Night of the Living Dead Whining Democrats

Former New York Governor, and liberal media darling Mario Cuomo, (thrown out by voters eleven years ago in favor of a Republican, and out of office ever since), is whining that an effort by Republicans to end unprecedented Senate filibusters against the president's judicial nominees would go against what James Madison would have wanted:

[Cuomo] said Senate Republicans ''are threatening to claim ownership of the Supreme Court and other federal courts, hoping to achieve political results on subjects like abortion, stem cells, the environment and civil rights that they cannot get from the proper political bodies... The Republicans say it would assure dominance by the majority in the Senate... That sounds democratic until you remember that the Bill of Rights was adopted, as James Madison pointed out, to protect all of Americans from what he called the `tyranny of the majority'... The Republican senators should instead start working with the Democrats to address all the serious problems of this country in the proper forums -- in the Congress and in the presidency -- leaving the judges to be judges instead of a third political branch controlled by the whim of the politicians in power. [emphasis added]

Without the New York Times, this 'story' wouldn't even see print. Instead, they lovingly (if irrelevantly) note that Cuomo "was leading in Democratic polls in late 1991 when he pulled the plug on a possible presidential bid." Oh, well! Why didn't you say so? That changes everything. Pardon me Mr. "Almost-ran-for-the-nomination-fourteen-years-ago-but-decided-not-to".

But maybe that's too harsh. Based on that logic, perhaps we should listen to him - and to the late Thomas Dewey, (who was leading in the newspapers until Truman defeated him), or John Kerry, (who was leading in grossly biased MSM exit polls until Mr. Bush defeated him), or maybe Mike Dukakis, (who is still leading in some cocktail party straw polls in certain neighborhoods in hyper-liberal Brookline, Massachusetts where he lives.) Yeah, that sounds fair. Except that nobody freakin' cares! You lost.

Why is it that the MSM spends so much effort on giving career CPR to has-been loser Democratic politicians? Why is the argument that democracy must be achieved through undemocratic processes not stripped down to what it is: an argument for elitism and tyranny? Doesn't the very name of the party start to sound a little ironic and embarassing after awhile? If Mr. Cuomo is so upset, why did he dump his presidential bid? Why did he turn down an offer to be considered by Bill Clinton for a Supreme Court seat? Those are questions he's said he'd rather not answer. He'd rather snipe from the sidelines than face the voters again.

Message to Mario: Whatever else he wrote, James Madison signed something called the United States Constitution. You're a smart guy. Perhaps you've read it. It allows Senate rules to be changed by a majority. We're sorry you don't like that, but that's too bad. It also provides for elections. You may have noticed that we just had one. Your party lost - badly. If you don't like that, perhaps you'd like to run for your party's nomination again in 2008 against Hillary Clinton? You might have to give up your radio show, but at least we'd know what the voters thought of you and your ideas. It would be kinda fun to watch the two of you claw each others' eyes out as you sank into democratic (small 'd') oblivion - again.

UPDATE: Given the way the last election turned out, this might be a better proposal on how to work together.

President Bush's chief of staff appealed on Sunday for congressional Democrats to work with the administration and Republicans rather than complain and stall action on Capitol Hill.

North Korea Inches Closer Still

Another not-really-surprising development, that the left is already blaming on the Bush administration, forgetting the patent silliness of the 'Agreed Framework' that the last president used to enable North Korea with the nuclear material it's now using. (Better to kick the can down the road to the next guy than to actually solve the problem):

...North Korea has been preparing to carry out an underground nuclear test since March and could go ahead as early as June... The United States had called on China to urge North Korea to halt its preparations, but there were no signs that Beijing had done so, the sources said.

This hard-on-the-eyes blog by an American ex-pat in Korea takes a an ultra-hard line on Korea and prophesies a shootin' war by July, while spouting the usual loony-left garbage about Iraq. Sounds like Hillary: 1000 American lives in the interest of routing terrorism and stabilizing the Middle East? Intolerable! A nuclear shootout with North Korea in which millions might be killed? Let's rumble! Do self-avowed peaceniks really want her with the nuclear 'football'?

Duck and Cover - Starbucks in the Bunker?

The Washington Post is reporting on a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) briefing yesterday in which it was revealed that North Korea has miniaturized their nuclear warhead technology. The WaPo article couches the news in relatively mundane terms. If you live in Seattle however (or Vancouver, as I idly mused just yesterday), this may be, umm... a larger concern - something that the Seattle Post Intelligencer amply reflects. (Hey, at least they'll have good coffee to go with the five year supply of canned goods and bottled water.)

The Pentagon's top military intelligence officer said yesterday that North Korea has the ability to arm a missile with a nuclear device, stunning senators he was addressing and prompting attempts by other defense and intelligence officials later to play down the impact. The statement by Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby before the Senate Armed Services Committee marked the first time that a U.S. official had publicly attributed such a capability to North Korea. Although U.S. intelligence authorities have said for years that North Korea possesses nuclear weapons and could likely reach the United States with its long-range rockets, they had stopped short of asserting that North Korea had mastered the difficult task of miniaturizing a nuclear device to fit atop a ballistic missile. Jacoby, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said U.S. intelligence agencies believe North Korea has developed multistage intercontinental missiles with nuclear warheads capable of hitting the United States. A two-stage missile is believed capable of striking "Alaska and Hawaii, and I believe a portion of the Northwest," he said. A three-stage missile "would be able to reach most of the continental United States," Jacoby said, adding that the three-stage missile remains a "theoretical capability in the sense that those missiles have not been tested."

Up until yesterday, nuclear warhead miniaturization remained 'theoretical' too. It's important to remember that, as AEI Scholar Nicholas Eberstadt put it last month in the WaPo, (and as I noted here) Kim Jong-il is under no illusions that the Korean War is over. We regard that as a technicality. He does not. If I was Kim Jong-il and I had a three-stage missile, I would not test it. I would use it, since testing something that powerful would raise significantly the chances of being hit with a first strike. Eberstadt:

...the war that North Korea has prepared for is not some future theoretical contingency. In the view of North Korean leaders, their country is at war today... committed to an unconditional victory, however long it might take and however much it might cost... To achieve this goal, North Korea must possess nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles capable of delivering them into the heart of the American enemy. This central strategic fact explains why North Korea has been assiduously pursuing its nuclear and missile development programs for more than 30 years...

Meanwhile, in another development likely to add sunshine to your weekend, the Wall Street Journal carries this editorial (subscription required) about Iran's determined push towards nuclear weapons capability:

Iran's Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi has just stated in no uncertain terms that if today's talks with France, Britain and Germany fail, there will be "no choice but to restart" his country's uranium-enrichment program. The Iranian people, he says, "believe it is their inalienable right to have access to this technology for peaceful purposes." ...These offers are beguiling. They are also bad. The reasons why, though, are likely to remain obscure so long as our diplomats continue to agree with Mr. Kharrazi that all states that are not in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty have a right to make nuclear fuel and that such activity can be monitored to prevent quick diversions to make bombs. In fact, there is no such right and nuclear fuel-making of the sort Iran is planning to engage in still cannot be safeguarded in any meaningful way.

Recall that close ties between North Korea and Iran were not invented by this president. Like North Korea, they too have made their intentions abundantly clear. Yes Virginia, there is an Axis of Evil.

It's become fashionable recently on the left to take pot-shots at this administration for deliberately stoking a climate of fear to support some nefarious secret agenda for global domination. My questions to those critics: When is fear justified? When is it no longer "All Bush's fault"? Is it more responsible to brush such threats under the rug? Do you have to see the flash and mushroom cloud before you'll believe that there are forces in the world whose sole purpose is to destroy Western Civilization no matter who is leading it? Wasn't 9-11 enough to convince you?

UPDATE: Hillary Clinton is tacking well to the right on this:

Senator Clinton called Admiral Jacoby's testimony "troubling beyond words." She added: "We have been locked into this six-party idea now for a number of years and all the while we've seen North Korea going about the business of acquiring nuclear weapons and the missile capacity to deliver those to the shores of the United States.

UPDATE II: In fact, Hillary Clinton is tacking so far right that she's conveniently neglected to mention how far left she and her husband were on this just a few years ago. The same evil guy is still in power in North Korea, but back then it was all about visits from Ms. Albright and concessions for good behavior that any NoKo watcher knew was never going to materialize.

In an interview on Thursday, Mrs. Clinton called Admiral Jacoby's statement "the first confirmation, publicly, by the administration that the North Koreans have the ability to arm a missile with a nuclear device that can reach the United States," adding, "Put simply, they couldn't do that when George Bush became president, and now they can."

Naively enabling our enemies, then shifting blame for political gain is truly diabolical. If she can't squelch her Machiavellian instincts on something like this, we're all in deep trouble.

UPDATE III: Michelle Malkin does a late roundup here.

More Gestapo Tactics in Alberta

Since the story was reported last week, there's been total silence on the Calgary police's confiscation of computer equipment from Jan Vahey - a contractor who had been critical of police Chief Jack Beaton's leadership.

Now comes this, further up Provincial Highway #2 in Edmonton, (also reported here, and here.) The story is awfully similar: a cop gets criticized, then goes out of his way - bending or breaking police rules and/or the law - to personally target and silence the critic:

Police broke provincial law when they accessed information about a Sun columnist and the former cop commission chairman, says a report. And the information city police members accessed wasn't "used for a law enforcement purpose," wrote Alberta's Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner in a report released yesterday... In November, allegations emerged that police had staked out a provincial election meet-and-greet at the Overtime Broiler and Taproom downtown in an attempt to catch Sun columnist Kerry Diotte and then-police commission chairman Martin Ignasiak driving drunk. The pair, who took cabs home that night, had publicly criticized the force on various issues in the past. Rayner said that during their investigation they uncovered violations of the Edmonton Police Service's information system policy "not related to the Overtime incident" that occurred before November.

Critics of U.S. policies who imagine Canada as a big frozen San Francisco, please take note.

UPDATE: A new blog "Crime and Punishment" by Leo Knight, (purveyor of the Primetime Crime website), has accessed firsthand sources and inside angles I haven't seen reported elsewhere in the Beaton/Vahey affair. This post ("Using a Sledgehammer to Swat a Gnat") is particularly interesting. One wonders if Chief Beaton knew much about free/anonymous web logs when he went to the trouble of getting an Anton Piller order and shutting down two websites. He should know a lot more about the new media environment by now. Traditionalists might object to anonyblogs' slander potential, but given how Jan Vahey has been intimidated and gagged, that argument doesn't pass the laugh test.

Will Canadians Frag Themselves?

Captain Ed discusses some disturbing scenarios for Canadian politics that Austin Bay makes on Strategy Page in an article entitled, "The Next Failed State." In light of recent developments there (most notably the Adscam scandal that's likely to take down Paul Martin's Liberal government), such scenarios can't be entirely dismissed:

Austin Bay: A political specter haunts North America -- the specter of the world's next failed state. We can still call it Canada, at least for a couple years. And who knows, like news of Mark Twain's demise, my cheeky pessimism may be greatly exaggerated. Our northern neighbor's polyglot populace of beer drinkers, peaceniks, Mounties and socialists may yet dump their crooked politicians and craft a new, more robust deal with Quebecois separatists. If you don't know about Canada's crooked politicians, you're not alone. Democracy and free speech are breaking out in Beirut, but they're both taking a beating in Ontario... "federal" Canada remains an iffy proposition, and becomes iffier as the separatist Parti Quebcois (PQ) gains political clout at the expense of the corrupt Liberals.

Captain Ed: How serious is the threat of dissolution north of the 49th? ...The lack of interest in Canadian politics will catch Americans with their pants down if Quebec goes its own way and precipitates a general collapse of the national system in Canada, an embarassing [sic] development for a country that takes such an interest in global politics.

Europe may chafe at the frustrations of Brussels bureaucracy and the many small indignities of life under the EU. But those separatist tendencies are tempered by shared memory (albeit dimming) of the horrors of Balkanization and war. Canada has nothing similar in the collective consciousness to give pause. The country's decision in February to withdraw from the North American missile defense umbrella is cause enough to question Canadians' understanding of the harsh world beyond the warm, brotherly embrace of their southern neighbor.

I doubt that the typical BC liberal, (a redundant phrase - some can make a San Franciscan look reactionary), has thought very hard for example, about whether Kim Jong-il's nuclear and missile programs have advanced far enough yet to take out Vancouver before lunchtime - as opposed to say, a few endangered species on a glaciated outcrop further north. Most Canadians would shrug and ask "why would he want to?" Well, he doesn't need a reason. "Oops, I missed Seattle" might be reason enough. It's not hard to think that some Canadians (if they'd thought about it at all), might care more about irradiated mountain goats and glaciers melting due to 'global warming' than the destruction of a bustling modern city (and their only major port on the Pacific), in a massive radioactive fireball.

It's true that my Canadian friends can be hyper-patriotic with the best of them (waving maple leaf flags at sporting events and reverently singing 'Oh, Canada'.) But they aren't from Quebec. Symbolism can mean a lot - or nothing at all. It's hard to tell how deep it goes. Is Austin Bay's scenario an American overreaction to tensions no worse than the red-blue cultural gap down here? If the Quebec domino falls, we may get a chance to find out.

Austin Bay has more on the EU failed state comparison here, noting that memory of 20th Century horrors may not be strong enough to overcome anger at overreaching by a bloated EU bureaucracy and longstanding cultural divides.

Exploding Frogs Plague Germany

This bizarre story...

More than 1,000 toads have puffed up and exploded in a Hamburg pond in recent weeks, and scientists still have no explanation... This phenomenon really doesn't seem to have appeared anywhere before... The bloated animals suffer for several minutes before they finally die.

...made me think of this much older one.

The frogs died in the houses, in the courtyards and in the fields. They were piled into heaps, and the land reeked of them.

Texas Town Adds Bible Class to School Curriculum

After being approved by a unanimous vote of the Odessa, Texas school board, the only reason I can imagine for this Bible class making national news is that the MSM thinks it will give Texas a black eye. (Remember, it's all Bush's fault.) The AP headline "Texas School Board Adds Bible Class", gives the impression that this is an imposition of religion into the public sphere. The text of the article makes clear however, that the course is about the Bible as literature and history.

The burden of proof ought to be on why - in that context - the Bible shouldn't be taught. Like it or not (and personally I do), it's undeniable that the Bible has had a major influence on the evolution of Western Civilization for millennia. Avoiding talking about it does a disservice to kids trying to understand and live in the world. (In any case, it seems that kids would have a choice not to take the course.) More to the point, it is censorship - something that the ACLU used to oppose. In this case, they are siding against the town's decision.

In my hyper-liberal community in New England, my daughter is being taught the Bible as a major chunk of her high school English class. To my surprise, there's been no controversy. Coming from a liberal bias however, the Texas course makes a better story for the MSM.

The Angry Left Boils Over - Air America and Incitement to Assassination

Drudge is breaking a story about an Air America skit on the Randi Rhodes show about shooting the President.

Government officials are reviewing a skit which aired on the network Monday evening -- a skit featuring an apparent gunshot warning to the president! The announcer: "A spoiled child is telling us our Social Security isn't safe anymore, so he is going to fix it for us. Well, here's your answer, you ungrateful whelp: [audio sound of 4 gunshots being fired.] Just try it, you little bastard. [audio of gun being cocked]."

It's deranged, hateful listening even without the violent skit, (which I can't find - possibly pulled?) This kind of stuff has been bubbling under the surface on Democratic Underground for some time. Putting it on the airwaves is a quantum leap, even by conservative talk radio standards. The loony left has gone beyond hypocrisy when - while espousing 'peace' - it thinks something like this is funny. It's even scarier to think that this stuff has an audience (albeit a declining one.)

Scarier still is that some members of that audience are just uninhibited enough to be influenced toward action. In a way that's no longer subtle, license has been given to think about murdering the president because of a disagreement over his policies. While some on the left may pine for the protest marches of the 60's, they conveniently forget that it was a time of assassination, riot and social chaos with many victims. However passionate their dislike of this president and his policies, the ends do not justify the means.

Watch for the angry left to get even angrier in days ahead as a sympathetic media helps them spin the Secret Service investigation as a repressive, politically motivated crackdown on free speech. The term "fascist" (conveniently without the 'Islamo-' prefix) will be used even more frequently in the fringe-liberal media in weeks to come. What bears repeating is that responsibility for the results of one's free speech have never been (and should not be) protected.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin is all over this with many links.

Redneck Culture

Thomas Sowell is once again insightful and utterly logical, even if oh-so-un-'PC' in the Wall Street Journal today (also available via a short, free registration on OpinionJournal):

...a study published last year indicated that most of the black alumni of Harvard were from either the West Indies or Africa, or were the children of West Indian or African immigrants. These people are the same race as American blacks, who greatly outnumber either or both... If this disparity is not due to race, it is equally hard to explain by racism. To a racist, one black is pretty much the same as another... What then could explain such large disparities in demographic "representation" among these three groups of blacks?... Slavery also cannot explain the difference between American blacks and West Indian blacks living in the United States because the ancestors of both were enslaved. When race, racism, and slavery all fail the empirical test, what is left?

Culture is left.

The culture of the people who were called "rednecks" and "crackers" before they ever got on the boats to cross the Atlantic was a culture that produced far lower levels of intellectual and economic achievement, as well as far higher levels of violence and sexual promiscuity.

Ouch. A minor success with this editorial would be for Sowell to be vilified by the left, rather than ignored by them as he so often is. Too bad. As a man of exceptional insight and logic, whose brilliance and scholarly production stand out even at Stanford, he ought to be harder to ignore.

Reflections on NBC's Revelations - Part II

After watching episode one, I gave a mixed review; after two, I'm giving up. There was a long buildup of silliness, but the point where I finally lost it was when the nun character asked Dr. Massey oh-so-earnestly: "Do you think we could tell Satan from Christ by his DNA?"

His DNA? Do the writers at NBC really believe (or expect us to) that God would be so inept, and righteous people so undiscerning in their hearts that we'd need a blood test to figure it out? Has Dan Browne had that much influence? Is it all now about good genes and proper breeding?

I smell the acrid whiff of a worldview that says it's all about who your parents are - 'people like us' who will lead the world with reason. That's a brush with which conservatives used to be tarred, (not that the left has given up trying, but the tar is sticking less and less.) In recent years though, it's been more characteristic of a party that nominated a certain haughty-looking well-bred Senator from Massachusetts to run for president last fall. His know-better wife is the archetype for that philosophy. No, stop. Scratch that. The know-better wife of someone whose husband did manage to scam us into electing him is an even better archetype.

