Thoughts from
San Diego on Law, Politics, and Culture

 
Steve Hinkle and the First Amendment
By Gail Heriot

Now and then justice really does triumph. Some of you might remember Steve Hinkle, the Cal Poly student who was ordered by university officials to write an apology to his fellow students or face stiffer penalties. What had he done to cause offense? He posted a flier advertising a College Republican event. Yes, that's it, he posted a flier--and a pretty inoffensive one at that. Fortunately, through the efforts of the Center for Individual Rights (CIR) and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), Hinkle's First Amendment rights have been vindicated in federal court.

Hinkle was attempting to publicize a talk by Mason Weaver, a Southern California radio personality and author of the book, "It's OK to Leave the Plantation." Weaver, with whom I've shared a podium in the past, is one of those most-reviled creatures on college campuses today--a Black conservative. He states on his web site that he believes in "independence, not co-dependence" and "equal rights, not special rights." You can agree with him or not, but these views are pretty much in line with the average American's (and, yes, they are pretty much in line with mine). The flier posted by Hinkle simply contained Weaver's name and photo, the title of his book, and the time and place of the talk.

When students at the campus multi-cultural center saw Hinkle distributing the flier, however, they called campus police to report "a suspicious white male passing out literature of an offensive racial nature." Hinkle was put through a seven-hour hearing after which he was found guilty of disruption and ordered to write letters of apology to the offended students. He was told he risked stiffer penalties up to expulsion if he refused. This is pretty scary stuff.

When CIR and FIRE came to Hinkle's rescue, Cal Poly made it clear that it would not back down easily. A lawsuit was therefore brought, which, after six months of litigation was finally settled. Cal Poly agreed to expunge the offense from Hinkle's record and pay $40,000 in attorneys' fees.

I'm happy with the result (although having the Cal Poly officials write Hinkle a letter of apology would have been a nice touch). Obviously, cases like this shouldn't happen, but they do, so at least it's comforting to know that there are organizations like CIR and FIRE out there to jump in. Fortunately for Hinkle, he knew enough to call them.

There is one thing, however, that troubles me. Beverly Eakman writes about the Hinkle settlement and makes a comparison between Hinkle (with whom she is rightly sympathetic) and John Rocker. She writes, "Think of the numerous phony hate-speech accusations that have been hurled at individuals over the past decade for spouting only controversial opinions - some of them, like baseball star John Rocker's, admittedly less tactful than others." It's worth noting that for many reasons the Rocker case was quite different from the Hinkle case. Rocker made a few boorish statements--statements that surely were protected by the First Amendment--but which were in fact likely to offend a significant number of people. And, unlike Hinkle, he was not punished by any governmental authority for his statements. Instead, two things happened. First, a number of people--rightly or wrongly, but in the full exercise of their own First Amendment rights--responded that John Rocker is a jerk. That's not an abridgement of the First Amendment. That's the First Amendment in all its glory; everybody gets their say, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Second, the Atlanta Braves--Rocker's employer--required him to undergo psychiatric treatment. Such an action may again be wise or foolish, but it is not a violation of Rocker's First Amendment rights. The Atlanta Braves are in the entertainment business. Their profits depend upon their ability to stay in the good graces of the their fans. They are thus perfectly within their rights to demand that their players refrain from making statements that will be regarded as boorish in public by any significant number of people, even if those statements are protected by the First Amendment and hence would be protected againt government interference. One could argue about whether the Braves over-reacted, but the law does not forbid an employer to over-react.
posted by Gail at 5/31/2004 02:56:00 PM

 
Philosophers take heart
By Tom Smith

This should make philosophers feel better about how they spend their time.
posted by thomas at 5/30/2004 05:16:00 PM

 
Low Carb Diets have arrived
By Tom Smith

This month's issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine is as good an indicator as any that low carb diets have arrived, have become, that is, medically respectable. It's not clear that they work via all the metabolic hocus-pocus Dr. Atkins spoke about, or whether they just work by reducing caloric intake because people using them are less hungry. But who cares?
posted by thomas at 5/30/2004 10:43:00 AM

 
Good bleat
By Tom Smith

This is good. Are blogs unique in the way they can gracefully combine public and private?
posted by thomas at 5/29/2004 10:20:00 AM

 
An outrageous example of ethnic profiling
By Tom Smith

The latest FBI/DOJ call to be on the lookout for suspected terrorists is an outrage. Not only, as the press has recently revealed with their characteristic courage, is the government issuing warnings without being certain that there will be an attack, but, as this website clearly demonstrates, they are engaged in egregious ethnic profiling. Among the suspected terrorists, there is not a single elderly Asian person. Pacific Islanders are conspicuously absent. Not a single African-American. And only one woman, and she depicted in a traditonal headscarf that just screams stereotype, not to mention the men's headwear. Is this some kind of conspiracy? Are we to believe that the suspected terrorists are really all of similiar ethnic and/or religious persuasion. This is the stuff of right wing fantasy, not real life.

Just an unrelated idea. I think Aafia needs a new look. Now she has too much of that, Nurse Sought in 27 Suspicious Deaths thing going. My picture is, cut the hair, do something with more body, and maybe a turtleneck, hip glasses. Just a thought.
posted by thomas at 5/28/2004 07:00:00 PM

 
All the news that fits, we'll print
By Tom Smith

Were the prisoners recently released from Abu Ghraib attacked, or was that just celebratory gunfire? The possibility that their fellow countrymen might value the prisoners' lives even less than the evil US Army is a possibility The Times spares us thought of by not including the incident in their account at all.

Perhaps this is what Paul Krugman means when he celebrates today the liberation of the press he thinks he is witnessing from "the tyranny of even-handedness." A nice turn of phrase. Krugman may have a talent, not only for mathematical models of international trade, but also for Orwellian slogans. Where does one get, I wonder, having escaped this tyranny? To the republic of bias? The rule of prejudice? The commonwealth of fanatics? He and Al Gore should talk it over.

As I understand Krugman's economics, which isn't well, I gather he's not a big one for optimal equilibria. Being in something of an eccentric orbit himself, perhaps they don't appeal to him. But I think, or hope anyway, that an equilibriating process may be at work in the press, by which as they liberate themselves from "the tyranny of even-handedness" they also separate themselves from all but their most rabid readers. Most people are not geniuses, but they can figure out most stories have two sides.
posted by thomas at 5/28/2004 06:07:00 PM

 
Babies
By Tom Smith

I must say, there's a lot to be said for having a baby in your forties. I was looking at 7 month old Mark the other day and said to my lovely wife Jeanne: "He's beautiful. Just perfect."
"I know."
"And to think you made him!"
"I know."
"That was the wrong answer."
"I know."

He is an extremely agreeable infant. He smiles, laughs and rarely cries. He is spectacularly fat, but in a cute, appealing way. He has magnificent thighs. He has learned how to scooch, backwards. A genius, clearly. He's a great gazer. World class staring contest material. You just want to eat his ears.

The dogs like him. How could they not?

With your first baby, you're too anxious, at least if you're me, to enjoy the process very much. It's all rather scary. Where did that giant staple go? Could Luke have swallowed it? You freak out the first time your child eats a large bug. Later, you just see the little grasshopper legs sticking out and think, isn't that darling?

I still remember my first diaper. In the hospital, Jeanne and I stood staring at the pink object until the nurse barked, "Well, change him!" She'd probably had enough hapless yuppies for one day. It was gross. Now, I sort of look forward to a big messy poop. Pipes are working! Good baby!

Last night, Mark slept on my chest while I watched part of The Transporter on HBO. Terrible movie, but a great baby. He woke up a few times, and we looked at each other, he as if to say, "Oh, it's the large, stratchy one without nipples. Time to sleep more" and rolled off again into slumber. Great little sleeper. A friend of ours calls her forth child (also a boy) her desert baby, and that's apt. You don't really need it, but why not.

Mark is about to enter that stage immediately before rug rat technically known as danger squid. This is where they can squirm at a high rate of speed just about anywhere in search of objects to put in their mouths. The calm before the storm. I'll keep you posted.
posted by thomas at 5/27/2004 03:20:00 PM

 
Judith Miller, non-person
By Tom Smith

The Times is so disgusting. Now that it has become an article of faith that there never were any WMDs in Iraq, Judith Miller's stories must somehow be disavowed. Miller is one of the few reporters at the Times who actually knows what she is talking about. She has an in depth knowledge of both the Middle East and biological warfare. I wonder if she would be willing to say, off the record, that she still thinks the WMDs are out there. It would have been interesting to be a fly on the wall at the little show trial they probably had for her.

There's still plenty of reason to think there are as yet undiscovered chemical weapons mixed in among the millions of artillery shells waiting to be inspected or buried somewhere. And biological weapons are easy to hide, and the germ stocks have probably been smuggled out of the country now anyway. No media outlet I have seen has seen fit to investigate where the many gallons of chemical weapons to have been used in the aborted chemical truck bomb attack in Jordan came from. You might think an attack that might have killed 80,000 would be big news. But nahhh. Too many non-fact facts. Not newsworthy, in the spin sense of newsworthy.

Anyone who has bothered to read Judith Miller's excellent book Germs would know what a wilderness of mirrors the underground world of bio-warfare is in that part of the world. It's more like making moonshine with portable stills than it is like manufacturing ball bearings. It's not the least surprising that by the time our troops show up, all that is left are some recently cleaned tanks and labs. But a clean still that would work for making bio-weapons proves nothing! Unless it's a dead village straight out The Andromeda Strain, no germ weapons round here.

