign, and asked someone sitting at a computer (a blogger, I now believe) if the computers were available at this location too. He assured me they were and pointed me to a vacant one that had no papers around it. I sat down and for about 20 minutes checked my e-mail on a computer that it turned out was owned by blogger Robert Cox.

At no point while I was sitting there did anyone inform me of my faux pas, and I'm sure some people enjoyed my gullibility. Mr. Cox came back, saw me, and kindly asked how long I would be. Thinking he was someone waiting to use the machine, I said "Just a minute," and ended my session. We then had a very pleasant chat about his website skewering Keith Olbermann. End of story—well, until the blogosphere latched onto it. Unfortunately, no one who commented on it bothered to ask me to explain my behavior, including people who were present at the time.

Rather than belabor readers with more details, here are two comments from bloggers who were there during my supposed depredations. The first is from Kevin McCullough, an up-and-coming radio talk show host who hosts a fine blog. He is the one who first broke "FundGate" on his website, and while he has now posted my responses he still properly chastises me for not seeing the sign identifying the area as Blogger's Corner. He was not the person who misdirected me to Mr. Cox's machine, but in an e-mail to me on Sunday he noted, “I do appreciate your apology and explanation and will accept it gladly. As to the ‘practical joke’ aspect of this story...I claim the fifth. "

I think that makes it pretty clear there was indeed a practical joke at work here that shouldn't be given any more altitude. As for Mr. Cox, he wrote that, “I am a reader and a fan and had you asked I would have been more than happy to let you use my laptop while I was at lunch. When I found you at my machine I was more bemused than upset (staged photo not withstanding). It comes as no surprise to me that someone actually encouraged you to use my machine as a blogger version of a practical joke. By the time you showed up in Bloggers Corner everyone was pretty tired after several long days in a row, there was not much going on and some folks were getting a little loopy. ‘FundGate’ was a welcome diversion.”

It was not quite as welcome a diversion for me—more like a headache--but I still very much respect both bloggers and, of course, private property. I think the lesson in this is twofold: I should not be so gullible in the future, and bloggers who flay people for alleged sins might do well to get their side of the story first. After all, the next time you could be a victim of a practical joke that gets out of hand and never quite dies because it is preserved in the blogosphere forever.

This represents a considerable fraction of emailers. From a reader:

Let me say first that I'm not a blogger.I am a huge consumer of news and opinion. What still gripes me about the MSM writers, is their condescending attitude, when they describe the Bloggers as 'biased'. Keller wants us to think that the MSM has no bias or prejudice. Baloney. The fact is, that every blogger I read, has some kind of baggage, or some agenda or something that he's flogging. Great. I know this going in ,and I read accordingly. The marvelous thing that I find about the blogs, is that it all levels out. There are enough opinions that you can quickly get a good 'average'. The MSM used to be the only source for news reporting and opinion, and that was what you had to pick from. I know now what slim pickings they were. The blogs also have a sort of 'self-righting' quality, that seems to keep things on an even keel. If you read some egregious comment at 8 am, usually by noon, it's been totally sliced and diced, beaten with a clue bat and reduced to a pile of what it was to start with. The MSM is totally incapable of this sort of stuff. The MSM projects the attitude, " We are the authority, we know everything, and that's all you need to know". With only a very few exceptions, who shall remain nameless, I don't find that attitude among the blogs. I do find the attitude that " I know a guy, who knows a guy..." The MSM tries to palm themselves off as experts. More baloney. The bloggers, thousands and thousands of them and their readers millions and millions, are the real experts.

Perhaps it's fair enough to argue that Pryor has an incentive to temper his behavior while he is awaiting Senate approval. But to buy that, you'd have to disregard the rest of his legal career, which is wholly consistent with his actions as part of the 11th Circuit.

No, Pryor isn't perfect, and this newspaper hasn't agreed with him on every issue. But even people who have found themselves opposite Pryor can agree he is a conscientious public official who respects and follows the law - even when he disagrees with it.

At the very least, Pryor is entitled to a vote of the full Senate. And if they look at Pryor's record objectively, senators will gladly confirm him as a federal appeals judge.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to consider a Bush administration bid to block Oregon's first-in-the- nation law permitting doctor-assisted suicide.

Pryor chose the latter. "I have a record as attorney general that is separate from my personal beliefs," he told Hatch. "I am able to put aside personal beliefs and follow the law, even when I strongly disagree with it." On abortion, Pryor argued that, despite his personal opposition, he had ordered Alabama's district attorneys to take "the narrowest construction available" of the state's newly passed partial-birth-abortion ban. Pryor told the committee that he believed Supreme Court precedent, specifically the Casey decision, dictated a more moderate reading of the law than the aggressive stance favored by some pro-life groups in Alabama. "Look at my record," he told the committee. "I have done my duty."

