More on Filibusters

According to Sam Rosenfeld writing at the American Prospect's website, Tennessee Sen. Bill Frist has overplayed his hand in his threat to resort to the nuclear option of abolishing the use of the filibuster for judicial candidates. I don't know if it is true, but it sounds plausible. I can think of no other reason for Frist to continue delaying a vote if he otherwise wants it.

EconRadical at Redstate.org is calling on Frist to resign over the matter, refering to him as a "rudderless clown" and stating that "he's been set up and [Democratic leader] Reid has outplayed him at every turn, but the responsibility for the coming fiasco rests largely with Senator Frist."

I am a little surprised at the extent to which the Right has become wedded to the nuclear option. The American Conservative Union announced that it will consider a vote on the issue in its ratings of Senators. Hugh Hewitt, a leading proponent of the move has written a smarmy and insulting speech that he would like to see a recently elected senator deliver:

Senators, the issue of judges matters more than you can imagine. More than it has probably ever mattered in the 217 years of our country's political history. So much does it matter, Senators Snowe and Chafee--and I say this as a friend--that if we refuse or lose this battle, I think you will lose your seats . . .

I want to early on in my remarks to thank Senator Voinovich. Senator, you may not have intended to do so, but with your comments in the Foreign Relations Committee last week, you opened the door. After you said you needed time to think about the Bolton nomination, well, every network couldn't rush an expert out quick enough to praise you for your integrity. Over at CNN I thought Bill Schneider was going to canonize you. Senator Chafee also was on a lot of broadcasts saluting your willingness to rethink your position. Others made the same point that it takes courage to change your mind in D.C.

I thought then, and I emphasize now, senators can change their mind on big issues, especially when it is because you have thought long and hard on the subject. I am hoping Senators Chafee and McCain, who have announced their intention to vote with the Democrats on the issue of the filibuster, that they use the opportunity that Senator Voinovich has given them to rethink their position and rejoin the caucus. I think it is much more important than saving Senator Chafee's seat, though I am fairly certain he will lose it if we lose this vote. It is more important than Senator Snowe's seat, though I think we will lose that one as well if we lose this vote. . .

I say that now and if we lose the majority and the presidency in the future, I will say it then. It is the principled thing to do, and it does nothing to dilute our institution's deliberate approach to legislation or blue slips or the committee's power. . .

Hewitt is inflating the importance of judical nominations so that they are virtually the only thing that matters. He should look back at the year 1937 if doesn't think that the courts have ever been more important than they are now. I assume many veteran senators are concerned about the institution in which they serve and the precedent that they would be setting. The Los Angeles Times called for abolishing all filibusters in an April 26th editorial:

. . . The filibuster debate is a stark reminder of the unprincipled and results-oriented nature of politics, as senators readily switch sides for tactical advantage. Politicians' lack of consistency on fundamental matters — the debate over the proper balance of power between Washington and the states would be another case in point — is far more corrosive to the health of American democracy and the rule of law than any number of Bush- appointed judges could ever be. For one thing, it validates public wariness about politicians professing deep convictions.

Liberal interest groups determined to keep Bush nominees off the bench are in such a frenzy that they would have you believe that the Senate filibuster lies at the heart of all American freedoms, its lineage traceable to the Constitution, if not the Magna Carta. The filibuster, a parliamentary tactic allowing 41 senators to block a vote by extending debate on a measure indefinitely, is indeed venerable — it can be traced back two centuries. But it is merely the product of the Senate's own rule-making, altered over time . . .

I don't agree with their position, but they are on far firmer ground that those calling for carving out a filibuster exemption. If Frist succeeds, the Democrats will have a precedent for future exceptions or abolition when they win the Senate.

A Serving of Crow For a Big Mouth

Watch out, Tex! Neil Boortz has the goods on you, and your liberal ilk. Many naive souls are under the impression that the U.S. military found no dreaded "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq. Boortz points out that those people were wrong:

Actually, WMD has been found in Iraq. Several chemical agents classified as weapons of mass destruction have been located, including mustard gas and sarin, enough to kill tens of thousands of people. Naturally, this was dismissed by the Bush-bashing media is insufficient. Apparently weapons of mass destructions means something different to them.

Saddam Hussein knew we were coming....and either hid or destroyed the WMD. He had weapons of mass destruction, he used them and he was capable of producing more. But that won't be how this report is covered. Nor will you hear that regime change in Iraq was the stated policy of the Clinton administration for 8 years.