The irony in this is that Bush is supposed to have lied to everyone about WMDs, forcing a few facts into a legend. What is really happening, instead, is that the supposed truth-seekers in the media have decided it must be the case, for political reasons, that there never were any such weapons, strange as that fact may be, because that makes such a damaging charge against Bush. Then you ignore any leads that point the wrong way, and purge the people who know better. And then, just to make the irony complete, congratulate themselves for saying their earlier stories were not rigorous enough. Maybe the Times should establish the Courageous Truth Seeker of the Century Award and then give it to themselves, after they have purged everyone who might report something inconsistent with the company line. I wonder how long James Burns will last. I swear, one of the many reasons to be glad the Nazis lost, way down the list, I admit, is that we don't have to read stories in the Times about how there were never that many Jews in Europe anyway. Really, can you prove there used to be a lot of Jews here? I don't see any Jews. Hearsay doesn't count.

To be even handed, the Bush people don't exactly have an interest in explaining where the WMDs are either, and they are not. They probably slipped through our fingers into Syria, Jordan and Iran. I bet the Mossad has few illusions about how those WMDs were just imaginary all along. I guess at this point we should hope those Iraqi weapons scientists who haven't been assassinated (another non-story) fall into Israeli hands, since they haven't officially decided there's no such thing as an Iraqi sarin bomb (except for that old one they probably didn't even know they had). Mossad is probably searching like hell for them, so they don't show up in Tel Aviv. Sure, it doesn't make a very good story for the White House to say, they really were there, but now they seem to be in the hands of Al Quaeda. O well, we tried. The media could beat Bush over the head with that, but I guess that wouldn't be as damning as the stupid conspiracy theory that there never were any WMDs. Along with that other article of faith, that Saddam and the islamofascist terrorists never had anything to do with each other.

I am so over wishing for a media that got at the truth. But is it too much to hope for one, a la Florence Nightingale and hospitals, that at least doesn't deliberately bury the facts?
posted by thomas at 5/26/2004 04:45:00 PM

 
Just another quiet day in Jamul
By Tom Smith

All this happened within the last hour. I'm upstairs, trying to take a nap, because I'm feewing kind of siwck. Whether I'm coming down with something, or just sick of reading exams, I'm not sure. My 10 year old Patrick is home sick, watching cartoons. Suddenly, I am aroused from a near blissful drowse by Patrick saying, "Dad, there's a helicopter outside saying something on a loudspeaker!" I go downstairs, thinking, what does a guy have to do to get a nap around here? Sure enough, there is a helicopter circling our neighborhood, saying "Arrrr rrrr arrrgharrrrr! RRRrrrrr! We rrrrr ar ar rrrrr!" Good information to have. Is there a fire? Is this an evacuation? Some sort of terrorist thing? What I suspect it is is the border patrol, tracking down illegals trying to make their way through the mountains behind our house. I get out my binoculars and glass out the chopper. Hmmmm. It is not a border patrol chopper (green and white) but a San Diego Sheriff's Department chopper, circling in a very business-like manner. So I decide it's time to call 911.

What a confidence inspiring experience. "Hello. You have reached the San Diego County Sheriff's Department's Emergency Communications Center. All Operators are busy. Please stay on the line and your call will be answered in the order in which it was received." Just what you would want to hear in the middle of the night after you heard the crash of glass and drunken redneck laughter coming from downstairs. Be that as it may, in just a bit a bored voice came on the line. I explained they had one of their helicopters circling above my house, but I couldn't make out what they are saying. "Let me check," and then the dispatcher said "Do you live anywhere near Secluded Cactus Lane?" (A fictional street name, for privacy purposes.) "That's my street," I said. "Well, let's see, we're looking for four subjects [she said 'subjects' not 'suspects' for some reason], one of them armed, one of them white shirt, one with a red baseball cap, not a very good description . . . " she concluded, as if in disgust at all the lame descriptions she got from civilians, day after day. "Maybe I should stay inside," I said. "You should stay inside and lock your doors," she said. "I certainly shall," I said. No reason to let grammar slip at these moments.

My thought then was, "G*^&%$#it, this is why I wish I had a gun, so I wouldn't have to sit here with my 10 year old and baby and nanny, hoping four losers don't come strolling up my driveway . . . " Then I thought, wait a minute. I do have a gun. Well, I guess now is the time to get it out. So I unlocked the desk drawer it is in, unlocked the plastic case the pistol was in, and got it out. Then I pushed 10 .40 caliber cartridges into a magazine (from the 500 I keep in case of civil disorder) and looked at it. It looked funny. I had put the cartridges in backwards. I took them out. Put them in the right way. Heidi, our nanny, a country girl, laughed. "I did that the other night. I went out after a coyote with a shotgun, and had the wrong size shells with me!" I was glad the nanny wasn't freaking out over the sight of a gun. I didn't put the magazine in the pistol because it is a Springfield XD, a very slick handgun which loads very quickly and easily, assuming you haven't loaded the magazine backwards. I just put the magazine in my pocket, knowing I could load it in a flash if necessary. I tucked the pistol in my belt and felt sort of cool for a while. Nothing happened. Mark continued to suck on his bottle. The helicopter buzzed overhead. This was boring. So I went outside to see if I could see any bad guys. There was Dr. B across the street, fussing with his lemon tree. I thought of telling him there might be four armed men in the neighborhood, but he already thinks I'm half nutty.

Just another quiet day in the suburbs. Quiet. Boring. Don't get me wrong. I like boring, in a way. The helicopter flew away. They probably got bored too. I went back inside. Locked the gun and the magazine in the case. Locked the case in the drawer. Time to read more exams. When God intends you to read exams instead of take a nap, there's no point fighting it.
UPDATE: I should have known some would object to my having a gun and being capable of sliding ammo into the magazine the wrong way. Hadn't I studied this? Can't I field strip the piece blindfolded? In my defense I will say I caught the mistake right away, it is a new gun and so I've only loaded it a few times; the design of the XD's magazine is a little different from a Glock, which might be why I made the mistake, which I quickly corrected anyway. Further, I was walking around at the top of my 2 acre property, not on the street; there weren't any deputies around to mistake me for a bad guy, or bad guys either, apparently. And finally, I personally think I'm safer having a doubly locked, unloaded gun in the house rather than a loaded gun in a safe. I suppose it's possible some bad guy might think, hmmm, two large barking dogs, fully equipped martial arts area, let's pick this house. But I think they'll probably go elsewhere. On balance, I think I'll keep the gun well locked up against four mischevious boys. But yes, I should get to know my XD better, and I look forward to doing so. At the range.
posted by thomas at 5/26/2004 02:57:00 PM

 
We love you just the way you are
By Tom Smith

Vermonters are so cute. They drive those old pickups. They wear those funky L.L. Bean caps. Don't ever change, Vermont. You're beautiful. I know, it can be hard having to buy things from quaint little shops, but we like it that way, it makes you so much more scenic, so rustic. You don't want a Walmart, really, think about it. Maybe just a few suggestions. Some of you are a little, well, too authentic looking, well, ugly. Maybe you wouldn't mind wearing a bag over your head, just during tourist season? You can get some really attractive bags at Starbucks. And some of you are, well, a little too hefty to be strictly scenic. Maybe you could spend more time at your Pilates? Really, we would so appreciate it. You just buy your simple country things at those darling simple country shops, and we'll try to remember to leave bigger tips. How does that sound? Oh, sorry, dear, must go, got a call on the other line.
posted by thomas at 5/26/2004 12:38:00 PM

 
NY Times flogs dead horse (isn't that torture?)
By Tom Smith

The Army is investigating a number of deaths in custody and cases of beatings. I know it's hard to believe, but sometimes captives get beaten and killed in wars. Rather than let that go on, I think we should just surrender now. We should have done so with the Japanese and the Nazis, but missed our chance. We can correct that now. When I supported this war, I did not realize that we were from an irretrievably corrupt culture that deserved to be destroyed by a bunch of cave-dwelling religious fanatics. But now I know, and I owe that to the New York Times and other organs of enlightenment. To read more about how awful we are, go here. Isn't that a sweet picture of the Iraqi Major General and his grandson? Top general of one of the cruelest regimes in recent history and devoted family man. But where's the puppy? Probably out chewing on the leg of some dissident chained up in the back yard.

It will be an interesting summer. "Before we ask you where in New York the dirty bomb is, we have one question. Do you take cream or sugar?"
posted by thomas at 5/26/2004 12:27:00 PM

 
IISS report
By Tom Smith

The International Institute of Strategic Studies is a prestigious think tank on strategic affairs in London. Here's a link to their site and latest report. Not particularly cheering news.
posted by thomas at 5/26/2004 12:10:00 PM

 
Those darn peacekeepers
By Tom Smith

If we could just get the UN into Iraq, that would solve everything.
posted by thomas at 5/25/2004 11:45:00 PM

 
It's the new game sensation!
By Tom Smith

Can you find the cross the ACLU wants removed from the LA County shield? It's there! Really! OK, start in the center of the seal, and go to your right. See it, floating over the little mountain there? Yep, that's it! I don't know about you, but I feel the constitutional temple shaking even as I look.

I am not a constitutional lawyer, and cases like this are one of the reasons why, but isn't it kind of STUPID to fuss about a tiny, tiny cross on the seal of a city named "The Angels", which is short, isn't it, for "Our Lady of the Holy Angels" or something like that? The whole coast of California is just one saint after another.

Much to his credit, County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich wrote to ACLU executive director Ramona Ripston that her letter was "right out of a George Orwell novel. Your failure to understand the history and to rewrite it from the so-called political correctness follows the hate of past book burners."

Yep, that gets it exactly. Orwellian it is.


posted by thomas at 5/25/2004 11:22:00 PM

 
Yoo counter-petition
By Tom Smith

Oh that's right! If there's free speech, you can reply!

Here is the Yoo counter-petition, calling for more academic freedom at Boalt Hall and defending Professor Yoo's right to have been a government lawyer who told his client what the law was, under conditions where he might reasonably have inferred that was his job.

