The European model is not always what liberals hope it to be

There has always been a strain of American thought that glorified the Old World: Liberal supreme court justices have used foreign laws as the basis for their decisions and Democrats have on occasion praised the European model for fighting terror as a law enforcement issue. However, as Bret Stephens points out, the French model for "law enforcement" includes powers for the government that Democrats would oppose even when fighting a war:

Warrantless wiretaps? Not a problem under French law, as long as the Interior Ministry approves. Court-issued search warrants based on probable cause? Not needed to conduct a search. Hearsay evidence? Admissible in court. Habeas corpus? Suspects can be held and questioned by authorities for up to 96 hours without judicial supervision or the notification of third parties. Profiling? French officials commonly boast of having a "spy in every mosque." A wall of separation between intelligence and law enforcement agencies? France's domestic and foreign intelligence bureaus work hand-in-glove. Bail? Authorities can detain suspects in "investigative" detentions for up to a year. [France's investigative minister] Mr. Bruguiere once held 138 suspects on terrorism-related charges. The courts eventually cleared 51 of the suspects--some of whom had spent four years in preventive detention--at their 1998 trial.

FLASHBACK: As an earlier example of Democrats sympathizing with Europeans when they shouldn't, consider a New York Times editorial from February 26, 1916 accused the some Democrats of siding with Germany against Pres. Wilson during the lead up to World War I:

By their Constitution, the American people created the Congress as a branch of the Government of the United States, not as an instrument to serve the purposes of Germany.

Yet, among the abhorrent forces now at work in Congress to obstruct the President in his policies, to prevent the expression of the country's will, and to bring dishonor upon the nation, that alien influence is too conspicuous for concealment.

It is a monstrous anomaly, a hideous solecism, that the American Congress should be the field of a contest in which a foreign government can display such power, or any power at all, over our national decisions.

The skeptics of democracy

Mr. David Geffen, Hollywood mogul and, currently, an Obama supporter, is concerned that Sen. Clinton might win the primaries. Mr. Geffen concludes:

I think that America was better served when the candidates were chosen in smoke-filled rooms.

Such scepticism of popular choice has a long history in American politics. Alexander Hamilton was the first leader of this group. His biographer, Ron Chernow, quotes Mr. Hamilton (p.233):

"Give all the power to the many and they will oppress the few. Give all the power to oppress the few, they will oppress the many." The system needed an impartial arbiter to transcend class warfare and regional interests, and here Hamilton [used] the word monarch: "This check is a monarch.... There ought to be a principle in government capable of resisting the popular current."

Conservatives, as represented by Hamilton's foe, Thomas Jefferson support democracy but not because it is perfect: they also share a scepticism of "popular currents." However, Jeffersonians have a much greater scepticism of any "monarch" or other authority which claims to "transcend" class or region. The Jeffersonian idea was wittily and famously expressed by Winston Churchill in 1947:

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

In the US, Democrats would like the president to take the role of transcendent "monarch" or, maybe more precisely, the role of ideal parent. The idea of the voters being children of the president, was explicitly addressed during a debate of presidential candidates in 1992, as recounted by Dr. Edwin Feulner:

During one of the 1992 presidential debates ... a young man with a ponytail stood up to ask a question of the candidates. He said, "We are your children, we have our needs. What will you do to take care of us-to take care of our needs?" All three candidates predictably fell all over themselves explaining what they would do for this young man.

Dr. Feulner continues by quoting a typical Jeffersonian reaction to this concept:

My friend and Heritage Foundation colleague Bill Bennett commented about this episode: "Wouldn't it have been refreshing," he said, "wouldn't it have been great if any one of them had said, 'Just a minute. Get a life. I'm not your father. This is America. This is a do-it-yourself society. I'm only running for the head of the government... satisfy your own needs. See a minister, see a priest, see your wife. Take care of yourself, man; get a hold of yourself."'

I believe that BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome) can be explained by the fact that Pres. Bush, by going to war in Iraq, violates the Democratic concept of ideal parent. His presence in White House is as much an abomination to Democrats as, say, Andre Serrano's "Piss Christ" is to Christians.

In foreign policy, Democrats place the United Nations in the role of Ideal Parent, expecting it to be above class or region and provide the sound judgment that the world needs. Republicans, by contrast, see nothing ideal or parental about the UN: they see it, rather, as a group of thugs, thieves, and tyrants that may occasionally be useful but should never be respected.

MORE DETAIL: The "young man with a ponytail," mentioned by Dr. Feulner, spoke at the October 15th of 1992 presidential debate between Perot, Clinton and Bush 41 in Richmond, Virginia. His question was:

The focus of my work is domestic mediation, is meeting the needs of the children that I work with by way of their parents and not the wants of their parents, and I ask the three of you, how can we as symbolically the children of the future president expect the two of you, the three of you to meet our needs?

Group guilt

Consider a recent murder in New Orleans:

A recent murder encapsulated the difficulties. After a 17-year-old was beaten up, his mother gave him a gun and told him to get revenge, and he killed the boy he fought with.

When police went to his home to investigate, they found the mother with cocaine and a family photo on display of the son with a gun in one hand and a fistful of cash in the other.

"For us to correct this, we have to look at the root of the problem. The root of the problem is our education system," Police Superintendent Warren Riley said in an interview.

In this case, talking about "root" cause certainly seems like an excuse to avoid assigning individual guilt.

Via BoTW.

Group vs. Individual

The FAA bans handguns from private space flights, in orbit or otherwise.  The FAA, however, has changed the reason why.  Their previous explanation claimed that the 2nd amendment right to bear arms was a "collective right" not an individual right.  The new explanation says that the FAA has the right to ban guns from spaceflights, as it does from planes, as a reasonable exception to the 2nd amendment.

The trend here is that the left thinks of group rights while the right wants to protect the rights of individuals.  For example, affirmative action, strongly supported by the left, is intended to provide group justice regardless of the injustice that it does to many individuals.  The claim that the Bill of Rights was intended to protect governments ("collective rights") against individuals is perverse: History shows that the Bill of Rights was passed out of concern that the newly created federal government might have too much power, not too little.

Foreign Policy and Selective Ethics

Paul Campos condemns Glenn Reynolds for suggesting covert action, including assassination, against Iran's nuclear program.  Glenn Reynolds responds by pointing to Democrats who have advocated similar policies during the Clinton years and concludes:

It's not only important to have the right opinions -- it's important to have them at the right time.

The difference is that Democrats assume when, say, Bill Clinton attempted to assassinate bin Laden, that Bill Clinton had a good reason. They extend no such assumption to Republicans. In either, they will phrase their argument as if it involved basic inviolable principles of ethics or morality or law.



The liberal view of free speech is similarly situational.

UPDATE: John Hinderaker looks at the legal issues that Prof. Campos raises in his attack on Prof. Reynolds.

RELATED: Those who advocate "peace" yet become violent seemingly display a similar hypocrisy.

The FAA and those 10-hour plane waits

The well-publicized 8 or 10 hour long waits in an airplane are explained by the WSJ:

The FAA's air-traffic-control system can penalize flights that go back to a gate, even for a temporary bathroom break. Air-traffic controllers generally take flights first-come, first-serve, unless the airline can badger officials into giving a flight higher priority, or trade places in line with another of its own flights.

Indeed, last month a JetBlue flight ended up on the ground for eight hours at JFK because it returned to the gate and then was required to file a new flight plan, the FAA says.

The bigger the bureaucracy, the stranger the rules.

Sen. Obama on economic policy

Is the world perfectible? Democrats seem to believe so. For example, Sen. Obama declared:

Let's be the generation that ends poverty in America.

The past 40 years of the US "war on poverty" not only didn't end poverty but seems, in many ways, to have made it worse. Marxism also did not work. Poverty stubbornly remained in the USSR and China. Homelessness remained in the USSR even when all housing was owned by the government. None of that seems to affect the liberal belief that the next government program will be the solution. What is Sen. Obama's suggestion?

Every single person willing to work should be able to get job training that leads to a job, and earn a living wage that can pay the bills, and afford child care so their kids have a safe place to go when they work. Let's do this.