Not surprisingly, Boortz didn't link to any articles about WMD finds in Iraq. So I'll link to one (from Fox News, so it must be true). The WMD's found in the Fox News story sound consiberably less menacing that Boortz's interpratation:

. . . Two people were treated for "minor exposure" after the sarin incident but no serious injuries were reported. Soldiers transporting the shell for inspection suffered symptoms consistent with low-level chemical exposure, which is what led to the discovery, a U.S. official told Fox News.

"The Iraqi Survey Group confirmed today that a 155-millimeter artillery round containing sarin nerve agent had been found," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt (search), the chief military spokesman in Iraq, told reporters in Baghdad. "The round had been rigged as an IED (improvised explosive device) which was discovered by a U.S. force convoy.". . .

Two weeks ago, U.S. military units discovered mustard gas that was used as part of an IED. Tests conducted by the Iraqi Survey Group (search) — a U.S. organization searching for weapons of mass destruction — and others concluded the mustard gas was "stored improperly," which made the gas "ineffective."

They believe the mustard gas shell may have been one of 550 projectiles for which former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein failed to account when he made his weapons declaration shortly before Operation Iraqi Freedom began last year. . .

Kimmitt said the shell belonged to a class of ordnance that Saddam's government said was destroyed before the 1991 Gulf war (search). Experts believe both the sarin and mustard gas weapons date back to that time.

So there have been findings of "WMD" in Iraq. Specifically, aged and ineffective sarin and mustard gas was found. That would bolster the case for war if the administration had said that we must invade Iraq right away because there are a few rusting mustard gas shells somewhere in the desert. What the administration said, as I pointed out here, was that the country faced "clear evidence of peril" and we couldn't wait for the "smoking gun" which might in fact, be a "mushroom cloud."

No evidence of any genuine threat has been found in Iraq. Which is why people like Neal Boortz, who dined on the administration's "WMD" baloney are looking for any excuse to not eat crow.

Sue Ellen, Fearless!

60s generation Baby Boomers were obnoxious and self-absorbed about being young. Is it any surprise that some of them are equally obnoxious and self-absorbed about growing old(note the snotty "Not Your Mother's Midlife" heading)?

Aging is tough, and a pair of boomer women, Nancy Alspaugh and Marilyn Kentz, have a way to help their sisters cope that is as American as apple pie -- gaseous, self-help-style claptrap under the name "Fearless Aging"; combined with a coffee table book:

With their books, seminars, speaking engagements and stage play, Alspaugh and Kentz hope to raise awareness regarding being a middle-aged woman in this twenty-first century; to give them some hope and inspiration and the sense that they are not alone. The Fearless Aging Movement validates this unequaled generation and encourages them to take on the rest of their lives with a renewed sense of power.

But I'm open minded fellow and if if your idea of empowerment is a book that features pictures of 50 something celebrities, such as Linda Gray (best known as the tippling Sue Ellen Ewing of Dallas fame, triumphally hoisting sword aloft, I say knock yourself out.

Stating the Obvious

David Boaz does what is occasionally neccessary and restates the obvious. In the struggle over judicial nominations:

Republicans who once extolled the virtues of divided power and the Senate's role in slowing down the rush to judgment now demand an end to delays in approving President Bush's judicial nominees. President Bush says the Democrats' "obstructionist tactics are unprecedented, unfair, and unfaithful to the Senate's constitutional responsibility to vote on judicial nominees." Democrats who now wax eloquent about a "rubber stamp of dictatorship" replacing "the rights to dissent, to unlimited debate and to freedom of speech" in the Senate not too long ago sought to eliminate the filibuster altogether.

I would vote against ending the filibuster but I don't think it is the end of the world. I would feel better about the Republicans if they would openly admit that they are killing the filibuster period (which I believe will be the result) instead of pretending that it will only apply to judicial nominees; and drop all of this special pleading on behalf of "people of faith."

The Neo Curve

Perhaps in his spare time Steve Sailer could plot a bell curve of neoconservative columnists. I have a suspicion that Clifford May would show up on the left end. His latest column fails the test of elementary reasoning ability:

Buchanan says, Americans have brought terrorism on themselves through interventionist policies. "What happened on 9/11 was a result of interventionism," he argues. "Interventionism is the cause of terror."