As I noted below, a number of Boalt Hall law students are protesting Yoo's memo, which he wrote while in the Justice Department, regarding the law applying to prisoners taken in Iraq.
posted by thomas at 5/25/2004 10:58:00 PM

 
Susan Sontag in an intellectually lazy bore
By Tom Smith

When I was in my twenties, I thought wildly imaginative, i.e. implausible, leaps of logic from one cultural thing to another were cool. Now I think they're mostly stupid. Strip malls and cluster bombs. Freeways and imperialism. Nixon's beard and Chile. No, they don't have anything to do with each other. It's just an illustration.

So is Sontag's approach to Abu Ghraib. Hers and all the other left wing hyper-ventilation about Abu Ghraib is beyond tedious. The deep meaning of the prison scandal is, you don't want to be a prisoner in a military prison while your compatriots are busy killing American soldiers, while being guarded by not exactly the cream of American society. It would probably be a long night in the drunk tank in El Paso too. Or trapped in the 92nd Street Y having to listen to Susan Sontag explain how we had 9/11 coming and it's all about American imperialism. All torture is relative. OK, what do you want to know? I'll give you my Ebay password if you'll just shut up!

But my point is, it's not even thinking to do what Sontag does. Anybody can throw together associations between things they don't like. Maybe it comes from watching too many art films. Cut to football game. Cut to torture pic. Fade to Bush at religious service. Cut to testing of missile defense system. See? Anybody can do it. Don't you see?! It's like all, connected!! No, it's not all connected. It's just what's left of the left wing imagination after all the theory has been embarrassed into little academic havens and a few parts of a few big cities. Which reminds me, Susan, do you have your evacuation plans in order? Water? Gas mask? Arabic for dummies? Maybe she should identify herself so the NYFD can go to the next apartment and save some nice orthodontist.

And what if American culture is corrupt, uses too much oil, oppresses all and sundry and doesn't appreciate intellectuals enough, as Sontag suggests? So we should blow up our skyscrapers and put our women-folk in parachutes? As I've said before, America in the 1940's had a lot of problems. That doesn't mean should have gone all gooey on the Nazis. Seriously, if al Quaeda had German physics instead of the Koran, we'd all be digging bomb shelters and Sontag would be telling us we deserved to die (while making arrangements for the south of France). Unless of course intellectual fashion changed and it became cool to be pro-American, the new intellectual black, as it were. That would be the way to change Sontag's "mind". Arguments are a waste of breath when it's fashion you're really talking about. Hypothetical: Sontag realizes her bloviations, which on the margin increase the likelihood that lots of innocent Americans will die and that lots of innocent Arabs will go back to living or continue living under corrupt dictatorships, might also negatively impact her status as giant girl intellectual; Result: time to reconsider views! Then after doing so, exchange praise with other intellectuals for being so courageous. But I'm a little cynical about intellectuals. IMHO, Sontag is not worthy to dish out hash to the lowliest Marine, whose head is less stuffed with falsehoods and whose courage is not a self-promoting pose.

Andrew Sullivan does yeoman work fisking Sontag, who is approaching self-fisking anyway.
posted by thomas at 5/25/2004 08:49:00 PM

 
JCLI Direct Democracy Symposium
By Gail Heriot

California did not invent direct democracy. For that honor, one must look beyond the New England town meeting, beyond the Swiss canton, and perhaps even beyond the ancient Athenian city-state. But California is surely at the center of direct democracy today. Its population of about thirty five million makes it easily the largest political entity ever to experiment with the notion of direct legislation--more than a hundred times the size of Athens in the fourth century B.C. With approximately twenty million citizens over the age of eighteen, it has more than six hundred times the number of Athens’ citizens.

That's why it was fitting for USD and the Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues to hold a symposium here last June on the subject of direct democracy. The JCLI is a faculty-run journal of the University of San Diego School of Law. I was the general faculty editor, and if everything goes according to plan, my student editors and I will be sending Volume 13 off to the printer in the next day or so.

The articles include:

Preferences, Priorities, and Plebiscites by Lynn A. Baker

The Character of Direct Democracy by Sherman J. Clark

Direct Democracy and Debt by Clayton P. Gillette

Direct Democracy at the Time of the Framing: Its Failure and the Protestant Ethic That Led to Republicanism by Marci A. Hamilton

Rousseau and Direct Democracy (with a Note on the Supreme Court's Term Limits Decision) by Nelson Lund

Subversion of the Many by the Few: Some Scientific Evidence on the Initiative Process by John G. Matsusaka

Popular Initiatives and American Federalism, or, Putting Direct Democracy in its Place by Maimon Schwarzschild

Comments on Baker, Clark, and Direct Democracy by Richard L. Hasen

Comments of the Initiative Industry: The New Kid on the Block or an Old Friend? By M. Dane Waters

All of the articles are first-rate; I couldn't be more pleased with them.

posted by Gail at 5/25/2004 06:13:00 PM

 
Weird San Diego martial arts legends, part 1
By Tom Smith

Last night at my jujitsu class, I asked one of those questions that sent our Soke off on a tangent, albeit an interesting one. I do that in my classes too, notoriously, so it was interesting to be on the other side for a change.

I recently watched the Jet Li movie "Kiss of the Dragon" (highly recommended for nearly non-stop, mindless martial arts action! And the villains are French!), in which Jet Li, our hero, uses a technique in which he deploys acupuncture needles in various points, thereby paralyzing or even killing his opponents. I asked Soke if there were anything to this, or was it just martial arts movie hokum.

Soke told us about Dim Mak, a Chinese martial art that involves attacking particular pressure points in order to cause paralysis or death. (Presumably this is the idea behind Mr. Spock's 'Vulcan nerve pinch'.) These attacks can supposedly cause death nearly instantly or as much as two weeks later, and were said to be used by assassins, such as ninja. The San Diego connection is that one of the most accomplished masters of this art is said to live in East County San Diego. I heard his name, but for obvious reasons, not least of all not wanting to annoy a rumored professional assassin, I don't want to repeat it here. Anyway, he is a former San Diego cop who was educated in a monastery in Hawaii and learned the art from a monk there, a 15th degree black belt who would practice it on pigs who were about to be slaughtered anyway. The cop disappeared for some years before returning to San Diego. He would never say where he was, but our teacher (a friend of his) says his friends' best guess is that he was off killing people for the government.

Urban legend? Probably. But given that acupuncture can do pretty amazing things, I don't find it that hard to believe that attacks to similar points could disable or kill. In the meantime, be very polite to elderly Asian people, as you should be anyway.
posted by thomas at 5/25/2004 12:42:00 PM

 
More even-handed analysis from the Washington Post
By Tom Smith

We need a new word along the lines of "docu-drama" for news media "analysis" that is really just partisan spinning, with a dash of analysis thrown in. "Spinalysis" maybe? Suggestions welcome.

Anyway, here's the view of two journalists on Bush's speech. Needless to say, it's clear, objective, and dazzlingly insightful. They may need to tweak the computer program that wrote it a little, but it's pretty good when you consider that, strictly speaking, no mind was involved in its production.
posted by thomas at 5/25/2004 10:53:00 AM

 
Michael Moore is a big, fat liar
By Tom Smith

The recent awarding of a Palm d'or (sp? and I don't care) to Michael Moore has really shaken my faith in the international film elite. We rely on them for measured judgments of the art cinematique (ditto). But how can we do this if the giving of prestigious artistic prizes is based so obviously on politics? Are we to believe that something has gone amiss in the process of international aesthetic peer review? Is it possible that the judges and audience in the south of France of full of merde? Eh! Bien! who-can-say? Pffffffffttt! [Gallic shrug] Peut-etre that-is-your-ohpiniohn!

If you really wanted a conspiracy theory, you could tell the story of French support for Saddam and I would guess ongoing support for our enemies in the region. My father-in-law is in Paris now with his lady friend and he says it's swell. OK, they can keep Paris. Maybe Disney could buy it and turn it into one big amusement park.

Here's the link that got this all started. I called Moore on the phone and he said it is all true.
posted by thomas at 5/25/2004 10:26:00 AM

 
You can tell how hard a pig is stuck by how loud it squeals
By Tom Smith

Country wisdom describes this screed in Slate. Hysterical denunciation of Bush's fortitude should be welcomed. Bush may not be Reagan, but he has some Reagan in him. We just have to accept that if he (and we) win in Iraq, it will be the Cold War writ small (Cold war? What Cold War?). Not a big deal, no one ever said it was, blah, blah, blah. Still, it's rather bracing to see Bush be Reagan.
posted by thomas at 5/25/2004 07:05:00 AM

 
Get the job done
By Tom Smith

New poll numbers suggest the American people get it. They disapprove of the job Bush is doing on Iraq, but are determined to tough it out. That sounds about right to me.
posted by thomas at 5/24/2004 05:42:00 PM

 
Germ update
By Tom Smith

Yet another reason to go to a female doctor.
posted by thomas at 5/24/2004 12:25:00 PM

 
John Gray on Iraq
By Tom Smith

Interesting essay from John Gray, a professor in London now, via Brian Leiter, my favorite enemy of the state. Gray was at Oxford when I was there, but I only heard him speak once or twice and came away thinking here was a guy who really wanted to fit in. It's a very British thing. I may be cynical, but I think these sorts of essays tell you a lot more about the social and political pressures within the English academic classes than they do about reality on the sandy ground. But it is interesting, for all that.

I agree that neo-Wilsonianism is something to be watched out for among the neo-cons. Wilson, arrogant Princetonian prig that he was, did think he knew better than everyone else, and that led him astray. I worry about that among some of the neo-cons, who seem intellectually arrogant to me. On the other hand, those who don't see how Iraq fits into the war against terror, which means the war against the Islamo-fascist fantacists, are being deliberately dense. Iraq isn't Vietnam, or Algeria, or Chechnya. "It's a whole new world . . ." as Princess whats-her-name says in Alladin.
posted by thomas at 5/24/2004 10:42:00 AM

 
John Yoo denounced at Berkeley
By Tom Smith

John Yoo, professor at Boalt Hall, who has been depicted on this blog as saying reasonable things on TV, apparently wrote a memo saying Taliban and Al Queada terrorists don't get the same benefits under international law as would prisoners of war. According to the story, about a quarter of Berkeley's law graduates wore red armbands (why red?) to protest the memo and Professor Yoo's presence on the Berkeley faculty. (via VC) Some students made themselves available to say stupid things to reporters.