But back to 'Revelations' - the show, not the book. What it seems to miss, despite its spiritual window dressing is the essential lesson that Christ alone knows better what we need. As to his DNA, the world didn't get it right last time either. Jesus spells it out in Luke 8:21:

Someone told [Jesus], "Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to see you." He replied: "My mother and brothers are those who hear God's word and put it into practice."

I won't be Tivoing Revelations again. Back to our regular programming.

UPDATE I: BoingBoing finds an interesting take on Revelations' hucksterism, linking it to a spate of misguided if profitable alien astronauts 'documentaries' in the 1970's. Indeed. Peoples' desperate hunger for spirituality can lead them after just about anything that looks like a lamp in the dark - even if it's only a firefly or an apparition.

UPDATE II: Even as many on the right grow weary of the show's tone-deaf Hollywoodisms, those on the left are working up a froth of hatred towards the Great Right Wing Conspiracy and its pandering agents in the media that they just know must be behind it. This article in Salon takes anti-religious paranoia to a new level:

Welcome to the latest nugget in a hailstorm of fundamentalist invective... what better way for NBC to round up a full month of hand-wringing and candlelight vigils for Terri Schiavo and the pope, than by ushering in a miniseries sure to capitalize on the fear whipped up by these two deaths, not to mention more terrorist arrests, the tsunami disaster, the war in Iraq, you name it?

Message #1 to Salon editors and readers: If this is what you're concerned about, you ain't seen nuthin'! Message #2: Come on in, the water's fine.

Once Again With Feeling: Bush Lied

It really gets tiresome refuting over and over a myth that the left dearly wishes were fact: Bush lied about WMD in Iraq as an excuse to invade. The MSM has recited it so often they seem to have forgotten the truth. In that vein, watch for this latest small-news tidbit to get major play in tomorrow's headlines. It might just get spun into several days. The lead:

In his final word, the CIA's top weapons inspector in Iraq said Monday that the hunt for weapons of mass destruction has "gone as far as feasible" and has found nothing, closing an investigation into the purported programs of Saddam Hussein that were used to justify the 2003 invasion.

Buried further down in the artice however, is this:

The addenda conclude that Saddam's programs created a pool of experts now available to develop and produce weapons and many will be seeking work. While most will probably turn to the "benign civil sector," the danger remains that "hostile foreign governments, terrorists or insurgents may seek Iraqi expertise... Because a single individual can advance certain WMD activities, it remains an important concern." ...Among unanswered questions, Duelfer said a group formed to investigate whether WMD-related material was shipped out of Iraq before the invasion wasn't able to reach firm conclusions because the deteriorating security situation limited and later halted their work. Investigators were focusing on transfers from Iraq to Syria. [emphasis added]

What "benign civil sector"? Would this be Iraq's burgeoning biotech industry, perhaps? Or all of those domestic uses everyone knows about for nerve agents and mustard gas and missiles and plutonium? I'm sure the Iraqi venture capitalist community will be all over this one: "Hey, lets start a little ma and pa business selling blister agents as face creams!"

Of course in the MSM's amnesiac assessment, the program never existed in the first place, so these experts can't be real, can they? Except that they are. Saddam paid them to be, and we spent twelve years dilly-dallying with the UN while they advanced their skills on his payroll. So now maybe, just maybe, one won't be able to find a job (which will no doubt also be Bush's fault), and he'll go to stay with his uncle or brother in Syria. He'll decide to moonlight for a little cash, using Iraqi materials that were shipped over there before the war, but we don't know because we stopped the investigation because of the "security situation" - a longstanding excuse for politically oriented Western relief groups to flee. Nah, not a problem.

Let's just yell louder that BUSH LIED! and this will all go away. Case closed. No WMD. No war justification. No problem. And if the WMD experts that don't exist turn out to be a problem, blame it on the invasion. After all, they were gainfully employed when Saddam was in power. Whistle past the graveyard. Ignore the Islamofascists bent on our destruction. It worked in the '90s, didn't it? Well yes. Until it didn't... Demonize the Republicans. On to '08 and a new administration. Nothing else matters. It is truly a house of mirrors.

What keeps getting brushed under the rug is that this administration never based its case for invasion solely on WMD. Capability and intent were sufficient. Go find me a quote that says differently. It doesn't exist. Nor did it invent the case. It inherited the case (see below), and put it into action. Some presidents do that. They mean what they say and follow through on tough decisions. That scares some people, but that's what we hire presidents to do. Nor did the President ever claim that there were definitely WMD in Iraq. Again, go find me the quote. It doesn't exist either.

The fact was, nobody really knew for sure about WMD in Iraq except Saddam, and he was trying hard to imply that he had them. It is surely an intelligence failure, but one rooted way back in strictures put on the CIA starting in the 1970's. Regardless, we knew about Saddam. That was enough. Even now, despite the MSM headline spin, we still don't know for sure about what he created - the grain of truth that the left spins into the big lie. WMD may have been shipped to Syria. The 'final' report admits as much.

We may never know - until it's too late. Everyone suspected the WMD were in Iraq- Western security services, Republicans and especially Democrats - at least during the Clinton administration. But everyone (except perhaps Scott Ritter) also knew that the UN was getting led around by the nose by Saddam. It's inconvenient for the MSM to report, but these oldies-but-goodies are still around:

Senator (and thankfully only that) John Kerry, February 23, 1998: "Saddam Hussein has already used these [WMD] and has made it clear that he has the intent to continue to try, by virtue of his duplicity and secrecy, to continue to do so. That is a threat to the stability of the Middle East. It is a threat with respect to the potential of terrorist activities on a global basis. It is a threat even to regions near but not exactly in the Middle East."

Senator (what? still?) Ted Kennedy, 1998: "Nor can we rule out the possibility that Saddam would assault American forces with chemical or biological weapons."

Senator Al Gore (who?), December 16, 1998: "If you allow someone like Saddam Hussein to get nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, chemical weapons, biological weapons, how many people is he going to kill with such weapons? He's already demonstrated a willingness to use these weapons. He poison-gassed his own people. He used poison gas and other weapons of mass destruction against his neighbors. This man has no compunction about killing lots and lots of people."

Thankfully-former President Bill Clinton, also in 1998: "What if [Saddam] fails to comply and we fail to act, or we take some ambiguous third route, which gives him yet more opportunities to develop this program of weapons of mass destruction? ... Well, he will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction. And some day, some way, I guarantee you he'll use the arsenal."

So if "Bush lied" about these things in 2002 and 2003 what does that make these scions of the left four or five years earlier? Either prescient - or gutless and duplicitous. You decide.

UPDATE I: Glenn Reynolds has a superb, well researched (and uncharacteristically long) refutation here, while Marc Schulman notes more revisionism at the New York Times. More perspective here on Democratic presidents, murder rates, wars and the double standards of the left. If they didn't have the media deep in their pocket, this debate would have been over two years ago.

BACKDATE II: This post from last summer at USS Neverdock provides a neat compilation of the case against the mindless "Bush lied" meme.

An Old But Troubling Story: Jihad in the Sky

I am very late to the story of Northwest Flight 327: nine months late. (The link is to writer Annie Jacobsen's original firsthand account.) Call me clueless, but I don't recall it being featured by the MSM at the time. Too inciteful. Too anti-PC. Her second installment is here. There's lots of other stuff out there, including this follow-up by Ms. Jacobsen from last Thursday, and ongoing vigilance at Jihad Watch. From the original:

On June 29, 2004, at 12:28 p.m., I flew on Northwest Airlines flight #327 from Detroit to Los Angeles with my husband and our young son. Also on our flight were 14 Middle Eastern men between the ages of approximately 20 and 50 years old. What I experienced during that flight has caused me to question whether the United States of America can realistically uphold the civil liberties of every individual, even non-citizens, and protect its citizens from terrorist threats.

Chemical Weapons Used Against Israel's Lost Tribe?

It's pitiful to reflect how much media attention in the U.S. gets devoted to items like the Michael Jackson trial and Britney Spears' love life when things like this are going on in the world:

Strong evidence has emerged of the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Burma Army against the Karenni people. A draft report from [human rights group] CSW International President Dr Martin Panter presents evidence of chemical weapons use during an incident which is alleged to have happened near Burma’s north western border with Thailand on February 15. During the shelling of a Karenni camp, Dr Panter has gathered reports that a device exploded which gave out yellow smoke and a “highly irritating odour”. On April 14 Dr Panter interviewed five of the soldiers who suffered symptoms as a result of this alleged attack, such as irritation to the skin and lungs and severe muscle weakness.

In fairness, MSM outlets like the BBC and the Guardian are picking up the story, as are news outlets in other Commonwealth countries. CNN International cuts the other way, headlining the military government's denial. Nothing significant in U.S. MSM that I can find. 'Worship Naked' (love that blog name!) has more:

The tribe mentioned in this news article, the Karen [or Karenni], is no ordinary tribe... in the midst of a heavily Buddhist Burma, [it is] a Christian tribe... for generations before they were ever evangelized, the Karen passed poems amongst themselves that told of one creator God named "Y'wa" who made man and woman. The stories told of a man and a woman who lived in a garden and of a snake who gave the woman some forbidden fruit. The Karen also believe they once possessed a "Book" that told the truth about life. That book was lost, they say, but they believed that one day, a young man from across the seas would come and return it. So when Bible-bearing missionaries arrived in Burma in the 19th century, they were warmly welcomed and the message of Christ was embraced... those searching for the Jewish descendants of the Assyrian captivity who believe the Karen to be a remnant of the lost tribes of Israel. Just how did they know this story otherwise? [emphasis in original]

The implications - both secular and spiritual - are enormous.

Axis of Evil - Et Tu Canada?

This post has to be read in full to be believed. The gist: DPRK-born South Korean citizen Tongsun Park may have helped funnel money from Saddam to the UN - including Kofi Annan - via companies in which besieged Canadian premiere Paul Martin had (or may still have) an interest. This appears to be the same Tongsun Park who was involved in the 'Koreagate' lobbying scandal during the Carter administration. Does it get any richer?

Immigration and Divine Inspiration

Here in New England we have the luxury of not having to think too hard or too often about illegal immigration. Few Canadians swim the St. Lawrence seeking a better life - though that could change soon. ;) Thousands of Irish kids descend on Boston every summer. Some stay. Most leave. Many come back. Their impact goes largely unnoticed.

When I do think about the larger problem on our southern border, I'm torn by (at least) two conflicting instincts. As a conservative, I favor the rule of law. I.e., illegal immigration is just that and should be treated consistently as the crime that it is. That's tempered however, by my belief as a Christian that we are all equal in God's eyes and that our laws are never perfect and must evolve (albeit slowly and carefully.) As I noted earlier this week, "We may have a demonstrably better system [here in the U.S.] but we should not let that lead us into thinking that as individuals we are superior beings." That can be a slippery slope - one not all that different from the Terri Schiavo case, but in reverse.

With Ms. Schiavo, many conservatives (including me) thought that higher laws ought to have trumped those of men - or at least inspired change in those laws. Not putting as much stake in higher laws, liberals (and libertarians), argued ironically for rule of law - or at least law as interpreted by a few questionable judges. On immigration, it's back to the more familiar battle lines: liberals for 'compassion'; conservatives for rule of law.

I've never been a big fan of 'third way' arguments, seeing most of them as wolves in sheep's clothing - urging compromise where there ought not to be any between good and evil. But in the case of immigration, I tend to agree more with the President. On this there must be change (or at least due consideration of change) to existing law, if only for the practical reasons of enabling a fresh, principled start on applying immigration rules consistently in the future, and not crippling some regional economies. That's in addition to the humanitarian (and ultimately Christian) view that ought to come into this given that human lives are at stake.

Fellow blogger Hootsbuddy has done some scriptural research, plus some close reading of LaShawn Barber's material. He pulls that together nicely in this post. Synopsis: The President is working hard to walk a compassionate (Christian) conservative line on an issue that isn't as simple as it looks. He has the right and in fact the responsibility to push for change - in the law (and, I would add, in its consistent enforcement.) Like Nixon on China or the environment, Mr. Bush may be uniquely positioned to pull it off. Excerpt:

Bush is aware, in a way that most conservatives choose not to be, that there's a serious injustice being perpetrated under his watch against those who did something wrong to be here. The fact that they did something wrong doesn't make it just for people to oppress them. Is the Christian thing in such a position automatically to go with the letter of the law against the oppressed while imposing piddling penalties in comparison against their oppressors, or is it to figure out if there's a better way to deal with the problem by changing the law?

Isaiah 1:27-31

Zion will be redeemed with justice, her penitent ones with righteousness. But rebels and sinners will both be broken, and those who forsake the LORD will perish. "You will be ashamed because of the sacred oaks in which you have delighted; you will be disgraced because of the gardens that you have chosen. You will be like an oak with fading leaves, like a garden without water. The mighty man will become tinder and his work a spark; both will burn together, with no one to quench the fire."

Sexual Predators, Statistics and Kids

It reads like a long, wild metaphorical rant, but Dirty Harry over at Jackson's Junction has done his homework on sexual predators, kids, and recidivism - zeroing in neatly on some of the worst inconsistencies in how the left perceives risks and sets priorities. One small sample:

When liberals talk about our children and the wacky crap they want to make law, we often hear, "If it saves just one! Just one child, isn't it worth it?"... .00000005% arsenic in the water? "CHAOS! WE'RE KILLING THE CHILDREN!!!" 5% of released sexual predators destroy a child? "Eh, not so bad." ...these predators can't afford to live in the same nice neighborhoods as their defenders. These predators can't afford to live among the liberal elite oh-so concerned with the rights of monsters. No, these predators prey on the poor. They prowl trailer parks and working class neighborhoods.

It's worth reading the whole thing.

Don't Mess With Calgary Cops

Calgary Police Chief Jack Beaton poses with seized weapons. What I want to know is, where's the PR photo of Beaton with the computer equipment seized from his now-silenced critic, Jan Vahey?

UPDATE I: This seems to be about as bold as the Canadian MSM is getting on the subject.

UPDATE II: In light of some cops' dissatisfaction with the leadership of the Calgary police force, its amusing what others are willing to do to be part of it.

Off With Their Heads! - Canada Plunges Down the Rabbit Hole

After breaking the Calgary police story a week ago, Captain Ed continues to find and follow a series of through-the-looking-glass stories about Canadian publication bans that in the U.S. would incur a First Amendment perfect storm. The latest involves:

...the case of a suspected gang ringleader who violated his bail agreement. Not only did the Canadian judge [Marlene Graham] release Michael Kim, [she] refused to allow the Canadian media to report why Kim was freed from custody... It looks more like Graham herself does not want to be held accountable for her decision, which makes the question of why she released Kim even more pressing... There's something Lewis Carrollish about Canada and free speech these days.

What are even more interesting are the anecdotes from disgruntled Canadians that Cap'n Ed's posts are attracting in his comments section. They belie an image we often get down here of an orderly 'UK-West' or 'California-North'. In Calgary, 'police state' might be closer to the truth.

I'm not sure how much credence to give this article ('Calgary Strongman') about Calgary Police Chief Beaton and the seizure of computer equipment used to criticize his administration. It claims to be from last Thursday's National Post, but I can't find it on the NP's website. Either it was made up - or pulled. Chief Beaton's urging of those with complaints to bring them forward ring a little hollow in light of recent events.

Ironically, the Calgary Police are hiring; no mention of jackboots or truncheons, but perhaps this position may be more useful in fixing their PR troubles:

Communications Officer: The Communications Section of the Calgary Police Service is usually the first point of contact between the Police Service and the citizens of Calgary. Working in a team environment, Communications Officers receive general inquiry calls...

Of course one can always call or e-mail Chief Beaton directly to voice your views, as he invites: (403) 206-5900. When it suits his purposes, the Chief seems to take public input seriously, as in this citizen survey. Unfortunately, it shows general satisfaction with police services declining significantly: from 70% 'very satisfied' in 1997 to only 49% in 2003. No wonder he's closing down critical websites.

Angry in the Great White North has the original text from the closed website - the domain for which (www.code200.com) was obtained via a privacy-enhanced domain registration service in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines on December 15th, 2004. Not private enough, it seems.

UPDATE: Chilling background here on the so-called 'Anton Piller' order that's at the core of the Calgary police case. Some of the logic for them, (e.g., theft of proprietary information by disgruntled employees) actually makes sense. But when the police are both the plaintiff employer and the ones carrying out the order, something's fishy - even in a snowy land without a First Amendment.

Local Warming Crisis - Or Not

I note this single line buried under a typically hysterical NYT headline, "Study Shows Antarctic Glaciers Shrinking":

Evidence from the main Antarctic ice sheet is mixed, with some areas of the continent showing shrinkage and others showing thickening.

The results featured in the article cover glaciers only on the Antarctic Peninsula. The main Antarctic ice sheet contains hundreds of times more ice volume. Without enough data from the vast main ice sheet to establish any trend, the peninsula data means... absolutely nothing.

When 1252 Words Are Better Than a Picture

I believe it was The Anchoress who tipped me off to Sigmund, Carl & Alfred - a thoughtful, essay-oriented pseudonymous blog by a psychotherapist that hits hard on some issues I care about, as well as some I wasn't even aware that I cared about until I read about them there. This post is particularly good, even as it covers some ground already well trodden by others. One small excerpt (read the whole thing):

The Nazis attempted to hide their evil and deny it. The Islamists can't be bothered. In plain view, they proudly pronounce their aims and intent. They want to subjugate us or destroy us. Officially appointed Arab government clerics reiterate these goals in mosques and on television. School curriculum educates from an early age, the Islamic destiny, to be fulfilled by a never ending Jihad. These aren't matters of debate or issues up for discussion. They are facts. In facing these realities, it is not enough to discuss them or even understand them. They must be dealt with. In doing so, we must be prepared not only to ask the questions, but to answer them clearly and unequivocally. Do we extend equal civil rights to those who's [sic] stated aim is to destroy us? Do we respect the sanctity of a Holy Shrine if it is being used to as a military base from which to shoot and bomb? Do we target schools and hospitals used by terrorists and hiding behind children? Do we refrain from searching women, knowing that terrorists have used pregnant women to smuggle explosives?

On a completely different note, this guest piece on S,C&A also hit home. (I have a daughter about that age.) The author relates a true story of a military friend-of-a-friend:

...the decision was made to have the going away party at a topless bar... The place went wild…except for one guy. He realized that the girl [on stage] was his 16-year-old daughter... This guy wasn’t willing to accept any of the responsibility for what his daughter had done. It was the fault of the people she hung around with, or the drugs she was doing, or something in the water.