That's an astonishing conclusion. The atrocities of 9/11 were orchestrated by Mohammed Atta, an Egyptian. How, before 9/11, did Washington intervene in Egypt's affairs -- except to give Egypt billions of dollars, re-supply its military, and turn a blind eye to President Hosni Mubarak's repression of dissidents?

Atta followed orders from Osama bin Laden, a Saudi. For more than fifty years, American "interventionism" in Saudi Arabia consisted of paying the kingdom astronomical sums in oil revenue, granting Saudis unprecedented privileges (for example, empowering Wahhabis to vet Muslim chaplains for our military and our prisons) and, in 1990, sending American soldiers, at the request of the Saudis, to protect them from being invaded by Saddam Hussein.

Or maybe Buchanan was thinking about our intervention in Somalia -- the only goal of which was to feed starving people. Or our intervention in Afghanistan to support guerrillas fighting the Soviet invader. We also intervened in Bosnia and Kosovo -- to save Muslims from further devastation at the hands of their Christian neighbors.

Clearly, it is not "interventionism" that has spawned anti-American terrorism. What is it then? Listen to our enemies. They've told us -- over and over.

I don't know what May is talking about. It is not as if Buchanan, who is much more comfortable using the English language than May is, has not made him self clear. This three year old column explains his position fairly well:

America's leaders should start telling the truth: Evil though they may be, Islamic killers are over here because we are over there. They are not trying to kill us because they dislike our domestic politics, but because they detest our foreign policy.

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia. They did not fly into those twin towers to protest universal suffrage or to advance self-determination for the Palestinian people. As Osama bin Laden said, they want us to stop propping up the Saudi regime they hate, and to get off the sacred Saudi soil on which sit the holiest shrines of Islam. They want our troops out of Saudi Arabia -- and if we don't get out, they are coming over here to kill us any way they can.

Isn't that clear? May seems to think that because the U.S. government has propped up regimes in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, that fanatical Islamists can't possibly object. However, as Buchanan notes above; U.S. support of the Saudi regime, along with U.S. bases in their country have been terror motivators.

A subtext of May's column is that because our intentions have been good, bad consequences can't follow ("maybe Buchanan was thinking about our intervention in Somalia – the only goal of which was to feed starving people"). This leads me to the conclusion that he didn't even pass Conservatism 101 where he would have learned an aphorism about good intentions and the road to Hell.

May and his colleagues on the Right have been steadily unlearning many of the basics in the last few years. They have embraced Bushian big government and radical notions about transplanting democracy as if it were a tomato plant. It would be a joy to watch them learning at the School of Hard Knocks if the price was not being paid by American soldiers and Marines, and countless innocent Iraqis.

Poisonous Legacy

David Brooks exposes the poisonous political legacy of Roe v. Wade in the New York Times:

When Blackmun wrote the Roe decision, it took the abortion issue out of the legislatures and put it into the courts. If it had remained in the legislatures, we would have seen a series of state-by-state compromises reflecting the views of the centrist majority that's always existed on this issue. These legislative compromises wouldn't have pleased everyone, but would have been regarded as legitimate.

Instead, Blackmun and his concurring colleagues invented a right to abortion, and imposed a solution more extreme than the policies of just about any other comparable nation.

Religious conservatives became alienated from their own government, feeling that their democratic rights had been usurped by robed elitists. Liberals lost touch with working-class Americans because they never had to have a conversation about values with those voters; they could just rely on the courts to impose their views. The parties polarized as they each became dominated by absolutist activists.

The decision's legacy will manifest itself again if the Republicans in the Senate abolish the filibuster for judicial nominees. Fanatical partisans such as Hugh Hewitt should consider the consequences of doing so:

Over the past four years Democrats have resorted to the filibuster again and again to prevent votes on judicial nominees they oppose. Up until now, minorities have generally not used the filibuster to defeat nominees that have majority support. They have allowed nominees to have an up or down vote. But this tradition has been washed away.

In response, Republicans now threaten to change the Senate rules and end the filibuster on judicial nominees. That they have a right to do this is certain. That doing this would destroy the culture of the Senate and damage the cause of limited government is also certain.