What I think is especially cute about the protest is that the question did not even arise, apparently, whether Professor Yoo was correct, as a matter of law, in his opinion. Did it even cross the brilliant legal minds of the young protestors to wonder that? I doubt it very much. Nope, not if you think law is just the outfit you dress your opinion in. If the law were clear that illegal combatants, say, are out of luck when it comes to conditions of confinement, for example, then isn't it the job of Yoo to advise his client of that?

We don't get much protestation here at USD, which is fine with me. I hear that a lot of conservative students are afraid to speak out in class, since they feel they are in the minority, but that they read the Right Coast (some secretly). Conservative anxiety is probably exagerated. But nothing could please me more than to give solace to law students around the country who don't want to feel so . . . alone! In the meantime, Professor Yoo has another badge of honor in the book of me and many others. What a stud.
posted by thomas at 5/24/2004 10:18:00 AM

 
Moral tone on the Hill
By Tom Smith

I guess I really am a prude. I admit I find this Senate staffers blog shocking, and am relieved to discover that she can be fired without violating her rights. It would be an exaggeration to say I found DC or the White House a moral cesspool when I was there, but let's say you wouldn't want to drink the water either. The best I can do (with one exception I don't feel like relating now) was a long meeting I had to sit through on the design of some stupid prize for American Industry the Reagan administration came up with. It eventually was legislated and became another few million of taxpayers' money wasted -- a rounding error. Anyway, my boss had to 'coordinate' with some other semi-big shot from OMB or somewhere. He literally looked like a revived corpse. He had the last stages of cancer or something. His assistant was this drop dead gorgeous blonde woman stupider than anyone I have met since high school. Once you go to college, you just don't meet people that stupid, let alone try to craft federal programs with them. When I pointed out things like, important innovations in the pharmaceuticals industry were not likely to come from lone inventors in garages, she would pout, and look at daddy like, "stop this man from being mean to me." It was very, very weird. Then her boss Dracula tried to get me in trouble with my boss for treating her like the idiot she was. Call me naive, but I thought it was wrong to piss away the public's money, even if it was only a few million, just so Nosferatu could get lucky with little Miss Anna Nicole Wonk-Smith. Yet, a few blocks away there were folks in the Justice Department worrying about what James Madison really thought about the foreign affairs power. Washington is a really weird place.
posted by thomas at 5/24/2004 09:54:00 AM

 
John McIntyre at realclearpolitics.com gets it right
By Tom Smith

McIntyre is probably right about recent poll numbers and Bush's reelection prospects.
posted by thomas at 5/24/2004 09:28:00 AM

 
I feel special
By Tom Smith

Not only do I have a gmail account (tacsmith at gmail dot com) but I have an invite to spare! (I sent one to my wife. She did not seem particularly impressed.) Apparently some people are desparate to get one, but I don't really see why. Maybe if you are emailing huge files around. Anyway, I feel cool. Just thought I should let you know. I am hopeful its spam filters might work a little better than most. If I get one more pen1s enlargement offer, I think I may go insane. After I received about a thousand of them, one day I clicked through. Fortunately it was not a virus, as some of them are I learned later, and it took me to a site selling powder from Canadian elk antlers. I find it hard to believe than anything from Canada would give me a bigger male organ. Nationalist thinking, but there you are. The ad also quoted a Canadian physician as saying the powder had turned his male patients into "volcanos" of virile energy. I doubt the quotation was authentic. A doctor would never say "a volcano of virile energy." Not exactly scientific. On the other hand, I understand Canadian doctors will do a lot for greenbacks. For some reason this got me thinking about the names they give drugs such as Viagra. Get it? It's Virile plus Niagra, it of the thundering, throbbing power. Subtle. Even better is Cialis, pronounced "See Alice," as in "I wonder if I have time to go see Alice." It's not supposed to work that well. Maybe they should call it Ciamber. There's probably a list of rejected names in a file in EliLilly somewhere. Mancano didn't make the cut, Suenami is out. Spam is such a waste of time.
UPDATE: I don't feel so special anymore. Gmail won't let me on.
posted by thomas at 5/23/2004 04:34:00 PM

 
WashPost snatches defeat from the jaws of victory
By Tom Smith

US forces kick Sadr's hoods out of Karbala, but is it victory, or something ever so much more ambiguous? The Post beats out the Times for most biased coverage this week. I admit I'm a little disappointed, but you have to be objective abouth these things.
posted by thomas at 5/23/2004 04:26:00 PM

 
Bad day at Abu Ghraib
By Tom Smith

This report doesn't fit the story line very well. Via LGF.
posted by thomas at 5/22/2004 11:27:00 AM

 
Cute kids alert
By Tom Smith

Some of my students have expressed an interest in my kid photos. Here's a link to a few new photos, some of which are pretty darn cute.

FYI all the boys are Jeanne's and mine, Luke, Patrick, William and Mark, oldest to youngest. All the girls are my sister Trish and her husband Paul's.
posted by thomas at 5/21/2004 04:43:00 PM

 
You can try this at home
By Tom Smith

It's a lot like fishing. At first you don't know what the hell you're doing. But you'll figure it out.
posted by thomas at 5/21/2004 01:27:00 PM

 
Truly horrible picture
By Tom Smith

I publish this picture only because I think it is important to know who our enemy is, what he looks like up close, and the horror of it up close. (Warning: due its graphic nature, this photo should not be seen by children, pregnant women, or people with heart conditions). Via instapundit.
posted by thomas at 5/21/2004 09:38:00 AM

 
NPR outdoes itself
By Tom Smith

NPR was in rare form this morning. It featured "An American's Anger at Abu Ghraib," in which somebody-or-other, a former television producer and children's bookseller, explained that she was as angry over the prison abuses as she had been at 9/11. (Scroll down to story on this page.) But, if I understood her point correctly, she's going to channel that anger into being nice to people, or at least some people. But she's really angry.

It really makes me wonder if Osama isn't right -- that America is too soft, too tender hearted, too incapable of resolve, to stand up against a truly ruthless terrorist movement. It reminds me of the scene in Apocalypse Now in which Kurtz tells the story of how the Viet Cong went into a village in which the Green Berets had innoculated the children and cut off all the innoculated arms. Quoting roughly, Kurtz said, "there was this pile of little arms, and it hit me, right here [pointing to the middle of his forehead]" how determined, how pure was the ruthless determination of his enemies.

It's also a very depressing commentary on public life. Heaven knows there is plenty to criticize in Bush's conduct of the war, confusion and cruel behavior in Abu Ghraib not least, but not greatest either, among them. Yet the motives of the war critics seem to be divided between those who genuinely wish for America's defeat, even if that means victory for the religious Nazis for fit their paranoid fantasies about the American right most closely, and opportunists who see defeat in Iraq as the fastest way to get back in the White House.

Just to be clear, I do question the patriotism of the lot of them. Just to be clear, the torture of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib is insignificant compared to 9/11. It does not deserve to be mentioned on the same page. It is not even a footnote. Nobody burned to death. Nobody had to say goodbye to wives and children on a cellphone. Nobody had to reassure his secretary that it was OK, that God would understand if they jumped to their deaths instead of roasted alive in burning jet fuel. Nobody had to choose between their oaths as fire fighters or police officers and seeing their families again. Nobody had to carry their comrades to their graves to the wail of bagpipes. Nobody had to wonder if maybe, somehow, Dad or Mom has escaped and wake up in the middle of the night to wonder still. Nobody died, let alone thousands. That national radio, that you and I pay for, should give voice to such unpatriotic rubbish as comparing Abu Ghraib and 9/11, and that is all it is, is a complete disgrace.
posted by thomas at 5/21/2004 09:03:00 AM

 
Mort is dead right
By Tom Smith

Mort is dead on in this column.

And so is Victor in this one.
posted by thomas at 5/21/2004 08:40:00 AM

 
Interesting debate on Patriot Act
By Tom Smith

Debate over Patriot Act, also via LGF
posted by thomas at 5/18/2004 12:19:00 PM

 
Decapitators captured?
By Tom Smith

Four reported held for Berg murder, via LGF.
posted by thomas at 5/18/2004 12:13:00 PM

 
Those darn chemical weapons
By Tom Smith

It really was sarin. (via instapundit).Apparently there was roughly a gallon of the stuff, but it didn't mix effectively when the bomb disposal guys detonated it.(There's a job for you. Maybe Frank Rich would like to give it a try. He could use some of his movie analogies.) So, my question is, suppose the bad guys had triggered the shell. Would it have spewed a gallon of the evil stuff around? A drop of it can kill you. Sounds scary. So just keep repeating to yourself: "Bush lied. There are no chemical weapons."
posted by thomas at 5/18/2004 11:55:00 AM

 
Second grade anatomy
By Tom Smith

Our second grader, William, brought home the following extremely cute song, about brains:

(To the tune of My Darling Clementine)

The Dendrite Song

Use your dendrites,
Use your dendrites,
To connect throughout your brain!
Take in info, analyze it!
Grow some new ones
Unrestrained.

Axons send out
Neurotransmitters
To the dendrites all around.
Across the synapse
Jumps the impulse;
New ideas can now aboud!

Stimulation
Is what the brain needs
To make dendrites stretch and grow!
New connections
Make us smarter
In what we think and what we know!

(Chorus)

Some mind-brain identity going on here apparently, and some neuroanatomy too. Who says you can't get science in Catholic schools?