Of course, job training is important. It is important for the young to learn key job skills such as (a) show up on time, (b) when interacting with customers, be nice to them, and, most importantly, (c) just because the boss asks you to do something, it does not mean that he is 'dissing' you. Most Americans learned these skills, without government subsidy, in their first entry-level jobs. Curiously, Democrats have just taken pride in their attempt to eliminate entry-level jobs (i.e. the minimum wage increase). In a perfectible world, of course, such trade-offs do not happen and do not need to be considered.

Sudden Jihad Syndrome, circa 1997

The New York Daily News exposes a 10-year cover-up. The 1997 shooting spree by Kamal, a Palestinian, on the observation deck of the Empire State Building was jihad. At the request of the Palestinian Authority, the media had played the story as if it was caused by the shooter's depression over a business failure.

But three days after the shootings, Kamal's family got a copy of a letter that was found on his body, they said. The letter said he planned the violence as a political statement, his daughter said.

"When we wanted to clarify that to the media, nobody listened to us," she said. "His goal was patriotic. He wanted to take revenge from the Americans, the British, the French and the Israelis." ....

"He wrote that after he raised his children and made sure that his family was all right he decided to avenge in the highest building in America to make sure they get his message," said [Kamal's daughter] Linda, who works for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. [emphasis added]

via LGF.

Some economic ideas die hard

Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result indicates, they say, insanity. Oil-rich Venezuela has implemented price controls. The results appear to be the same as previous attempts:

Shortages of basic foods have been sporadic since the government strengthened price controls in 2003 after a debilitating strike by oil workers. But in recent weeks, the scarcity of items like meat and chicken have led to a panicked reaction by federal authorities as they try to understand how such shortages could develop in a seemingly flourishing economy....



With shoppers limited to just two large packages of sugar, a black market in sugar has developed among street vendors in parts of Caracas.

It is not within the power of governments to repeal the law of supply and demand. Yet, they try over and over again.

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Singing "we are the world"

The leftists in Venezuela think it "illogical" that Al Qaeda would want to attack them:

ARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) -- Venezuela's defense minister said Thursday that the nation would reinforce security measures after a branch of al Qaeda called for attacks on suppliers of oil to the United States.....



Luis Cabrera, a military adviser to the president, earlier had questioned the authenticity of the threat in comments published by local media.



He said it was illogical that "al Qaeda, which is against North American imperialism, would go against a state that is fighting, though in a different way, against that hegemony."

As James Taranto notes, this confusion is longstanding. After Pres. Bush referred to islamist terrorists as "extremists" in his speech at the UN, Venezuela 's President Chavez replied as if So. American socialists and Islamists were all allies:

Yes, you can call us extremists, but we are rising up against the empire, against the model of domination.

Al Qaeda, of course, will consider Venezuela an enemy until Venezuelans convert to Islam and impose Shari'a law, Chavez does have the advantage that South America is not currently on Al Qaeda's priority list but that is all. He, however, imagines that he and bin Laden are allies. agit-prop filmmaker Michael Moore also shares a similar delusion as shown in his comment on the 9/11 attack:

Many families have been devastated tonight. This just is not right. They did not deserve to die. If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him! Boston, New York, DC, and the planes' destination of California--these were places that voted AGAINST Bush!

George McGovern also has a similar reaction, as explained by James Taranto:

[R]emember George McGovern's analysis of a few years ago:

President Bush has said repeatedly that the terrorists hate us because of our freedom. I don't believe that. The world's people have always admired our freedom. What they don't like is the arrogance and indifference to world opinion inherent in so much of our international policy. Plenty of my fellow citizens don't like that either. I'm not alone....

Note how McGovern equates "terrorists" with "the world's people," then moves on quickly to "plenty of my fellow citizens" and finally to himself. It seems he is simply unable to imagine someone seeing the world through anything but a McGovernite prism.

This is similar to Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wa) who believed that bin Laden was a strong advocate of daycare centers.



It is a conceit of the left/liberals that the whole world (or almost the whole world) believes the same things they do.

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Character assassination by forged blog comment

Comments on blogs are often deleted because of offensive content or language. Some blogs delete comments from those who simply disagree however politely and reasonably. Well, blog ownership does have its privileges. However, it is something else entirely for a blog owner or administrator to use his access to forge a comment and attribute it to someone else. That appears to have happened in a very offensive way in this case.



If you visit the "Liberal Avenger" blog, it seems that it would be wise not to post comments there.

UPDATE: Another eerily similar example is here.

Hat tip: Instapundit.

The selective right of free speech

Using mostly student fees, College of William Mary held a "Sex Workers Art Show." College president Gene Nichol issued a statement:

"I don't like this kind of show and I don't like having it here," he said. "But it's not the practice and province of universities to censor or cancel performances because they are controversial."

This is the same Pres. Nichol who had no problem censoring the display of a cross in a university chapel.



Previously on this topic:

The Right of Free Speech, Selectively Applied

Tolerating free speech, IV

Tolerating free speech, III

More on tolerating free speech

Those who cannot tolerate free speech

Rep. Murtha's Foreign Policy

Movecongress.org shows their true intentions:

Chairman Murtha will describe his strategy for not only limiting the deployment of troops to Iraq but undermining other aspects of the president's foreign and national security policy[emphasis added]

Naturally, after this was exposed, movecongress.org deleted the part about "undermining."

Previously in this series:
More on how Democrats treat allies
Attacking your allies
Who is being "confrontational"?
Despising your allies

More on how Democrats treat allies

How do you treat a friend? Sen. Dodd explained his approach on March 12, 1975:

"The greatest gift our country can give the Cambodian people is not guns but peace. And the best way to accomplish that goal is by ending military aid now." -- Rep. Chris Dodd (D., Conn.)

Congressional Record

March 12, 1975

As James Taranto points out, the results of Sen. Dodd's "greatest gift" was not good. In the words of Dith Pran:

On April 17th, 1975 the Khmer Rouge, a communist guerrilla group led by Pol Pot, took power in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. They forced all city dwellers into the countryside and to labor camps. During their rule, it is estimated that 2 million Cambodians died by starvation, torture or execution. 2 million Cambodians represented approximately 30% of the Cambodian population during that time.

Dith Pran, by the way, is the Cambodian refugee whose war time story was portrayed in the movie, The Killing Fields.

Sen. Dodd is currently recommending a similar "gift" to Iraq.

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Attacking your allies

Among the Democratic talking points is that Pres. Bush did not have a large enough coalition and that Democrats, with their superior skills, would have encouraged more mor countries to join us. At the same, Democrats have have insulted our allies. The latest is from Sen Obama who has been picking a fight with Australia:

I would also note that we have close to 140,000 troops on the ground now, and my understanding is Mr Howard [Australia's PM] has deployed 1,400, so if he is (ready) to fight the good fight in Iraq, I would suggest that he calls up another 20,000 Australians and sends them to Iraq. Otherwise it's just a bunch of empty rhetoric.

Among other things, this tirade indicates that Mr. Obama is not aware that Australia has a small population to begin with.



The Democrat's hostility to US allies was noted earlier in a post entitled "despising your allies."

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And, the Grammy for best politics is:

Jimmy Carter! Ex. Pres. Carter won a grammy award in the spoken-word category for the audio-book version of his bestseller “Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis.” Separately, the Dixie Chicks won 5 Grammys this year.



Who won last year's spoken-word Grammy? Sen. Barack Obama for the audio-book version of his book “Dreams From My Father.”

RELATED: The George Polk Awards for 2006, which honor journalism in the tradition of George W. Polk, also seem to be political. It is even questionable that Geo. Polk was who he claimed to be.

What is looks like when a foreign policy succeeds

The city of Katowice, Poland, is considering erecting a statue to former Pres. Reagan in a square that may be renamed "Ronald Reagan Freedom Square." City hall spokesman Waldemar Bojarun said that he had "enormous respect" for Reagan. The AFP writes

Reagan, who dubbed the Soviet Union an "evil empire," is widely credited by Poles with having driven communism to the wall.

Separately, there are plans to erect a statue in memory of Reagan in the center of the Polish capital, Warsaw.



Democrats widely believe that the end of the Cold War was caused by Gorbachev who planned on having his Soviet Union undergo a simultaneous military, economic, and political collapse leading to the USSR's disintegration into numerous separate countries. Apparently, the Poles don't buy into that interpretation of history.

