Saturday, March 3, 2007

03 Mar 2007 11:15 pm

Coulter Quarantined

Romney, McCain and Giuliani all put some distance between their campaigns and the woman from under the Republican rock.

03 Mar 2007 11:02 pm

How Does HIV Spread So Swiftly in Africa?

Steve Sailer suggests a theory:

The key is that African husbands tend to be more tolerant of their wives having a long term lover or two than is the norm elsewhere. The thought of one's wife becoming pregnant by another man is intolerable to most husbands around the world, but tends to be less infuriating in Africa.

That probably stems from women doing most of the farm work in rural Africa. (That's why you are always hearing about men in Africa working away from home in mines or wherever for months -- the men aren't often needed around the farm because most of the work is just hoeing weeds, which women can do at least as well as men.)

So, the husbands don't have as much leverage over their wives' behavior as in places where husbands are work-a-daddies bringing home the bacon. And African husbands don't have as much motivation to enforce fidelity on their wives since they won't be investing as much money in their wives' children's upbringing as they would elsewhere.

Another contributor to the high rates of AIDS in Southern/Eastern Africa besides multiple concurrent partners and lack of circumcision is the bizarre fetish for "dry sex," which I would guess doesn't exist among West Africans because (thankfully) you never hear about it among their African-American cousins.

Dry sex?

03 Mar 2007 09:01 pm

So You Wanna Be A Jedi Knight?

It's America. And your one minute and 48 seconds are up.

03 Mar 2007 07:29 pm

Quote for the Day

"I have said it before and I'll say it again: social conservatives have taken over the Republican party. Fiscal conservatives have allowed social conservatives to not just take over their party, but even to determine the meaning of conservatism. If the Republican party, however, wants to win in 08, they’d better break with the social conservative movement/religious right," - Michael van der Galien.

I make a similar case in "The Conservative Soul," which last year prompted some critics to say I was over-stating the influence of the Christianist right in redefining conservatism away from its roots in skepticism, limited government and individual freedom. But I've noticed a slight uptick in interest in the book lately, as some Republicans have headed toward new extremes. Even Derb says he may re-read it. Try Chapters 5 and 6, Derb. I bet you find more there to agree with than you might expect.

03 Mar 2007 06:32 pm

The View From Your Window

Lincoln, Nebraska, 6.30 am.

03 Mar 2007 05:43 pm

An Epidemic of Self-Esteem

One thing that emerges from reality-television. It is now simply de rigueur always and everywhere to proclaim one's own talents publicly, to boast about doing a great job always, to predict one's own imminent triumph - and never to engage in self-criticism. I see it on Top Chef, Project Runway, and American Idol (my three faves). I find it unappealing and wonder if the producers demand it. But the epidemic of self-esteem seems to be growing more generally among the young, according to this piece from the Detroit Free Press.

03 Mar 2007 04:22 pm

Face Of The Day

US General David Petraeus talks with an Iraqi man in the Shorja market area while on foot patrol to meet shopkeepers and other Iraqis March 3, 2007 in the downtown area of Baghdad, Iraq. General Petraeus is implementing a new plan for the American effort in Iraq, which relies heavily on frequent contact with normal Iraqis in the streets. (Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images)

03 Mar 2007 02:57 pm

HRC and HRC: The Love-In

Here's Senator Clinton's speech to Human Rights Campaign volunteers yesterday. Money quote on HRC's talk to HRC:

"I love the fact that it's my initials. Have you ever noticed that?"

There was no press coverage of this speech, and HRC kept it very hush-hush, which is weird, defensive, suspicious - but that's HRC, sucking money out of gay pockets to finance an insider, velvet-rope elite of D.C. hacks. But the speech is significant in one respect, it seems to me. HRC, the organization, is now fully integrated into HRC, the campaign. It is the Clinton campaign. Clinton calls HRC's executive director, Joe Solmonese a "colleague." She talks of a future "relationship" with HRC in a Clinton administration: "You will have an open door to the White House". Among HRC's victories, she cites the 2006 election turn-out campaign ... for the Democrats.

To her credit, she forthrightly backs gay adoption. And she backs ENDA and hate crimes. But no mention of marriage. She's against it. She also makes no commitment to passing ENDA (the Employment Non-Discrimination Act) or hate-crimes laws in the current Congress. That's also significant. I have a feeling that they've run the numbers (that's what HRC does when it's not fund-raising for the Dems), figure that employment discrimination could actually be the first gay wedge issue to work against Republicans, and are going to hold off to use it in the presidential campaign. What matters is what's in the best interest of the Clintons and the Democrats. It's 1992 all over again:

03 Mar 2007 02:54 pm

Life in Bush's America

Just a sample:

On New Year's Eve in 2003, I was seized at the border of Serbia and Macedonia by Macedonian police who mistakenly believed that I was traveling on a false German passport. I was detained incommunicado for more than three weeks. Then I was handed over to the American Central Intelligence Agency and was stripped, severely beaten, shackled, dressed in a diaper, injected with drugs, chained to the floor of a plane and flown to Afghanistan, where I was imprisoned in a foul dungeon for more than four months.