The whole piece is worth reading for anyone who thinks they know what parenting is about, or (like me), can't believe the fictions some parents talk themselves into in the name of letting their kids 'find', or 'be' themselves. And while we're on that subject... (and yes, I know this is getting to be a quirky, meandering post already)...

My wife and older daughter and I rented a little-noticed documentary from Netflix the other night that's, well... haunting... and worthwhile. "Devil's Playground" follows several Amish teenagers turned loose in the world at age 16 in a tradition known as 'Rumspringa' (essentially "running wild".) The theory is that - having been brought up strictly in the church to that point - a few years of wild drunkenness, smoking, drugs, sex and fast cars will inoculate them against the temptations of the world and hopefully cement their choice to be baptized into a life following Christ in the Amish church.

I'll give away only part of the ending by noting that fully 90% of these kids return to be baptized Amish and accept the extreme discipline of that life despite some of the wildest partying I've ever seen or heard of.

What the rest of our society misses, it seems to me, is that first 16 years. Many kids (particularly in this wacko-liberal corner of the country) are given nearly free reign from toddlerhood despite behavior that cries out for guidance and limits. My wife and I are considerably younger than the parents of most of my kids' contemporaries. Many of those older parents seem fixed in a 1960's/'70's Woodstock parenting philosophy that essentially boils down to "whatever". Fortunately, my kids seem to have already figured out that many of these kids are already on the road to being pretty messed up. I'll get off the soapbox now. Go rent the film.

Bolton Opponents Revealed

John Bolton on the UN as of 1994, according to an audio tape that Sen. Barbar Boxer (D, Calif.) triumphantly played at his confirmation hearing:

There is no such thing as the United Nations. There is an international community that can occasionally be led by the only real power left in the world — and that is the United States, when it suits our interests and when we can get others to go along.

And the problem with that would be?...

James Taranto pulls together some cutting logic about Dems' positions on the UN at the time of Gulf War I vs. Gulf War II at WSJ Best of the Web Today (definitely worth reading the whole thing):

It seems fair to conclude, then, that most liberal Democrats, like Bolton, are pro-U.N. only when it suits their purposes--and that their purposes are the opposite of Bolton's. That is, for the Democratic left, the U.N. is useful and worthy of respect only insofar as it acts as an obstacle to American leadership and an opponent of American interests.

Borders and Immigration - Ducking the Unavoidable

Regular readers will note that I've stayed largely silent on the questions of border policing and immigration (legal vs. illegal.) That's been harder to do in the last few days as bloggers I respect focus more and more attention on it. I've skimmed many more than those two sources, but still need to read more, (and more widely) to justify a longer post. My starting place is this:

• Some people go to great effort to come and stay here legally. We shouldn't obliquely punish them for their patience and respect for the law. Amnesty can have its place (on many issues, e.g., welfare, draft-dodging, bankruptcy, etc.) Done wrong or repeatedly however, it inevitably spawns cheating. People respond to incentives.
  
  
• Immigration has been the engine for this country's growth, energy and vision. Anecdotally, if I had to pick the half dozen most brilliant and hard-working individuals I've encountered across a wide range of jobs, roles and nationalities in a 25-year career, foreign-born people occupy all of the top spots. No question. And no, that doesn't include me. Stifling immigration altogether is bad for our culture and our economy.
  
  
• It's extremely easy for anti-illegal immigration logic to turn into ugly xenophobic fear of any immigration, as well as racist sentiments and violence - which is not a reason to avoid the debate. It's been too easy for those who would like to avoid the debate to smear the anti-illegal immigration defenders with such bigoted stereotypes. The concern with unintended consequences is a legitimate one (always is for a conservative!), however it cannot become the sole focus of discussion.
  
  
• Like it or not, we are at war. The initial salvo in that war was launched by foreign nationals who entered and remained in this country on fraudulent terms, in violation of existing law. Our enemies have made clear that they will make every effort to come at us again on our home turf. This should not make us paranoid. It should make us clear-eyed and vigilant.
  
  
• Massive unresponsive government bureaucracies, lousy computing, communications and database infrastructure, arcane rules on inter-agency information sharing processes, and long and poorly patrolled borders with mostly friendly (if less vigilant) neighbors have hamstrung our efforts to consistently enforce existing immigration laws - which is not a reason to avoid expending effort to do so more consistently in the future.
  
  
• We are all children of God. On this earth, borders are sadly necessary. We may have a demonstrably better system, but we should not let that lead us into thinking that as individuals we are superior beings. We are all ultimately equal in God's eyes.
  

UPDATE: Add one more insightful immigration commentator to my list above. Shoulda guessed. Victor Davis Hanson comes through with singular clarity. Excerpt:

We have given our entire souls to the god Reason, and left little else to the mystery and inexplicable of the world of faith. By believing that money and education alone can remake man, we of this therapeutic age forgot that his nature is largely fixed and hence predictable—and thus saved through law, family, religion, and community that ameliorate and tame his innate savagery. In our arrogance, we think a millionaire bin Laden or an educated Mohammed Atta is simply misguided, or has legitimate grievances, or is in need of aid and understanding...

Addiction Comes in Many Flavors

Hootsbuddy speaks truth on substance abuse, linking to a study on twins:

Like the weather, everyone has something to say [about addiction], but after a while we all come to the same conclusion: We can talk about it til the cows come home, but there really isn't a lot we can do about it. Only when the affected individual gets to that critical point - and no one knows how to make that happen - will he or she have any chance of slaying their demon.

Joe Carter at EO on blogging compulsion, (who, me?) citing a story in New Atlantis:

...for some people, blogging has become something they feel they should be doing rather than something they feel passionate about. If you’re feeling the fatigue of blogging it might be a good time to ask yourself if it is something you really want to be doing. The barriers to entry in the blogosphere are low. But getting out isn’t always so easy.

On a completely unrelated point, I had to smile at Joe's take on PBXVI in the same post:

Apparently, some people were hoping that the College of Cardinals would elect an Episcopalian lesbian rather than someone who actually believes in the tenets of Catholicism... I don’t know enough about the new Pope to form an opinion but I am impressed by one thing – he certainly ticks off the right people.

The Inexplicable Adoration of Hillary Clinton

Ooh! I'm just lovin' this sweet rant from The Anchoress on Hillary Clinton, adding weight to my only slightly tongue-in-cheek theory on the matter.

Hillary has the disingenuous lie down pat. She can look you right in the face and tell you “the fact is I’ve always been…(a Yankess fan, a praying person, a cookie-baker)” with the absolute and full expectation that you will accept that claim simply because she has said it. She has no respect for the intelligence of the voters, and sadly, too many of them, mind-numbed by lifetimes spent believing everything they’re told on television, simply nod their heads and say, “uh-huh, that’s right! She’s shooore tellin’ the truth! She shooore did move to the center, she shhoooore did say we needed to find “common ground” on abortion, and that MEANT something! Uh-huh! Uh-huh! It did!”

And there are simply some in this country who are so far gone, so reactionary and reflexive in their support of Hillary (they love her simply because the other side does not) that they would watch her eat puppy brains on the steps of Disneyworld and still say, “aw, isn’t she great? She’s such a ROLE-MODEL, such an ADVOCATE!”

And lets not forget the ultimate left-wing zinger-insight: she's a woman. (Condi Rice doesn't count, of course.) I won't give it away, but The Anchoress has managed to dredge up some ancient Hillary trivia that sheds much light on the present. Go read the whole thing.

Bolton Gets Thomased?

Clarence Thomas, that is. I'm not sure what's going on here except perhaps some liberals in Republican clothing asserting their independence to gain power in the party. (Side note: Ohio - ouch.) Or maybe Voinovich and Chafee are just covering their butts in case some really bad manners come to light. Or maybe there's a political horse trade in the works to deep-six Bolton in favor of progress on judicial nominees - could be worth it, but I doubt that's it. Whatever the cause and ultimate outcome, Bolton's opponents may have already gotten what they wanted: a nominee whose name will always be tainted in the public mind by images of hearing theatre.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin is all over this. Not pretty.

More Sanity and Nuance on Gay Marriage

I'll admit to being conflicted on this issue - one that has become increasingly polarized and strident on both sides. Thus, I've been on a quest for thoughtful writing on a subject that begs for reasoned dialogue. This short piece on Intellectual Conservative meets those criteria - standing out for standing back. The author asks some tough 'meta' questions about the ground rules (or lack thereof) for reaching social consensus. This particular bit struck me as remarkable:

My support for gay adoption and civil unions, coupled with my opposition to the National Defense of Marriage Act has not usually been enough to escape the "right-wing fascist homophobe tag." Either you support gay marriage, or you are part of an increasingly vilified sect of society clinging to an ancient belief in a deity that doesn't exist. That fact alone seems to immediately disqualify any individual from the debate. In essence, the only people the left sees as qualified to debate the issue is other secularists. And that is the essence of the gay marriage debate. Proponents essentially propose an ultimatum. You are either a supporter of gay marriage, or you are a weak-minded caveman clinging to bigotry. The people who should have spent the last four years explaining their position in a reasonable manner have instead chosen to vilify the opposition, bully their position, and shame America into supporting gay marriage.

Looking for Leverage - Benedict XVI Picks His Shots

Writing in today's Wall Street Journal (free registration), Kenneth Woodward offers wise perspective on the new pope that stands out from a sea of frantic labeling (e.g., "God's Rottweiler", "From Nazi Youth to Pope...") that passes for analysis and commentary.

...it is worth remembering that Benedict XVI was not always a conservative theologian. As an adviser to German bishops at Vatican Council II, the young Joseph Ratzinger was a university professor and progressive theologian who urged a more open and accommodating attitude toward the world. He became a conservative in reaction to the student riots in Western Europe in the late 1960s, and to the wild embrace of theological novelties that erupted after the council. If a conservative is a liberal who abhors chaos, then Benedict XVI certainly will be a doctrinally conservative pope... In his previous position, he repeatedly insisted on Christ as the one way to God and was notoriously hard on Catholic scholars who tried to find theological common ground with Hinduism in particular. He seemed unconcerned that other religions have their own understandings of Jesus, or that these understandings might provide missionaries in the field with ways to make Christianity more adaptable to local cultures... In this third and most important stage in his career, Benedict XVI might well recall the more optimistic days of Vatican Council II when the word "resourcement" was much in the Roman air. The idea was that the church could be renewed by a collective return to the sources of tradition--chiefly the Bible and patristic writings (of the early Church fathers). The hope was that in this way the church would find in its beginnings the inspiration to make itself anew... what the church needs most are Catholics who want to be Catholics, who know what that means, and who seek the grace to become true disciples of Christ. That they must do themselves. [emphasis added]

Elsewhere in the piece, Woodward quotes Cardinal Ratzinger's already-famous phrase in the plural ("the dictatorship of relativisms") - a more plausible and telling way of putting it, in my estimation. Meanwhile, even the most 'balanced' sources like the AP seem bent on setting PBXVI's agenda for him:

Benedict faces new issues: the need for dialogue with Islam, the divisions between the wealthy north and the poor south as well as problems within the church. These include the priest sex abuse scandals that have cost the church millions in settlements in the United States and elsewhere; coping with a chronic shortage of priests and nuns in the West; and halting the stream of people leaving the church.

There's no denying that these issues plague the church, (with the possible exception of 'dialogue' with a tradition that seems bent on our destruction.) What many forget though, is that the church's mission is not the same as a business. Growth is nice, but that is not the main measure of success (many will fall away.) By the same token, the church is not a democracy. Changing its principles in order to fit in better with the world may sound practical (attracting more priests and nuns, filling pews, filling church coffers), but pursuing those as goals is dangerous.

No, Woodward has it right when he brings up 'resourcement'. Our understanding of God's absolute truth may be incomplete, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. This is not a return to the Middle Ages (as some on the left would have it), but about returning to Christ himself - 'the red letter stuff', as I once put it to a spiritual mentor - what Jesus said and did on earth. That may not be fashionable, but it's the best we have to go on. I'm relieved that PBXVI seems to know that in his bones. With that as foundation, anything is possible.

UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt offers this hurricane-force take-down of the MSM on PBXVI:

The country's opinion elite has become uniformly shrill and predictable, and the left margin of the political spectrum it represents, deeply hostile to all that Roman Catholicism as understood by John Paul II and Benedict XVI represents. It is hard to sell newspapers to Roman Catholics when your contempt for its tenets and leaders drips from every page.

MSM Plays to Global Warming Fiction

I had to snicker at this colorfully illustrated piece in this week's Time for how it perfectly mirrors the fictional media dupes in Michael Crichton's 'State of Fear'. The MSM argument (such as it is) still seems to revolve entirely around the willfully ignorant koan: everybody else has agreed with everyone else agreeing with them, so therefore it must be true. E.g.:

...even though the public awareness about global warming has grown significantly... there hasn't been a lot of progress in dealing with it.

As if public 'awareness' - generated by the media itself - ought to warrant utterly radical global policy change, hubristically aimed at stopping what have been constant (often major) climate shifts throughout the planet's history in order to protect some beachfront property (developed within the last 50 years), that might be threatened 50 years from now. Maybe. The pandering to armchair, know-nothing environmentalists is pervasive and obscene.

As with its stance on other issues, the left does not allow room for reasoned objection and debate on this. Those of us who love a clean planet as much as the next guy are shouted down in the public square when we dare to say "weigh the costs, study all the evidence, and admit that models are not prescient". Complete demonization as shills for industrial interests awaits anyone who would dare object to cries of Kyoto, Kyoto, Kyoto!

Speaking of Ayn Rand - Acela Winds Down

With my mind on an Ayn Rand track this afternoon, the irony of Acela's sad, expensive demise is just too rich to ignore. (Reference: 'Atlas Shrugged')

I've taken the Acela train from Boston to New York quite frequently. It's a pleasant ride. At under $100 each way, it's relatively cheap for business. That said, I can count on one hand the number of times I've arrived on time, and the real cost of my seat is nowhere near as low as the price if full accounting were done across the vast Amtrak bureaucracy over the time it has existed. My liberal colleagues like to argue that the government should have more foresight and patience, (e.g., increasing government powers of eminent domain to straighten the rails and speed the trains.) Sometimes such foresight is exactly what needs to be taken out and shot. Ms. Rand may have missed the religion thing completely. But on this, she was correct. The trains don't run themselves when nobody's really accountable.

UPDATE: What's wrong with this picture?

Amtrak will not be able to get any of its high-speed trains up and running again until summer... The expected life of the brake discs is about 1 million miles, and the current Acela fleet has traveled about half that far... The current [Federal] budget gives Amtrak about $1.2 billion in operating subsidies and capital investment funds.

Pope Benedict XVI vs. Ayn Rand

For those not dwelling in a cave the last few hours, German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has been elected pope. [Hat tip to reader Matthew Fountain for staying alert while I had the news turned off to do other work this afternoon.] Watch how the MSM can't resist prefacing every story about this guy with 'conservative', just as they like to identify Republicans.

At 78, he's the oldest pope since 1730. Of course Reagan was the oldest President when he was elected. Experiencing history counts for something, even as it may not be an attractive to those seeking to uproot society from its moorings in the interest of 'progressivism'. Ratzinger (hereby referred to on this blog as PBXVI), was 18 when WWII ended. That's important. That makes me happy. This statement by Ratzinger from a pre-conclave mass also sounds intriguing:

"We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as definitive and has as its highest value one's own ego and one's own desires"

'Dictatorship of Relativism' is definitely a phrase we're going to be hearing again. (Does Peggy Noonan moonlight for the Vatican? It sounds like her stuff. Again, Reaganesque.) The phrase resonates on so many levels: 'dictatorship' evoking tyrannical evil in the world, as well as Satan actively directing the gradual moral decline of the world, 'relativism' evoking the church as rock in a storm - a place to tie up one's boat and seek blessed, forgiving shelter. Even the three-part phrasing, centered on the word 'of' resonates nicely with phrases like 'Axis of Evil', 'Den of Vipers', 'Pack of Wolves', etc.

The pointed identification of human ego as the opposite of of God is also brilliant, and patently true. It will be a very hard pill indeed for the decadent West to swallow. (The sneering MSM is already going at it with pieces like this - probably written weeks ago.) With this one phrase, PBXVI goes head-on with Ayn Rand and the libertarians, potentially driving even more of a wedge between social and South Park conservatives here in the U.S. As a one-time devotee of Rand's economic philosophy (a highly specific and much-needed antidote to involuntary, state-sponsored collectivism), I look forward to seeing how this plays out - even as I know who's going to win. Having completely dismissed the voluntary collectivism of believers in the body of Christ, Rand missed the most important 'third way' out of the intractable economic dilemma she was trying to resolve in her books.

UPDATE I: Shot In The Dark has more in a post that's not only funny, but informative as to PBXVI spent his war years in Germany.

UPDATE II: Hugh Hewitt gets to the nub of the "Dictatorship of Relativism" phrase's brilliance: it is impossible to answer without evasion - or referencing a non-relativist standard. Checkmate.

Terror is Terror is Terror

It's possible to disagree on nitty-gritty details in defining words like 'terrorism' and 'tyranny'; but more than a half century after Hitler and Stalin, it's hard to understand why the former is universally regarded as the personification of evil (quite true), while the latter often gets a hall pass from the MSM for having had good intentions. Play the same tape for current day dictators like Kim Jong-il and Fidel Castro, and it becomes clear that the Walter Duranty impulse lives and breathes in American journalism. The ideology of terrorists and tyrants is somehow deemed important.

So on this day - the tenth anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing - it's hard to avoid mention of the "right wing" motivations of the perpetrators of that atrocity. That's a huge distraction from the more central fact that relatives of those killed in the blast know all too well: it was an atrocity - a heinous terrorist act on American soil, made even more heinous by the fact that Americans were killing their own. The very real impact of such pointless partisan score-keeping can be to blind us to other terrorists seeking equally horrible outcomes - whatever their motivations.

Thus, even as it's long overdue in my opinion, that terrorist organizations like the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) are labeled as such (a case that Michael Crichton lays out neatly in his recent book, 'State of Fear'), it's worrisome that so-called 'right-wing' domestic terror groups are avoiding similar censure by Homeland Security. Longtime readers know that I can be as right-wing partisan as the best of them, but on this, there must be consensus. If a person or group is determined to do harm to innocents, they must be watched, and watched closely. I hope that clear, non-partisan heads in Washington can prevail on this, even as that wish sounds like an oxymoron on re-reading.