Oops! The song is copyrighted by Bruce Campbell. Good on ya, Bruce.

posted by thomas at 5/18/2004 11:39:00 AM

 
Roundup
By Tom Smith

Roundup of good news from Eyeraq. Fight the left by staying informed. Via instapundit.
posted by thomas at 5/18/2004 10:53:00 AM

 
Is this true?
By Tom Smith

It will be up to us in the blogosphere to figure out just what the heck is going on. If it's true that the torture at Abu Ghraib was approved at the top as part of some super-secret program, well, there will be hell to pay. Major disaster for US national security certainly seems a possibility, but at least we will have the consolation of knowing we are doing what the New Yorker thinks is right.

Update: Hmmmmm. Seymour seems to have some credibility problems.

Belmont Club on the home front, and it really is a front. What does the Left think they're doing? Let's say you believe 'government should own the railroads, not railroads the government'. How does giving Iraq back to a bunch of crazed medievalists advance that cause? If you think the government should own the railroads, what good does it do to help the people who want to blow us up, railroads and all? I'm beginning to think the Left isn't really the Left anymore. They're some kind of weird, post-modern pyromaniacs, who just want to set things afire for the pleasure of watching them burn. I'm telling you, evil is weird, and so is history. It's less like Das Kapital than Lord of the Rings. The anti-fascist left should have no part of this, but anti-fascism is a relic on the Left, anyway. Now it's just hatred of the West and nihilistic hatred of wealth and power. Spooky.

And there's the ever studly Mark Helprin.
posted by thomas at 5/17/2004 11:42:00 PM

 
Fighting Back Against Campus Indoctrination
By Gail Heriot

San Diegan Luann Wright was so fed up with the political indoctrination that her son was receiving at UCSD that she decided to fight back. She started a web site--NoIndoctrination.org--at which students can expose college and university instructors who use the classroom as an opportunity for political harangues. For example, a recent posting from a UC Berkeley resident assistant complains of an over-the-top diversity trainer. Check it out.
posted by Gail at 5/17/2004 09:51:00 PM

 
Things That Slither
By Gail Heriot

Here is a picture of the kind of snakes I found in the kitchen of a friend of mine's seemingly ordinary suburban home last week. They were Black Racers--completely harmless--and they had evidently been hibernating behind the dishwasher. The first one was of indeterminate length, but the second was kind enough to stretch himself out in a straight line along the cabinetry, so I am quite certain that he was six feet. I am not afraid of snakes (beyond the ordinary rational level of fear), but I can't say I'm keen on them either, particularly when they show up while I'm trying to read the paper in my bath robe.
posted by Gail at 5/17/2004 06:52:00 PM

 
The loathsome Frank Rich
By Tom Smith

These are salad days for the detestable Frank Rich. He disgorges the following:

Maybe that's true — we are just starting to hear Private England speak for herself — but there's a more revealing story in these women than the cheap ironies of their good witch/wicked witch twinship might suggest. Our 13-month journey from Jessica Lynch's profile in courage to Lynndie England's profile in sadism is less the tale of two women at the bottom of the chain of command than a gauge of the hubris by which those at the top have lost the war in both the international and American courts of public opinion. And the supposedly uplifting Lynch half of the double bill is as revealing of what's gone wrong for us in Iraq — and gone wrong from the start — as is her doppelgänger's denouement at Abu Ghraib.

Is that offensive enough for you? How about this?

But this movie [that's Rich's conceit, the war as movie] has just started, and it's beyond anyone's power to spin it any longer. Yet when the president traveled to the Pentagon on Monday to look at previews of the coming attractions, he seemed as out of touch with reality as Mr. Limbaugh. It was nothing if not an odd moment to congratulate the secretary of defense, who has literally thrown the reputation of our honorable military and our country to the dogs, for doing a "superb job."

What a hypocrite. As if Rich cared a fig for the reputation of our military. As if nothing thrilled him more than the release of the torture pictures. As if he would not dance a lumbering jig to news that a score or a hundred Marines or soldiers were wiped out by a roadside bomb or ambush? So much the better to defeat Bush, and West Virginia and everybody outside his tiny little world.

Amongst other troubling features, for all his sneering superiority, Rich reveals himself to be an utter sexist and city snob. All you have to be is a woman from West Virginia and you're just the same white trash to Frank Rich. Fair game. I missed the part where he explains just what Private Lynch did to deserve being twinned with Private England. I guess Lynch's crime was behaving in a way that did not clearly cast discredit upon the United States. But not everyone can live up to Rich's high standards. Read Rich's whole thing if you don't believe the Times crowd is just overflowing with hatred for the very idea that this country has anything to offer the world. It really makes me wonder why people from West Virginia and a lot of other fine states in this union should be dying for the likes of him.
posted by thomas at 5/17/2004 05:16:00 PM

 
Oh, that's just great
By Tom Smith

Just another happy moment for Catholics in San Diego. As part of an international investigation, covering many countries, of child pornography, the FBI has seized the computer of a priest who used to work (until of couple of years ago)at the parish where my kids go to school. That's just dandy. I don't want to name the priest. It's in the article; you can read it if you want to. I didn't know the guy, and it's innocent until proven guilty, but frankly, if the FBI comes and takes your computer and the Church puts you on a leave of absence, things don't look so good for you. The pornography involved sounds particularly vile. Apparently it emerges from the former Soviet Union and depicts acts committed against children who are effectively slaves. Some of the children are reportedly very young, even infants.

I could go on about this subject at some length. Like a lot of Catholic men my age, a gay priest once approached me for sex when I was underage, (yes, I declined, ha ha) and one priest I knew fairly well got into a lot of trouble for molestation, though I've heard conflicting reports about whether he actually went to jail. I also know some priests who are fine priests and men, and who are, I assume, celibate and gay. I know, I know, I'm going from child pornography to gay very quickly, but the fact is, the molestation involved is almost entirely against underage boys. The problem is not pedophilia per se, but homosexual pedophilia.

Two books I think shed a lot of light on the subject. The first is Good Bye, Good Men. The book is somewhat amateurish, and tends to blame everything on ubiquitous "liberals," but I think it's more or less correct in its diagnosis. The second is another odd, but insightful book, Dr. Scott Peck's People of the Lie. Yes, there's a lot in the book that is goofy, or wrong, or a little nuts, but it also contains some real insights into the nature of evil, one of which is, evil people are drawn to where the good is, the way thieves are drawn to banks. If you want to take advantage of children, where better to be than in a position of sacred trust regarding children? It's important to recognize crimes against children as being first and foremost, crimes, before we go all therapeutical. Another book which is supposed to be good, which I haven't read, is Pedophiles and Priests. The book makes the point that the problem is not particularly Catholic. What the Church has that other organizations that deal with children lack is a centralized structure that makes abuses easier to discover and track, and also makes it a more desirable target for plaintiff's attorneys.

One good thing about this topic is that it makes me eager to get back to grading exams.
posted by thomas at 5/17/2004 10:20:00 AM

 
Those darn Syrians and their darn WMDs!
By Tom Smith

This is, in fact, interesting. I wonder if some black ops team from the USA gave the cargo a little boost into oblivion? Any of you former SEALs hanging out in San Diego who know anything are welcome to let me know, on a no names, identify me and you'll wake up dead basis.
posted by thomas at 5/17/2004 10:12:00 AM

 
Interesting essay on Star Trek
By Tom Smith

One of the better things I've read on Star Trek, which may not be saying much.
posted by thomas at 5/17/2004 10:10:00 AM

 
Do you remember Vlad? Now that was torture!
By Tom Smith

This was over the top even for the Times:

Meanwhile, the Islamic world was seeing something new and yet somehow familiar. For the most historically imaginative, the pictures of mistreated prisoners of war from inside Abu Ghraib prison recalled the sight greeting Ottoman soldiers when they marched north in 1476 into Romania: hundreds of their captured comrades spiked on poles along the roadside by Vlad the Impaler, the Christian prince who gave rise to the Dracula legend.

Oh, puh leeese. Now we are vampires, Christian vampires, impaling those poor Iraqi victims. And I'm sorry, but I doubt very much if 15th century Romania lives, just like it was yesterday, for anybody in Baghdad. What a complete crock. Don't they have editors at the Times? And not to defend Dracooolah, but the Islamic hordes weren't exactly going north as tourists. That's why they took their scimitars with them. And is it really necessary to label Vlad the Impaler as a Christian prince? Oh I know! He was a born-again Christian, right? I think we're missing the historical ties between Vlad, Bush and Halliburton. I coom to suck your oil!

Maybe I shouldn't complain. If the Times weren't so ridiculous, more people would take them seriously. Ooops! Got to go! I see the sun peeking up over the horizon, and my skin is starting to boil!
posted by thomas at 5/17/2004 09:33:00 AM

 
Oh, that nerve gas
By Tom Smith

It's just a little. It's only one. It's probably the only one. Bush lied. It violates international law. We're just as bad as Saddam. Have I left anything out?

Then there's this:

Gazi George, a former Iraqi nuclear scientist under Saddam's regime, told Fox News that he believes many similar weapons stockpiled by the former regime were either buried underground or transported to Syria. He noted that the airport where the device was detonated is on the way to Baghdad from the Syrian border.

George said the finding likely will just be the first in a series of discoveries of such weapons.

"Saddam is the type who will not store those materials in a military warehouse. He's gonna store them either underground, or, as I said, lots of them have gone west to Syria and are being brought back with the insurgencies," George told Fox News. "It is difficult to look in areas that are not obvious to the military's eyes.

"I'm sure they're going to find more once time passes," he continued, saying one year is not enough for the survey group or the military to find the weapons.

Saddam, when he was in power, had declared that he did in fact possess mustard-gas filled artilleries but none that included sarin.

"I think what we found today, the sarin in some ways, although it's a nerve gas, it's a lucky situation sarin detonated in the way it did ... it's not as dangerous as the cocktails Saddam used to make, mixing blister" agents with other gases and substances," George said.