The Senate operates by precedent, trust and unanimous consent. Changing the rules by raw majority power would rip the fabric of Senate life. Once the filibuster was barred from judicial nomination fights, it would be barred entirely. Every time the majority felt passionately about an issue, it would rewrite the rules to make its legislation easier to pass. Before long, the Senate would be just like the House. The culture of deliberation would be voided. Minority rights would be unprotected.

Those who believe in smaller government would suffer most. Minority rights have been used frequently to stop expansions of federal power, but if those minority rights were weakened, the federal role would grow and grow - especially when Democrats regained the majority.

Majority parties have often contemplated changing the filibuster rules, but they have always turned back because the costs are so high. But, fired by passions over abortion, Republican leaders have subordinated every other consideration to the need to overturn Roe v. Wade. The Democrats, meanwhile, threaten to shut down the Senate.

Censorious Ninny

Michelle Malkin contiues her devolution into a censorius ninny. She whines about Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin's joke:

According to Copley News Service and the State Journal-Register, Sen. Durbin threw in a story about the late federal judge Abraham Lincoln Marovitz of Chicago, whose collection of Lincoln books is included in the new library's holdings.
Judge Marovitz used to say that his mother believed that President Lincoln was Jewish, Durbin said. After all, his first name was Abraham, and then, to confirm it, she learned that John Wilkes Booth shot him in the temple.
This is funny?
A prominent Democrat joking about a Republican president's assassination.

Malkin seems to think Durbin is engaged in violent rhetoric on the level of wearing a "Kill Bush" tee shirt.

Editorial Note

Trust me, editors never pound on any doors to hand out paper and pen. As a general rule, they have plenty of people pounding on their doors.

Surrender the Rosary Beads, Judge Pryor!

Repubican lap dog, Hugh Hewitt is on his high horse over Democratic filibusters of Republican judges, which he says is due to anti-Christian bigotry. He makes the ludicrous claim, for example, that Judge William Pryor "is being held up because he is a devout Catholic."

Maybe I haven't paid close enough attention, but I haven't noticed Sen. Hillary Clinton demanding that Judge Pryor denounce the doctrine of Immaculate Conception. Nor have I seen Sen. Robert Byrd mock Transubstantiation while demanding that Judge Pryor admit that Roman Catholic Communion is only symbolic.

These issues, and matters such as the Rosary have not come up because Judge Pryor's religious faith is not at issue. The underlying issue is of course, Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision striking down state abortion laws. For what it is worth, I think it is (one of many) an outrageous usurpations of power by the Court without any basis in the U.S. Constitution.

They are planning to abolish filibusters with regard to judicial nominations if they can get the votes to do so. I am a lot less disturbed by this prospect after giving the matter some thought. The Constitution simply says that, "Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings . . ." In addition this article makes an excellent point:

The Senate rules that create the filibuster also do not allow the Senate to change the filibuster rules unless 67 senators agree. However, these rules should not bind the Senate any more than a statute that says that it cannot be repealed until 67 percent of the Senate votes to repeal the statute. An earlier Senate cannot bind a present Senate on this issue.

Still, it is a radical step, and I think I would vote against it if I were a senator. I would have more sympathy for the Republican position on the issue if they weren't indulging in the sort of victimology that they denounce when it is used by liberals and Democrats. The honest argument for the so-called "nuclear option" is that the Republicans have the power to do it. In the end, that is the only thing that matters.

UPDATE: Richard Cohen assesses the performance of Senator of Faith, Bill Frist:

The invocation of the phrase "people of" is no different when preceding "faith" than it is when preceding "color." It's a bold signal of mushy thinking, a corralling of people who have nothing in common other than a perceived -- and often fictionalized -- enemy. "People of faith" mischaracterizes what the political debate is all about. What Senate Democrats lack is not faith but 50 votes. Frist knows this, of course, but his mad pursuit of the presidency requires him to prove to the Christian right, the core of the Republican Party, that its cause comes before his principles.

He did this with Terri Schiavo, going so far as to use his medical bona fides (he's a heart surgeon) to view a neurologist's videotape of the poor woman and pronounce her somewhat alert. Now he is lending his name and his fast-diminishing prestige to this reprehensible effort to enlist faith on the side of a single political issue. This sort of stuff will not, as he hopes, make him the next president of the United States. Instead, it shows what raw ambition has made him: a person of pander.

On Top Of The World . . .