Long after the American government realized that I was an entirely innocent man, I was blindfolded, put back on a plane, flown to Europe and left on a hilltop in Albania — without any explanation or apology for the nightmare that I had endured.

The administration will not apologize or make any redress for outsourcing their torture of this innocent man. To do so would expose a "state secret" that has been in every newspaper in the world and a program of "extraordinary rendition' that has been publicized globally. The current administration - from its disappearance of critical pieces of evidence in the Padilla case to its refusal to hear el Masri's case - is behaving like a regime in a banana republic with a lot to hide.

03 Mar 2007 02:15 pm

The "Faggot's" Faith

Beliefnet has an engaging interview with John Edwards and his religious faith here. Money quote:

"It's important to - or at least in my case, to have a personal relationship with the Lord, so that I pray daily and I feel that relationship all the time."

"Allowing time for children [in school] to pray for themselves, to themselves, I think is not only okay, I think it’s a good thing."

"I do believe in the separation of church and state. But, I don't think separation of church and state means you have to be free from your faith."

I believe all three things. I'm happy to hear a Democrat say it. And notice this isn't Christianism. He is speaking of his faith, not his politics. And he understands the importance of putting clear sky between the two.

03 Mar 2007 01:46 pm

The Presidential Succession

Norm Ornstein thinks we have a problem. Since there's a small but real chance of impeachment of president and vice-president in the next two years, under certain circumstances, it's worth fixing ahead of time.

03 Mar 2007 01:33 pm

The Right Vs. Coulter

Dreher lets her have it here:

Hard to imagine Russell Kirk (or Ronald Reagan, for that matter) standing before an important conservative gathering (or any gathering), and denouncing someone as a "faggot." That tells you something about the state of the Right today.

Reynolds here. Ed Morrissey here:

Bottom line: Coulter's remark was indefensible. She had the right to say it, but that doesn't make her right for saying it, and she deserves every bit of criticism she's getting.

This response seems to me to capture the underlying truth:

I tend to look at someone like Ann Coulter as a barometer of the country’s general political direction. When she could make wry observations about some of the unfortunate tendencies of liberals (and their fellow travelers) and sell a million books, you knew that the conservatives were in ascendancy. When she has to call candidates rude names to get some lukewarm attention, it would seem that the liberals are on the rise.

I hope that conservatives finally repudiate Coulter for reasons other than opportunism. The issue is not that she makes other conservatives look bad; it's that she is cynical poison for any serious political movement. Conservatism should be about expanding opportunity for all, not restricting opportunity for the already-marginalized. That it has morphed from one to the other is a sign of something deeper than cosmetics and manners. It's time to acknowledge and deal with that.

03 Mar 2007 12:49 pm

Romney at CPAC

He's the base's strongest candidate, I think. His speech was an artful attempt to put the Republican Humpty-Dumpty back together again. He kept repeating the importance of a conservative coalition. He spoke of bringing economic and social and national security conservatives together one more time. On fiscal issues, he definitely had me. He pledged to keep non-defense discretionary spending one percent below the inflation rate. His best un-Bush line:

I know how to veto; I like to veto.

Nothing on entitlements, of course, which are the main problem. But he certainly seems to understand the centrality of fiscal balance to any conservative coalition. He called Bush's record "embarrassing." It's worse than embarrassing. I loved his phrase: "simpler, smarter and smaller government." Yes, please.

The rest, however, was weak from my point of view. On social policy, he's a theocon. But then you ask yourself: what is a president actually going to do about marriage equality in Massachusetts? Or stem cell research in California? Not much. He would doubtless help legitimize the marginalization of gay people in our society. And that's a big thing. But the FMA is surely dead, and it's hard to see him out-doing Rudy on Supreme Court appointments. Still, his rhetoric on the judicial branch was vulgar: the usual boilerplate about men "in black robes" thwarting the will of the people. Has it occurred to Romney that the entire point of an independent judiciary is to thwart the will of the people sometimes? I get the feeling that large parts of the Republican party would rather the judiciary didn't exist. That's a strange position for true conservatives to take. But, as you know, I think true conservatives are increasingly rare in the GOP.

On foreign policy, Romney was bold enough to call the Iraq fiasco "under-prepared, under-managed, under-manned and under-planned." But he had no strategy for countering Jihadism except lots of military spending and some kind of "Marshall Plan" for moderate Muslim countries. You know a candidate has no ideas when he mentions anything like a "Marshall Plan." But he will run on torture - that much we already know. The religious right base actually seems to believe in torture. Along with making lots and lots of money, and losing weight, torture is now apparently a one of Jesus' core teachings.