Every couple of days I get an email along these lines:

I saw the movie Groundhog Day for the first time over the weekend. I used to avoid it, but was interested in seeing it after the mentions of it on NRO and your piece in NRODT.

All I got out of it was that it wasn't after Murray's character began thinking of others and doing good deeds that he got out of the repetition of Groundhog Day because he had finally "gotten it right." He was released only after he had bedded Andie McDowell. In other words, I think the movie stands for the redemptive power of fornication.

I do not want to start another GHD thread in here. But let me just say this once so I can have a link to send to readers in the future. The spell doesn't end because Murray and McDowell have sex. They don't even have sex. They merely fall asleep together, a point made explicit by McDowell when they wake up in the morning. Second, as a reader pointed out to be the other week, the first sign that the GHD spell is broken is not when Murray wakes up on a new day. It comes the night before when it snows unexpectedly while McDowell and Murray are mooning over each other after he makes an ice-sculpture of her. Not to get too sappy, but it was love, not sex, which broke the spell.

Now in the porn spinoff Groundho's Day, sex does have redemptive power...

Her progress appealing to once skeptical New Yorkers was illuminated by a New York Times poll released last week that showed that 21 percent of New Yorkers had an unfavorable opinion of how she is handling her job, down significantly from the 29 percent of voters who expressed similar sentiments in October 2002.

(In two recent back-to-back surveys, pollsters for Quinnipiac University, in Hamden, Conn., also found a notable decline in the number of New York voters who expressed a negative view of Mrs. Clinton.)

At the same time, Senator Clinton's job approval rating has increased to 69 percent from 58 percent in October 2002, according to the Times poll. That is higher even than the 63 percent approval rating of Charles E. Schumer, the senior senator from New York who was re-elected last year to a second term with a record 71 percent of the vote and who is known for his attention to upstate concerns.

He has a response to my post from yesterday.

In his latest post, he offers examples of religious extremism and intolerance at CPAC. "1) I couldn’t count on all my fingers and all my toes how many times speakers said either directly or indirectly that God had chosen George W. Bush as president. . . . 2) There was plenty of rhetoric about how God should be front and center in our civic and political cultures. 3) There was plenty of ranting about 'Will & Grace' and other immoral popular culture." I have to say that none of this strikes me as particularly extreme; it would depend on how these things were said. But since Sager was at CPAC and I wasn't, I'll defer to his sense of its overall tone.

Obviously, our disagreement goes beyond CPAC. Sager thinks that the Republican party's reputation for intolerance is an electoral liability. It alienates swing voters. "It seems to me that there was a huge chunk of the electorate that, under different circumstances (i.e. no War on Terror), would have voted for Kerry over Bush without batting an eye. These were people who were disgusted with runaway spending, disgusted with the Republican fear-mongering regarding gays and none-too-impressed with the rest of the Bush presidency. . . . Given a slightly better Democratic candidate, or given less concern about terrorism, the Republicans would have lost the presidency this time around. And there’s no reason to think that with a credible Democrat on the top of the ticket in 2008 -- and even Hillary Clinton is busy fashioning herself into a strong-on-defense moderate -- that the Democrats won’t win big."

Let me start off my response by saying that I think libertarians are right about the proper functions of the federal government 90 percent of the time. I would certainly like for there to be a lot fewer federal programs. What follows is my take on the electorate we have, not the one we might wish for.

Most sets of positions on contested political issues bring advantages and liabilities to the party that holds them. It is certainly true that social conservative positions--and the attitudes these positions are perceived to signify--alienate some voters. (I'm going to set aside illegal immigration, which Sager mentions but doesn't quite fit in with the social conservative vs. libertarian divide.) But they also bring in voters. The same can be said of opposition to big government: It too appeals to some voters and alienates others (at least when it's put in terms of opposition to specific government interventions).

I think at this point we have quite a lot of evidence, however, that the social issues are net winners of votes and the size of government issues net losers.

--Republicans' biggest setbacks over the last decade occurred in 1995-96, when they were associated, fairly or unfairly, with anti-government extremism rather than social-conservative extremism--and particularly with hostility to Medicare.

--Bush seems to have strengthened the party partly by giving ground on the size-of-government issues but not on the moral ones.

--In 2004, which issue set was Bush most defensive about and which was he most aggressive about? During the debates, he seemed much happier to talk about abortion and even stem-cell research than about outsourcing, the minimum wage, or prescription drugs. I think his relative enthusiasm for these issues reflects basic political facts on the ground, not something specific to his philosophy or record.

--Over the last two presidential races, the Democrats have acted as though the social issues were more damaging to them than the economic ones, too.

--What are the issues Hillary Clinton is "moderating" on? The war; abortion; the role of faith in public life. She's not moderating on size of government issues.