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Science vs. Politicians

A group of Danish scientists suggests that global warming is caused by the Sun.  Their findings, published this week in the prestigious Proceedings of the Royal Society A, are likely to cause consternation among politicians who would prefer that scientists not interfere with their belief systems.

The theory in brief is that: (a) increased solar magnetic activity helps shield the Earth from cosmic rays; (b) With fewer cosmic rays reaching the Earth's atmosphere, fewer molecules are ionized; (c) With fewer ions, then fewer water clusters nucleate; (d) With fewer water clusters, then fewer clouds form; (e) With less cloud cover, more of the Sun's light reaches Earth causing more warming.  The lead scientist on this project, Henrik Svensmark, says the current warm temperatures could be because we currently "have the highest solar activity we have had in at least 1,000 years."

Both Jupiter and Mars show indications that they are experiencing global warming, an issue that cannot be explained by excessive use of SUVs but could be explained by the Sun.

UPDATE Feb 13 '07: A House Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality hearing on "warming of the planet" scheduled for tomorrow was postponed due snow/ice/freezing rain storm.

Democratic party press releases found not to be the same thing as unbiased reports.

As we all know, MSM editors require that news stories be subjected to many layers of careful fact checkers before they are released. On the other hand, maybe they just accept Democratic party press releases at face value and publish them as the Washington Post and AP were caught doing this week in a story about Iraq pre-war intelligence. See here and here. To its credit, the Washington Post issued a clear correction. The AP, as is typical, silently rewrote some paragraphs in the story.

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When facts become inconvenient, discard them

It is currently an article of faith in the "unbiased" media, such as the Washington Post, that Saddam and Al Qaeda had nothing to do with each other. It wasn't always so. In 2000 and before, the connection was considered obvious, as made clear in this ABC News video from 2000:

The "facts," of course, haven't really changed. What has changed is that any connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda or other terrorists is now seen as helpful the Bush administration. Therefore, the formerly accepted facts must now be false.

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Who is being "confrontational"?

Iran appears to be providing weapons, training, and maybe personnel, to attack us in Iraq. They provide money and supplies to Hezbollah in its fight with Israel (who they see as our proxy). Iran is working on nuclear technology with the seeming goal of 'wiping Israel off the map.' In the Washington Post, Paul R. Pillar expresses his concern, not with Iran, of course, but rather with Pres. Bush:

[T]he Bush administration ... is taking confrontational step.

Iran declared war on the US in 1979 with the hostage taking and continued chants of "Death to America." They continued since then with their support of terrorism, including the Khobar Towers bombing, and continues now in Iraq. So, after a quarter century of Iran's warfare against the US, what concerns Mr. Pillar is that Pres. Bush might be too "confrontational"?

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The rules apply only to other people

Speaker Pelosi has just called for "prompt action" on legislation about global warming. Of course, this is not interfering with her demand for an unpredendently large DoD airplane to fly her where she wants to go. It also won't interfere with the government chauferred SUV (15 mpg) that "carbon-criminal" Pelosi rides in for free.



Did I mention that her vehicle is exempt even federal gasoline taxes? Democrats frequently call for tax increases (Pelosi voted for five increases gas tax in the past six years), yet don't think that they should have to pay those taxes. This is reminiscent of Pres. Clinton's nominees for US Attorney General, the nation's highest law enforcement officer, who themselves hadn't bothered to pay the income taxes that they owed.

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The UN's about-face?

While political activists are noisily trying to silence scientists (see below), the new UN report has quietly done some interesting backtracking, says the WSJ:

Take rising sea levels. In its 2001 report, the U.N.'s best high-end estimate of the rise in sea levels by 2100 was three feet. Lord Monckton notes that the upcoming report's high-end best estimate is 17 inches, or half the previous prediction. Similarly, the new report shows that the 2001 assessment had overestimated the human influence on climate change since the Industrial Revolution by at least one-third.

.... We're told that the upcoming report is also missing any reference to the infamous "hockey stick," a study by Michael Mann that purported to show 900 years of minor fluctuations in temperature, followed by a dramatic spike over the past century. The IPCC featured the graph in 2001, but it has since been widely rebutted.

At present, the UN report is only in draft form, so any of the above can change before publication.

The silencing of dissent

The governor of Oregon wants to fire the state's climatologist, George Taylor, because Taylor asserts that “[m]ost of the climate changes we have seen up until now have been a result of natural variations” as opposed to the governor's preferred theory. Mr. Taylor is a faculty member at Oregon State University's College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences where he manages the Oregon Climate Service, the state repository of weather and climate information, and supervises a staff of ten.



Separately, Delaware's State Climatologist, David R. Legates, is under fire because he believes that some claims about warming and climate shifts are "overblown." What particularly galls left-wing groups, such as Greenpeace and the Union of Concerned Scientists, is that some of Legates research is funded by private industry. Dr. David R. Legates is an associate professor of geography and director of the Center for Climatic Research at the University of Delaware. He is also the Associate State Climatologist and Associate Director of the NASA-sponsored Delaware Space Grant Consortium. He has a B.S. degree in Mathematics and Geography, a M.S. degree in Geography-Climatology and a Ph.D. degree in Climatology all from the University of Delaware.

The Imperial Speakership

Speaker Pelosi has complained that the aircraft provided to her by the military, and as previously used by Speaker Hastert, is not big enough for her needs.



Another issue is whether the Pentagon should supply planes for purely partisan purposes. Rep. Pelosi wanted one to take her to a Democratic weekend retreat in Williamsburg but the Pentagon declined.

Strength through pacifism?

Heather Robinson listened to Sen. Clinton speak to the AIPAC (America Israel Public Affairs Committee):

[Sen. Clinton] continued, “I also want to send a message to the rest of the world if [force] becomes necessary that we have exhausted all measures…because we will need friends to stand by us as we stand with Israel as we approach this long war.”

Okay, maybe there’s something to this last part. Then again, look how well the world remembers, respects, and stands by America for our efforts to exhaust all other measures (to the tune of 19 UN resolutions and an embargo for which we were excoriated) to contain Saddam Hussein, prior to the time force became necessary.

So Sen. Clinton's idea is that one makes friends and allies by showing weakness. Ms. Robinson is of course right that this doesn't work in the real world. It is however something that liberals, ex-Pres. Jimmy Carter comes to mind, believe in very strongly.

Even more curious, liberals don't seem to practice this one themselves. How many of dictators that Jimmy Carter thinks he is best-friends with would be the last one to use force, waiting until they have "exhausted all other measures"? In domestic policy, liberals are often championing murderer-rights and trying to reduce punishments. Murderers, such as crips gang co-founder and liberal cause celeb Stanley Tookie Williams, certainly didn't earn the friendship of liberals by being the last to use force.

Quick links to recent press fakery and press bias stories

The New York Times wrote a completely false story about abortion rights in El Salvador. The story claimed that Carmen Climaco had been convicted of having an abortion and sentenced to 30 years. This story was written in collaboration with an abortion advocacy group, IPAS, that used the article for fund-raising. However, the truth was that Ms. Climaco was convicted not of abortion but of infanticide on a born live baby. Several NYT editors continued the cover-up for weeks as later revealed by NYT Public Editor Calame. More here.

A fake NYT story on Saddam's last words is exposed here.

The group think of our "independent journalists" is documented here.

The Washington Post falsely claimed that Iraq Study Group member Clifford D. May was "won over" to the negotiate with Iran and Syria policy suggestion. When the error was pointed out, the newspaper refused to correct it and wouldn't publish Mr May's letter of correction.

The AP misrepresents the flying imam controversy.

The New York Daily News misrepresents a new law on postal mail inspection.

The AP misrepresented the history of the Kyoto treaty to blame Bush.

Another Lebanon fauxtography scandal is exposed.

Pamela Hess of the UPI points out one of the media's key bias problems when covering foreign policy.

KC Johnson reviews the Paula Zahn show (CNN) to demonstrate how uninformed some of the MSM talking head "experts" really are. Sometimes, it is hard to draw the line between bias and simple ignorance.

Across the pond, Gene Miller has noticed that the London Guardian just republished the NY Times story on Carmen Climaco in its original and uncorrected form. They did this even after the NY Times acknowledged the errors.

It appears that the AP and the NY Times were again caught presenting Palestinian propaganda as fact. More here and here.