What was his biggest applause line? "I will fight to repeal McCain-Feingold." I kid you not. The base gets excited by things most Americans haven't even heard of. His position in immigration? Lou Dobbs'. He kept saying "McCain-Kennedy" as if this crowd needed to hate McCain more. As for Romney's game-plan against Giuliani, it seems to be this: put the family forward. His wife is a looker. She introduced him. They've been married 37 years, we were told a few dozen times. They have five sons and ten grandchildren. Unlike who? Yeah, we know. But they should try not to look too much like the Osmonds.

I know what the national polls say. I know he makes John Kerry look like a stopped clock on, well, anything. But he'll have an understanding with the religious base: I'll do whatever you want, give you the judges you want, and you'll forgive me for being a Mormon. He has no core principles, and they understand that. What matters to Dobson et al is results. They've had enough of men like Bush who are sincere evangelicals but useless in actually implementing the theocon agenda. Romney's their tool - and a very competent, effective one. And they are his tool. It's a solid basis for a political marriage. I think he's the most formidable long-term candidate on the right. Up against Clinton, he'd probably win.

(Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty.)

03 Mar 2007 10:41 am

Obama at AIPAC

I wasn't there. Someone sent me the text. Money quote:

President Ahmadinejad has denied the Holocaust. He held a conference in his country, claiming it was a myth. But we know the Holocaust was as real as the 6 million who died in mass graves at Buchenwald, or the cattle cars to Dachau or whose ashes clouded the sky at Auschwitz. We have seen the pictures. We have walked the halls of the Holocaust museum in Washington and Yad Vashem. We have touched the tattoos on loved-ones arms. After 60 years, it is time to deny the deniers.

In the 21st century, it is unacceptable that a member state of the United Nations would openly call for the elimination of another member state. But that is exactly what he has done. Neither Israel nor the United States has the luxury of dismissing these outrages as mere rhetoric.

The world must work to stop Iran's uranium enrichment program and prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. It is far too dangerous to have nuclear weapons in the hands of a radical theocracy. And while we should take no option, including military action, off the table, sustained and aggressive diplomacy combined with tough sanctions should be our primary means to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons.

03 Mar 2007 08:15 am

Washington Times Drama

If this blogger is right, it's one hell of a newsroom right now.

03 Mar 2007 07:07 am

Derb on the Blogalogue

From his latest column:

"All in all, I call the Sullivan-Harris fixture a tie so far (they are not through yet)."

Derb still wants to know how I square my desire for homosexual civil equality and my support for gay love with Catholicism as it is now authoritatively defined by the Vatican. The short answer is: I don't. The long answer is the first chapter of "Virtually Normal". The fact of the matter as a spiritual issue is that I know I am a sinner in many ways. But being gay isn't one of them.

Friday, March 2, 2007

02 Mar 2007 08:33 pm

Barnett Gets It

I'm not being an hysteric about Coulter. Republicans, if they are serious about reaching the people they lost in 2006, need to start distancing themselves from her. She's their Michael Moore.

02 Mar 2007 08:16 pm

Black Enough

The Economist notes Obama's rise and Hillary's decline. Tomorrow's face-off at Selma could accelerate the trend:

[Obama] either trumps or neutralises Mrs Clinton's biggest selling-points. She is potentially America's first female president; he is potentially its first black president. She is a celebrity: he has star power. Mrs Clinton had hoped to set the pace of the campaign. But he has repeatedly run ahead of her—getting into the race before her, for example, and making her announcement, when it came, look like an exercise in catch-up.

He's now leading Clinton among blacks by 44 to 33 percent.

(Photo: Jeff Haynes/AFP/Getty.)

02 Mar 2007 07:31 pm

Schizoid On Coulter?

A reader writes:

I'm confused. Wasn't it Andrew Sullivan who declared Ms. Coulter to be nothing more than a "performance artist" who need not be taken seriously? I believe that, in July 2006, when Ms. Coulter referred to Al Gore as a "total fag," liberal commentators were aghast. But you dimissed her anti-gay hate as "high camp," a mere "vaudeville act." After all, it wasn't as if she used the word, "fag," in a perjorative way - it was just an inside joke, right?

Now comes Mr. Sullivan to declare Coulter the "standard bearer [of] the new Republicanism, one who "truly represents the heart and soul of contemporary conservative activism." Presumably that heart and soul includes hatred of homosexuals.

Well, which is it -- high camp vaudevillian or true face of the conservative movement?  And where does that leave you?