Side note: Hammering home the point that simplistic designations for the motivations of terrorist acts can be misleading are stories like this, that point out how the phone records of Terry Nichols and Timothy McVeigh tie them to individuals in the Philippines known to work with the notorious Abu Sayyaf terror group there.

God in Sports

In an age when so many sports 'heroes' are self-centered, immature, drug-addled prima donnas, it's refreshing to see someone set an entirely different example. After winning yesterday's Boston Marathon for the fourth time, (in the process becoming the race's all-time highest money-winner, men or women), Catherine Ndereba dropped to her knees - not from exhaustion, but in prayer. (The Boston Globe, in its picture section chose to describe the move as a 'lean', catching her only as she was lifting herself back up.)

Standing again, she held up her left hand for 30 seconds or so - not in a wave, but in a gesture familiar to those who've ever attended an evangelical service. Though no one was around her, she was clearly speaking - most likely reciting what commentators described as her favorite verse: Psalm 121.

She followed that up a few minutes later in this interview:

"It feels very good and I thank God for the history that I've made. I know it's not by my might or my power but by the power of the holy spirit [sic]. It's only because God was on my side. I know the power of winning comes from my God."

Well done, Catherine. Nice run yesterday.

The Continuing Bolton Kerfuffle

Mark Steyn perfectly captures my continued bemusement at the left's petty indignation about John Bolton's 'bad manners' in this hilariously sarcastic Barbara Boxer take-down in yesterday's Chicago Sun Times:

If the Senate poseurs and the media wanted to mount a trenchant critique of Bolton's geopolitical philosophy, that would be reasonable enough. But there's not even a pretense of any of that. Instead, his opponents have seized on one episode -- an intelligence analyst in a critical position with whom Bolton and others were dissatisfied -- and used it to advance the bizarre proposition that every junior official should be beyond reproach, and certainly beyond such aggressive "body language" as putting one's hands on hips. Or as Peter Beinart, editor of the New Republic, complained to the BBC the other night: Bolton was "disloyal to his subordinates"... But in the end we believe underperforming bureaucrats in key roles should be allowed to go on underperforming until retirement age. And, if you happen to show you're just the teensy-weensiest bit upset with one of them, we'll blow it up into a month of hearings on TV. So vast battalions of America's "public servants" sit around all day cross-examining each other about some guy's unacceptably aggressive body language.

Meanwhile Powerline notes more ridiculousness in making bad manners the main issue. Perhaps Ms. Boxer and her cohorts should take a look at the truly 'bad manners' that Mr. Bolton has said would be his main priorities as UN Ambassador.

Radical Feminism - Paved With Good Intentions

The spring edition of City Journal carries this thought piece on fundamental contradictions underlying the goal of complete gender equality that radical academic feminism seeks:

The intellectual cornerstone of women’s studies is “gender,” the notion that differences between men and women are not rooted in biology, as [Harvard President Lawrence] Summers had hypothesized some might be, but are cultural artifacts, inculcated by an oppressive patriarchal society. Precisely because the gender idea builds a specific (radical) political orientation into the field... women’s studies proved intellectually suspect from the start...

True justice for these radical feminists means overcoming gender and establishing an androgynous society. So when Summers asserted that something besides artificial cultural roles—something besides “gender”—might account for the distinct positions of men and women in society, he was undermining the intellectual and political foundation of the entire women’s studies establishment...

Yet even if this understanding of gender as learned behavior is right, androgyny proponents quickly run into a problem... mothering by women produces women who themselves want to be mothers. The mechanism at work may be social and psychological, rather than biological, but it’s no less real for that. How, then, do you get women to mother less and men to mother more...

Plato faced this dilemma when he drew up history’s first great plan for a perfectly just society in the Republic—a society that required, among other things, androgyny. His solution: send the members of the old, imperfect city into exile, so that the new, just city could be built from scratch. Otherwise, their recalcitrant mental habits would sabotage the creation of the new order. The fact is, attempts to force a society out of its most deeply held cultural values can be every bit as tyrannical as schemes to override our biological nature.

This has been the refrain of grand social reformers ever since - starting innocently enough: just a few broken eggs and the omelet will be delicious. Really. Any day now. But such philosophies are morally bankrupt from the outset because their logic brushes aside the God-given rights of individuals. Inevitably, the classes of people in whose name such movements are launched are precisely the ones crushed once it gets rolling. Asking ordinary women what they actually think would be anathema. After all, they've been brainwashed by the establishment and their opinions can't be trusted. For the results of previous experiments, see: this and this.

Hillary Clinton's Head Spins Around

I had to chuckle at this.

She is leading in the polls for her party's White House nod in 2008... [but] all Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton wants to talk about is her re-election bid next year. "'06, '06, '06," the New York Democrat chuckled when asked recently about her presidential ambitions. The former first lady and her top aides steadfastly maintain that her focus is on winning a second Senate term. [emphasis added].

She should know that her main rival for that, err...'jersey number' (Kim Jong-il) is making a renewed bid for the title of dark lord:

South Korea said Monday it believes a reactor at North Korea's main nuclear complex has been shut down, a possible sign the communist state could be moving to harvest more weapons-grade plutonium.

The Gradual Re-Encroachment of Eugenics

This quote from The Anchoress late last night pretty much sums it up with regards to the gradual re-emergence of eugenics in our culture, especially Europe:

Pretty staggering, isn’t it, that we now have to be reminded that “disability is a natural part of the human experience?” I think it is. Staggering, I mean, that we have to be reminded. Once upon a time, everyone understood that part of the blessing of being one of the strong ones was that you got to protect the weak.Maybe there are no more strong ones. Maybe everyone is weak. The ones with the strongest bodies might have the weakests minds and spirits. [emphasis in original]

Michael Crichton, in his recent book 'State of Fear' neatly reminds us of how recent and widespread this love affair with eugenics was, and how close at hand it has always been, given that it is simply an idea - lying only semi-dormant in the human psyche and the social conversation:

Imagine that there is a new scientific theory that warns of an impending crisis and points to a way out. The theory quickly draws support from leading scientists, politicians, and celebrities around the world. Research is funded by distinguished philanthropies, and carried out at prestiguous universities. The crisis is reported frequently in the media. The science is taught in college and high school classrooms. I don't mean global warming [the main subject of his book]. I'm talking about another theory, which rose to prominence a century ago... The theory was eugenics, and its history is so dreadful - and, to those who were caught up in it, so embarrassing - that it is now rarely discussed. But it is a story that should be well known to every citizen, so that its horrors are not repeated.

Perhaps we're not so far from the future described in the 1976 film, Logan's Run:

...it is forbidden for humans to live beyond 30 and you are given two choices, either to go through a ritual called Carousel with the promise of being "renewed" [botox? ;)], or go on the run and risk being hunted down [and killed] by an elite police force...

Unlocking Lost Gospels

Now this is interesting:

Thousands of previously illegible manuscripts containing work by some of the greats of classical literature are being read for the first time... Invisible under ordinary light, the faded ink comes clearly into view when placed under infra-red light, using techniques developed from satellite imaging... expected to include works by Ovid and Aeschylus, plus a series of Christian gospels which have been lost for up to 2,000 years. [emphasis added]

Obligatory spidey sense reference.

2nd Thessalonians 3:1-3

Finally, brothers, pray for us that the message of the Lord may spread rapidly and be honored, just as it was with you. And pray that we may be delivered from wicked and evil men, for not everyone has faith. But the Lord is faithful, and he will strengthen and protect you from the evil one.

Thoughts on NBC's 'Revelations'

I was set to write a long analytical post about NBC's new mini-series 'Revelations', but after watching the first episode, I'm not sure it warrants that.

As I noted the other day, the story's outline borrows heavily from the 1997 film 'Contact'. The tone and pacing however, could hardly be more different. Revelations is edgy and sensationalistic ('24' with scripture). By contrast, Contact took time to gradually build empathy with Jodie Foster's character, Dr. Arroway and her quasi-spiritual questioning. The three biggest impressions I'm left with after watching the first episode are:

1) Satan is too transparently satanic. The main problem with evil is that it often masquerades as good. I much prefer how Satan is depicted by Liz Hurley in 'Bedazzled', by Al Pacino in 'Devil's Advocate' or by the agents in 'The Matrix': attractive, charming, worldly, witty, seemingly reasonable and utterly logical in a legalistic sense.

2) The nun character is too loud and insistent. Sure, Jesus got angry at the money changers in the temple, and frustrated at the occasional cluelessness of the disciples, but those are the exceptional scenes that prove the rule. When I think of holy characters like Jesus, Mother Theresa, Ghandi, or Pope John Paul, I think of extreme serenity. This nun yells too much, leaving the incorrect impression that good must fight evil on its own terms.

3) Lightning as a mechanism to transmit God's message is just so Hollywood. The workings of the Holy Spirit - i.e., God's calm voice speaking within each of us is far more powerful than showing little kids getting electrocuted and thrown up into trees. It's not that I don't believe in big, cinematic gestures by the Deity (e.g., Red Sea parting, Paul on the Jerusalem road, stone at the tomb rolled back, etc.) It's just that featuring them makes God into an unsubtle, grasping creature - much narrower in his capabilities than He actually is.

As others have commented, the series is an obvious effort to cash in on the market the MSM suddenly 'discovered' with the success of The DaVinci Code and The Passion of the Christ. Despite it's failings though (and there are many), we ought to regard it as a success if even one non-believer sees the scripture tidbits flashed after each commercial and is motivated to go crack open a bible that's been gathering dust on a shelf for years. That alone would be a huge win. I trust that God is smart enough to turn this cynical human hack job to His purposes.

Side note: I couldn't help thinking that - expecially with the lighting they used, the brain-damaged kid in the bed looked a lot like Linda Blair's character in the original Exorcist. Does anyone know how the timing of the filming of that segment relates to the Terri Schiavo affair? The parallels are either eerie or deliberate. Maybe both.

Canada Shows Its True Colors

I have to snicker at the irony of this in light of American 'blue-staters' who proclaimed fervently after the election last November that they would rather move to Canada than endure the crushing of civil liberties that the President's re-election would surely bring.

The police chief of Calgary shut down a website that had been critical of him and his management team by seizing a computer from a private home -- and no one involved can speak of it, nor tell anyone what charges have been proferred [sic]... How frightening to live in a country where expressing dissatisfaction with the police, even in hyperbolic terms, could result in being publicly gagged and prosecuted in secrecy. Even more frightening is the fact that this action has the support of Calgary politicians...

It's not clear if this will make a difference, but it's heartening to think that American blogs may be having some effect on such repression at the margin.

Stories in the Works... Light Blogging Day

Blogging will be light today due to tax loose ends, client conference calls, shopping for a birthday sleepover for a bunch of 12-year-olds, and house and yard work to get ready for a pre-marathon party. Look for blog posts over the weekend on impressions of NBC's 'Revelations', (the first episode of which I watched on Tivo last night), plus other kinds of revelations emerging from Paul Volcker's second interim report on the UN Oil-For-Kickbacks-To-Tyrants scheme.

Boston Globe Circles the Circulation Drain

As I was commenting on the Boston Globe's twisted editorial slant yesterday, the New York Times Company (parent of the Globe), was conducting its call with analysts to discuss first quarter results. In a word: 'ouch'; glad I'm not a shareholder. The Times itself reports a profit that would have been a loss but for the sale of real estate. As for the Globe, industry journal 'Editor and Publisher' reports:

...the Globe's daily circ declined by 17,000 copies, or 3.7%, and Sunday decreased by 15,000 copies, or 2.1%... Executives attributed the circulation decreases in Boston and in the New York area to weather problems during Q1, changing demographics -- an influx of immigrants -- and the shunning of traditional papers by a younger generation... [warning that] the declines would continue for the second half of the year, especially as the company migrates away from bulk sales.

The Globe's less liberal rival, the Boston Herald, gleefully adds:

The Herald, meanwhile, grew more popular. "We're up 1,400 copies a day in the last six months compared to the same period a year ago,'' said Herald Publisher Patrick J. Purcell in an interview. Falling sales aren't The Globe's only problem. Advertising revenues fell 4.2 percent last quarter, including 9.3 percent in March. Times executives partly blamed the early Easter, but then conceded they had seen no corresponding pickup in April.

These stated excuses for such a precipitous decline (and in the thin margin news business, 3.7% is precipitous) can only be described as delusional:

• Weather, (Hello! It's Boston. And isn't this the paper that's fond of reminding us over and over again that global warming is happening any minute now?)
• Immigration, (that would be a new one for a paper that's silent on illegal immigration and supportive of balkanized 'whatever language you feel comfortable with' education)
• Demographics, (except that these are ongoing, long-term trends.)
• Religion, (i.e., the timing of Easter. Hey, let's blame the church - it worked last time!)
• The Economy, (a backhanded smear on a Republican President and Governor, and the excuse of last resort for any failing business.)

There's only one problem: to the extent that any of these things are even true, they affected the entire region. And yet the Herald's numbers are up. Hmm...

The Times doesn't even hint that the Globe's persistently far-left editorial policy, (e.g., this) and resulting fatigue with the paper's predictable, warmed-over, 1960s-era-liberal, Peoples' Republic of Cambridge, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry are da bomb slant could be a factor. There's no mention either of the rising popularity of blogs, (much less the role - at least on the margin - of political ones.) Nope. It was the snow. And Republicans trashing the economy. And Easter. And those pesky immigrants and young people who didn't have the common sense to look out for their own interests by voting for Kerry.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has more on the Globe's shortcomings here. The story its readers would like to hear (heartless seal hunt in Canada!) gets ink despite being, well... untrue.

Heartland of Orthodoxy - This Just In

In the minds of most of its liberal readers, this article in today's Boston Globe is meant to shock (those ignorant reactionaries out in Nebraska!), while simultaneously reassuring them that they are on the side of truth and progress. To the rest of us however, it sends precisely the opposite message. Take this stunning revelation:

...most of the 89,000 Catholics in the Lincoln [Nebraska] diocese oppose the ordination of women, marriage for priests, euthanasia, the death penalty, stem-cell research, and abortion... To leaders of the Vatican hierarchy, who regard many of the US faithful as ''cafeteria Catholics" who pick and choose doctrine, the diocese is a humming model of pulpit-to-pew conformity. Such lock-step orthodoxy is not the norm in the United States. Polls suggest most American Catholics disagree with the Vatican on several core issues.

Several core issues? How about all core issues? I continue to be amazed at how the MSM harbors this unspoken expectation that the Catholic Church ought to be a democracy, while failing to see democracy in the Middle East as a priority. I've spent time in Lincoln, Nebraska. We could do a lot worse. Come to think of it, here in Boston-Globe-on-Every-Lawn-Land we already have.

Another Reason Not to Mess With LaShawn Barber

This morning, she thoroughly eviscerates the perverse PC-liberal 'logic' behind the application of hate crime laws. Next time, I'll remember to select my ancestors more carefully. LaShawn - please don't beat me up! :)

Hillary Clinton as America's Tony Blair?

It pains me to even contemplate it, but a long history of importation of cultural and political trends from Britain, plus these remarks by Mark Steyn (in an interview conducted by Hugh Hewitt), make it hard dismiss the possibility that that's exactly where she's headed - and that she might succeed.

If the Democratic Party had been able to come up with a Tony Blair figure, who was credible on national security and foreign policy, and yet was also a great big pantywaist on all the health care and the rest of it, they could conceivably have won the election. It's their inability to produce a Tony Blair figure that's held them back... [Hillary Clinton is] basically the one woman, the one person in that party who's in a position to move to the right, or at least pretend to move to the right on issues like abortion and so forth, without offending the Democratic Party base. She's big enough to get away with it...

Rewriting History: Bolton, Kerry and KJI

From an editorial in today's Wall Street Journal (subscription required):

Mr. Bolton once uttered some pungent remarks about the totalitarian North Korean leader and the "hellish nightmare" in which his people live. And in Monday's hearing Mr. Kerry chided Mr. Bolton for speaking such truths. "We all dislike" Kim, Mr. Kerry said, but "to personally vilify him was to almost guarantee the outcome of the diplomatic effort that [Mr. Bolton] was engaged in." The Senator blamed Mr. Bolton "for the abandonment of efforts that the Clinton Administration had made that effectively froze Pyongyang's plutonium program." [emphasis added]

It still frightens me to reflect on how close we came to having such a thoughtful, nuanced and utterly delusional Commander in Chief during times like these.

Earthquakes and Volcanoes

Draw your own conclusions from this, this, this and this.
UPDATE: And this.

Jesus Through the Wrong Lens

Forgive me a short rant here, but... Why is it that between The DaVinci Code (soon to be turned into a film, directed by Ron Howard), and now this flap, there seems to be this desperate rush on to view Jesus through the lens of our sex-obsessed culture? Why are such questions even being asked? As SDA puts it: who cares? More to the point: what's to be gained?

I'm all for anything (even pop culture) that can bring people to mention His name without spluttering, blushing, or lowering their voice self-consciously. I trust that God routinely uses corrupt things for good. But the popular obsession with the "did he or didn't he?" and, "was he or wasn't he?" angles (whichever side one comes out on them - something this post is emphatically not about, so hold that comment you're about to send), seem like massive distractions from who he fundamentally was and is: God's one begotten Son, sent as the light of the world to free us from sin. I'm not sure that the questions per se are blasphemous but they miss this most important fact, and in so doing, draw our precious attention away from God, back down to where Satan wants it: the muck of sin in which we live and suffer.

UPDATE: Now he's being accused of fraud. Well, sort of... ;)

The Company They Keep - Cuba, Iran and the DPRK

As the parent of teenagers, I make it a point to keep track of who they hang out with, as it can say a lot about their priorities. When it comes to international relations, we should too. Those who like to scoff that the 'Axis of Evil' was purely an invention of the President should note that it is more extensive and more well established than that. From the KCNA (NoKo's news outlet):

Pyongyang, April 10 (KCNA) -- Jalaleddin Namini Mianji, Iranian ambassador to the DPRK, hosted a reception at Pyongyang Koryo Hotel Friday evening on the occasion of the Day of the Sun and the 12th anniversary of leader Kim Jong Il's election as chairman of the DPRK National Defence Commission.

Pyongyang, April 12 (KCNA) -- Giraldo Abreu Morales, military attache of the Cuban embassy here, hosted a reception on Monday evening to commemorate the Day of the Sun and the 12th anniversary of leader Kim Jong Il's election as chairman of the DPRK National Defense Commission.