The Washington Post appears to have been caught misrepresenting the basic facts of the Plame affair.

The German newspaper FAZ got its facts quite wrong on the Jamil Hussein story.

UPDATE 2/24/07: Confederate Yankee has done some research on AP's favorite source, Capt. Jamil Hussein:

Jamil Hussein doesn't exist. He never did, as [Iraqi Ministry spokesman] Brigadier General Abdul-Karim Khalaf confirmed.

AP's source is another name entirely, and what's more, AP knows I have the right name, which is why they're clamming up now, instead of issuing heated denials as they have in the past.

Despising your allies

James Taranto spots a parallel between Democrats today and 1974. Sen. Clinton wants to make progress by "threatening" to de-fund the democratically-elected government of Iraq:

"I want to make it very clear that we need to threaten the Iraqi government, that we're going to take money away from their troops, not our troops who still lack body armor and armored vehicles; that we're going to send a clear message -- that we are finished with their empty promises and with this president's blank check."--Hillary Clinton, speech to the Democratic National Committee, Feb. 2007

This is eerily similar to the Democrats approach to "helping" Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1970's:

"Last year, some believed that cutting back our military assistance to the South Vietnamese Government would induce negotiations for a political settlement. Instead, the opposite has happened. North Vietnam is refusing negotiations and is increasing its military pressure."--Gerald Ford, "Special Message to the Congress Requesting Supplemental Assistance for the Republic of Vietnam and Cambodia," Jan. 28, 1975

The policy of defunding our allies did not work well: Between the killing fields in Cambodia and the ethnic cleansing (see "boat people") in communist Vietnam, there was a staggering death toll. Applying the same policy to Iraq, where Al Qaeda and Iran are fighting democracy, could be even more devastating.There are other parallels. Jimmy Carter helped remove our ally, the Shah of Iran, from power so that his dictatorship could be replaced with the Islamists who today want nuclear weapons.

UPDATE: The Sanity Squad offers another explanation for Democrats who hope that the enemy wins. at least with respect to Iraq:

“What I can’t understand is why the Democrats are so desperate to surrender in Iraq.”



“To them its not about surrender. It’s about penance. Surrender in Iraq allows them to be victims.”

ADDENDUM: A topic related to despising one's allies is adopting the enemy's ideas as your own. For example, Sen. Kerry's propaganda has an amazing similarity to Al Zawahiri's. The similarity was spotted by Rush Limbaugh ($$).

The politics of inconsistency

"They're going to need a surge of forces," said Sen. Biden.



The Washington Times has identified a dozen Democrat senators, including Senators Kerry and Reid, who have flip-flopped on the issue of a troop surge in Iraq. When these senators supported a surge, it seemed to be pure politics: it allowed them to seem strong while criticizing Pres. Bush. They seem to be displaying no principles or insights other than loyalty to party. James Taranto has tracked some of this as they shift from supporting to opposing surges, sometimes in the same speech. (Curiously, MediaMatters seems to think that this absolves the flip-floppers in some way.)



This contrasts with, say, the speech by Sen. Clinton, noted below, where she seems to follow the "principled" liberal approach to foreign policy.

UPDATE: Kevin Drum provides an example of carefully crafted inconsistent impression left by Sen. Edwards on his approach to the Iran issue. UPDATE II: James Taranto has a still more critical look at Sen. Edwards' inconsistencies.

Sen Clinton's Foreign Policy, Explained

Let's consider an analogy. Suppose it is a hot day. there are a bunch of kids in the back seat of a car being driven someplace by the parents. If the kids into a fuss, the solution is for them all to "cut it out" and "settle down." Democrats tend to look at foreign policy the same way. If two nations are squabbling, the solution is for them to "settle down." There is no point taking sides or assigning blame. They should just settle down.

Senators Kerry and Clinton see the relations between nations the same way. At the present time, the US, through Pres. Bush, is raising a ruckus and refusing to settle down like any well-behaved child. Senator Kerry is extremely embarrassed to be a representative of a nation that refuses to settle down. That is why he feels the need to apologize.

Similarly, consider Sen. Clinton's statement on Iraq policy:

We expect him to extricate our country from this before he leaves office. ....

I am going to level with you, the president has said this is going to be left to his successor. I think it is the height of irresponsibility and I really resent it.

So, you see, Bush is just causing trouble and he should stop ("settle down") before he leaves office. Some may think that foreign policy should consider issues such as the survival of democracy in Iraq or how to fight a proxy war in Iraq against Al Qaeda and Iranian insurgents. For Sen. Clinton, these are non-issues. (After all, if two kids in the car are fighting, neither is right even if both of them claim to be right.) In her view, Pres. Bush may think that it is his turn to make noise but, she thinks, he should stop when his turn is over.

Everything goes well in the back of the car when the kids simply obey the parent. So, in the Democratic mind, who is the parent? In foreign policy, the UN plays the role of "parent." Any kid (country) who wants to do something should, of course, first ask permission from the parent (the UN).

Meet The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss

Ban Ki-moon, the new United Nations Secretary-General, appears to be working on his first cover-up of a UN scandal.

Do-gooders and their pets

Two PETA activists are on trial for killing animals. Daily updates are here.

States find that high taxes not working

The WSJ notes that some state governments are discovering that high income tax rates are not helping:

State lawmakers also seem to have learned from two of the most recent states to adopt an income tax: New Jersey and Connecticut. As recently as 1965 New Jersey had neither an income nor sales tax, but managed to balance its budget every year. Now it has both taxes -- its income tax is the 5th highest in the nation -- but the state is facing what Stateline.org calls a "staggering budget deficit." Allied Van Lines reports that the Garden State is now one of the leading places for people to flee.

The latest state to adopt an income tax was Connecticut in 1991, but a new report by the Yankee Institute reveals that the tax has been a calamity. The state has ranked last in employment growth since 1991, losing 240,000 of its native born citizens between 1991-2002. No other state has since enacted an income tax, and lawmakers in Georgia, Missouri and South Carolina say Connecticut is now the model for how not to run a state economy.

Georgia, Missouri, and South Carolina are now considering repealing their income taxes.

Political Correctness run amok

[I]t is no longer politically correct in the House Dem caucus to refer to the newly elected members from '06 as "Freshmen."

It is claimed that some may see the word "freshmen" as "derogatory."

The Right of Free Speech, Selectively Applied

James Taranto captures the left-liberal idea of free speech in this post today:

Sgt. Jason Hess, who is stationed in Iraq with the U.S. Army's First Cavalry Division, wanted to buy some floor mats for his men to sleep on. He wrote to a West Allis, Wis., company called Discount-Mats.com:

Do you ship to APO [Army Post Office] addresses? I'm in the 1st Cavalry Division stationed in Iraq and we are trying to order some mats but we are looking for who ships to APO first.

As Snopes.com notes, because of paperwork and other regulations, some companies do not ship to APO addresses. Discount-Mats turned out to be such a company, but the response to Sgt. Hess, from an anonymous employee, included a bit of editorializing:

We do not ship to APO addresses, and even if we did, we would NEVER ship to Iraq. If you were sensible, you and your troops would pull out of Iraq.

The story spread, and Discount-Mats heard from "furious people," who "e-mailed and called the Web site owner's house and left obscene messages," Milwaukee's WTMJ-TV reports. The company fired the employee responsible.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that "anti-war and free speech advocates were equally offended, by the widespread criticism of the company and the individual who responded to the soldier":

"This is a matter of free speech," said Julie Enslow, an organizer with Peace Action Wisconsin in Milwaukee. "It is totally irresponsible for radio stations and bloggers to attack a person for his personal political views."

You've got to love Julie Enslow's concept of free speech. If you agree with her, it's fine to shoot off your mouth on company time. If you disagree with her, it's "totally irresponsible" to express your views in a public forum.

The last 13,000 years of history explained

At the end of the last ice age, 11,000 BC, humans all over the globe were at the same stage of development: stone age hunter/gatherers. By 1500 AD, huge disparities in development occurred: some civilizations were iron age, some bronze age, and some humans elsewhere remained stone age hunter/gatherers. Dr. Jared Diamond, a professor of geography and of environmental health sciences at UCLA, thinks he can explain why humans developed at different rates in different places on the Earth. Principally, he believes that the development of human civilization required domesticatable plants and animals. For reasons of geography, he says, this favored the Eurasian land mass. His speech is a good read if you are interested in the big picture of history.