It's a fair point. I once called her a "drag queen posing as a fascist." But I didn't mean that as a compliment. My only response to my reader is that seeing her live in front of a young, cheering crowd made me feel a lot less complacent. Being a gay man in a crowd that cheers a woman denigrating someone for being a "faggot" is an educative experience. Seeing college kids line up to worship her tore me up. These kids deserve better. They're young and smart enough to be interested in conservatism - and this is what they are getting? From a stage where two presidential candidates just spoke? I guess I've been a bit of a smug ironist who just got mugged by conservative reality.

02 Mar 2007 06:57 pm

Walter Reed

I told you it's serious. And a resignation, in my view, is absolutely appropriate. It was also appropriate after Abu Ghraib, no?

02 Mar 2007 06:10 pm

The "Faggot" Video

Here's a video of Coulter calling John Edwards a "faggot" to her adoring crowd at CPAC. Romney said before her: "I am happy to hear that after you hear from me, you will hear from Ann Coulter. That is a good thing. Oh yeah!" But he did follow it with a remark that I don't have in my notes, but in my memory, took the edge off the praise. I think he said something along the lines of: "It's always good to hear from the moderates." Very deft - as was his entire performance. I'm sorry I missed Giuliani. People in the crowd told me that there was stony silence during his entire talk. Some attributed it to respect, others to a lack of enthusiasm. The big passion at CPAC is between Brownback and Romney, with some love for Hunter and Tancredo. That's the base. It's a party that wants nothing to do with someone like me. All I heard and saw was loathing: loathing of Muslims, of "illegals," of gays, of liberals, of McCain. The most painful thing for me was the sight of so many young people growing up believing that this is conservatism. I feel like an old-style Democrat in 1968.

02 Mar 2007 05:01 pm

Coulter In Her Element

"I was going to talk about John Edwards but these days, you have to go into rehab if you say the word 'faggot,'" - Ann Coulter, cheered to the rafters at CPAC today. No wonder she and Mickey Kaus get along so well.

When you see her in such a context, you realize that she truly represents the heart and soul of contemporary conservative activism, especially among the young. The standing ovation for Romney was nothing like the eruption of enthusiasm that greeted her. One young conservative male told her he was single and asked for her cell-phone number. Other young Republicans were almost overwhelmed in her presence. "When are you going to get your own show?" one asked, tremulously. Then there's her insistence on Christianism as the central message for Republicans: "There are more people voting on Christian moral values than on tax cuts." This from an unmarried woman who wears dresses that are close to bikinis on the morning news. Hey, it's Democrats who are Godless.

Her endorsement of Romney today - "probably the best candidate" - is a big deal, it seems to me. McCain is a non-starter. He is as loathed as Clinton in these parts. Giuliani is, in her words, "very, very liberal." One of his sins? He opposed the impeachment of Bill Clinton. That's the new standard. She is the new Republicanism. The sooner people recognize this, the better.

02 Mar 2007 04:49 pm

Live From CPAC

The delay in posting is because I've been listening to Mitt Romney and Ann Coulter at the CPAC conference. I'll post my impressions soon, but here are some pics. Here's Romney leaving the hotel with his wife, surrounded by raucous cheers by his supporters and a few characters yelling 'Flip-Flop!', 'Flip-Flop.' Coulter endorsed him, and he praised Coulter.

02 Mar 2007 03:05 pm

Face Of The Day

Charles Hunt listens to the candidate speak during a debate for the open seats on the Loxahatchee Groves Town Council March 1, 2007 at the Sunsport Gardens Family Naturist Resort in Loxahatchee Groves, Florida. Only one of the 10 candidates running for the open council seats didn't show up for the debate. The town is looking to seat its first council as it recently was incorporated. With few businesses in the area and the rural nature of the town the voters living at the nudist colony are a big voting block. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

02 Mar 2007 02:39 pm

Naughty Words on Blogs

This has to be the biggest waste of time ever devised in the blogosphere. Which is probably why you'll click on the link.

02 Mar 2007 01:27 pm

How You'll Die

A cheerful assessment of the ways to go. Yeah, I know you're sitting there cheerfully tapping at your computer, planning for the weekend, digesting lunch. But do you realize ... well, The Flaming Lips said it best (in one of the best pop songs of the decade):

02 Mar 2007 01:06 pm

Quote for the Day III

"The obstinate and imperious nature of the King gave great advantages to those who advised him to be firm, to yield nothing, and to make himself feared. One state maxim had taken possession of his small understanding, and was not to be dislodged by reason. To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and, as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections" - Thomas Babington Macaulay on King James II.

(Photo: Alex Wong/Getty.)

02 Mar 2007 12:37 pm

Polling The Netroots Right

The rightwing blogosphere is almost certainly to the right of most Republican voters, let alone independent voters who are open to the GOP. But I didn't expect quite this amount of loopiness. Of 63 blogs queried, we get survey results like this:

Do you think that a majority of Democrats in Congress would like to see us lose in Iraq for political reasons?