UPDATE: I guess this should come as no surprise:

Pyongyang, April 13 (KCNA) -- A friendship gathering with members of the Syrian embassy here was held at the Kim Jong Suk Creche in Pyongyang on Tuesday on the occasion of the 49th anniversary of the independence of Syria. Present on invitation were Charge d'Affaires a.i. Muhammad Adib Alhani and staff members of the Syrian embassy. Members of the DPRK-Syria Friendship Association and an official of the creche were on hand. The participants of the gathering looked round various facilities of the creche and were deeply moved to see bright and cheerful children. Then, they talked to each other about the Korean children healthily growing under the state popular policy and the public care and the need to boost the cooperative relations between the two countries, deepening friendship.

Revelations vs. Contact

Heard an ad for this new NBC series on the car radio today. It premieres tonight. I'm skeptical of any MSM effort to capitalize on spirituality (follow the money...), but curious enough that I'll Tivo it and see for myself. Even if it's bad, most of the prime time alternatives are worse. The promotional blurb sounds like a thinly veiled re-make of Contact with a provocative biblical title:

Harvard professor Dr. Richard Massey, [is] an astrophysicist who is certain that all worldly events can be explained by Science [why caps?]... Dr. Massey is dealing with the tragic murder of his 12-year-old daughter... After a strange course of events, Massey is challenged by a nun, Sister Josepha Montafiore (Natascha McElhone, "Solaris"), who leads him on a journey through the unfamiliar world of faith. Drawn together by personal tragedy, these unlikely partners -- one who worships God and one who worships Science -- are propelled into a deepening mystery, finding evidence that the world, as predicted by The Book of Revelation, has reached The End of Days.

Josh Claybourn has this review that's not really a review - more like a quick opinion plus NBC's blurb. I doubt he had time to watch the 6-hour advance copy he received yesterday before posting last night. Not that he claims otherwise.

The journey that Jodie Foster's character takes (literally and spiritually) in the 1997 film is an excellent thought-provoking 'bridge' for die-hard secularlists due in part to Carl Sagan's science-celebrity credentials. It was one of the most successful (i.e., discussion-generating) films for a high school Sunday school group I taught last fall.

[Hat tip: Evangelical Outpost]

Beyond Outrageous - Assassination Art

It seems to bear repeating, but the First Amendment does not offer protection from the consequences of one's speech. Yelling 'fire' in a crowded theatre has been the classic example. Now this new, hip trend in 'kill-the-president' self expression takes it to a new level. Deplorable. It seems to me that the Secret Service's involvement here was extremely restrained. Next time I catch someone on the left saying that the right is "full of hate", I'll just laugh.

Scary Times - Flu, Bioterror and Pandemics

It's getting harder to ignore a growing expert consensus on the next pandemic: It will come (possibly soon.) When it does, it will happen fast, it will be global and it will be difficult to slow, much less stop. It could easily kill tens of millions of people. Residency in the first world will confer little advantage.

Stories like this, this, this and this are particularly unnerving. [Hat tip: Glenn Reynolds for two of those.] The fact that there are several plausible scenarios for source and propagation of a deadly microbe only gives this more credibility, in my estimation.

Forgive the intuitive digression, but in light of other recent events, e.g., two huge earthquakes and the eerie timing around Terri Schiavo and the Pope, such news sets my 'spidey sense' to tingling. Stay tuned. Stay alert.

UPDATE I: Not to mention this.
UPDATE II: Wilder theories, such as this and this are also interesting.
UPDATE III: As if we needed yet more reminders from the earth.

Democrats Throw Temper Tantrum

Reading Hugh Hewitt's interviews with Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice, an Ralph Neas, executive director of People for the American Way on the subject of judicial nominations, it's hard not to think back to "discussions" I used to have with my kids - when they were two.

Hewitt: Would you oppose, and urge a filibuster of Mike Luttig?
Aron: Absolutely, but you see...
Hewitt: Would you oppose Judge Mike McConnell if he were nominated and urge a filibuster?
Aron: Yes, we would.
Hewitt: Do you oppose, and urge a filibuster for John Roberts?
Aron: Yes, we would.
Hewitt: if [Miguel Estrada] was nominated to the Supreme Court, would you oppose and urge a filibuster.
Aron: Of course we would!

No! No! No! I won't do that! I don't want to! Waaahhh!

To think that they can be reasoned with is naive. It's their way or no way. Didn't they make hay out of Republicans shutting down the government over a budget impasse? Who's being extreme now? Judge for yourself: Aron interview. Neas interview.

Looking Forward to Bolton

Skimming the many stories on John Bolton's Senate confirmation hearings, (including PBS's best shot at maligning him, and juvenile name-calling by lefties), I can't help feeling a giddy sense of anticipation at the prospect of his tenure. And there will be a tenure. On North Korea, Cuba, Iran, the UN and nuclear arms proliferation, this guy is smart and calls it straight. Yes, there is an axis of evil, why do you ask? In some ways, he's refreshingly reminiscent of Reagan. Opponents are left in the untenable position of defending... North Korea, Cuba, Iran, the UN and nuclear arms proliferation.

Oh no, we can't actually do anything about those problems. Someone might get offended. Someone might get hurt. Let's study them some more and wring our hands and go to $200 lunches in Manhattan on our UN expense accounts. Free Tibet? Oh no, we didn't actually mean it... We just liked the bumper stickers.

If talking about his 'abrasive' personality (abrasive to liberals perhaps - he's music to my ears), and dredging up allegations of 'bullying' of subordinates is the best that Democrats can come up with, the Dems are just going through the motions. The game has turned to saving face with a rabid base they foolishly stoked, but that always forgives them for trying. When Committee Chairman, Lincoln Chaffee (a Republican in name only) says he's inclined to vote for Bolton, it's all over.

Virginia Senator George Allen, writing for NRO, shares my sense of possibility and inevitability:

Not since 1945 has there been a more promising time than the present to make the United Nations into the useful organization that was desired by the framers of its charter... [Bolton] stands head and shoulders above nearly all living Americans in his grasp of law, international relations, and national security. Bolton's knowledge of the United Nations system is encyclopedic. Those who attack his nomination by selectively citing his past remarks about that troubled organization are overwhelmed by evidence confirming his mastery of diplomacy and U.N. affairs.

Global Warming Indoctrination on Campus

When did our institutions of higher learning start reveling so openly in their self-assured closed-mindedness - particularly those billing themselves as liberal arts, (in the old meaning of that term)?

It's getting hot in here - on the planet, that is. And anyone who doesn't believe global warming is a serious problem might just as well argue that Earth ends at the horizon line. That's the message from a group of students at Vermont's Middlebury College, who set up the first annual Flat Earth Award during their recent winter-term class on climate change and activism.

I'm currently reading Michael Crichton's 'State of Fear' - a work of fiction that's nonetheless exhaustively researched and footnoted with real studies. One of his more provocative points is not about global warming per se, but about how human beings are prone to intellectual fads and manias. In an appendix, Crichton compares the 'consensus' on global warming to the consensus on eugenics in the '20's and '30's - fuzzy-headed, politically motivated, hubristic and ultimately, dangerous.

The Eloi Roll Over - Naivete in the Netherlands

I'm a little late on this, but the story bears amplification. An accused terrorist in possession of just about every frightening thing one could imagine to plan and carry out an attack is let go in Holland. When will Europe learn the lessons that H.G. Wells predicted humanity would confront?

[Hat tip: NRO's Corner]

Betraying Their Brothers - Korea is Not Germany

Mick Hartley pretty much sums it up on South Korean indifference to North Korean suffering.

Philosophical Deconstruction

Pardon the digression from current events, but I have this thing for densely reasoned philosophical musings. I'll share two recent ones I liked that others may enjoy:

1) Roger Kimball at Armavirumque (New Criterion), this morning:

There is a certain type of academic today who loves quoting Montaigne's essay "Of Cannibals" in order to demonstrate how liberated he is (and how liberated you should be) from the narrow, bourgeois conventions of your society. After all, even cannibals have feelings, and there is a sense, Montaigne tweaks us by observing, in which we "surpass them in every kind of barbarity."

2) 'Prosthesis' on norms (moral and otherwise), yesterday:

...the norm for engineering knowledge may be different than the norm for propositional knowledge. Similarly, I would suggest that there are various types of knowledge, each with different standards of normativity. Moral knowledge should be loving, aesthetic knowledge should be harmonious, economic knowledge should be stewardly.

We return you to our regular programming.

West Virginia Makes English its Official Language

The New York Times is already spinning this story as one of legislators being duped into making a horrendous anti-progressive mistake.

Two days after the end of the legislative session, state lawmakers are discovering something few were aware of: They voted to make English the official language of West Virginia... Efforts to make English the state's official language have been introduced annually since the late 1990s. A group called U.S. English has championed the cause. "I think it's wrong that's something like that was snuck into that bill in the last minute," said House Judiciary Chairman Jon Amores, who helped kill an earlier proposal to forbid any state or local agency from having to print documents in any language but English... [the WV ACLU] said English-only laws are based on the false premise that immigrants will not learn English without government coercion. "...English-only laws do nothing constructive to increase English proficiency. They simply discriminate and punish those who have not yet learned English."

Like a thousand other things, (e.g., welfare), the left confuses incentives and basic standards with 'coercion'. From the standpoint of legislative process, the passage of this bill does sound a little sneaky, but that's politics. Both sides do it. Get over it. Read the whole bill next time.

Having passed however, I can't wait to hear the Tower-of-Babel defenders make a positive case for repealing what ought to be common sense. We will not survive long as a nation without a shared language with which to communicate. I'm sure it won't be long before words like "bigot" and "xenophobe" and "racist" are slung around in efforts to conflate this with some darker effort to roll back the mutual tolerance that any enlightened civil society requires. [UPDATE: That didn't take long, did it?]

Hearing stories from my European immigrant in-laws about having to learn English from scratch on their arrival, I have little sympathy for those who seek to set us up for further misunderstanding and Balkanization. My mother-in-law now reads at least five papers each morning - in English - on the web. Despite disagreeing on just about everything else politically, her attitude on this issue can be summed up as: "what's the big deal?"

I find it ironic that West Virginia is taking the lead on this. 'Progressives' will no doubt use that to imply that this is a step backwards. (Those hillbillies!). My question: why haven't states with some of our most elite institutions of higher learning taken the lead on defending the language?

A Democratic Voice of Sanity

Dan Gerstein, a consultant and former communications director and senior strategist for Joe Lieberman's presidential campaign urges Democrats to return to their senses in an editorial in today's Wall Street Journal, (subscription required.) Gotta love it in light of this post of mine from earlier this morning.

Democratic elites have convinced themselves that they are taking a stand against cultural tyranny. That's how some women have rationalized their indifference to the misogyny of several hip-hop artists. But the reality is that it is those who cry "Censorship!" the loudest who are the ones trying to stifle speech and force their moral world-view on others. That may seem counterintuitive, but think about it. What is at issue is not the right to express oneself politically or artistically, or to consume controversial works in one's own home. It's the cultural environment we all share, what gets said and done in the public square for all to hear and see, and whether that common space should be governed by some social (not legal) norms and standards. How could that not be an appropriate subject for public debate in a democracy, particularly one as committed to free speech as ours?... But that is not a discussion the entertainment industry or its Democratic defenders want to have.

This other editorial by Mr. Gerstein from back in January (also in the WSJ) is equally amusing to those of us on the right who can say "we told you so", and "what else is new?"

When John Kerry ripped defeat from the jaws of victory last November... a few of us Democratic outliers took some solace in thinking that his campaign's dismal performance might actually force the party to own up to its mortal electoral weaknesses. Turns out we grossly underestimated the national Democrats' capacity for self-delusion and self-defeat.

UPDATE: Professor Bainbridge zings another part of Gerstein's Monday editorial that I blew right by.

Gerstein: [Democrats have] a profound aversion to making moral judgments. And that's the nub of the values problem for Democrats today. We don't hesitate to judge people's beliefs, but we blanch at judging their behavior. That leaves us silent on big moral issues at a time of great moral uncertainty, and leaves the impression that we are the party of "anything goes."

Bainbridge: It seems to me that liberals in fact not only "don't hesitate to judge people's beliefs," but they also don't "blanch at judging [certain people's] behavior." In other words, the Democrats have become "the party of 'anything goes'" precisely because they are ready to judge anybody who thinks somethings should remain out of bounds.

NoKo - A Real Military-Industrial Complex

North Korea's official mouthpiece, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported today that its military spending will increase...

...with a view to bolstering the People's Army, developing the defense industry and implementing to the letter the (Korean Workers) Party's policy of placing all the people under arms and turning the whole country into a fortress... The U.S. imperialists were so base as to suspend even the supply of heavy fuel oil to our country last year, though they were committed to it as compensation. [emphasis added]

Compensation? So let me get this straight: every citizen is to be armed, yet providing aide to "civilians" is something that some on the left believe can be separated from support of their hostile military ambitions towards us? Didn't we try this already in Iraq with Oil-For-Food?

Blogging Order Out of Chaos

LaShawn Barber is once again taking leadership on blog etiquette with this post. (On reading it, I realize I'm probably guilty of several of these sins in my early, clueless weeks. I hope that she'll forgive me!) Unwritten rules are always treacherous. LaShawn has done the blogosphere a service by taking an honest shot at writing some of them down. Dare I track back to her? OK, this time...

Another thought: this kind of self-policing will help damp the objections of those arguing for regulation of blogs - a topic I discussed in my last post.

Back to Basics: Blogging and the FEC

Last week I noted how surprisingly sensible some liberals like Atrios are sounding on the danger and stupidity of Federal Election Commission proposals to regulate blogging, taking issue with others like Rick Hasen at Election Law who favor disclosure regulations. (Meanwhile, Canada has provided a shocking example of how quickly good intentions can run amok.) Atrios writes:

What amazes me about all of this talk about the FEC and bloggers is that seemingly sensible people think it's important to place disclosure requirements on bloggers which apply to no one else in the universe.

My post drew a comment from Jeremy Thompson over at Loyal Opposition inviting a reply: "I'd like to hear what you think, as I am working up a my own response for the F.E.C. public comment period. I'd appreciate a conservative viewpoint."

Well, if I'm the best liberals can do for a conservative viewpoint, they're in more trouble than I thought. ;) But in case anyone's interested, here goes:

"Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..."

The debate should not be about extending McCain-Feingold to blogs. It should be about whether 'campaign' finance 'reform' (CFR) was a valid idea in the first place, and whether it will stand up to Constitutional challenge. (Side note: liberals should not be deceived by the fact that "Republican" Senator John McCain sponsored this legislation. He stands as firmly for conservative principles as Zell Miller stands for liberal ones.)

There is simply no language in the First Amendment that justifies exceptions in order to achieve some hazy notion of a fair result. "Make no law" means... "make no law". "Speech or... the press", means... "speech or... the press". The founders (not to mention Justice Louis Brandeis) recognized that more speech was the best, if not perfect remedy for 'objectionable' speech - whatever that means. The idea that 'corporate interests' somehow change the equation is misguided. Business interests - and the concentrated wealth that goes with them - are nothing new. Had the founders thought them worthy of special restrictions on free speech, they would have said so.

Those in favor of CFR seem to believe, by contrast, that the world is fundamentally different today, and that there is a perfect remedy out there, if only smart and well-meaning policy-makers would work harder to come up with it. There isn't. They should stop looking. And even if there were in theory, it would be so utterly burdensome, complex, and rigid as to create a panoply of perverse and unforeseen consequences far worse than whatever they set out to 'cure'. The current flap over blogging is just the most obvious example of that. There will be others.

Opening the door to government involvement in regulating speech in any way whatsoever is extremely risky. The founders knew this because they recognized that the nature of man is unchanging - in both positive and negative senses. Negative in that public debate will always involve yelling and screaming and lying and cheating and otherwise scrabbling for advantage. Positive in that: 1) people are not stupid, and 2) injustices are temporary unless locked in by government fiat. Human nature may not be changing, but human innovation offers a font of endless change. Because of it, the means to correct any injustices will arise in unexpected forms and unexpected places - including those that elites thought so disenfranchised as to be incapable of standing up for themselves and their points of view. (At last count, there were over eight million blogs out there. Tell me that isn't democratic and empowering.)

In the first category, reputation is the main corrective. An uncorroborated anonymous source is less credible than a corroborated one or a pseudonymous one with an established reputation. A pseudonymous source (e.g., this blog, or an unsigned editorial) is less credible than one bearing a real-world identity. And real-world identities (individual or corporate) are worth more when they are better known. Readers know this and make judgments accordingly. The writer (paid or not) selects a point along this continuum and lives with the consequences in terms of credibility, readership and influence. The Martinez-Schiavo is merely the most recent example that proves this out. Bloggers and other media with reputations for sanity and fairness developed through toil and over time run a massive risk to themselves and their brand by taking money and not disclosing it. But it is their risk to take.

Anyone who smells an unsavory agenda is free to call it out by starting their own blog, investigating the money trails, and bringing down a blogging (or MSM) giant. Many have already - on both ends of the political spectrum. That alone should be proof that government involvement isn't necessary. Those bloggers and media outlets unwilling to run such catastrophic risk will voluntarily disclose their means of support. (For the record, I derive no compensation of any kind from any person or entity even remotely related to the subjects covered by blog... though any offers would be graciously considered!)

In the second category, blogging itself is the wonder solution of the moment to the 'problem' of concentrated corporate control of media that the left has long railed against. It's just that the effect - on balance - has not been what they'd hoped for. I suspect that the main reason some liberals are now calling for an extension of CFR legislation to blogs is because they don't like the shape of recent 'victories' over corporate media. I.e., sympathetic voices like Dan Rather were brought down hard by wide-open speech, while new conservative voices have surged forward.

That said, it is sometimes worth it as a society to incur the huge risk of government involvement in speech. Two centuries of legal precedent have established strong if not universal consensus on the need to incur that risk where general public safety and the basic pillars of civic order are at stake, e.g., pharmaceuticals, financial securities, threat or incitement to commit violence, outright theft of someone else's intellectual property, etc. Even in those cases however, it's worth noting that the exceptions are hardly universal: medical foods, fair use, etc.