But don't worry. The chemical weapons have nothing to do with prison abuse and so are per se irrelevant, as we lawyers might say. Alternatively, just put your fingers in your ears and say, "I'm not listening, la, la, la, la, la . . . " It works for kids and it can work for you.


posted by thomas at 5/17/2004 09:28:00 AM

 
Must Church watch its step?
By Tom Smith

Interesting post at TaxProf blog, on whether recent pronouncements by the RC bishop in Colorado Springs, suggesting Catholics should not vote for pro-abortion candidates, might jeopardize the Church's tax exempt status.
posted by thomas at 5/17/2004 09:19:00 AM

 
First Things first
By Tom Smith

Good post over at SUV-hater Prof. Bainbridge, whose judgment is otherwise sound. He needs to watch his driving, though.

Post is about the journal First Things, which really is a swell mag.
posted by thomas at 5/14/2004 07:27:00 PM

 
Come fly with Terry
By Tom Smith

Can I say Terry instead of TeRAYsa? (a mnemonic from James Taranto -- she wants TeRAYsa your taxes) . . . Anyway, I'm shopping for a personal jet aircraft and I think the kind Terry Kerry has would do me just fine. Still puzzling out where the 50 very, very large is going to come from (donations gladly accepted), but here's what she, I mean it, it being the jet, looks like. Lovely, isn't she/it? Somewhere in all this is the answer to the question, why should I pay more taxes? I drive a leased 2001 Volvo wagon with a dent (spouse) in it. Nice jet, though. If she becomes first lady could I like, sit in it? Check out the interiors. People spend millions, seriously, millions, to decorate the interiors of these things. Would it be possible to find out how much Terry spent to decorate the interior of her jet? For the cost of one of these flying puppies, you could have sent 5000 San Diego kids to the sort of private school John went to for one year. Or not. Nice jet though.
posted by thomas at 5/14/2004 07:00:00 PM

 
Nick Berg video
By Tom Smith

I finally found a download of the Nick Berg video here that worked and watched the video.

Here is a link to the Right Coast typepad site, where you should be able to download the video in zipped form. If you save it to a location on your drive, then click on it, it should play, assuming you have Windows media player on your system.

As I mention on the other site, the 'price' for downloading here is saying a prayer for Nick Berg and his family.

I'm linking this because I think this is a video that Al-Queda has changed its mind about Americans watching, and which the mainstream media seem not to want us to see. It clarifies things. Poor Nick reminds me of animals I have seen slaughtered on the ranch. Which is no doubt how they see us and our children.

UPDATE: Just to be clear, the reason I am posting this is because I think, contrary to what Al Qaeda was hoping, this video is having the opposite effect. No doubt one of Al-Q's disadvantages in PR is that they find it hard to predict how people with normal consciences will react. With Al Jezeera now saying the video is fake, and denial of service attacks on websites publishing the video, it seems clear Al-Q wants this cat back in the bag. But one thing blogs can do is get out news, even when our enemies don't want it out, and even when the mainstream press would just as soon not carry the story. One can bloviate forever about the nature of terrorism and terrorists, and not make the point as vividly as the last 30 seconds of the the Nick Berg video.
posted by thomas at 5/13/2004 11:52:00 PM

 
And another thing
By Tom Smith

To elaborate on what Maimon says below, sentiments like this (same link as below to instapundit, but what the heck)can fairly be described, they can only be described as unpatriotic. Am I questioning the patriotism of critics of the war? No. I am stating, asserting, observing the obvious fact that a lot of critics of the war are NOT PATRIOTIC. They want America to lose, they are quite willing to see a bunch of American young men and women die if that's what it takes to humiliate Bush, they hold many if not most American people in contempt, they grossly underestimate the evil of our enemies and the goodness of our cause, and they are deliberately obtuse about the ongoing threat of WMD's, which for my money are now in Syria or Jordan or Iran, and may show up when least expected, just to mention of few of their shortcomings. There is precious little of the "When right to keep her right, when wrong to put her right, but my country right or wrong" sentiment amongst the left. I'm not talking about old-fashioned Democrats of which there are a few left, but rather the left of the academy and the media and a good part of Democratic party. They really do hate America and want to see her humiliated. If that's not unpatriotic, what is it? I don't question John Kerry's patriotism--though I wouldn't say I'm entirely convinced by it either--but if you don't think a lot of the academic and journalistic left hate this country, you're just a sap, unable to believe unpleasant truths. It may be somewhat irrational for them to hate the USA, but hatred is an irrational emotion. Lots of kids hate parents who make their pampered lives possible. It should join the catalog of unpleasant truths you manage to accept after age 40. There really are women who hate men, men who hate women, people who hate other people of particular races, religions and nationalities. And a lot of people who hate this country. Things get a lot clearer once you accept that fact. OK, a pretty obvious post. I'll try to go back to my normal, brilliant self for next time.

AND this (via instapundit again).
And this.
posted by thomas at 5/13/2004 10:30:00 PM

 
Those darn French
By Tom Smith

Here's a cute cartoon from Le Monde. Via Andrew Sullivan. Just for that, we shouldn't let them get any more bribes from Saddam. Oh that's right! We took care of that already! Je ne regret rein!
posted by thomas at 5/13/2004 10:23:00 AM

 
Success in Iraq?
By Tom Smith

Interesting post at Belmont Club.

I agree that Iraq is something out of Hannah or Kipling novel. I think it's possible the Marines and many others may be pulling off the very difficult task of isolating and defeating Sadr. Belmont Club has been very good at explaining how intricate the task has been. Most of the right wing blogosphereists who have been complaining about how we were not coming down hard enough on the insurgents have seemed pretty ignorant to me. As Plato once said, you have to kill the fleas without killing the dog. Or maybe not Plato, but you see the point.

I'm not sure exactly why, but I am feeling pretty optimistic today about the whole Iraq mess. The American people are not showing many signs of the despair and flight the unpatriotic left so ardently wishes. I never cease to be amazed at how profound the ignorance of the American Left is of the character of the country they're so keen to undo. Maybe I could run a sideline business giving tours of America to leftists who want to understand it. We could go wild boar hunting in South Carolina, go to minor league baseball game in Arizona, a church picnic in Nebraska around harvest time . . . They would realize it's going to take more than prison abuse stories to get The American Masses to throw up their hands and run shreiking from the room. But as usual, I digress. Barring some major new revelations, I don't see Rummy getting pushed out. Bush's poll numbers are not great, but show remarkable strength under the circumstances. And, it looks to me like Sadr and his minions are about to get crushed, slowly, but crushed. When that happens, I think there may be a rebound effect, a sense of "Gee, we're pretty good at this after all."

All this could be utterly wrong. I am the guy who thought "It really is a new economy!" and bought into NASDAQ at 4700. But I think there's a decent chance that pompous defeatist frogs such as George Will, hysterical chipmunks such as David Brooks, and the whole managerie of venomous creatures that is the Most Extreme Animals show of the American Left, are in for a surprise.
UPDATE: As usual, I'm just a radio, picking up the waves in the blogosphere.
posted by thomas at 5/13/2004 09:46:00 AM

 
One Angry Frog
By Tom Smith

Mr. George "Jeremy Fisher" Will is really mad this time. He's calling on Rumsfeld to do whatever it is he should do. Now that's telling him. Mind you, he's not saying Rumsfeld should resign. Nor is he saying he shouldn't. He is saying that Rumsfeld should do whatever the brave, bold, Shakespearean, Hamiltonian, Eatonian, Princetonian, bow-tiean thing is, as it may happen, as one should have thought it should not have been necessary to say, but apparently is necessary for one. That, as I say, is tellin' 'im. George the Man of Will. He is a brave man. Frogs that inflate themselves too far have been known to actually explode, you know. Will should be careful.

Forgive me for observing the obvious irony. Here is a pundit who is too sceeeeerd to take a position on whether Rummy should go, but is quite happy to bloviate on the importance of doing the courageous, the honorable thing, without taking a position on what the honorable thing is. So while positioning himself carefully in the middle somewhere, Will calls for bold action, without saying what that might be. This amounts to no more than moralistic preening, or whatever it is frogs do, not have feathers to preen. Giving themselves a fresh coat of slime, perhaps (One should have thought one should know better than to mix one's metaphors, shouldn't one? But there one is.) Will really missed his calling. He should have been an opinionated C of E curate who advised his parishioners to always be moral, while not having a bit of advice on what the moral thing was. Husband a drunk wife-beater but no other source of income? Well, then do the moral thing! What is that? Not a clue, what? what?

Needless to say, there are more important things here than the marginal advancement of journalist pundits' careers (as can almost always be said). As it says below the statue of Nathan Hale (of Yale) outside the CIA headquarters, a lot of things are honorable in defense of one's country (or words to that effect: contact Mr. Will for exact quotation.) Rumsfeld has a war to win. If he becomes a hindrance rather than a help, Bush will fire him, if Rumsfeld doesn't resign first. If you expect it to be Shakespearen when it happens, you'll probably be disappointed. In the meantime, calls for his resignation, or calls for honor (and the better part thereof) are just political posturing. Mr. Will should exhale, and have a nice butterfly sandwich.
posted by thomas at 5/11/2004 09:27:00 AM

 
Hanson speaks out
By Tom Smith

Victor is right again.
posted by thomas at 5/10/2004 04:40:00 PM

 
Dave Barry has a blog
By Tom Smith

But you probably knew that already.
posted by thomas at 5/10/2004 03:10:00 PM

 
Tom Ricks on Iraq
By Tom Smith

Here is an interesting article in the Post by Tom Ricks, who covers the Pentagon for them.