Yes (53)-- 84%
No (10) -- 16%

Do you think that a majority of Democrats in Congress would like to see us lose in Iraq for political reasons?

Yes (53)-- 84%
No (10) -- 16%

Do you think mankind is the primary cause of global warming?

Yes (0) -- 0%
No (59) -- 100%

The last one strikes me as astonishing. Some skepticism is warranted in climate change science. But the fact that the scientific community overwhelmingly believes that humans are primarily responsible for current climate change and none of the right-wing bloggers does suggests to me another sign of severe conservative meltdown. (Hat tip: Ann.)

02 Mar 2007 12:08 pm

Confessions of an American Torturer

A soldier who tortured defenseless detainees for president Bush, vice-president Cheney and defense secretary Rumsfeld tells his story. Tony Lagouranis is a guy who went to St John's College, a great school for reading great books. He speaks fluent Arabic. He joined the military to learn Arabic and to pay off student loans. We were at peace then. At interrogator school, before Bush authorized torture, he went through the normal procedures:

"We were told, 'You can’t use any coercive tactics. There can be no negative repercussions for a prisoner who isn’t cooperating with you.'"

At Fort Gordon, after war broke out, and after the president authorized torture for detainees, he began to hear stories of what was now allowed in Afghanistan and Iraq:

"They were talking about using sexual humiliation on these guys, or certain stress positions they had used, or in Afghanistan they would make the guy sit in the snow naked for long periods of time. They said that the detainees that they had were not covered by the Geneva Conventions, which I continued to hear in Iraq too."

You think Lynndie England came up with this by herself? Really? By the time Lagouranis arrived at Abu Ghraib, the scandal had come to light (Rumsfeld knew about it long before the photographs emerged and had done nothing to stop it) and there was reform. Soon after, however, Lagouranis interrogated a prisoner who said he'd been tortured. Lagouranis filed a memo. That memo disappeared. Then assigned to Mosul, he got the hang of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld policy: his unit used a shipping container as a makeshift torture-cell. Dogs first, something particularly terrifying in Arab culture:

"We had like a signal I would give him to cue the dog to lunge and bark at the prisoner. The prisoner would have blacked-out goggles on so he couldn't see that the dog was restrained, he couldn't see that the dog had a muzzle on, he just knew there was a dog in the room with him and that it was a big angry dog.

What usually happened was the prisoner would be terrified the first time the dog became aggressive. But then that effect wore off — he figured out that the dog wasn't going to attack him. So maybe you'd get the prisoner totally terrified for like five seconds and he would piss his pants, literally. Then after that there was nothing. So it wasn't effective at all, but the chief warrant officer kept telling us to do this so we did it."

As Orwell pointed out, pretty soon, the point of torture is torture. Still, Lagouranis's unit was milque-toast compared to the others:

"[T]he treatment they had at our hands was a lot better than they got from the detainee unit. We were getting prisoners who had gotten seriously fucked up. We were getting prisoners from the navy SEALs who were using a lot of the same techniques we were using, except they were a little more harsh. They would actually have the detainee stripped nude, laying on the floor, pouring ice water over his body. They were taking his temperature with a rectal thermometer. We had one guy who had been burned by the navy SEALs. He looked like he had a lighter held up to his legs. One guy's feet were like huge and black and blue, his toes were obviously all broken, he couldn't walk."

The most remarkable line in the entire piece is:

"We almost never had evidence on anybody."

The results on these people were intense:

"We went on them hard for almost a month, I think, and these guys were just completely broken down, physically, mentally, by the end of it. One guy walked like a 90-year-old man when he was done. He was an ex-army guy, he was a real healthy young man when he came in, and by the end he was a mess."

Another interrogator confirms Lagouranis's account and adds:

"I saw barbaric traits begin to seep out of me and other good and respectable people — good Americans who never should have been put in that position to begin with. They have two choices — disobey direct orders or become monsters. It's a lonely road when everyone else is taking the other one."

Last year, the commander-in-chief who is ultimately responsible for every act committed under his command, passed a bill exculpating him and every other civilian employee of the government from any legal consequences for committing war-crimes. Regular soldiers were not given such immunity. The war criminals who gave the orders get off free, while the grunts they ordered may face prosecution at some point (but not if the Pentagon can cover it up).

Last week, the critical DVD that was made of the last "interrogation" of U.S. citizen Jose Padilla - a piece of evidence central both to U.S intelligence and to the military justice system - mysteriously disappeared from the Pentagon's library.

One question: When are people going to wake up?

02 Mar 2007 11:26 am

Quote for the Day II

"You have prevented us from marrying, please do not prevent us from caring for each other," state senator, Ed Murray, after the Washington state senate passed a domestic partnership bill that grants a few basic rights to gay couples inder the law.

Those who want to prevent gay couples from caring for one another will now have to live in the Commonwealth of Virginia, the state most dedicated to attacking gay couples and families.