I assume that John 'Hindrocket' Hindraker, of Power Line, has greater reasoning skills than he exhibits in this post. He is upset that Howard Dean is not getting in trouble for saying "we're going to use Terri Schiavo later on." Hindraker says:

Why is it it that when a minor Republican staffer wrote that the Schiavo case was a "great political issue," it was a scandal that was reported in every newspaper in America, whereas, when the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee says, 'We're going to use Terri Schiavo' in the 2006 and 2008 elections, the response is a yawn? I'm sure there must be a reason why Dean's comment is different, but offhand I can't think what it is.

Hindraker can't figure out what the difference is because he excised the portion of the quote from the Los Angeles Times article (registration) that explained it. The Times wrote , "'We're going to use Terri Schiavo later on, Dean said of the brain-damaged Floridian who died last month after her feeding tube was removed amid a swarm of political controversy. Dean, who has called congressional intervention in the Schiavo case 'political grandstanding,' singled out House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) for his leading role in the matter." (emphasis added)

The italicized portion of the article makes clear to me that Dean intends to make hay over the Republican's, and specifically, Tom DeLay's political use of Schiavo case; which is very different from the Republican attempt to directly intervene in the case for political benefit (I assume that there was at least some genuine principle involved).

John Hindraker, who really wanted to believe that a memo hyping the political benefits of intervention for the Republicans was actually a Democrat dirty trick, should be careful. He and his colleagues were made "Blog of the Year" last year for their role in exposing the Dan Rather/fake memo business. It seems to have gone to their head -- their reasoning is often careless, and they make a lot of baseless charges. I wrote in a recent issue of the American Conservative that, "there was no blogosphere to speak of in 2000; it was a huge story by 2004. Dan Rather succumbed to the arrogance of power and never saw his downfall coming. There is no reason to assume that the same fate can’t befall a few big-name bloggers by 2008." The guys at Power Line are ripe for such a downfall.

Grave & Gathering, but not Imminent . . .

Jay Nordlinger chides Richard Cohen in his "Impromptus" column today:

The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen is an honest writer, basically. He wears his hates on his sleeve. In his 4/7 column, he wrote, ". . . I knew that the most alarming case against Saddam Hussein — that he was an imminent threat to the United States — was a lie."

Please note that word "imminent" — and recall what President Bush said in his State of the Union address, before he went to war against Saddam: "Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations will come too late."

Concluding his column, Cohen said, "The fact will remain that this war was fought for a lie."

This is a cherished belief that liberals — and many conservatives, and others — will hold on to till the day they die. But the truth is that they can speak confidently about WMD because the U.S. invaded. And it’s odd that they never blame Saddam Hussein for failing to comply with the U.N., or the United Nations for failing to make him comply — or even to care whether he did. Indeed, the U.N. abetted him.

Note Nordlinger's exacting level of specificity. What the president said in his 2003 State of the Union speech is the only thing that matters. But here is one of the many places that you can find a collection of statements from Bush Administration representatives discussing the grave nature of the threat from Iraq. Also, don't forget his 2002 Cincinnati Speech. Here are a couple of tidbits:

While there are many dangers in the world, the threat from Iraq stands alone -- because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place. Iraq's weapons of mass destruction are controlled by a murderous tyrant who has already used chemical weapons to kill thousands of people. This same tyrant has tried to dominate the Middle East, has invaded and brutally occupied a small neighbor, has struck other nations without warning, and holds an unrelenting hostility toward the United States.

Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.

The attacks of September the 11th showed our country that vast oceans no longer protect us from danger. Before that tragic date, we had only hints of al Qaeda's plans and designs. Today in Iraq, we see a threat whose outlines are far more clearly defined, and whose consequences could be far more deadly. Saddam Hussein's actions have put us on notice, and there is no refuge from our responsibilities.

Nordlinger may actually believe that because the President didn't utter the phrase, "Iraq is an imminent threat," that he and his administration were not trying to create the impression that the country had to go to war in Iraq right away, but reasonably intilligent native English speakers can be forgiven for drawing that conclusion from the administration's verbal case for war.

Also note what Nordlinger says about the U.N. and Saddam: "it's odd that [liberals] never blame Saddam Hussein for failing to comply with the U.N., or the United Nations for failing to make him comply -- or even to care whether he did. Indeed, the U.N. abetted him." Did Hans Blix , of a U.N inspection team, fall down the memory hole? As I remember, he was their searching for non-existent WMDs when he had to leave before the U.S. invasion. How was the U.N. abbeting Saddam?