But even more fundamentally, the very idea of campaign finance reform seems to rest on an arrogant notion that ordinary people need to be protected from their own lack of discernment by a more thoughtful, benevolent elite. The sting of the last election seems to have led some on the left to conclude that because the result was 'wrong' in their view (i.e., against 'common sense', principles of 'social justice', what everyone they knew was saying, what the MSM had supposed, or what biased exit polls had surmised), that it was somehow undemocratic. It was not. Get over it. Democracy is inherently messy. As Churchill noted, the 'neater', more centralized, 'rational' alternatives have been tried and found wanting (see Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Kim Jong-il, Fidel Castro, etc.).

It is elitist condescension that lost the last election for John Kerry. It is elitist condescension - and not any lack of wisdom on the part of the American people - that makes the liberal position on CFR utterly untenable. Never mind blogs. McCain-Feingold itself should be relegated to the ash heap of history - alongside other attempts at 'pruning' the First Amendment.

UPDATE I: Hammering home the point is sore loser John Kerry himself...

UPDATE II: ...and a former aide to Democrat Joe Lieberman.

Common Sense on (but not in) North Korea

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian Affairs Christopher Hill in an interview Monday:

We are not going to make concessions for the purpose of bringing them back to the talks... It is a shame that so much of our diplomatic efforts are engaged in an extremely underdeveloped country that is not producing food for its people, but which seems to be in the production of extremely dangerous weapons... we have a regime in North Korea that has trouble in figuring out on how to draw the line and has been involved in all sorts of illicit exports. I believe that proliferation is a reason to be concerned... we have a North Korean regime that has difficulties at times identifying their own interests and they have difficulties at times charting their course.

I.e., we're not going to pay off someone who's tyrannical and heavily armed because we don't want to promote those things, (Pakistan and Saudi Arabia notwithstanding.) And rewarding someone who is both irrational and a sworn enemy of the United States would make us irrational. If there were face to be saved (as some have argued), that time is long past.

A (Very Short) Break From Blogging

It's an absolutely perfect day here in New England. I startled several groups of deer on my dawn run in the woods. Ah, Springtime!... long in coming, but so welcome when it does. My day is chock-full, so blogging will have to take a back seat. Thanks for stopping by. Have a look in the archives and let me know your favorite(s). More blogging tomorrow.

Proverbs 20:3,9

It is to a man's honor to avoid strife, but every fool is quick to quarrel...
Who can say, "I have kept my heart pure; I am clean and without sin?"

Anchoress Has Moved

Nice new look. Given Blogger frustrations, I may be joining her soon. Check it out.

The Horror, The Horror - On Down the Schiavo Slope

Well that didn't take long. Even before Terri had died, the limits of death culture outrageousness were already being pushed just a little further. Or maybe a lot further. Incredible.

...an 81-year-old widow, denied nourishment and fluids for nearly two weeks, is clinging to life in a hospice in LaGrange, Ga., while her immediate family fights desperately to save her life before she dies of starvation and dehydration. Mae Magouirk was neither terminally ill, comatose nor in a "vegetative state,"... [But at her granddaughter's request], she has been kept sedated with morphine and ativan, a powerful tranquillizer...

Ativan is also an anti-anxiety medication with anti-nausea properties. (I've become familiar with it while my brother has been on chemo.) Yeah, I'd be anxious too if I were fully conscious and my granddaughter were trying to dehydrate me to death against my express written wishes. Shoot her up. Get her out of the way. Let's get on with it.

The dehydration is being done in defiance of Magouirk's specific wishes, which she set down in a "living will," and without agreement of her closest living next-of-kin, two siblings and a nephew...

Each little step away from life can seem so practical. Who are we do judge? It's a domestic dispute. Stay away. We know how those go; it's the outsiders who get hurt. Avert your eyes. Mind your own business. Respect their privacy. She's old and sick. Let it go. Hogwash! (And several other colorful epithets that I refuse to print.) We are halfway down a slide into darkness that some don't want to acknowledge we are on - unable now, it seems, to stop the momentum even if we wanted to.

One evening coming in with a candle I was startled to hear him say a little tremulously, "I am lying here in the dark waiting for death." The light was within a foot of his eyes. I forced myself to murmur, "Oh, nonsense!" and stood over him as if transfixed. Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror - of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision--he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath: "The horror! The horror!"

More analysis and outrage at Wizbang. [Hat tip: Anchoress]

UPDATE I: Michelle Malkin has more on a country just a little ahead of us in cultivating a culture of death: Belgium, the country that served as a Nazi speed bump. Shouldn't they know better?

UPDATE II: This apparently happy development for MaeMagouirk doesn't do much to convince me that this won't happen again to someone else. There are so many caregivers out there whom we rarely hear about who sacrifice their lives to care for an elderly relative out of pure love. My aunt and uncle are two of them - ironically also in Georgia. They are going 24/7 right now caring for my 97-year-old grandfather after he's taken a turn for the worse the last few days. Please keep them in your prayers.

Adaptive Conservatives, Liberal Clones

David Brooks' piece in Tuesday's NYT is worth reading as much for what it says about how to sustain a political movement - any political movement - as for its analysis of liberalism's failure to properly diagnose their own ills. He describes a kind of continuous, messy, resilient adaptation - rooted in deep, rich philosophical soil - that's propelled the conservative movement from the fringes to the mainstream over fifty years:

Conservatives have thrived because they are split into feuding factions that squabble incessantly. As these factions have multiplied, more people have come to call themselves conservatives because they've found one faction to agree with... Moreover, it's not only feuding that has been the key to conservative success - it's also what the feuding's about. When modern conservatism became aware of itself, conservatives were so far out of power it wasn't even worth thinking about policy prescriptions. Conservatives fell into the habit of being acutely conscious of their intellectual forebears and had big debates about public philosophy. That turned out to be important: nobody joins a movement because of admiration for its entitlement reform plan. People join up because they think that movement's views about human nature and society are true. Liberals have not had a comparable public philosophy debate. A year ago I called the head of a prominent liberal think tank to ask him who his favorite philosopher was. If I'd asked about health care, he could have given me four hours of brilliant conversation, but on this subject he stumbled and said he'd call me back. He never did.

I suspect that the blogosphere only accelerates this process. (No, we're not all working for Karl Rove... though if he's hiring, I'm available.) By contrast modern liberalism is brittle - almost as brittle as Communism. A single set of ideas repeated over and over doesn't lend itself well to survival in a rapidly changing world where political philosophies are in constant competition. Brooks' piece is driving lefties crazy, though on one issue they may have a point. 'Meat-Eating Leftist' writes:

We have always been a country on the conservative side. We had some moments where it seemed that reason and progress [ahem!] would win out: the 1930s and the 1960s. For the most part though, conservatism in this country has always been the norm. Take a drive from NYC to California sometime through the middle of this country. What you'll notice is that there are a lot more of them than there are of us. So conservatism has always had a ready and willing audience.

The 30's and the 60's... ouch. But even if we accept this siege mentality, it's worth asking 'why?' (Something MEL doesn't really do.) Why have we 'always been' a conservative country? Why have we also been the most successful and free country in the history of the planet? Could it be that the founding fathers were correct in expounding what were then quite radical ideas? Nah!

The Siren Song of Compromise: Steyn on JPII

Like a laser-guided missile, Mark Steyn hones in on a fundamental question I've blogged about recently, (e.g., here, and here)... and blows to pieces the heart of the secularist argument. Readers should take it as a given that whenever I mention Steyn, the whole post is worth reading. (The Telegraph requires registration, but it's free.) Some highlights:

The root of the Pope's thinking - that there are eternal truths no one can change even if one wanted to - is completely incomprehensible to the progressivist mindset. There are no absolute truths, everything's in play, and by "consensus" all we're really arguing is the rate of concession to the inevitable... it's all gonna happen anyway, man, so why be the last squaresville daddy-o on the block? We live in a present-tense culture where novelty is its own virtue... when you seek to find consensus between truth and lies you tarnish [the] splendour [of truth]... It requires tremendous will to cling to the splendour of truth when the default mode of the era is to blur and evade... The question now is whether His Holiness was as right about us as he was about the Communists… John Paul II championed the "splendour of truth" not because he was rigid and inflexible, but because he understood the alternative was a dead end in every sense.

Anonymous Blogging

Or in almost all cases pseudonymous. I.e., cloaked but consistent. Boing Boing comments on EFF guidelines on the subject. Worth reading for this blogger - as I'm sure it will be for some others. A truly anonymous blog is difficult to imagine, (i.e., one with no verifiable consistency of authorship or blog name.) Sort of like Usenet. And anonymous comments.

Hypocrisy, Thy Name is Fidel

In an audaciously cynical and calculating five hour speech yesterday, Fidel Castro opined that what he and the Pope stood for were practically the same thing, while urging Cubans to respect all religious - and nonreligious - beliefs. He predictably criticized President Bush on all of the usual issues, while downplaying the Pope's role in bringing down Communism - questioning in effect, whether Communism (more fashionably referred to now as 'Marxism'), was really 'down' at all.

Where to start?

First, I'm struck by how deep, eternal truths can be conveyed with an economy of words, (or in the Pope's last days, no words at all - just moments and gestures.) Castro and other tyrrants, by contrast, regularly take hours to make their 'arguments'. Kim Il-Song was famous for such lectures to audiences held captive by fear. They are self-centered and insecure by definition. (Imagine anyone sitting still that long in a free society.) The Pope was the opposite of those things.

Second, it's a hallmark of clever falsehood (dare I say 'Satan'?), to mimic truth as closely as possible, co-opting superficially attractive aspects of it in order to implant a deeper lie. The Pope may have used his meeting with Castro to enable God to work His purposes on the people of Cuba. It was never an endorsement of the repressive policies (and predictably horrendous outcomes) of that regime - amply catalogued over at Babalu Blog, e.g. in this post, or this one.

Finally, "Respecting all beliefs" is one of the slipperiest of those canards. "Hey, that sounds pretty reasonable... sort of like the U.S. Constitution... this guy can't be all bad." Tell that to the jailed librarians and other prisoners of conscience in Cuba, or to the ordinary citizens chained to a bureaucratic state system that doesn't care a whit about them when the grand sterile vision is at stake. Anne Applebaum gets at this nicely in her piece in Wednesday's Washington Post:

Marxism, as it was practiced in Eastern Europe, was a cult of progress. We are destroying the past in order to build the future, the communist leaders explained: We are razing the buildings, eradicating the traditions and collectivizing the land to make a new kind of society and to shape a new kind of citizen. But when the pope came to Poland, he talked not just of God but also of history... John Paul's particular way of expressing his faith -- publicly, openly, and with many cultural and historical references -- was explosive in countries whose regimes tried to control both culture and history, along with everything else... communist regimes achieved their greatest successes when they were able to atomize people, to keep them apart and keep them afraid. But when the pope first visited Poland in 1979, he was greeted [by]... an endless crowd, "three kilometers in every direction."

Cuban, North Korean and other repressed people should be so lucky.

UPDATE I: Check out this righteous, sad, funny post from Babalu: "Satan visits church". Parting thought for fidel, (I like the way Babalu eschews capitalizing his name), from James 2:19 - "You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that - and shudder."

UPDATE II: Welcome Babalu readers! (Thanks for the link, Val.)

UPDATE III: I hesitate to reprint them, but fidel's words do more to condemn him than any spin I could possibly put on them. Sometimes it's easier to recognize evil when it's lashing out in full fury: "Now they have gone to cry before the cadaver of John Paul II, who so opposed the war, who so opposed the Imperialist order, who so often condemned consumerism and this brutal war in Iraq." Disgusting. But unfortunately familiar enough to some ears to sound reasonable. Maybe that's because, without attribution, the quote would seem equally plausible coming from the MSM, the Democratic Underground, or certain members of Congress.

UPDATE IV: Jesse is headed to Havana. Figures.

Acga or Oswald - Intrigue Only Builds With Time

The Daily Standard carries this piece on the lack of investigation into the attempt on the Pope's life in 1981, going into more depth on the history of it than my compilation of current news last Friday.

...the elite media in this country never wanted to investigate the threads of evidence pointing to Bulgarian, and thus Soviet, involvement. What is surprising, however, is that in one of the greatest U.S. intelligence failures of all-time, neither did the CIA... it was not the elite U.S. media that would break news of the Bulgarian connection; it was Reader's Digest... The idea of a state-sponsored terrorist attack, especially ordered by the Soviet Union, went against the agency's prevailing paradigm for understanding terrorist actions.

[Hat tip: Big Trunk at Powerline]

The Pope at Blonie Field

In this beautiful piece, Peggy Noonan highlights the importance of one especially pivotal week, (and one moment within that week) in June, 1979 when the Pope re-visited his homeland. The image is of an unstoppable, yet utterly peaceful force, embodied in one man. The force of his presence, symbolism and words seem - in hindsight at least - inevitable, even as evidence of earthly repression must have made some hesitate in fear. This excerpt from the Pope's speech struck me as especially timeless:

Is it possible to dismiss Christ and everything which he brought into the annals of the human being? Of course it is possible. The human being is free. The human being can say to God, "No." The human being can say to Christ, "No." But the critical question is: Should he? And in the name of what "should" he? With what argument, what reasoning, what value held by the will or the heart does one bring oneself, one's loved ones, one's countrymen and nation to reject, to say "no" to Him with whom we have all lived for one thousand years? He who formed the basis of our identity and has Himself remained its basis ever since...

UPDATE: Apparently the Pope's funeral was broadcast onto huge videoscreens in Poland at this same location. Powerful. Rest well, padre.

Technical Difficulties

I'm a writer, not a coder, so it's mystifying me why trackback disappeared some time in the last month and has taken me half a dozen tries to re-install this afternoon. It seems stable now, but any input on this glitch is appreciated - the blog is due for a cosmetic overhaul... any day now.
UPDATE: It's gone again. Grr... Migrating elsewhere is starting to look better and better.

Now He Tells Us - Kofi on UN Human Rights Commission

In a statement of the stunningly obvious by the utterly culpable, Kofi Annan just delivered a speech to the annual meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva:

Unless we re-make our human rights machinery, we may be unable to renew public confidence in the United Nations itself... We have reached a point at which the commission's declining credibility has cast a shadow on the reputation of the United Nations system... and where piecemeal reforms will not be enough...

D'oh! If only we'd been told earlier... Thank you, Kofi. The Reuters feed goes on to note that:

...many current members, including Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Zimbabwe, are themselves accused of widespread abuse.

Mais, non! How did this happen? We didn't know! One other thing that gets me is how cranks (on both left and libertarian right) can take self-righteous pot-shots at the late Pope for failing to completely reform abuses in a decentralized (yes, decentralized) organization like the church - stemming from a broad moral decay that he'd consistently preached against - and yet not hold to account the Secretary General for abuses in which he was a direct and active participant.

The Schiavo-Talking Points-Martinez Memo

I've stayed silent on this story because a) it seemed like a lot of heat for very little light (especially while Terri lay dying), and b) others were investigating and covering it - from both sides - more thoroughly than I could ever have the patience for. This morning, patience has been rewarded, as the memo's author steps from the shadows. And he is: freshman Senator Mel Martinez (R). Yes, 'R'. Let it not be said that this blog doesn't share embarrassing news when it emerges. As usual, the ultra-diligent, early-rising Michelle Malkin has this comprehensive post on how bloggers, the MSM, and some particularly rude commenters handled the story from its inception. Malkin:

Giddy e-mailers are demanding that conservative bloggers, including myself, "retract" and "correct" "right-wing lies" about the Schiavo memo... many on the Right jumped to conclusions that the memo was "fake" or a "dirty trick." I concur that those who made such claims should issue clear retractions and corrections. And I urge those bloggers and pundits to do so. But contrary to what the left-wing gloaters who have not bothered to follow the story until last night are writing, I have never made such claims... The search for answers can be messy. Bloggers were at both their best and worst in this episode. But it was the MSM that failed to play it straight in the first place.

UPDATE I: I've always been puzzled about why this was such a big deal. The political points to be won or lost were fairly obvious early-on (e.g., as outlined in this editorial by Peggy Noonan on March 18th). Yes, that sounds crass, but I take as a given that everything is political. What separates the crassly political from the merely political is the heartfelt original motivations of individuals - depths we will never plumb completely on this earth. What irks many of us on the right is an assumption that our motives in focusing on Terri are purely political. At the margins, they may be. In the main, they are not. My left-leaning colleagues will have to trust me on this.

March 18th was the day that Terri's feeding tube was pulled. It was also the first day that the 'talking points', (aka, Martinez) memo was reported. And, if it's possible to remember or even imagine now - before it was widely clear that Republicans would get involved in any significant way. Did Noonan and Martinez collaborate in some Great Right Wing Conspiracy? It's possible, but ultimately irrelevant. People talk to each other. People read things. And as far as I know, no crime was committed here other than the moral crime at the center of it - Terri's killing - and the 'crime' of political opportunism - an issue of decorum (always a moving target), with plenty of blame to spread around depending on one's perspective. (See: Jackson, Jesse)

Again, the points were obvious - out there in the ether, waiting for a rallying cry. As the blogosphere has amply demonstrated these past few years, such rallying cries can sometimes simply emerge: multiple actors play their parts in developing an idea and taking the lead at various times. Does it matter who pointed them out? Not really. The anonymity and the subsequent lies are problematic but don't bear on the content of the memo. Certainly it would be more damning if the memo were traced to Congressional leadership. But it hasn't been. They've got enough troubles already. A junior Senator miscalculated. We'll see what price he pays (or what benefit he reaps). Either way, Terri is still dead and we're all implicated.

UPDATE II: Michelle Malkin has more on the possible GOP cover-up angle. Again, let it not be said that blogs are a partisan swamp. Ribbit! :)

Right and Left Unite - For a Moment

To my surprise, I found myself agreeing with virtually everything in this post from Atrios on proposed FEC disclosure requirements on bloggers - and absolutely nothing else on his blog - which at this late hour seemed kind of amusing and warped and sad.

What Theocracy? Part II - Truth & Freedom

This tight philosophical piece by National Review Editor Rich Lowry nails two points I've been wrestling with recently, including in this post ('What Theocracy?'): 1) Why is America not even close to being a 'theocracy'? and 2) Why is freedom essential to faith (and vice versa)?

Many of the great leaps of freedom in the West have come at the instigation of Christian believers. Their faith lends them an unbending belief in human dignity and an audacious hope in success against all odds that sweep aside excuses for inaction... Pope John Paul believed in the connection between truth and freedom. One school of thought — generally, liberal secularist — has held that truth is a threat to freedom: If there is only one true way, it will inevitably squash freedom. Another school of thought — associated with religious reactionaries — believes that freedom represents a threat to truth because it will lead to moral relativism. The pope rejected both arguments. The secularist view misses that freedom is grounded in truths, in the God-given dignity of man as a rational creature and in our fundamental equality... The reactionary view is mistaken too, because freedom, properly ordered, is not a threat to truth. Freedom shouldn't be understood as moral anarchy, which makes freedom impossible. Truth narrows our choices.