02 Mar 2007 11:03 am

On Toleration

Ian Buruma confesses ambivalence about Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Money quote:

In Europe, even the issue of headscarves cannot be treated simply as a symbol of religious bigotry. Some women wear them to ward off male aggression, others because their parents insist on it, and some by their own choice, as a defiant badge of identity, even rebellion. Bruckner admires rebels. Should we only side with rebels whose views and practices we like? Or does living in a free society also imply that people should be able to choose the way they look, or speak, or worship, even if we don't like it, as long as they don't harm others? A free-spirited citizen does not tolerate different customs or cultures because he thinks they are wonderful, but because he believes in freedom.

To be tolerant is not to be indiscriminate.

(Photo: Scott Barbour/Getty.)

02 Mar 2007 10:45 am

A New Conservative Slogan

It fits the new party well:

"We're going to get the band back together, and we're on a mission from God."

More from CPAC here.

02 Mar 2007 10:27 am

Quote for the Day

"When I look around me at the world we got, the world we created after 2001, that's the question I keep coming back to: What went wrong? The question nags me all the more because I was part of it, swept along with all the currents that took us from the ruins of the World Trade Center through the shameful years that followed. Iraq, the war on terror, the new European culture war.

This mirror of "What Went Wrong" wouldn't be a story on the same scale, but it has the main theme in common. It would be about Westerners who had their reality bubble pricked by people from an alien culture, and spent the next couple of years stumbling about like idiots, unable to deal rationally with this new reality that had forced itself on them. Egging each other on, they predicted, interpreted, and labelled – and legislated and invaded. They saw clearly, through beautiful ideas. And they were wrong.

Who were these people? They were us." - Bjorn Staerk, a European war-blogger, able to confront his own complicity in the mistakes we made. (Hat tip: Crooked Timber.)

02 Mar 2007 10:06 am

The View From Your Window

Ixonia, Wisconsin, 8.50 am.

02 Mar 2007 10:00 am

Instapundit's Coverage of Walter Reed

It's this. Phillip Carter, meanwhile, explores the problem further at Slate.

02 Mar 2007 09:50 am

Is Michelle Malkin A Shill?

Here's a useful test.

02 Mar 2007 09:43 am

Clinton's "Hidden" Thesis

Here is part of the presidential candidate's long hidden senior thesis at Wellesley:

"A cycle of dependency has been created, which ensnares its victims into resignation and apathy."

This was her assessment of Johnson's War on Poverty. Quite a little neocon, wasn't she, as president of the college Republicans in her freshman year? Those looking through the thesis for some kind of endorsement for its subject, leftist organizer, Saul Alinsky, will be disappointed. Clinton is not a radical. She's a deeply pragmatic, high-minded centrist - much like her husband, without any of his charisma.

02 Mar 2007 09:31 am

Obama and the Future

I'm not sure Barack Obama has sounded an off-key note in his campaign thus far. Am I swooning? No. I've learned my lesson. But read this NPR interview, where Obama has to walk through a racial and cultural minefield. He strides straight ahead, unflappable and sane. I think his appeal is precisely this. He is moving our narrative forward. He is able to speak of race and faith and politics without the usual ideological cant, and without the conventional cliche-ridden positioning. Compare him with Romney's or Clinton's parsed pirouettes. They just don't feel fake in comparison; they feel old. Money quote from Obama:

NPR: Do you think that your life and your experience as an African American would cause you as president to pursue any particular policy differently than if you'd been white? Would you be a different president in some way?

Obama: There are certain instincts that I have that may be stronger because of my experiences as an African American. I don't think they're exclusive to African Americans but I think I maybe feel them more acutely. I think I would be very interested in having a civil rights division that is serious about enforcing civil rights laws. I think that when it comes to an issue like education for example, I feel great pain knowing that there are children in a lot of schools in America who are not getting anything close to the kind of education that will allow them to compete. And I think a lot of candidates, Republican and Democrat, feel concern about that. But when I know that a lot of those kids look just like my daughters, maybe it's harder for me to separate myself from their reality. Every time I see those kids, they feel like a part of me.

Why do I keep feeling that he's actually being honest?

02 Mar 2007 08:10 am

What He Said Or What He Left Behind?

A reader writes:

I am most intrigued currently with your ongoing correspondence with Sam Harris.  I must say, however, that I really don't know what the fuss is about. Are you debating the philosophy that underlies religion(s), or the dogma and mythology that encompasses the actual practice and institutions? Which is more important? Which does the ostensible harm to science, society and education? Do the underlying philosophies or the institutions set in place over millenia cause the problems Mr. Harris and you debate? 