Sexists in the Senate

Diane Sawyer interviewed the US senate's 16 female members. Several of them expressed the idea that women think differently from men. Senator Cantwell thinks that "women are agents of change" and emphasize "collaboration" and "cooperation." Senators Clinton and Landrieu agreed on the female emphasis on "collaboration."

(hat tip BoTW.)

Must see video

LGF has must-see video from the UK Channel 4 documentary "Dispatches: Undercover Mosque."

Try to imagine Gen Clark getting together with the people in these videos and "sitting down for a couple of days and talking about our families and our hopes, and building relationships."

Tang dynasty and Mayan civilization doomed by climate change?

A German study suggests that climate change, c600-900 AD, may have led to the downfall of both the Chinese Tang dynasty and the central-American Mayan civilization. More specifically, there might have been "a general shift towards a drier climate at around 750 and then, during these generally drier period, three-year cycles in which rainfall was very low," leading to poor harvests and peasant revolts.

Too bad they can't blame this on SUVs.

More on anti-semitism and foreign policy

Gen. Wes Clark, former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, is mad about America's Iran policy and, according to Arianna Huffington's account of a conversation they had, he blames the "New York money people":

At the packed-to-the-rafters brunch preceding Nancy Pelosi's formal swearing in, Melinda and I ran into Wes Clark.... "How can you talk about bombing a country [Iran] when you won't even talk to them?" said Clark. "It's outrageous. We're the United States of America; we don't do that. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the military option is off the table -- but diplomacy is not what Jim Baker says it is. It's not, What will it take for you boys to support us on Iraq? It's sitting down for a couple of days and talking about our families and our hopes, and building relationships."

When we asked him what made him so sure the Bush administration was headed in this direction, he replied: "You just have to read what's in the Israeli press. The Jewish community is divided but there is so much pressure being channeled from the New York money people to the office seekers."

At one point Melinda reminded him that she was taking down everything he said (a fact that would have been hard to miss, since she was taking notes on a not-inconspicuous legal pad). His response: 'Yes, I know."

Two things are notable about this. One is that it is now acceptable for prominent Democrats to use Jewish stereotypes. The other is that Gen. Clark seems to belong to the "it-must-be-only-a-misunderstanding" school of foreign policy. Iran Pres. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad thinks that nuking Israel will help to hasten the return of the twelfth imam and Clark wants to counter this by "sitting down for a couple of days and talking about our families and our hopes, and building relationships"!

More here and here.

Jimmy Carter endorses terrorism against Jews

The Editors at the New York comment on an astonishing sentence in Jimmy Carter's new book:

January 15, 2007 -- Has a former president of the United States - a Nobel Peace Prize winner, no less - given his blessing to wanton murder and terrorist assaults against Israel?

Sure looks that way.

How else to read that astonishing statement on page 213 of Jimmy Carter's new anti-Israel screed, "Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid"?

To wit: "It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Roadmap for Peace are accepted by Israel." (Emphasis added.)

You don't have to read between the lines here.

Carter isn't calling on the Palestinians to give up terror and murder now as a way to convince Israel they are serious about peace. Rather, he says they can wait until they've achieved their goals at the bargaining table. No need, says Carter, to give up terrorism until then.

Certainly, that's how 14 members of the Carter Center's advisory board read that paragraph. Indeed, it's why they angrily submitted their resignations last week.

That's also how Melvin Konner read it. He's a respected anthropology professor at Emory University and had been asked to be part of an academic group meant to advise the former president and the Carter Center on how to respond to criticism of the book.

...

And he's understandably offended by Carter's "repeated public insinuations that the Jews control the media and the Congress - well-worn anti-Semitic slurs that, especially coming from President Carter, present a clear and present danger to American Jews."

UPDATE: The above shouldn't cause one to lose sight of Mr. Carter's humanitarian instincts. For example, Neil Sher explains that Jimmy Carter expressed humanitarian concern for Martin Bartesch, a Nazi death camp guard who was deported from the US. UPDATE II: On the other hand, Scott Johnson says the story may be true but that Neil Sher should not be regarded as a reliable source.

UPDATE III: Jimmy Carter apologizes about the book passage.

UPDATE IV: Jimmy Carter continues to "clarify" his anti-semitism.

The Sandy Berger Mystery

The Wall Street Journal sheds some light on Sandy Berger and his theft and destruction of classified documents related to the handling of bin Laden under the Clinton administration:

One incident is particularly suggestive. By his fourth and final visit to review documents and prepare for testimony before the 9/11 Commission, the Archives staff had grown suspicious of how Mr. Berger was handling the documents, so they numbered each one he was given in pencil on the back of the document. When one of them--No. 217--was apparently removed from the files by Mr. Berger, the staff reprinted a copy and replaced it for his review. According to the report, Mr. Berger then proceeded to slip the second copy "under his portfolio also." In other words, he stole the same document twice.

This gives the lie to Mr. Berger's story that he was taking the documents for his own convenience, to assist with his preparation for testimony to the commission. If that were the whole story, one copy of document 217 would surely have been sufficient. That document was an email pertaining to a draft of the Millennium After-Action Report on the attempted bombing of Los Angeles International Airport. The episode suggests that Mr. Berger had some other motive for removing No. 217, even if he was ultimately unsuccessful in doing so. But neither his April 2005 plea agreement, nor the Congressional report, nor the report of the Archives' Inspector General shed any light on what that motive might have been.

So, unlike initial claims, his thefts were systematic. The question remains: what was he trying to cover up?

UPDATE: Apparently to avoid answering further questions on the subject, Sandy Berger relinquishes his law license.

Criminal Logic

James Taranto regularly chronicles a recurring bit of liberal-logic on the issue of crime. In his latest, he quotes a Chicago Tribune editorial commenting on falling crime rates in Illinois:

What's harder to explain is why, though crime has fallen so sharply, prison admissions have continued to rise.

To non-liberals, the answer is obvious: When a criminal is in prison, he cannot commit crimes against innocent citizens. Consequently, a rise in prison admissions means that corresponding fewer criminals are on the street committing crimes.

Liberals, such as the Chicago Tribune editors, see the criminal justice as focused on punishment. Because they usually have sympathy for criminals, they usually see too much punishment going on. To non-liberals, punishment is only a secondary goal. The primary goal is the protection of innocent citizens. The Chicago Tribune captures the failure of the system in the following comment:

Recidivism rates are disturbingly high. Half of the people who leave prison wind up back behind bars within three years.

That appears to mean that they shouldn't have been let out in the first place. The cost to society of of the crimes that they committed while out is incalculable. There is even significant to the justice system in investigating the crimes they commit, re-arresting them and re-trying them. It would be better for innocent citizens and less expensive to the government to just have kept them locked up for those three years instead. Illinois spends only $22,000 per year to keep a criminal in prison while the cost to society of convicting him, which would include police, lawyers, the judge and court staff, and the time that jurors donate, is quite high.

Further, recidivism may be worse than the Chicago Tribune's number would indicate. The US Dept. of Justice did a multi-state 3-year study on inmates released in 1994. They found the 3-year recidivism rates for robbers, burglars, and thieves to be in the range of 70 to 80%. Further, the DoJ found

The 272,111 offenders discharged in 1994 had accumulated 4.1 million arrest charges before their most recent imprisonment and another 744,000 charges within 3 years of release.

That is a lot of crime. But, to the editors of the Chicago Tribune, it is worth it.

Adolescents in the (US) House

Freshman U.S. Rep. Steve Kagen (D-Wis) has been impressing activist groups with tales of his first days in Washington. He tells this story of his meeting the always pleasant first lady Laura Bush:

Then I go to his (President Bush's) wife, 'Hi Barbara, how are ya?' I did that because I learned on the campaign that the meanest thing you can say to another gentlemen is, "he's a fine fellow," and you then refer to his spouse by a different name.

While meeting with a group of 'peace'-activists, Rep. Kagen, a well-to-do physician, told a story of his meeting Karl Rove:

While meeting last month with a group of area peace activists, then Congressman-elect Steve Kagen told a story of his first visit to the White House that shows a feisty and humorous side to our new man in Congress.