By the end of his post, Sager is tacitly conceding that many swing voters in Ohio--I would add Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Minnesota, among others--are attracted to the Republican party because of its social conservatism. When "swing voters" aren't just a media abstraction--when parties are actually competing for them--they don't turn out to be social liberals who want less spending. They are much more likely to be socially conservative union members and blue-collar hunters.

If you want some of conservatism's libertarian elements to be strengthened--and I join Sager in wanting this--getting a clear view of our actual political circumstances is a prerequisite. Sager's a smart guy, but I think that his political prescriptions reflect wishful thinking on his part.

Glenn Reynolds fairly zings me for quoting Drezner out of context. I guess I focused too much on the phrase "anti-blogger jerk" a label which Drezner goes on to partially absolve Keller of. What resonated with me was the phrase itself, as if this is a category in its own right, like "anti-Dentite bastard" from Seinfeld.

Regardless, my apologies to Dan for the larger misreading.

Also, Tim Graham made a good point to me around the virtual water-cooler. The best part is Keller's assertion that blogs don't question the prejudices of their readers enough. That may be true. But Mr. Pot might like to meet Mr. Kettle.

Yet even this valor and sacrifice is not the full story of what Iwo Jima means, or what Rosenthal's immortal photograph truly symbolizes. The lesson of Iwo Jima is in fact an ancient one, going back to Machiavelli: that sometimes free societies must be as tough and unrelenting as their enemies. Totalitarians test their opponents by generating extreme conditions of brutality and violence; in those conditions--in the streets and beheadings of Fallujah or on the beach and in the bunkers of Iwo Jima--they believe weak democratic nerves will crack. This in turn demonstrates their moral superiority: that by giving up their own decency and humanity they have become stronger than those who have not.

I'll have to admit to being annoyed more than once for your persistent pitches in The Corner for various NR books. But I gave in and bought the Bedtime Stories volume in late December, and it has been nothing short of terrific. This is the first "chapter book" that I have read to my oldest son, a five-year-old, and so I was unsure if he'd be interested.

Boy, was that concern unfounded. We read 2 to 4 chapters each night, and no matter how many I read, he pleads for more. And, even better, I'm enjoying the stories myself, so much more than the typical "age appropriate" books thrown at children these days. They're interesting, exciting, and fun, not to mention full of the kind of values I'm trying to instill in my children. In fact, just the other day I was talking with my son about how he can help diffuse arguments with his younger brother, and I used Jerry Muskrat and his cousin the Beaver as an example.

So thanks to you and the fine folks at NR for making such a wonderful book available. Keep up the good work.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Shiite Iraqi alliance officials say Ahmad Chalabi drops his bid to be next prime minister of Iraq.

Would it be trafficking in stereotypes if I called this inscrutable?

I hope I'm not stepping in it too badly here, but I think it's time to remind some people that bloggers aren't a race or a religion. For some it may be a way of life or a creed or some such. But that may be part of the problem. I think it started with the Pajama thing. Maybe I took offense for that remark for different reasons than others did. I thought it was bad because it was a way of arrogantly deflecting the problems at CBS by attacking the accusers who had the facts on their side. But it increasingly seems that bloggers, as a group, don't like criticism period. This is a gross generalization about a sentiment more than absolute declaration of fact. But I get more and more email from bloggers -- or devout blog readers -- in which the correspondents make it sounds as if criticizing the medium is entirely illegitimate and almost immoral.

Consider two posts from over the weekend. The first is about the already-noted Bill Keller anti-blog comments. Keller, the executive editor of the New York Times said:

Keller also sees “blogging,” or online writing that blurs news and commentary, as a mixed blessing. While he celebrated the blogger’s ability to uncover breaking news, he noted that a blog’s inherent bias might be detrimental to the reader. “A blog is still a view of the world through a pinhole,” he said, noting that it can sometimes fall as low as being a “one man circle jerk.”

“There is a pressure to feel well informed without ever confronting an opinion that confronts your prejudices,” he said of blog readers.

To which the excellent blogger (and political scientist) Dan Drezner responded "Wow, sounds like this Keller guy is a bit of an anti-blog jerk."

Or consider this odd story about John Fund allegedly using bloggers' laptops at C-Pac without permission. I don't completely understand or care what the details were. But it seems that Fund just sat down at someone's unused computer and started tapping away.

Here's how Kevin McCullogh -- another fine blogger and radio host -- responded:

What this is - is a total and complete disrespect for the medium of blogging. It is the actions of the self-superior "big media" journalists (be they on our side even) steam rolling over the pajamaboys and pajamagirls and not caring one ounce about the end result.

Uh...maybe. Maybe this doesn't say very much about Fund's respect for bloggers and says more about his respect for property. I don't know what was in John's mind, but is it really so inconceivable that he might have done the same thing with a print reporter's laptop too? I mean, I personally could imagine Fund -- or a lot of other people -- borrowing someone's idle computer at a big press-area, like at the political conventions. If he used a print reporters computer would we assume that he was showing complete disrespect for the printed word?