As you are a practicing Christian, I will use Christianity as my base. I would suggest that it is not the philosophy of Christ's teachings that is the source of the friction, it is the institutional practices of the religion He never wished to found. One can indeed be a Christian and at the same time not be a Christian in the formal, institutionalized sense (and certainly not a "Christianist", a term I have great fondness for).  One can follow the teachings of Christ in the everyday routine and still believe that there was no Resurrection. His teachings are universal. It is far more important to me that I attempt in my own fallible way to follow His (and I capitalize out of respect for others, a most Christian attitude)  teachings than it is to believe in His divinity.   

I truly believe, and of course I may be completely wrong, wouldn't be the first time and won't be the last, that daily interaction with others, whether they be individuals or nations, in accordance with Christ's teachings, has a more positive and reaching effect. The debate should not be science vs. religion; it should be science vs. philosophy, and in that there should be no discord.  Religion as philosophy, science and rational thought can always live comfortably together. One must simply decide whether the teachings or the institutions are more important.

Thursday, March 1, 2007

01 Mar 2007 08:14 pm

A Self-Fisking Readership

One reader fisks another:

Do married men (fathers) go on demonstratively bragging?

Better question: do you have any friends at all? Straight men, married or single, fathers or otherwise, boast about their sexual ventures all the time. That is what we do. We brag, everywhere, in poker games and bars, overtly or through innuendo, for as long as we still draw breath. Duh.

Alva is saying that even if one's lifestyle is degraded and perverted?

Alva is not saying anything of the sort. That is what you are saying. And most people - at least in the next generation - think you are full of it.

This is fake subterfuge and bluff.

You nailed it, Sherlock. You caught on to Eric Alva and his sinister, life-long plan. You see, ever since he knew he was gay, Alva has been trying to concoct a scheme to turn America into the Sodom and Gomorrah of his craving. And then, one night, while prancing around in all his gayness, he saw a commercial for the Army. He knew instantly what he had to do. He would join the Army, and use the social status to advance the cause of moral debauchery. Then Bush decided to go to war, unwittingly giving him the chance to execute his diabolical plan. There, in the sands of Iraq, he saw a protruding land mine, and he willingly jumped on top of it, becoming a martyr for gays everywhere. And to think he would have gotten away with it, too, were it not for your steadfast vigilance!

Look what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah. The biggest strength any army has is its spirit. A joyous, unified, spirit to win, knowing they're doing the right, just and moral thing.

You're right, actually. The best asset of the army is its spirit - of comradeship, brotherhood, and unity. It is a spirit which overrules, or at least ought to overrule, all the taxonomies of civilian life: race, politics, class, region, and even, one might hope, sexuality. But if you actually believe our men and women in uniform can stand up to the most maniacal, barbaric, ruthless, and vile killers in the world, and still be flustered by - gasp - a gay person,  then you have officially exiled yourself from the frontier of reason.

01 Mar 2007 06:59 pm

"Him"

It's a movie that was made, shown and is now utterly lost. There are more of those than you'd imagine, though probably not as many as you'd like. Here's the synopsis of its history:

The title character of this gay porn flick is none other than the Man from Galilee, whose interest in hanging out with the all-male disciples is supposedly more than mere fraternalism. Parallel to this is a contemporary story of a young gay male who finds new spiritualism by plumbing the gayer aspects of the Gospels for his own notion of loving thy neighbor (particularly if he’s a good looking hunky neighbor).

WHY IS IT LOST? The film would have probably been forgotten had it not been detailed in the 1980 book 'The Golden Turkey Awards' by the Medved Brothers. Despite an Internet debate that insists the film never existed, poster art from the movie's original New York run has turned up to verify it did exist. The film itself, however, is believed to be lost (how the Medveds learned of the film is not clear, though the idea of Michael Medved watching gay porno for "research" is mind-boggling).

Not actually mind-boggling. Policing the culture can be cold and lonely work and someone's got to do it.

[Update: Here's an interesting summary of the debate about whether this movie ever existed or whether Michael Medved just made it up. Here's an open question to Michael Medved. Was this your hoax? Can you tell us now? Did you watch this movie? Or did you make it up?]

01 Mar 2007 06:25 pm

Tossing For Britain

A mobile sperm bank is spotted in Oxford. Or is it Cambridge? If it's finals time, there should be plenty surplus material.

01 Mar 2007 06:17 pm

Rage Over Walter Reed

It's growing. Intel Dump's Phillip Carter gets mad. And madder. If my military readers are any indication, this is a huge story, and rightly so. Where is McCain? He should have announced his candidacy at Walter Reed, not Letterman.

01 Mar 2007 06:13 pm

Cheney's Plane

He flew to Pakistan "in the belly of The Spirit of Strom Thurmond." I bet he did. (Hat tip: Moderate Voice.)

01 Mar 2007 05:26 pm

Bill vs Arianna

It's a classic gambit: forcing Huffington to disown leftist commenters on her site. But she has, hasn't she? She wrote of the comments:

[T]hey are unacceptable and were treated as such by being removed.