After Rove washed his hands ('At least he's a hand washer,' Kagen said), he attempted to leave, but Kagen prevented his departure by holding the door closed and said, "You're in the White House and you think your safe, huh? You recognize me? My name's Dr. Multimillionaire and I kicked your ass."

Kagen expected to make Rove squirm, but said (he) acted like it was a tennis match and simply said, "Oh, congratulations."

Rep. Kagen is 56-years old. He doesn't sound like it, does he? Also, note the contrast with the calm and mature way that Mr. Rove handles the Kagen's provocations.

Rep. Kagen's stories and their ever changing versions along with Kagen's non-denial denials are nicely cataloged by Dan Riehl.

As a culture of corruption update, the FDA has informed Dr. Kagen that he is under investigation violation of federal law "for manufacturing and selling allergy shots without a valid license." It is always funny how Democrats don't think that they should have to follow the rules that they so happily have the government impose on us. (Remember that Bill Clinton had a hard time finding a nominee for Attorney General who hadn't herself violated the law. Janet Reno was his third choice after Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood both had income tax problems.)

Protecting evil

The AP reports:

The U.N. has an official stance opposing capital punishment and [U.N. Secretary-General] Ban's predecessor Kofi Annan reiterated it frequently. The top U.N. envoy in Iraq, Ashraf Qazi, restated it again on Saturday after the former Iraqi dictator was hanged.

This is expected: the protection of the lives of thugs, crooks, and fascist dictators would, of course, be a top priority for many of the UN's member states.

Being innocent can be expensive

According to this quite interesting article on the misconduct of prosecutor Nifong and the MSM in the Duke "rape" case, the cost of defending against false charges is quite high:

For the past 10 months, the defendants’ families each have paid $80 thousand a month for the legal services of the various attorneys representing them.

UPDATE: Dorothy Rabinowitz compares the Nifong scandal to the child-abuse case scandals of the 80's and 90's.

Principle or merely excuse?

The Washington Post reports:

CBS appeared to be the most reluctant of the networks to take the unprecedented step of broadcasting video footage of an execution on television in the United States, a country where 53 people were put to death in 2006 alone.

CBS News Vice President Paul Friedman all but ruled out showing footage of Saddam's hanging, saying, "I personally believe it is beyond the pale to show executions."

"I would not want to see moving pictures of the actual moment of Saddam Hussein's death, or anyone else's," Friedman told Reuters[emphasis added]

As Kathryn Jean Lopez points out, it's all a lie: (a) Showing an execution is not unprecedented and (b) despite the CBS VP's protestations, CBS itself has already shown video of an execution. In particular, in November, 1998, CBS 60 minutes showed video of the execution, including the moment of death, of Thomas Youk by lethal injection at the hands of Dr. Jack Kevorkian.

The difference, of course, is that liberals are generally in favor of Kevorkian-style euthanasia while the liberals are extremely uncomfortable with justice being delivered to a mass-murderer such as Saddam.

Media bias in Germany

Having heard endlessly over the years about how evil the US is (and, more recently, Iraq is) for having capital punishment, I was surprised to see opinion polls that show that majorities in the UK, Germany, France, and Spain support the execution of Saddam. David Kaspar details how the European media ignore this and try to spin the Saddam execution.

Incidentally, Kaspar's Medienkritik blog is an overall fascinating look at German media bias.

Science under attack

Activists are now asking scientistst to put a stop to some biology research. Previously, science has identified many hormones and their role in controlling or regulating human biology. In addition to controlling hunger (ghrelin), growth (GHRH), and happiness (serotonin), hormones such as testosterone and estrogen control sexual behaviors. However, now researchers at Oregon State University have identified hormones that control, at least in rams, homosexual vs. heterosexual behavior. Some think that science has gone too far:

Martina Navratilova, the lesbian tennis player who won Wimbledon nine times, and scientists and gay rights campaigners in Britain have called for the project to be abandoned.

Navratilova defended the “right” of sheep to be gay. She said: “How can it be that in the year 2006 a major university would host such homophobic and cruel experiments?” She said gay men and lesbians would be “deeply offended” by the social implications of the tests.

...

Peter Tatchell, the gay rights campaigner, said: “These experiments echo Nazi research in the early 1940s which aimed at eradicating homosexuality. They stink of eugenics. There is a danger that extreme homophobic regimes may try to use these experimental results to change the orientation of gay people.”

He said that the techniques being developed in sheep could in future allow parents to “play God”.

Saddam and terrorists

A very interesting blog, regimeofterror.com, has extensive information on Saddam's links to various terror organizations,

Prosecutorial Misconduct

In our criminal justice system, the guilty often go free. At the same time, the innocent can be harassed by politically motivated prosecution. The Duke rape case appears to be the latest of the latter. Our system is careful to protect the rights of the guilty but the innocent can be powerless. Democracy doesn't necessarily help: Durham D.A. Michael Nifong appears to have won his primary battle because of rather than in spite of his seeming prosecutorial misconduct.

In the '80s and early '90s, there were several people falsely convicted of bizarre and unlikely child molestation changes. Grant Snowden was lucky enough to have his conviction overturned after evidence presented was freed after 12-years in prison. 14-year-old Bobby Fijnje spent two years in the Miami Juvenile Detention Center on molestation charges before a jury before a jury declared him not guilty. Both these miscarriages of justice were perpetrated by then Miami prosecutor Janet Reno. For this, Janet Reno was not punished but rather rewarded. Bill Clinton selected her to become the US Attorney General. Similarly, DA Scott Harshbarger infamously obtained convictions against the Amirault family and went on to become the Massachusetts attorney general and later to head the liberal-lobby group Common Cause.

The one thing that these case have in common is identity politics. The Duke Lacrosse players are Southern whites and therefore, as as a group, are presumed guilty of brutalizing blacks. Similarly, child-care workers, as a group, are presumed guilty in child-molestation cases. Punishing an unpopular group can be popular and successful politics even if the punished individuals happen to be innocent.

Rest in Peace

Gerald Ford (1913-2006) was a decent and honorable man with a calm voice. James Brown (1928?-2006) was the opposite. May they both rest in peace.

e-mail is not private (yet)

The US Appeals court is expected to rule soon on whether e-mail should be considered private. Unlike USPS mail or telephone conversations, there are no laws protecting the privacy of e-mails. Federal prosecutors assert the right to read to any e-mail that is a public server. This includes, for example, any mail in a google, hotmail or AOL account. Prosecutors used this to gain evidence to charge Steven Warshak, an Ohio spam-merchant, with mail fraud and money laundering. A US district judge sided with Warshak that e-mail should be private but the US appealing.

Murderers are the real victims

James Taranto found this bizarre passage in a New York Times story describing a possible death penalty procedure for Saddam Hussein:

The victims are led up a set of steel stairs to a platform, about 15 feet above the ground, and nooses fashioned from one-and-a-quarter-inch-thick hemp ropes are slipped over their necks. The executioners are different each time, drawn from among employees of the Justice Ministry who volunteer for the job. Many have lost relatives or friends in insurgent attacks, officials said.

With a tug of two large levers, the steel trapdoors drop open and the victims fall through. The doors make a loud clanging sound as they slam against the apparatus, according to people who have witnessed hangings. The jarring noise echoes off the cold, unadorned concrete walls.

Death is supposed to come instantly — a doctor is on hand to certify it — and the bodies are removed to a cooler where they are held before being handed over to the victims’ families. The entire process is recorded by a photographer and a video cameraman and the images are stored in a government archive.

Although this is from an "unbiased" news story, it captures clearly the upside-down liberal view of the world: murderers, such as Saddam, are "victims."

Liberal racism

Jason Riley is a member of the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. His wife is expecting. He finds that his liberals friends have a problem with that:

Your wife, who unlike you is white, and who is expecting your first child, has been receiving the oddest reactions to the news of her pregnancy. Upon finding out, friends can't resist informing her that "interracial children are beautiful." It's said in a tone that suggests deep gratitude and admiration, although the reasons are a little unclear.

The comment may be kindly meant, as a sort of reflexive compliment, but it inevitably suggests that she is being congratulated for her willingness to place the aesthetic enhancement of the populace above the imperatives of racial purity. She's heard the remark, or some variation of it, from a dozen different people if she's heard it from one. And more often than not, your wife tells you, it's the first thing they blurt out, even before asking about gender and due dates. ....