I spoke to Tom twice, once on the record and once off, back we he covered the White House for the Wall Street Journal. This was shortly after the Battle of Hastings. I don't know what his politics are, though it's safe to assume they are the usual enemy of all that is good left liberalism. Nevertheless, I was very impressed with the guy. He seemed to have read the entire four volume legislative history of the Glass-Steagall Act for instance, and act of fanatical self-education in the area of securities regulation, one of the things he covered for the Journal. In other words, the sort of deeply-informed person a journalist should be, and almost never is. Rumsfeld reportedly hates him. Tom doesn't get invited to love-fests with the Secretary as other Pentagon reporters do. He is good at seeking out disaffected sorts who want to get something off their chest, so his depiction of military dissent from the Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz approach may be somewhat exagerated, but probably not entirely.

I am somewhat in agreement with the pro-wars sorts who are observing that there is a mismatch in Iraq between our stated objectives and our level of resources and commitment. I even agree with some of the left-wing critics who put this down to intellectual arrogance on the part of Wolfowitz, who appears to suffer that fault, very common among intellectuals. He's also rather disingenuous-- see his quote at the end about junior military officers unwilling to criticize him to his face. Why on earth would they be unwilling? What's wrong with guarding radar stations in Alaska? You see some really beautiful sunsets, and they last for days at a time.

We probably need to both scale up resources and scale down objectives in Iraq until they are in line with each other. And do so without being too obvious that that is what we are doing.
posted by thomas at 5/10/2004 08:48:00 AM

 
Andrew needs an ambien
By Tom Smith

Andrew Sullivan spent a sleepness night over Abu Ghraib, while I on the other hand, slept fine. True, I had spent some time soaking in the spa and playing with four boys and two dogs in the pool, and watched Master and Commander on the new TV, not to mention drinking a Stone Pale Ale, so I was ready.

Yes, the reports of what went on in that prison are awful. The report that US soldiers actually videotaped Iraqi children getting raped by Iraqi soldiers is, well, what can you say? Obviously, we have a big house in Kansas for those miscreants. But the fact is, none of the revelations change a thing. Yes, it is a great propaganda victory for our enemies, from Paris to Iraq to North Korea. The New Yorker is in a veritable orgasm of glee. It is their favorite kind of scandal. In the feel-think the soft left seems to specialize in, it somehow entails that the US should crawl out of Iraq, turn it over to the UN kleptocracy, elect Mr. Heinz Kerry to the White House, and perhaps go to sensitivity camps to learn about why the world hates us. And poor Andrew Sullivan is up all night wringing his hands.

Some commentators have made the obvious but still worth making points that this scandal exists only because Americans are held to higher standards than Arabs. When Palestinian thugs murder a woman's children in front of her and then the mother it's just part of the cycle of violence. When Saddam murders thousands it doesn't merit notice. It's a tough old world out there.

I suppose some of this is Bush's fault for stressing the nation-building dimension of our invasion of Iraq. Building a democracy in Iraq, however, is just a means to an end, the end being to increase US national security. Tedious to repeat, but we find ourselves in a war against a peculiar enemy. History is just so weird. Who would have thunk that after World War I, the Germans would come under the sway of an ideology that held, among other things, that the race of Aryans (who descended from a pure, white stock from the Himalayas or thereabouts) was the master race, and was being polluted by nefarious, sexually over-powered Jews, and that in order to restore said master race, lots of room had to be cleared out in Europe; then their wonderful culture, which included such things as psychic powers only pure-blooded Aryans had, could blossom again (as it had once in the mysterious land of Thule) under a thousand year Reich? Those darn Nazis! They were just nuts! But it was no joke, of course, or at least not the funny kind. America in the 1940's was no perfect bargain. Jim Crow laws. Lynchings. Don't even ask about prisons. Yet, still not much of a case for irradiating the testicles of Jewish boys, murdering all Gypsies, mentally retarded people, disabled people, dissident Christians, and so on, and so on, and so on.

Here's the thing about the islamo-fascists, or whatever you want to call them--and we still need a good name. They are, not to put too fine a point on it, nuts. Evil and nuts. Their fantasy doesn't involve an Aryan master race or the land of Thule, but it might as well. Curiously, they hate Jews and Christians just like the Nazis did. (What is it about Jews and Christians?) But instead of exterminating people on the basis of race, they want to exterminate people on the basis of religion, so they can establish not a thousand year Reich, but some fantasy medieval theocracy where the men read the Koran and the women wear those parachute-thingies. Bizarre, I know. There is this strong Western, liberal tendency to downplay the irrational in history. It must really be about America's injustices in the third world, or capitalism, or inequality or something. But no, it's because they're nuts. Evil and nuts. A bad combination. But, needless to say, we can't let them win, and we aren't going to let them win. One hopes it won't take a Soviet-era thermonuclear device destroying Dallas or Tampa to convince Americans that there is no alternative to very thoroughly defeating this particular monster that has slithered out of the ideological fever swamps of the Middle East. Tony Blair got it exactly right in his speech. Of course the terrorists would have killed 3 million instead of 3 thousand, if they had the technology. I guess we should be grateful they're from the slums of Baghdad and not the suburbs of Munich. But the technology exists and conceivably could be bought. After it comes to that, or before, Americans will pull together, rise up and smash this threat to our existence. It would be better for all concerned if it is before.

So yes, by all means, we should punish the torturer-miscreants of Abu Ghraib. The highways of Kansas can always use more crushed stone. But unless our enemies undergo some spontaneous mental regeneration, which seems unlikely, we still have to defeat them. Andrew should get some sleep. He's going to need it.
posted by thomas at 5/09/2004 11:40:00 AM

 
Those darn bloggers
By Tom Smith

Looks like The New York Times Learning site has decided to yank its "lesson plan" on protesting Iraqi prisoner abuses. The plan included advice to teachers that students peruse the English language version of Al-Jazeera. This presumably after James Taranto called attention to it on opinionjournal.com. As whats-her-name says in Alladin, it's a whole new world.
posted by thomas at 5/09/2004 09:47:00 AM

 
really bad
By Tom Smith

Rummy may well be gone, if this is true. From the Independent in the UK.

The Bush administration was bracing itself last night for the release of new pictures and video footage from Abu Ghraib which show US soldiers having sex with an Iraqi woman prisoner, troops almost beating a prisoner to death, and the rape of young boys by Iraqi guards at the jail.

Senior officials have warned that the new images and details of the abuse and torture at the prison west of Baghdad will be even more shocking than those already released. They will undoubtedly place even more pressure on President George Bush and his beleaguered Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, as they desperately try to limit the political damage from the growing scandal.

NBC News has quoted military officials as saying that the new photographsalso show US soldiers "acting inappropriately with a dead body". This may refer to a picture, which The Washington Post described but did not publish, of Sabrina Harman, one of seven reservists charged with abuses, posing with thumbs up next to a decaying corpse.

NBC also reported that the rape of young boys by Iraqi guards, apparently in a special section of the prison, had been filmed by US soldiers.

There are even suggestions that the murder of a prisoner has been recorded.

posted by thomas at 5/08/2004 03:42:00 PM

 
Hanson on Iraq
By Tom Smith

We should just have a permanent link to Victor Hanson.

And here's what the New York Times prints (don't eat first).
posted by thomas at 5/08/2004 03:19:00 PM

 
Why blogs are good
By Tom Smith

This essay at Belmont Club speaks for itself.
posted by thomas at 5/07/2004 02:26:00 PM

 
Those darn Syrians
By Tom Smith

Oh, really, what's the big worry. The Iraquis didn't have nukes, and the Syrians won't get them either. Or Iran. Or North Korea. Well, they may have some, but that's our fault, for not giving them enough aid. We forced them to renege on that deal. And why should the US be the only super-power anyway? What makes us so special? Israel has nuclear weapons, so why shouldn't the Syrians? The Syrians wouldn't give them to terrorists, and there's no proof that they would. No good proof. No proof that is absolutely convincing. And if they did give some to terrorists, so what? We are the true terrorists! Look at what we did to the Native Americans! Genocide. Maybe we deserve to have a nuke go off in New York. That would teach us. So, as you can see, no reason to worry about the Syrians getting nukes.

BTW John Bolton was a partner at the firm I was at in Washington. I didn't really know him, but by all accounts, a very smart guy, hard headed, smart lawyer type. If he is worried about the Syrians, maybe you should be too. But not really. It's all just the vast right wing conspiracy, trying to make sure Halliburton gets to build more latrines in the Middle East.
posted by thomas at 5/07/2004 10:37:00 AM

 
Politically Incorrect T-Shirts
By Tom Smith

These T-shirts are politically offensive and should not be allowed on properly politically cleansed campuses. Imagine, a T-shirt that says, in Arabic, "Don't Mess With Texas." That is just wrong. It is hurtful. Somebody should be spanked, very strictly indeed. I wonder if you could wear one of these in Boalt Hall, or if that would violate the First Amendment, as amended.
posted by thomas at 5/07/2004 10:27:00 AM

 
This just doesn't seem very progressive to me
By Tom Smith

So Little Popelette Sadr has decreed that any militiamen that capture a British female soldier can keep her as a slave, according to AP. I think I need to be reminded again why the progressive forces of the Left support this guy. I realize it's not so much that they want slavery back, as that they want the US to lose, but don't you sort of have to consider the consequences of your actions, or is that just deluded bourgieous thinking, or something?

Moreover, I doubt British women would make very good slaves, just in general, and the ones actually fighting in Iraq, well, something tells me they would be even less suitable for slavery than the average Brit. And maybe the military genius Sadr should consider how the British public is going to feel after the tabloids get ahold of the story of British women being kept in slavery, assuming they manage to take any alive, which is doubtful. So far, the Iraquis have seen pretty polite Brits. They haven't seen the demonically possessed lion Brits yet. A few British slaves would probably do the trick. You go, little pope-boy.