[A back-handed hat tip - or other unmentionable gesture - to Pandagon, whose casual, sneering swipe tipped me off to this.]

Worshiping the Same God - The Jews' Pope

This story by Anchoress, and the longer article she references, are deeply moving: the Pianist, Diary of Ann Frank and Schindler's List rolled into one, with the late Pope (and the Holy Spirit) as non-fictional protagonists. This piece in Front Page magazine relates another telling, healing anecdote on the same theme that I posted on a few days ago.

On his visit to Jerusalem's Western Wall the Pope, as tradition dictates, placed a note between the centuries old stones of the Wall. The text of the note was later made public. This is what he wrote, please note that it was addressed to "God."

God of our fathers, you chose Abraham and his descendants to bring your name to the nations: We are deeply saddened by the behavior of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer, and asking your forgiveness, we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant.

Those few words explain it all.

This piece in the Christian Science Monitor is also interesting for what it says about healing between the Roman Catholic Church and U.S. leaders.

Never before has an American president attended a papal funeral, a signal of how much relations between the United States and the Vatican have evolved since Karol Wojtyla became Pope John Paul II in 1978... the confluence of interests between a born-again Protestant US president and the Roman Catholic Church over central social issues - abortion, gay marriage, stem-cell research, euthanasia, and judicial nominations - has left a mark on American politics that is likely to continue under the next pope... the late John Paul II was able to rise above street-level politics - even as he tackled politically freighted issues head on - and, ironically, it was his above-politics image that made him attractive to US presidents of all political stripes. In 1979, Jimmy Carter became the first (and, to date, only) US president to greet a pope at the White House. President Reagan met with the Pope four times, the first President Bush met him twice, and President Clinton saw him four times.

The UN's Malicious Incompetence

Kenneth Cain co-authored a book last year with two former UN colleagues that's at once funny, poignant and devastating in its firsthand, front-line glimpses into UN 'peacekeeping' operations. The bizarre title - "Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures: A True Story From Hell on Earth" - may have kept some from reading it, (or simply confused them.) That's too bad; it's a gripping, informative and often haunting read. (My liberal wife liked it too.) The book's harsh conclusions about the UN carry all that much more weight given the self-described liberal leanings of all three authors, (Cain, a Harvard-trained lawyer, plus a New York social worker and a Kiwi doctor.)

Continuing to tack courageously against a tide of criticism he receives from left-leaning colleagues for principled questioning of the UN, Cain wrote a devastating piece in last Sunday's Guardian/Observer, entitled: "How many more must die before Kofi quits?" (Hmm... why doesn't he tell us what he really thinks?)

Next to these tributes [to Rwandan genocide victims] is another installation - a reproduction of the infamous fax by the UN Force Commander, General Romeo Dallaire, imploring the then head of UN peacekeeping, Kofi Annan, for authority to defend Rwandan civilians - many of whom had taken refuge in UN compounds under implicit and sometimes explicit promises of protection. Here, too, is Annan's faxed response - ordering Dallaire to defend only the UN's image of impartiality, forbidding him to protect desperate civilians waiting to die. Next, it details the withdrawal of UN troops, even while blood flowed and the assassins reigned, leaving 800,000 Rwandans to their fate...

What kind of leadership would tolerate this conduct 10 years ago? The answer is: precisely the same leadership that, 10 years later, permitted the oil-for-food scandal and the sex-for-food scandal. Why did it take everyone 10 years to figure this out? The second searing irony for me is that the American neoconservative right has occupied the moral high ground in critique of Annan, outflanking the left, which sits on indefensible territory in his support. But if prevention of genocide and protection of the vulnerable are not core priorities on the left, then what is? If anyone's values have been betrayed, it is those of us on the left who believe most deeply in the organisation's ideals. I am mystified by the reluctance of the left both in the US and the UK (the Guardian 's coverage, for example) to criticise Annan's leadership. The bodies burn today in Darfur - and the women are raped - amid the sound of silence from Annan. How many genocides, the prevention of which is the UN's very raison d'être, will we endure before the left is moved to criticise Annan? Shouldn't we be hearing the left screaming bloody murder about the UN's failure to protect vulnerable Africans? Has it lost its compass so badly that it purports to excuse the rape of Congolese women by UN peacekeepers under Annan's watch? Is stealing money intended for widows and orphans in Iraq merely a forgivable bureaucratic snafu?

Message from this neo-conservative to Ken Cain: Welcome! Please keep writing. My only point of confusion: in the last paragraph, he inexplicably lets Annan off the hook, calling him "not personally corrupt or incompetent". Smells like a Guardian editor to me...

[Hat tip: Glenn Reynolds]

UPDATE: Captain's Quarters has this story on the UN mess, from the BBC. (See my previous post on the UN in Congo here.)

A UN whistleblower claims that a key report included falsified allegations of a Rwandan invasion of Congo... It become one of the reasons why the UN remains in the Congo to this day, despite their exploitation of Congolese women and children for sexual gratification. If it turns out that the report was faked, the entire mission to Congo becomes suspect...

Canada's Double Secret Probation

Anyone familiar with the slapstick 1978 classic, 'Animal House' will have to laugh at what Canada is attempting to do right now. Small Dead Animals reports (including several other links):

...in Canada, the courts can not only order a publication ban, but they can place a publication ban on publishing the fact that there is a publication ban ?

From the Animal House script:

Greg Marmalard: But Delta's already on probation.
Dean Vernon Wormer: They are? Well, as of this moment, they're on DOUBLE SECRET PROBATION!

North Korea Up Close and Personal

This just-released interview with Brad Martin ('North Korea's Death Chambers') in Front Page Magazine is worth reading for the detailed picture he paints of atrocities in North Korea. [Hat tip: Photios.] Martin is author of 'Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty'- published in October, 2004 - an exceptionally well-researched tome that despite the cataglog of horrors, pulls punches in its mild prescriptions for U.S. policy. Some information is a few years old, but since NoKo leadership remains the same, it's difficult to argue that such atrocities are in the past. (I.e., was Hitler a different guy in 1945 vs. 1938?) Recent public executions for petty offenses bear that out. Kim Jong-il and his father meticulously created this horror over decades. The son is still firmly in power - this time with nukes.

During the famine of the '90s, people really were reduced to eating worms and boiled tree bark. The best estimate now is that some two to three million people lost their lives... people have been brainwashed, indoctrinated with falsehoods-but it would be a mistake to assume they are miserable simply on that account. I found in interviews with defectors that people were still buying into the system, and in many cases even feeling something akin to religious exaltation... the country has operated a massive system of concentration camps for political prisoners-including not only the direct offenders but their families as well. Many have stayed until they died of overwork or malnutrition. Former guards I interviewed had been trained to view political offenders as subhuman, deserving of punishment and contempt.

...one inmate who managed to get out of a prison camp, said he weighed only 84 pounds at the time of his release, even though he's five foot seven. By the time I interviewed him in South Korea he had bulked up to a normal weight of 150. He told me the guards had caught him one day cooking a pig bone he had found on the ground. Eating food thrown away by non-prisoners was forbidden, so "I was tied to a stake and beaten. That's when my lower jaw was smashed. I've invested so much in my teeth since I came to South Korea. Once we were so hungry that about twenty of us went to the pigsty and started eating the pigs' feed." The pig keeper "complained that the pigs would get thinner because we were eating their feed. They sent us to the river and made us put our heads in the water. The first to put his head up would be beaten brutally. We had to do this until we drank enough water to urinate in our pants."

When Kang Chul-ho was eight, he was forced to watch the public execution of his father... [then] sent off to work in a mine, where party officials picked on him on account of that family background. Eventually they sent him off to a prison camp for having a "bad attitude." Kang got only 200 grams or so of food a day, he told me, and was "so hungry, I caught frogs in the mountains. I sometimes ate elm bark, which can be used to make noodles." Prisoners who disobeyed the guards "suddenly disappeared during the night."

The rest of the interview gets more combative, as Front Page tests Martin's almost inexplicable comments to the effect that Kim Jong-il might not be so bad after all.

Accessible firsthand accounts like this make it all the more reprehensible that someone like Jack Shafer can appear to take sneering pleasure in writing non-sensical, morally bankrupt political broadsides like this for the amusement of smirking, willfully ignorant readers at Slate. Amidst such a hellish nightmare of right-turned-wrong and wrong-turned-right, my spidey sense still tingles at this little coincidence - an observation that will no doubt amuse the Bush-hating Jack Shafers of the world who see the world through a warped, one-issue moral lens.

UPDATE: Here is more up-to-date information on the ongoing famine in NoKo, deftly avoiding mention of KJI's central role in perpetuating it. Why is it that the MSM can so easily lay blame on the current administration for things like inner city homelessness, and yet only dribble out an occasional article like this on millions of elderly people and schoolchildren forced to eat acorns to live without calling it for what it is: a man-made crisis of evil. [Hat tip: One Free Korea]

War and Evil - Sensing Blogs O'Reilly

I just noted this brief post by Austin Bay on the perennial question of how to confront evil in the world.

...defeating Hitler required combat. This is an old line but an important truth: American soldiers liberated Nazi concentration camps, not pacifists. Standing up to Stalin and Stalinism meant prosecuting the Cold War, and it went hot in Korea, Vietnam, and a host of smaller wars.

He references this long thoughtful post by the Reverend Donald Sensingon how Christians are meant to address the question, using his appearance on the O'Reilly Factor as a jumping off place. (Sensing's thinking and posting on this subject goes back years - this most recent is just the tip of a substantial iceberg.)

I've always liked George Orwell's comments on the subject, in 'Looking Back on the Spanish [Civil] War'. (Those writings get a lot less attention than 1984 or Animal Farm, both of which are frequently misapplied by the left in efforts to trash the current administration.)

Nourished for hundreds of years on a literature in which Right invariably triumphs in the last chapter, we believe half-instinctively that evil always defeats itself in the long run. Pacifism, for instance, is founded largely on this belief. Don't resist evil, and it will somehow destroy itself. But why should it? What evidence is there that it does? And what instance is there of a modern industrialized state collapsing unless conquered from the outside by military force?

Divine Timing - Terri, the Pope and Forgiveness

Hugh Hewitt offers this inspired take on God's hand in the timing of recent events - certainly more even-handed than my more feverish ramblings on the subject. I especially like his up-front billing: "This post is guaranteed to make zero sense to the non-believers. In fact, it will amuse them."

The last two weeks brought together an extraordinary confluence of events... anti-Christians will scoff at the idea of God's timing, but not the Cardinals, for whom God's timing is a given... Those Cardinals who shared with John Paul II an appreciation for the complexity of the world's path and of God's plan for the world can be expected to try to discern the significance of the timing of the conclave. I bring this up as a way of reminding people that Terri Schiavo's suffering and the suffering of her family were not purposeless, and despite the crush of media surrounding the Pope's death, also far from forgotten... It is an old story in Christianity--in fact the oldest--that apparent disasters and outrageous injustices lead in fact to the brightest displays of grace.

It's a refreshing, uplifting antidote to the drone I've been hearing all week on local talk radio seeking to pin a hard rap on JPII for failing to knock heads earlier over the crisis of pedophilic priests. Living less than a mile from one of the parishes at the epicenter of that crisis, (and with many friends attending there), that crisis has been difficult to ignore. The details that came out were horrendous, with plenty of blame to spread around. The damage to trust may take generations to repair.

But I'm uncomfortable with the vitriol of those seemingly determined to make that tragic chapter the focus of the late Pope's legacy. Papal infallibility aside, (and speaking as a non-Catholic that's perhaps too easy to do), Karol Wojtyla would have been the first to admit - by his grace in frailty, if nothing else - that humans make mistakes. Dwelling on earthly vengeance for them will never heal the wounds of the victims. Or the world.

A Sane, Nuanced Discussion of Gay Marriage

Katie, over at A Constrained Vision offers some useful insights on gay marriage, using as her jumping off point a long, thoughtful exploratory piece by 'Jane Galt' over at Asymmetrical Information. Galt characterizes her piece as "A really, really, really long post about gay marriage that does not, in the end, support one side or the other" I like the honest billing. I won't even attempt to summarize. Both are worth reading.

More Nukes in the News

It's interesting to note the close alignment and timing of the 'let us have nukes' arguments coming from North Korea and Iran, and their mouthpieces in the West. Yesterday, Iranian President Mohamed Khatami offered these transparently passive-aggressive explanations for Iran's nuclear ambitions. (Forgive the link to Al Jazeera, but the propaganda is amusing. I find the firsthand quotes at least as damning as any Western media 'spin' on them.)

"[Iran] does not want anything other than what law and the international community agree to... [Iran has] a national right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy... We all should have concerns about proliferation of nuclear arms and all nuclear weapon arsenals should be destroyed. The entire humanity should work hand in hand to stop proliferation of nuclear arms and go ahead with disarmament... Iran is ready to give formal guarantees that it will never produce nuclear arms in return for respect for its legitimate right to possess fuel cycle plant under IAEA safeguards..."

Perhaps Mr. Khatami would like to square those statements with this. If we learned anything from the deer-in-the-headlights time that was the late '70s under Jimmy Carter, (or the late '30s in Britain under Neville Chamberlain), it should be that buying in to the peaceful-sounding lies of those bent on your destruction is worse than counterproductive. It is irresponsible.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has broken with longstanding policy, removing one of radical Islam's longtime gripes by asking Israel, Pakistan and India to give up nuclear capabilities following the example of Ukraine and South Africa. I'm not sure that's such a good idea in Israel's case, nor is it likely to happen, but score one for consistency and clever diplomatic maneuvering.

[Hat tip: Mudville Gazette] More chilling headlines on Iran can also be found here.

North Korea "Had No Choice" on Nukes

I hope my Georgia family will forgive me the following analogy: Imagine the U.S. Civil War gone differently. The South exhausts the North into truce. Embittered, the Confederacy devotes itself over decades to military build-up - repressing, starving and isolating its people. Over time, an extreme liberal ideology takes hold north of the Mason Dixon line. (OK, that part's pretty easy to imagine.) It's what substance abuse counselors call an 'enabling fantasy' - accommodating and excusing the belligerent, execrable behavior of a rogue family member, (in this case a long-lost sister country), to maintain an outward veneer of calm. Now flip the North-South designations and apply the analogy to the Korean Peninsula.

The historical details are different in many respects, but the psychology is not, as shown in this long-winded apologist-for-tyranny editorial in South Korea's 'Ohmy News' today. (Note the ironic frightened-of-its-shadow name of the paper - described by its founder at a 2004 academic love-fest at Harvard as "Korea's liberal online newspaper.") Here's some of the serpentine logic they offer on NoKo nukes ('please don't hurt us - we hate the U.S. too!'):

"North Korea had no choice but to pursue nuclear ambitions when facing U.S. hegemony"... We mustn't overlook the fact that regardless of whether there were WMDs in Iraq, the U.S. would have realized its political and military goals, even by distorting intelligence. Until it realizes collapse or regime change in North Korea, the U.S. will not change its North Korea policies, and as soon as North Korea reaches the limits of its defense capabilities, it [the U.S.] will attack North Korea like Iraq... North Korea has no choice but to arm itself with nuclear weapons because of this. North Korea's choice to develop nuclear weapons is not a reason for U.S.-North Korea policy, but rather it is U.S.-North Korea policy that is the reason for North Korea arming itself with nuclear weapons... It has been virtually confirmed that without change in the U.S. attitude, the six-way talks will be good for nothing. North Korea held out one last hope and watched the start of Bush's second term, but nothing changed... The U.S. had more than four chances to stop North Korea from arming itself with nuclear weapons... An arms race would be more costly for the U.S. than North Korea... Even in a worst-case scenario, there will be no repeat of the hardships of the mid-1990s. There is almost no possibility that the North Korean regime, which weathered the crisis of the 1990s, will collapse under much more favorable circumstances.

No choice. The husband had 'no choice' but to beat his wife because she irritated him while he drank. North Korea had 'no choice' but to invade the South in 1950. The Kims had 'no choice' but to starve and execute dissenters. Any other choice, after all, would have weakened their military, and thus their grip on power. The logic is completely circular. Kim Jong-il has few personal choices left - having painted himself into a nuclear corner over many years. That's still more choice than most North Korean citizens have had in sixty years.

France and the Church-State Balance

Arts & Letters Daily (which continues to impress and thus remains my start-up page), noted this dense but sage piece today on how France is struggling to balance church and state after sliding far down the secularism-as-state-religion slope though not quite as far as North Korea.) It's not exactly breaking news, but with the Pope's death, and my related post on this yesterday, the subject has been on my mind.

Nicolas Sarkozy, formerly France’s interior minister and minister of finance, who was recently overwhelmingly elected as leader of France’s major center-right political party, is causing a stir... he believes that “spiritual need and hope are not satisfied by the republican ideal. . . . [The republic] is the best way to live together, but it is not the finality of man.” Sarkozy acknowledges the importance of religion in France and of the religious sphere in life generally. He follows America’s friendly critic, Alexis de Tocqueville, who advised Americans to avoid the tragedies of Europe’s past by not integrating politics and religion too closely, but also cautioned us not to remove either from human life altogether. His views stand in stark contrast to those of most contemporary secular French politicians, who see no place for this outmoded, superstitious, dangerous, and apparently superfluous aspect of human life... Spiritual and temporal powers must remain separate, and Sarkozy opposes writing God into the European constitution. But he is an opponent of the absolute secularization of society that attempts to remove any and all religious influence from human life.

UPDATE: As if to underscore the point, the French government manages to anger Christians for being too secular, secularists for honoring any religion at all, and Muslims for being unfair. (They have a point.) From Reuters:

As Catholics mourned the death of Pope John Paul, French leftwingers and a major teaching union criticised the government on Monday for ordering flags on public buildings to be lowered in a sign of respect.

'What She Said' - Golden Rule and Blogs

I've kept nudging The Anchoress higher up my Bloglines priority list. With this personal reflection on blogging and demonization of the 'other' she doesn't disappoint. Worth reading in full.

Thus the sandbox battle goes on, and I have to think Satan enjoys it very much, because it is so wasteful and it stuffs our pride so chock-full of vainglory and a gluttony of ego. The other guy is bad. The other guy is an idiot. The other guy is EVIL. What was it St. Paul said..."all that I hate, I am become..." I am going to try to learn. I'm going to try to discern when there is just cause for going in with both barrels loaded, and when, perhaps, there is a better argument to be made without succumbing to the "us" vs "them" rhetoric. "We" need it, I think.