A short time later, at a wedding reception in London, your wife finds herself chatting with a Danish woman she has just met. Back at the hotel, your wife informs you that the woman asked her, "How do you feel about having a baby who will look nothing like you? I have a lot of friends who have interracial babies, and they feel totally alienated from their children." ....

It's no surprise that these comments all came from white people; surveys have long demonstrated that blacks are much more accommodating of interracial relationships. More noteworthy is that in all but a couple of cases, the remarks came from white people parked on the political left, the kind of superior folks who might run you down in their Prius for even suggesting that they harbor racial hang-ups. As liberals constantly tell themselves, only conservatives have race issues.

But you know the truth is closer to the opposite. It is the left's obsession with skin pigmentation--invoking it everywhere and always, regardless of its relevance--that keeps race front and center not only in our public policy debates but even in everyday life. In his latest book, "White Guilt," Shelby Steele tackles this phenomenon with his usual peerless eloquence. He describes the endless frustration of dealing with whites "who have built a large part of their moral identity and, possibly, their politics around how they respond to your color."

Clinton legacy

Mike McCurry was Bill Clinton's press secretary from 1995 to 1998. In a speech at Princeton, Mr McCurry evaluated the Clinton presidency with unusual honesty. As reported by the Daily Princetonion:

McCurry said, above all, "the record and legacy of the Clinton presidency is, dare I use the word, 'stain.' .... In some ways, he had enormous potential and political gifts. But, they didn't arise because of his lack of discipline."

Minimum wage and hypocrisy

Megan McArdle looks at how one of the premier left-wing fundraising organizations treats its own employees.

If you want to know why I am no longer a lefty, just read this series on MyDD about PIRG, the organisation that supervised my transition from ultraliberal to libertarian. I have never worked at any organisation, including the Catskills hotel that basically used foriegn temporary labour in sweatshop fashion, that treated its employees as shamefully as PIRG. People talk about workers being disposable, but no other business model I have encountered depends on its employees having an average tenure of two weeks, the better to funnel their lost wages up the hierarchy to god-knows-where. It's all there in the series, what happens to you if you threaten to make too much money: the paycheck mixups that all run in favour of PIRG and somehow can never be rectified, the sudden firings of people for having a bad day, the curiously malleable policies on things like sick leave and holiday pay, which ensure that no one actually ever collects same, the shamelessly llame pretexts for getting rid of the overly successful, and the deliberate assignments to bad turf in order to depress your wages and thus force you to quit, or if that doesn't work, give them an excuse to fire you.

Similarly, ACORN, an advocacy group well known for campaigns to raise the minimum wage, didn't want to pay minimum wage to its own workers:

ACORN and Minimum Wage Hypocrisy ACORN is a vocal proponent of minimum wage hikesexcept when they apply to its own organization. ACORN actually sued the state of California to have its employees exempted from the state minimum wage. The group argued that if it were forced to pay higher wages, it would also have to hire fewer employeesthe very dilemma faced by businesses.

Even the Democratic Party tries to get away without paying the minimum wage to its employees:

Alex Scherer-Jones began working for Grassroots Campaigns to fight the Bush administration and elevate the fortunes of the Democratic Party. The 21-year-old MATC student left feeling exploited and sour: "I went in there being very idealistic, and it kind of ruined my idealism."

The job involves going door to door asking people to give money to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, using talking points that include a call to raise the minimum wage. For this, Scherer-Jones says he was paid far less than the state minimum wage of $6.50 an hour.

The Democrats tried to claim that the rules don't apply to them:

"These kinds of fund-raising and sales positions are governed under different [rules]," asserts [Wes] Jones [the national canvass director] in a phone interview from Seattle....

These practices likely violate state law. Rose Lynch, spokeswoman for the state Department of Workforce Development, says there are no special rules for canvassing firms, and "even individuals paid on a commission basis must receive at least minimum wage."

The left doesn't want to obey the rules that it advocates. One might think that this would them cause to stop and think whether the rules they advocate are good ones or not, but it doesn't.

The Public Policy Institute of California has done a study on "living wages" and found what would seem to be obvious to be worth a study: raising minumum wages causes an increase in unemployment among the lowest skilled labor.

Creationism in Europe

Although Europeans used to regard creationism/intelligent design as an American issue, it is now appearing in Europe. The November 23, 2006 issue of Nature (v444, p406, $$) says that two schools in Hesse, Germany, have been teaching creationism with the support of Karin Wolf, Hesse's Christian Democrat education minister. Nature writes:

[I]n Italy in 2004. Letizia Moratti, then education minister, caused a public outcry when she removed the theory of evolution from the curricula of Italy's middle schools on the grounds that teaching Darwin's theory of evolution can instil a materialist view of life in young minds.... [A]lmost two-thirds [of Italians] would prefer lessons to cover both evolutionary theory and the creationist view.

In addition to Germany and Italy, advocates of creationism are also active in Britain, Turkey, and Russia.

Consequences of a US pullout from Iraq

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is concerned that, if the US pulls out of Iraq, the Shia dominated government might use Iraqi troops against the Sunni population. In that case, Saudi Arabia would back the Sunnis. One can speculate that Iran would respond strongly. The foreign policy issues of this should concern the next session of Congress except that, when it comes to Sunnis and Shia, congressmen don't know who's who.

Congressional Intelligence: it takes a committee

If Congressmen sound clueless, it is probably because they are. Jeff Stein interviewed the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Tx), and found that he didn't know the basics about the dividing lines in the Middle East, such as Al Qaeda being Sunni while Hezbollah is Shi'ite. Mr. Stein had previously found other members of the Intelligence Committee, Rep. Jo Ann Davis (R-Va) and Terry Everett (R-Ala), to be similarly clueless.

One shouldn't consider congressmen dumb though. They probably know, for example, every major campaign contributor by name, hometown, and dollar amount.

UPDATE: CNN picks up on this story here.

ADDENDUM: Last month, Hugh Hewitt interviewed the candidates for Republican leadership positions and reports that "not a single Republican congressman vying for a party leadership position could name a book he had read relating to Islamic terrorism."

American Ingenuity

America soldiers are using toys and bee to defeat IEDs in Iraq. The toy, Silly String, is sprayed across a room to detect trip wires. If the string drops to the ground, there are no trip wires. The mother of a soldier is collecting cans of Silly Strings to send to Iraq. Separately, bees are being trained to sniff out explosives. This work likes trained dogs but, if a bomb goes off, no one misses the bees.

The Uncivil Society

In today's LA Times, Arianna Huffington comes out against Hillary Clinton:

Democrats are fed up with fence-straddling and triangulation. But that has become Clinton's brand. Smiling photo ops with Bill Frist, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. Backing a bill criminalizing flag burning. Coming out against violent video games. Signing on to President Bush's missile defense plan.

So, Ms. Huffington opposes having the leaders of the US Congress working together in a civil fashion? Maybe she would prefer it if our elected officials acted like the people in those "violent video games" that she seems to advocate?

"Any enemy of the US is my friend"

Sen. Kennedy reportedly had secret talks with the USSR for the purpose of thwarting US foreign policy. Today, the Jerusalem Post reports that the terrorist organization Hamas says that it has "held talks with officials from the US Democratic Party at an undisclosed location." There is no word yet on who participated or what they may have discussed.

UPDATE: Captain's Quarters notes that this paragraph in the Jerusalem Post story has now disappeared from their web site.

UPDATE 2: Ynet is now reporting on Hamas' claim to have met with Democrats. GatewayPundit has much more on the Democrat's history of collaboration with enemies going back to their efforts to persuade Union soldiers to desert during the Civil War.

Judicial activism in the 19th century

In one of the Supreme Court's most notorious decisions, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney wrote the maority opinion that ruled that the laws of slave states applied to slave Dred Scott even after his master had moved him to a free state. As the WSJ wrote:

The opinion Taney wrote for the majority in Dred Scott not only guaranteed slaveholders' ability to move slavery into the territories but also tacked on the gratuitous announcement that blacks were incapable of rising to the level of citizenship and therefore had no rights, under the Constitution, that could be violated by enslavement.