I think some Huffposters' desire to see the vice-president assassinated is repulsive on every level, and indicative of real sickness on the far left. But I would be more impressed if I had ever heard Bill Kristol ever take on the extremists that dominate his side of the aisle. Has Kristol ever said that he finds Ann Coulter's books to be disgusting? Has he ever disowned his Fox News colleage Sean Hannity's equation of liberalism and terrorism in the subtitle of a recent book? Did he offer a squeak of opposition to a book titled "Party of Death," clearly referring to the Democrats? Did he dress down the more extreme anti-Clinton elements in the 1990s? Not that I recall. Maybe I have missed his criticisms of fellow "conservatives". If I have, I'll gladly post them. But for a man who has made a career appeasing and coopting extremists on the far right, he is in a pretty elaborate glass house with respect to Arianna.

01 Mar 2007 04:32 pm

Classy Obama

Yeah, he's covering his own ass as well, but this is refreshing in our current climate of rabid partisanship:

"As somebody who had the same phrase in a speech, I think nobody would question Senator McCain's dedication to our veterans. We have a duty to make sure that we are honoring their sacrifice by giving them missions in which they can succeed … I'm positive that was the intent in which he meant it. It was the same intent I had when I made my statement."

01 Mar 2007 04:18 pm

Face Of The Day

Ralf Schumacher of Germany and Toyota watches from the pits during Formula One testing at the Bahrain International Circuit on February 28, 2007, in Sakhir, Bahrain (Photo by Mark Thompson/Getty Images)

01 Mar 2007 03:46 pm

The War From The Inside

The Weekly Standard decides to do its own regularly updated analysis of the Iraq war, to counter-act the accurate but sometimes misleading news reports of the various bombings, murders and kidnappings that are plaguing the country. My view is: the more we know the better. We need to know about the civil war; but we also need to know more about what Petraeus is trying, aganst all the odds, to accomplish. Sometimes you need a military expert to help. The author does not appear to me to be a shill for anyone. According to the Daily Standard,

Kimberly Kagan is a military historian who has taught at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Yale University, Georgetown University, and American University. She is a Senior Fellow and Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University, where she teaches the History of Military Operations;an affiliate of the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University; and a visiting fellow at Yale International Security Studies.

Money quote:

This report describes in detail and evaluates significant combat on Haifa Street in Baghdad, and clear-and-control operations south of Baqubah in Diyala province, placing these operations within the overall strategic context of the struggle. It discusses coalition efforts to disrupt al Qaeda networks in Iraq, the probable effects of those efforts, and the integral relationship between those efforts and efforts to stem sectarian violence. This report also briefly addresses the evidence for at least tacit Iranian support for Sunni insurgents in Diyala.

It's downloadable as well.

01 Mar 2007 03:18 pm

The Missing Padilla Video

Where is the videotape of Jose Padilla's final interrogation? It's crucial evidence, and could be central to showing the American public in graphic terms what the Bush administration has done to a U.S. citizen. Sometimes you need to see what torture is, as in Abu Ghraib, before you grasp what it is that these thugs in the Bush administration have been up to. And yet ... the video has somehow just "disappeared." Money quote:

The missing DVD dates from March 2, 2004. It contains a video of the last interrogation session of Padilla, then a declared 'enemy combatant' under an order from President Bush, while he was being held in military custody at a U.S. Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. But in recent days, in the course of an unusual court hearing about Padilla's mental condition, a government lawyer disclosed to a surprised courtroom that the Defense Intelligence Agency — which had custody of the evidence — was no longer able to locate the DVD. As a result, it was not included in a packet of classified DVDs that was recently turned over to defense lawyers under orders from Judge Cooke.

The disclosure that the Pentagon had lost a potentially important piece of evidence in one of the U.S. government's highest-profile terrorism cases was met with claims of incredulity by some defense lawyers and human-rights groups monitoring the case. "This is the kind of thing you hear when you’re litigating cases in Egypt or Morocco or Karachi," said John Sifton, a lawyer with Human Rights Watch, one of a number of groups that has criticized the U.S. government’s treatment of Padilla. "It is simply not credible that they would have lost this tape. The administration has shown repeatedly they are more interested in covering up abuses than getting to the bottom of whether people were abused."

Given what we have discovered about the criminal conduct of the Bush administration with respect to detainees, the notion of "losing" such critical evidence isn't, to my mind, credible. We cannot prove this, of course. But put it all together and you have two alternatives: a) the Pentagon is so disorganized and incompetent it can lose a critical piece of evidence in its most high-profile case or b) we have a government run by war-criminals covering their tracks. Feel safer?

01 Mar 2007 02:58 pm

"Money Quote"

Bill Safire helps my mum understand some more.