North Korea's "Secular Humanism"

It may come as a shock, but this just in: "North Korea Suppresses Religion". Stop the presses!

North Korea represses religion and has an official ideology that is a form of secular humanism... The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) said interviews with North Korean refugees showed a pattern of arrest, imprisonment, torture and execution for public expressions of religion. "Any reappearance of Christianity, possibly permeating from northern China to where many thousands of North Koreans fled from famine in the 1990s, is rigorously repressed," USCIRF North Korean researcher David Hawk told a news conference.

Secular humanism? Well, yes. In the extreme - unmoored from enduring principles at the heart of every major religious tradition (e.g., Golden Rule, acknowledgement of a higher power) - this is where it can lead. That's what I believe the Pope meant in his Vad Yashem speech three years ago. And before anyone starts flaming me with comments about a Bush 'theocracy', note that the commission was instantiated under the Clinton administration, and rooted in Article 18 of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (From time to time they actually do something useful over there.)

The Clinton Legacy - Teens & Oral Sex

A survey hot off the AP wire reports that:

About one in five ninth-graders report having had oral sex and almost one-third say they intend to try it during the next six months, a small study of teens at two California schools reports... average age was 14 1/2... "Girls and boys both see oral sex as not being a big deal," [said the study's lead author] ...a nonprofit group that studies reproductive issues... said the California survey is encouraging because... "Most adolescents also correctly recognized that oral sex is less risky than sexual intercourse."

Well isn't that nice - positive news on a public health issue: "Common colds down this season; rampant oral sex among 14-year-olds 'encouraging'." Hello! Where have we gotten to as a society when the press' spin on a study like this doesn't even speculate on root causes, moral content or unintended consequences? (The study itself does a little better in that department, but most won't ever read it directly.)

"Whew! My 14-year-old is less likely to get pregnant or get AIDS. Isn't that a relief? Now I'm off the hook as a parent." Does anyone in the MSM think to trace a direct, common-sense line from "I did not have 'sex' with that woman" to this?

When the leader of the free world dismisses his adulterous behavior as a trivial 'non-sex' encounter, is it any wonder that a few years later we have one third of ninth graders saying they 'intend to try it' soon? I may be naive or backwards, or just in a dour curmudgeonly partisan mood this morning, but any development that makes it easier and more permissible for very young teens to get into heavy-duty sexual encounters, incurring emotional baggage they're ill equipped to handle is not 'encouraging'. It is a social disaster.

Granted, the Bill-and-Monica story was hardly the first or the only thing driving this trend; but when extra-marital oral sex makes the national news and overnight became something other than heavy-duty, then gasoline has been poured on the fire. When it becomes something that a cool, wife-cheating, saxophone-playing President does for fun, gets away with, and even smirks at, it moves - in the minds of impressionable teens - from the category of 'maybe not' to 'why not?' That is Bill Clinton's sad legacy.

UPDATE: Given that the study's findings are appearing in today's release of the April Journal of Pediatrics (abstract here), this logo is rather ironic - and unfortunate.

A Long But Slippery Slope: JPII, Nazis and Secularism

In a speech in the Hall of Remembrance at Israel’s Vad Yashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem on March 23, 2000, Pope John Paul II, tried to heal millennia of animosity between Christians and Jews (doing exactly that in many eyes, while falling short in others'). Reading the transcript, this bit stood out for its current echoes:

How could man have such utter contempt for man? Because he had reached the point of contempt for God. Only a Godless ideology could plan and carry out the extermination of a whole people.

Those yelling about America's supposed drift towards 'theocracy' are completely on-target in arguing longstanding Constitutional protections for freedom of conscience and separation of church and state. They too easily drift however, into advocating what is in effect, a broad secularization of public life in general on the implicit logic that government is involved in just about everything these days. Granted, we're a long way from Nazism (unless, ironically, one listens to the 'moveon' and Democratic Underground crowds!), but aren't secularism-as-religion and contempt for God essentially the same thing? How close are we to the edge of the pit?

[Hat tip: Big Trunk at Powerline]

Truth vs. Relativism

Reflecting on the life of John Paul II, Joe Carter over at Evangelical Outpost writes:

Our modern world hates absolutes. Standing too firmly behind one’s convictions, as if they were indisputably true is considered the height of intolerance. There are no absolute standards, only choices, the world claims. John Paul, politely but firmly, disagreed.

I'm reminded of an e-mail 'sig' line that a liberal ex-colleague used - before he realized I was from the 'dark side' and stopped sending me moveon.org chain letters. It's from an obscure scene in Douglas Adams' wildly popular science fiction book, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", in which the alien character, Zaphod Beeblebrox says: "Awhhh, what is truth man?" Good question. We just lost one of the few men who seemed to have the answer.

Twisting and Spinning: JPII and Terri

All too predictable. At least it's on the editorial page. From today's NYT:

The long, bitter fight over the unknowing Terri Schiavo was a stark contrast to the passing of this pontiff, whose own mind was keenly aware of the gradual failure of his body. The pope would certainly never have wanted his own end to be a lesson in the transcendent importance of allowing humans to choose their own manner of death. But to some of us, that was the exact message of his dignified departure. [emphasis added]

I can't argue with 'dignified', but transcendent? Over what? And 'unknowing'? An assertion. As Mark Steyn would say "La-la-la, can’t hear you." [Hat tip: NRO's Corner]

UPDATE I: Captain's Quarters has more on the depth of the Times' bias here, referencing Powerline, including a 'blooper' screenshot (since papered over) that speaks volumes.

...the Times reveals that they had a firm grasp on criticism of John Paul, but apparently no one in their newsroom knew anyone who liked one of the greatest Popes of the modern Church:... 'need some quote from supporter'

Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin has assembled an MSM hall-of-shame that - were the subject some liberal icon, and the commentators conservative - would have caused a virtual maelstrom of self-righteous condemnation. Message to MSM: eat this maelstrom.

UPDATE II: MM also makes this reference to a Zogby poll that asks questions far more relevant to Terri Schiavo's situation than those that got widespread media attention while she was alive:

"If a disabled person is not terminally ill, not in a coma, and not being kept alive on life support, and they have no written directive, should or should they not be denied food and water," the poll asked. A whopping 79 percent said the patient should not have food and water taken away while just 9 percent said yes.

Acts 2:15-17

These men are not drunk, as you suppose. It's only nine in the morning! No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: 'In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.'

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness...

"...in that order." I had not read this thoughtful, amusing classic by TTLB (honest!) before I wrote this (Update II) on Terri Schiavo last week. Nothing new under the sun...

Anchoress Live-Blogs JPII's Exit

Beautiful, not 'ghoulish'. Check it out.

I can't help but believe that great things are going to accompany this death. The unprecedented, global, worldwide coverage will perhaps precipitate an unprecedented, global, worldwide waking up from our sleep of materialism and preening self-interest.

Yes, there's lots of reflection going on out there. Terri prepared us to be open. In our busy lives and increasingly fragmented media culture there's nothing quite like billions of human beings thinking about the same thing at the same moment - last felt at Diana's funeral.

UPDATE: Looks like it's over: "A Vatican e-mail says Pope John Paul II has died." (AP)

Desperation & Democracy in the Middle East

Victor Davis Hanson (a lifelong rational Democrat of principle - in the Zell Miller / Harry Truman tradition), is virtually without peer in articulating a deep historical perspective on society, culture, government and war in the Middle East. In this sobering but balanced piece, he opines on efforts to bring democracy to the Middle East, simultaneously warning pessimists and administration detractors that democracy-spreading is essential and retreat foolish in the extreme, while bursting several idealist balloons, (including a few of my own.) It's worth reading in full, especially if your weekend is looking as rainy and cold as mine.

There is also a vast body of research, both historical and sociological, that suggests democracy is the aftermath of a long slow evolution toward egalitarianism and economic liberalization... As the ripples from Iraq and Afghanistan spread, we are warned that success, not failure, is our new concern: The problem is not that the Middle East cannot vote, but that it can — and that the results will be worse than the mess that preceded it. Aside from the fact that we could never have even dreamed of such a "problem" less than four years ago when an ash cloud hovered over the crater in Manhattan, we need to reflect on a few often-forgotten realities.

First, America had few alternatives. This war was never between good and bad choices, but always a call between something bad and something far worse... the dilemma was an exclusively autocratic Arab Middle East. It was a mess where every bankrupt and murderous notion — Soviet-style Communism, crack-pot Baathism, radical pan-Arabism, lunatic Khadafism, "moderate" monarchy, old-style dictatorship, and eighth-century theocracy — had been tried and had failed, with terrible consequences well before September 11. Only democracy was new.

The next problem we face is not that we have pushed democracy too abruptly in once-hostile lands, but that we have not pushed it enough into so-called friendly territory. It is, of course, dangerous to promote democracy in the Middle East, but more dangerous still to pause in our efforts, and, finally, most dangerous of all to quit before seeing this bold gambit through to its logical end — an end that alone will end the pathologies that led to September 11.

Another Hanson piece on Syria from earlier in the week is also excellent - adding depth to some of the points Charles Krauthammer made in the WaPo editorial I noted yesterday. I found this bit priceless:

It used to be that if Americans were not convinced that they were perfect, then they despaired that they were no good — and so pulled out. Not now. We have weathered everything from Michael Moore to Abu Ghraib, and come out on the other end to hear former Arab terrorists and leftwing British and German newspapers now suddenly asking, "Was George Bush Right?"

The Pope

I'm not Catholic, but I've been surprised at my own reactions watching Pope John Paul II slide towards the next life. Jews, Protestants, 'lapsed' Catholics and even a few agnostics have weighed in on radio and in print with some amazing personal stories about how JPII touched their lives. As I noted yesterday, I'm surely not alone in being drawn back to this picture.

The Pope's physical decline has caused me to recall fondly where I was (high school), and less fondly, what the world was like when he was elevated: Jimmy Carter, Cold War, raging inflation, no personal computers. Yet what divine constancy from him in light of so many revolutions, (political, technological, social, economic) across the world! Constancy may not be 'progressive', but it sure is comforting. As one of my favorite passages from scripture says, "he who doubts [God] is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind"

I'm unsure of the source, but a radio show this morning noted that PJPII has been seen (presumably meaning 'live', not on TV) by more people than anyone ever in the history of the world. That's pretty neat.

So Many Enemies, So Little Time

'Whiskey' over at Captain's Quarters discusses Charles Krauthammer's WaPo editorial today arguing that Syria is the next logical focus in the war on terror - even as that might not mean a shootin' war. (I hope not, but we'd be foolish not to keep the option open.)

Given the other options: do nothing, (we tried that, see: "Clinton, Bill"), attack Iran (no firm support and a much tougher nut to crack than Iraq, from what I read), or attack North Korea ("Holy crap! Don't push that button, that's Armageddon!"), nudging Syria into 'regime change' (and presumably elections) is a good thing all 'round.

Given the porosity of their borders with Iraq when the question was letting foreign insurgents in and WMD and Baathists out, why should the porosity not work in reverse? Of course the devil is in the details. Those who don't want the buzzer can skip the "Vietnam/Cambodia" whine. Given the motivating details (just the most recent across decades), that Krauthammer outlines, the real question may be: When Israel goes in, what's our most useful role?

Three Quick Thoughts on Terri

(This started as a short post. Half an hour later, I'm not sure there's such a thing on this topic.)

In a couple of discussions recently, including one at home, I've run into the following memes:

1) Terri was unconscious, vegetative, dead, etc. I.e., not aware of what was happening to her, much less give anything back to those around her, so what's the big deal?

My position: We didn't know with any reasonable degree of certainty. The evidence was conflicting and inadequate at best - certainly far short of what we require in other cases (e.g., terrorists, convicted murderers, etc.) In cases where doubt prevails (as opposed to the preponderance of the evidence), and life is on the line, we should err on the side of life until such time as we can resolve those issues. Sometimes that will mean never.

2) The law spoke and that's the end of it.

My position: I will happily depart from some of my conservative cousins in noting that our laws have always been founded on higher principles which can become grossly perverted in some cases. If this argument isn't familiar to some on the left, then we need to revisit the question of "brain dead". IMO, Terri never got a fair hearing on the underlying facts of her case - when 'fair' means applying the same standards that we do for others whose lives are on the line.

3) Under a law that George Bush signed when he was governor, regulating public expenditures on 'hopeless' cases, a black child in Texas was taken off a respirator about the same time the Schiavo circus began. Is that fair?

My position: Where to begin? I don't know enough about that case to comment, though it's worth noting that a respirator is hugely different from feeding by mouth. [UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan has researched Catholic teaching on the subject here.] The elevation of Terri to story-of-the-year status still bewilders me in its randomness, even as some choose to see conniving by her parents, I don't. Life is unfair. As Mark Steyn has pointed out, there are other Terris whom we'll never hear about - probably daily. I suspect that this case, and its timing, has larger meaning well beyond her - part of the Godly play. That said, the selection of a Texas example and a black child and a public welfare case tags the counter-example as an obvious political witch-hunt from the get-go. Not that there wasn't political pandering on both sides around Terri, but back to point one: I'll side with those seeking to preserve life when there's doubt. It's not clear what doubt remained in the Texas case. And in any case, I reject the logic that says "we killed one, so we have to kill them all." God grieves for every one. We will always be inadequate in trying to make this world whole on our own power - which doesn't absolve us from trying.

Comments on Comments

Apparently it's time to start thinking about comment and trackback policies. All bloggers must go through this stage, but since I'm relatively new at this, it's been rather flattering to start attracting enough attention to generate any comments at all, much less ones that disagree with me. Cool. One commenter in particular seems to have been rather busy last night. ;-)

Rather than re-invent the wheel, I'll refer anyone who cares to LaShawn Barber's sane, funny and IMHO eminently fair thoughts on the matter here. (Substitute 'king' for 'queen' and it pretty much captures my view.) Thank you, LaShawn. "What she said."

For the time being, I've chosen to let stand comments from those who question my character, motives, faith, and good will on the theory that smart readers can make up their own minds. Perhaps that's naive; we'll see.

For further thoughts on the subject, see my own mea culpa from earlier this week. As Andrew Sullivan likes to say: it's about the issue, not the person. (Well, sometimes it's about the person. :) I'll try to live up to that, even as I know I won't fully succeed.

P.S. No, this isn't an April Fool's joke... though readers are free to think that if they wish. :)

DC Schools' Own Accused Terrorist

Yesterday's WaPo lead in the Jayyousi story (on which I opined yesterday; nothing more in the MSM today from what I can see), reads:

As chief of facilities for D.C. public schools, Kifah W. Jayyousi oversaw painting, toilet repairs and other mundane upgrades to aging buildings. But federal agents now say the engineer had a secret life, as a member of a nationwide network that raised money and recruited Islamic militants for conflicts in Bosnia, Chechnya and other places.

Paint and toilets. How mundane and un-threatening. What about HVAC and boilers and electrical systems? What makes everyone so confident that someone alleged to have supported enemy terror networks abroad might not have set up mischief closer to home? Or that others in such positions wouldn't? It may be unwarranted in this particular case, but my professional involvement in such matters leads me to be surprised that that kind of vulnerable infrastructure hasn't been hit in some nasty ways. Unfortunately, it's not all that difficult.

Political Winds Swirl Around Terri's Passing

James Taranto notes in an editorial in today's Wall Street Journal that Democrats have probably just lost the disabled vote - in a big way.

According to the National Organization on Disability, Al Gore outpolled George W. Bush among disabled Americans, 56% to 38%, but four years later Mr. Bush beat John Kerry, 52.5% to 46% -- a 24.5-point shift. As late as August, Mr. Kerry had a 10-point lead, which vanished by September, coinciding with the Florida Supreme Court's striking down "Terri's law." Polls last month suggested that most Americans favored Mrs. Schiavo's death. It was natural for an able-bodied person to think: I wouldn't want to live like that. But someone who is disabled and abjectly dependent on others was more apt to be chilled by the talk of her "poor quality of life" and to think: I wouldn't want to be killed like that. Liberalism once championed the interests of society's most vulnerable members. Today it increasingly champions their "right to die." No one should be surprised if this affects their decisions as they exercise their right to vote.

Add to those numbers anyone who knows a seriously disabled person (more than some might think.) Throw in time for personal reflection. Add humility (which I'll admit, the GOP could easily blow.) Shake, stir and bake 'til 2008 and it gets interestinger and interestinger... What clarity from Hillary on all this? [cue crickets chirping] But I guess pointing that out would make me part of the right wing attack machine. (Woo hoo! Do I get a pin to wear or something?) Draw your own conclusions. Meanwhile, her husband (that guy who got impeached after Nixon didn't) was a little late to the party. News for Bill: she's dead. Michelle Malkin has more on political opportunism, along with some pictures that speak volumes about sincerity and undying love.

Intricate Plot to Kill Pope in 1981

Newsflash: Ronald Reagan called it right. There is true evil in the world.

This is getting more complex by the hour, but hang with me here: The attempted murder of the Pope in 1981 was apparently plotted in Moscow, facilitated by Sofia (Bulgaria, that is), coordinated by East Berlin, handed to Turkish terrorists, and executed by Mehmet Ali Agca, (OK, we knew that last bit. Agca has since been pardoned in Italy, but is serving time for a previous murder back in Turkey.)

Now, in a twist worthy of a Dan Brown novel, Acga is saying he was aided by Vatican insiders. (Why that comes out only now that it's clear that the Pope probably won't be saying much anymore, we don't know, but it smells funny.) The Germans deny involvement. As do individuals implicated by the old files. Both Italy and Poland will be investigating further.

Through all this, the image I like most is this one - the epitome of forgiveness and redemption.

[Hat tip: The Anchoress, whom I'm starting to like a lot and read regularly. See blogroll.]

Update and side note: My spidey sense won't stop tingling at the coincidence of two innocents leaving us and dominating the headlines right around Holy Week, 1290+ days after 9-11. This is either totally whacked, (I'll be the first to admit.) Or massively important. Take your pick.

UPDATE I: More good background here from the ever-sensible Donald Sensing.

UPDATE II: Powerline has this synopsis of a USNews article on the plot, adding to the intrigue with a reminder that Acga trained with the PLO and Syria in a Lebanese camp in the late '70s.

UPDATE III: This piece in the Washington Times yesterday provides yet more context.