Nothing in the constitution supported Taney's conclusions: his decision was simply judicial activism. His activism came from the same source as today's activists. Taney was appointed to the Supreme Court by Andrew Jackson, the US president from the newly formed Democratic party. Only two justices dissented from the Dred Scott decision: Benjamin Robbins Curtis and John McLean. Curtis was was appointed to the Court by President Fillmore of the Whig party, which was, for a while, the main opposition to the Democrats. Originally a Jackson Democrat, McLean's strong opposition to slavery lead him eventually to join the Republican Party where he was twice a candidate for the Republican nomination for president.

This is not the age of reason

Jeff at Caerdroia meditates on the role of reason in public debate on four pressing issues ranging from global warming to Iraq.

Poison: the choice of emperors

The body of Alexander Litvinenko, the dead Putin critic, was found to have unexplained high levels of deadly radioactive Polonium-210. Poison was the tradition means for solving political disputes in the Roman, Chinese, and Mongol empires. The USSR took this to new levels of sophistication when the KGB poisoned Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov by stabbing him with a ricin-tipped umbrella in 1978.

UPDATE: After Putin's denial, James Taranto has an interesting theory: Maybe the intention was to poison Litvinenko with a very slight dose of Po-210, just enough to give him terminal cancer that would appear natural.

Government knows best

Las Vegas has government social services providers set up to help the homeless. There was a problem: the homeless didn't want these services. Rather than admit that the city might have had the wrong approach, the city instead passed a law banning private citizens from donating food to the homeless:

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman had argued that [private] handouts discourage homeless people from seeking help from social service providers set up to handle mental health and substance abuse problems...."The main thing is to make sure these people get professional care," Goodman said of homeless and indigent people....

where, of course, the "professional care" that he prefers is government care. U.S. District Court Judge Robert Jones has issued an injunction prohibiting enforcement of the city's ordinance.

Not mentioned in the AP article is that the mayor who wants to ban private citizens from feeding the homeless is a Democrat.

The great flood and other mega-disasters

Through a combination of satellite imagery and geological samples collected on Earth, some scientists now believe that they have evidence that large asteroid and comet impacts are much more common than previously thought. One such impact may have occurred 4,800 years ago in the Indian Ocean, leaving a crater 18 miles in diameter.

Dr. Bruce Masse, of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, has been collecting an analyzing 175 flood myths from around the world. There is speculation that that impact 4,800 years ago could have caused a large tsunami and worldwide weather change, including torrential rains, that are described in the myths. 14 of the myths mention a full solar eclipse which Dr. Masse speculates could be used to date the impact to May, 2807 BC.

Victims never have to be responsible

Steven Den Beste notes a difference between how Republicans and Democrats accept electoral defeat:

2000, Democrats: "We wuz robbed!"
2002, Democrats: "We wuz robbed again!"
2004, Democrats: "We wuz robbed yet again!"
2006, Republicans: "Bummer. Oh, well, we'll do better next time."

Note that right-wing pundits and bloggers don't seem to be fixating on voter fraud, despite documented evidence that the Democrats have been doing that kind of thing? Note that Republican candidates who lost very narrowly gave in gracefully, without demanding recounts or resorting to the courts? Why the difference?

I think it's the basic Democrat culture of entitlement showing through. Democrats were angry in 2000, 2002, and 2004 because they felt that they deserved to win. Republicans don't feel that anyone deserves anything. They believe that all rewards have to be earned.

There's another way of looking at this. In 2000, 2002, and 2004, Democrats explained their defeat by looking to see what the Republicans had done to inflict defeat on the Democrats. In 2006, the Republicans seem to be explaining their defeat by loo king for all the ways they themselves loused up. The Democrats are showing their investment in the cult of the victim. They didn't lose because of any fault or failure of their own; they lost because of the nefarious acts of villainous Republicans.

I think the issue is a more general avoidance by liberals and the left of any uncomfortable introspection. Thus, liberals would not look inside for what why they lost elections. Similarly but on the left, Karl Marx wrote endlessly on the supposed faults of capitalism but never examined critically his ideas of communism (Just how was his communist government supposed to 'wither' away?).

On some larger levels, they will introspect endlessly: Democrats obsess on foreign policy issues like "why they hate us?" However, they obsess on this only in ways that leave liberals as the innocent victims of the wrong-headed policies of others. An example would be Sen. Murray's (D-Wa) famous theory that Islamic fundamentalists hate the US because the US has not spent enough money on foreign aid to build daycare centers in Islamic countries.

"I don't fall down"

A left-blogger, Mike McIntee, claimed to have proof of the White House editing videos to remove the "mission accomplished" banner. As reported in Spiegel Online, the claim has been debunked another blogger. Links to both videos are here.

While Mr. McIntee's mistake may well have been an honest one, his response to its exposure has been curious: it is alleged that he has been deleting comments exposing his error. Abusive comments are often best deleted but left-bloggers, such as MediaMatters.org, have a reputation for deleting polite and rational comments merely because the comments present facts or evidence that makes liberals uncomfortable. This seems to me to be of a kind with Sen. Kerry's ski trip, as the New York Times reported (March 19, 2004, "Amid Natural Splendor in Idaho, a Weary Kerry Gets Away From It All" by David M. Halbfinger):

The image-conscious candidate and his aides prevailed upon reporters and photographers to let him have a first run down the mountain solo, except for two agents and Marvin Nicholson, his omnipresent right-hand man.

His next trip down, a reporter and a camera crew were allowed to follow along on skis just in time to see Mr. Kerry taken out by one of the Secret Service men, who had inadvertently moved into his path, sending him into the snow.

When asked about the mishap a moment later, he said sharply, "I don't fall down," then used an expletive to describe the agent who "knocked me over."

Reportedly, Sen Kerry fell six times that day when not in eye-shot of camera men. This is natural: All real skiers fall. Yet, Sen. Kerry doesn't want to admit to it, just as Mr. McIntee would rather delete comments than admit to an error interpreting a black bar. At least for our government leaders, I would prefer a higher level of emotional maturity.

Problem spotters vs problem solvers

David Simon spent 13 years as a crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun before rising to prominence with the publication of his 1991 book: Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, the inspiration for two TV series. He and collaborator, Ed Burns, a narcotics detective and 20-year veteran of the Baltimore police department were on a promotional tour and were asked about the drug problem:

Ed Burns and I spoke at one of those groups. There came this point where a guy said, "Well, what is the solution? Give me the paragraph; give me the lede. What's the solution, if not drug prohibition?"

I very painstakingly said: "Look. For 35 years, you've systematically deindustrialized these cities. You've rendered them inhospitable to the working class, economically. You have marginalized a certain percentage of your population, most of them minority, and placed them in a situation where the only viable economic engine in their hypersegregated neighborhoods is the drug trade. Then you've alienated them further by fighting this draconian war in their neighborhoods, and not being able to distinguish between friend or foe and between that which is truly dangerous or that which is just illegal. And you want to sit across the table from me and say 'What's the solution?' and get it in a paragraph? The solution is to undo the last 35 years, brick by brick. How long is that going to take? I don't know, but until you start it's only going to get worse."

And the guy looked at me and went, "But what's the solution?" He said it again. Ed Burns restrained me.

Mr. Simon has a keen eye for what has gone wrong but doesn't seem to know what a "solution" is: "Undo[ing] the last 35 years" is a wish, not a plan. Center-cities, for example, have deindustrialized for a variety of good reasons and there are no policies that people can agree on that would reverse it. Often the people who can identify problems in emotionally compelling terms seem unable to recognize that, compared to finding the solution, identifying the problem was the easy part.

UPDATE: On the same theme, Democrats can identify problems with our policies in Iraq but soldiers interviewed in the Washington Post point out that the proposed Democratic "solutions" would be worse than the problems. Ann Althouse comments.

Global warming, again

Anxiety does not engage the higher brain functions. Consequently, beliefs driven by fear are often wrong. Take, for example, fear-based climate-predictions, as summarized by Christopher Monckton in today's London Telegraph:

In 1988, James Hansen, a climatologist, told the US Congress that temperature would rise 0.3C by the end of the century (it rose 0.1C), and that sea level would rise several feet (no, one inch).

The rest of the article is as good a summary of the science issues as one will find in a popular newspaper.