Is it just me, or is this Sadr fellow starting to get really tedious? Perhaps the British should capture him and sentence him to working in a dingy little tea shop in Brighton for the next 20 years. But, oh, that would surely be a violation of human rights. Another idea that appeals to me at least. Apparently there is this version of the JDAM that is just a 1000 pound, bomb shaped block of concrete with a sophisticated guidance system. The Brits use them to take out tanks when they don't want a big explosion. Very British, somehow. Let's drop one of those on him! Preferably just as he his raising his finger talking about the glories of enslaving British women, or any women for that matter. That's the sort of feminism I could endorse.
posted by thomas at 5/07/2004 10:00:00 AM

 
How to do bad economics
By Tom Smith

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

The rest of world invests huge amounts in the U.S., more than we invest in or sell to the rest of the world, and that's a huge problem because . . . And here the argument grows murky.
posted by thomas at 5/07/2004 09:43:00 AM

 
Speech code for Boalt Hall
By Tom Smith

A speech code for Boalt Hall? How tedious. According to the first hand account on the Volokh site, the offending guest lecturer was role playing a crabby CFO of a midwestern construction company, and in that role said his company did not employ inferior Mexican immigrant labor, or words to that effect. If the new speech code, assuming it is decreed, or whatever it is you do to impose speech codes, is designed to stop this sort of thing, it will be pretty hard to engage in role playing of people who say "hurtful" things. Perhaps you could have a rule under which, when you were just role playing, a helper could stand to your left, holding a big poster board with a giant left quotation mark on it, and one to your right with a giant right quotation mark (oh wait, it would have to be a left mark on your right, and a right mark on your left, or else it would look backwards!), and that way everyone would know you were just role-playing. But, I suppose this could easily lead to abuses. Student groups could sponsor lecturers who could say whatever they wanted, so long as they had the quotation mark helpers standing on either side. A problem, perhaps too deep a problem for me. It's a complicated business, regulating the circumstances under which a person is allowed to speak freely.
posted by thomas at 5/07/2004 09:21:00 AM

 
Torture in the digital age
By Tom Smith

An angle on the Iraq prison scandal that the Washington Post rightly emphasizes is the role of the digital camera. The photos obtained by the Post were emailed to them and taken originally with digital cameras. No more sneaking rolls of film past guards or secreting microfilm in hollow teeth. As long as you have access to the web, you can transmit information anywhere.

Many of the soldiers in Iraq have digital cameras, including some, as has become so apparent, with access to the Abu Ghraib prison. As we law and economics types say, this has resulted in a radical lowering of monitoring costs. This may not be clear to the various enemies of liberty out there, but this scandal and the way it arose, is all about how open societies with free press, technology and democratic government can respond to and correct abuses. The torture going on in Iran, "the Kingdom," Egypt, Jordan, Cuba, North Korea and the rest of the prison states, we are not seeing digital pictures of, and will still be going on next year. And that torture is lot worse than what we see in the Post.

I have toyed with the idea of a sort of neo-Benthamite panopticon in American prisons. Why shouldn't there be webcams in the hallways of state penitentaries? If voyeurs saw three guards with billy clubs going into a cell in the middle of the night in the Wyoming state pen, bloggers would know about it by morning. I am all for locking up criminals. Three strikes is good by me. But I also think the abuses that routinely take place in prisons in this country are grotesque, and should be stopped.

There are lots of other public facilities that I think should be in the virtual public space of the internet. Why not have a webcam broadcasting the construction of public buildings? If workers are trying to frame while stoned (as they obviously were when they built my house) why shouldn't we find out, and maybe even get them not to use nail guns while intoxicated? Why shouldn't we know that some highway workers spend 90 percent of their time propping up shovels and not digging with them? I'm not kidding about this. I think the internet has enormous potential for lowering the monitoring costs of public activity that should take place in the full glare of publicity.
posted by thomas at 5/06/2004 10:52:00 AM

 
The University of Iowa Remains Committed to Goofy Political Correctness
By Gail Heriot

The University of Iowa recently cancelled a baseball game with Bradley University, because the Bradley team is known as "the Braves." The Iowa Hawkeyes (probably a reference to the Hawkeye character in James Fenimore Cooper's the Last of the Mohicans) wouldn't be caught dead on the playing field with team whose name is insensitive to Indians.
posted by Gail at 5/05/2004 09:43:00 AM

 
Hanson gets it about right
By Tom Smith

Victor Hanson on current troubles. via RCP.
posted by thomas at 5/04/2004 09:38:00 PM

 
Senate Intelligence Committee did poor job; need longer terms
By Tom Smith

See if you can figure this out. Maybe it's Senate-think.
posted by thomas at 5/04/2004 09:11:00 PM

 
What a relief
By Tom Smith

Stars get eco-friendly limos.
posted by thomas at 5/04/2004 10:51:00 AM

 
Now is the time for all pompous conservatives to puff themselves up like toads and bloviate
By Tom Smith

You've seen them, at least if you frequent conservative gatherings. They sport blue blazers that might have fit them at Andover or Yale, but not anymore. They seem never to have understood that ties can be drycleaned, or even replaced. If you want to talk dirty to them, you say "Princeton." There comes a time in every fight when this sort of conserative puffs himself up, like the pompous toads we have out in East County, and burps at the top of his little lungs "me too! me too! me too!" It happens out in Jamul in springtime, when you get rain and warm weather. It's happening now in Washington, now that it looks like we might have a fight on our hands in Iraq.

You can tell someone is losing their nerve when they start quoting people. George Will really breaks open the Bartlett's in this morning's screed. Time for another lesson on what is true, old-fashioned, no-ice-with-that, let's-give-Chip-a-wedgie, conservatism. Professor Will intones: "In "On Liberty" (1859), (did everybody get that? 1859! Them were the days!) John Stuart Mill said, "It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to say" that the doctrine of limited, democratic government "is meant to apply only to human beings in the maturity of their faculties." One hundred forty-five years later it obviously is necessary to say that." Or, as they say in East County: Errrrrrrrp! Errrrrrrp! Me too! Me too! Me too! And just as you are trying to digest that gobbet, Will lays this out for us: "Ron Chernow's magnificent new biography of Alexander Hamilton begins with these of his subject's words: "I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be." That is the core of conservatism."

Oh, how magnificent! How core-like! How very Hamiltonian! Where did I put those silk knee-breeches! Look, it's Mr. Jeremy Fisher himself, come to offer us a magnificent butterfly sandwich! How utterly refreshing and relieving for Will to let us know wherein lies the core of conservativism. We can never be reminded often enough. It is opportunism disguised as a reversion to old-fashioned, if obscure principles! Am I getting that right? And thank goodness those core principles are so obscure. Otherwise it would be hard to bug out when the going got rough, and still have something to justify it with. How very sad, how poorly it reflects on us, that Will had to remind us of that when, perhaps, one should have thought it should hardly have been necessary for one to say it to one. In my Disney infected mind, I see Will as a plump rat, decked out in 18th century finery, poised on the rail of the ship, which he fears is sinking, pausing to lecture us before he scurries overboard: "And let me say finally, that it is alwaysdiscretion, my friends, discretion and prudence, that is, or rather, are, the better part of valour! And with that, I bid you, Adieu!"

And what has motivated these nervous conservatives to hop to the edge of the water and puff themselves up with quotations, before they disappear into the waves? It is that, suddenly, things look rough in Iraq. American soldiers have been humiliating Iraqi prisoners and the press be goin' wild. What is going on in Fallujah doesn't look like the sort of victory political pundits can understand. I say, it's all rather confusing, what, what?

So, if you are the careful, cautious, old fashioned sort of conservative, it's time to start quoting dead liberals, such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan, about such completely unfalsifiable entities as "culture" and "maturity," which sound so much more profound than "exit strategy," and so much less cowardly than "quagmire." We wouldn't have left Iraq in such a mess, but their "culture" just wasn't "mature" enough. And so, we abandoned them to the mercies of die-hard Saddamist fascist thugs, theocratic neo-Nazis, and international terrorists searching frantically for WMDs. We did, in short, the mature, old-fashioned conservative thing. The traditional thing.

George Will should join the ranks of Maureen Dowd and other columnists who have said what they have to say. This is the stage of the Iraq conflict when we need cowboys and Marines a lot more than we need preppies or New York social x-rays. The core reality is that this is the time to cowboy up. One should hardly have thought that necessary to say. We need to find the rest of the so called "militants" in Iraq, and their various al Queda helpers, and kill them. We need to set up a functioning army and police force. We need to install a regime that is not founded on terror. We need to convince nuke-crazy Iran that we mean business. We need to punish the soldiers guilty of torture, compensate the victims and move on. Last I checked, the US Army didn't rape any children in front of their parents, feed anybody into a wood chipper feet first, or let their dogs eat them, so everybody, especially you really old fashioned conservatives, should just calm down and realize it's still the first quarter.

Yes, it's too bad George Bush can do such a credible imitation of a tounge-tied knucklehead when ever the press asks a tough question. We knew that already. That does not mean George Will should panic. It's a vision thing. Old fashioned conservatives, or some of them, think democracy came over in a boat from England. New conservatives think it can grow anywhere, even such God foresaken places as Texas and Iraq, because it springs out of the human heart, not Harvard politicos, English philosophers or magnificent biographies, or, as it should not be necessary to say, meterologically sensitive Washington pundits. We also have a moral obligation to try far past the point where the old conservatives scurry to their books looking for excuses to flee. We need to stick with the stubbornness of a cowboy who is too dug in to do anything but fight until he dies, if he has to. As that great philosopher said, like a tick on a dog. We owe it to the Vietnamese people, whom we betrayed, and to the Iraqi people, whom we betrayed once before. That's the core reality. That's true conservatism. That's the way things are. The "faculties" of the Iraquis trying to build a new state may not be the generation that gathered at Philadelphia, but they are "mature" enough to figure this reality out, and so is everybody else in the watching world.
posted by thomas at 5/04/2004 09:41:00 AM