Similarly, Keller may or may not be a jerk (though he is a widely liked guy). He certainly sounds more than a bit smug in his comments. But Drezner seems to be suggesting that being anti-blog can ipso facto make you a jerk. I think TV news is inherently inferior to written news -- be it online or off -- and I've said so many times. But I don't know many TV producers or reporters who would consider me a jerk simply for those views.

Blogging is a medium not a caste. I think it's a very exciting and important one. But if bloggers want to be taken more seriously they might want to become a little bit less defensive. Maybe I just don't get it, but there's something about all of this which reminds of the Seinfeld where everybody calls Jerry an anti-Dentite because he doesn't like dentists.

Update above.

From the Rocky Mountain News:

University of Colorado officials rushed to award tenure to Ward Churchill in 1991, thinking he had been offered a full professorship in American Indian studies at a California university.

But a former official in the California system says no such offer was ever made.

"He wasn't really a serious candidate because of his lack of credentials," said George Wayne, a former vice president for student academic services at California State University, Sacramento.

"The lack of a doctorate was one factor," Wayne said Monday. "Also, he wasn't writing learned articles - they were advocacy articles that could appear anywhere."

Ramesh, Kathryn, I read Bradford Short’s fair-minded post with great interest, even if I’m not convinced by his arguments for a number of reasons, mainly revolving around the general importance of doing as little as possible to boost (or acknowledge) the authority (legal or moral) of the UN as it now stands. I was particularly intrigued, however, by what he had to say about German diplomats and the Belgians lobbying against that UN vote.

There are some who might see this as a contrast with what is being done at the European level. Both Belgium and Germany are currently pushing hard to secure ratification of the EU’s draft ‘constitution’ across Europe. If I have understood it correctly (and it’s difficult read any part of that enormous and indigestible document without nausea, exhaustion and troubling suicidal urges), Article II-63 includes an express ban on “the reproductive cloning of human beings.” EU law generally trumps national law, and so if the EU constitution really does come into force that particular type of cloning would be prohibited throughout the EU, regardless of any skullduggery at the UN.

So far as I am aware, however, the draft EU constitution has nothing to say about therapeutic cloning, and that may be the crucial distinction for those wily diplomats.

A reader send this:

Dear Mr. Goldberg,

This may interest you; this is the latest decree from the Pope, accessible on http://www.vatican.va/latest/latest_en.htm. It’s a speech on mass media and information technology in the 21st century. Anyways, though he does not specifically mention blogs, these two paragraphs certainly seem to be pointing that way:

In the first place, a vast work of formation is needed to assure that the mass media be known and used intelligently and appropriately. The new vocabulary they introduce into society modifies both learning processes and the quality of human relations, so that, without proper formation, these media run the risk of manipulating and heavily conditioning, rather than serving people. This is especially true for young people, who show a natural propensity towards technological innovations, and as such are in even greater need of education in the responsible and critical use of the media.

In the second place, I would like to recall our attention to the subject of media access, and of co-responsible participation in their administration. If the communications media are a good destined for all humanity, then ever-new means must be found – including recourse to opportune legislative measures – to make possible a true participation in their management by all. The culture of co-responsibility must be nurtured.

"Holy One, convict those who are using their power not to lead or to guide, but to harm gay and lesbian citizens, a small minority within this commonwealth," she said Friday. "We need to be reminded of what unites us, not pitted against one another. A house divided, you have warned us, cannot stand."

Stephen Colbert, Senior Media Correspondent: "I draw the line with these 'attack bloggers.' Just someone with a computer who gathers, collates and publishes accurate information that is then read by the general public. They have no credibility. All they have is facts. Spare me."

“At the moment,” he said, “the major press is under attack from ideologues on the right and left.” Keller also sees “blogging,” or online writing that blurs news and commentary, as a mixed blessing. While he celebrated the blogger’s ability to uncover breaking news, he noted that a blog’s inherent bias might be detrimental to the reader. “A blog is still a view of the world through a pinhole,” he said, noting that it can sometimes fall as low as being a “one man circle jerk.” “There is a pressure to feel well informed without ever confronting an opinion that confronts your prejudices,” he said of blog readers.

"I'd rather them not do it at all," he added. "You've got a show watched by millions of children. Do children need to have gay marriage thrust in their faces as an issue? Why can't we just entertain them?"

Rose, for a minute you would think I was there! Lying MF this, MF that…. Shoes are flying. They had to carry the guy out, and has he was going, he was still calling Perle a MF liar! Other people objected to his lies as well, but it would have beeen really neat if as soon as one person was dragged out, another would start up. Like Crickets.