A Neocon's Best Friend is His Mother

Matt Barganier very rudely implied that Steven Schwartz is a psycho. I think he owes an apology . . . to Norman Bates.

Nuts

Steve Sailer on the Republican plan to eliminate the inheritance tax:

Eliminating the inheritance tax on the richest of the rich is nuts . . . This really shouldn't be controversial. I can't think of a logical reason why we will have a progressive income tax but not an inheritance tax on the extremely rich . . . The Democrats should pick a round number like $10 million for couples for the minimum taxable estate, something that the average person would agree is plenty-with-a-capital-P, and stick to it. Heck, set it at $50 million, but there needs to be something, both to narrow the deficit and to keep wealth from piling up generation after generation into a hereditary super-aristocracy.

He's right. He might have added that when they pick a number, it should be indexed to inflation.
What is particularly appalling is that the Republicans favor this sort of thing(and all of their other tax cuts) in the face of their massive expansion of government (except, of course, in guarding our southern border). It can't be said too often -- the Republicans are the party of fiscal dishonesty. They run up big deficits when they get into power, and let others figure out how to clean up the mess later.

Dumber & Dumber

I don't know what is worse--the ladies at Code Pink who think we should say "yes" to the UN(via a childish public hissy fit); or Hindpocket at Power Line, who thinks that saying "no" to John Bolton must mean saying "no" to America. Regular readers know that I spend about 95% of my time bad mouthing the right. That is because they control the government and drive the political/media agenda, not because I have any soft spot for the political left.

Kirk v. Kirk

Almost every issue of The American Conservative catalogs the decline of the Right. The April 25 issues has two articles back to back which nicely illustrate the descent from Russell Kirk to Captain Kirk. The first is by William Lind of the Free Congress Foundation. Lind contrasts the older patriotism with the nationalism now gripping the Right:

From Burke to Kirk, this has been the essence of conservative patriotism, or as it used to be called, a love of our country: specific attachment to our own places . . . The local is real, and the first conservative principle is the Reality Principle. To a conservative patriot Wal-Mart is a far greater threat than some tin-pot dictator in a Third World country. . . Nationalism, in contrast looks outward, identifying not with anything tangible but with the abstract that is the state.

Marcus Epstein, in contrast, went to the recent Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, described by Marshall Wittman as a "Star Trek convention for conservatives." Epstein, an apparent masochist, has attended three of these gatherings. He relates that, while manning the "conservatives for peace" table, the "most common response from attendees was to call the people manning the table leftists, unpatriotic, or communists." He then commits the dual sins of knowing a bit of history and defending the French:

Another [t-shirt] had a Frenchman waving a white flag and the words, "We Salute You." When the vendor asked me if I would like to buy the shirt, I told him that I didn't think the French were cowardly. He snapped back that they quickly negotiated peace in World War II and would not let us use their airfields during our latest war. I expained to him that 1.3 million French died in World War I, more than all American war deaths in history . . .

The infantilization of the American Right is disturbing -- there exists no significant force in American politics standing against what the late Sam Francis described as "Anarcho-Tyranny" at home and abroad -- but it is also entertaining.

Never Discuss the Family Business With Him

Gianni Russo is best known for playing the faithless Carlo Rizzi in Maro Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather is still around more than thirty years after he was garroted from the back seat by Peter Clemenza. The New York Times reports that the 62 year old sometime actor and former delivery boy for Frank Costello is planning a new career as a Sinatra style crooner. "The reluctant killer . . . has a publicist and a new dream: to be a big-name crooner, the kind who makes women swoon."

That would seem to disprove F. Scott Fitzgerald's belief that there are "no second acts in American life." It is not as if he plans to rely exclusively on his vocal talents though. The Times reports that, "Mr. Russo's singing act leans heavily on his 'Godfather' past, with cheeky references to Marlon Brando punctuated by the recorded sound of machine-gun fire."

Conservatives & Corporations

Jason, at Libertas is exercised over the release of The Corporation, a documentery about corporations. More specifically, he is upset about this interview with the film's creators and reproduces this quote:

The corporation is a legal construct that allows people to concentrate capital, do business, and be irresponsible for the actions the corporation takes in their name. It's an irresponsibility machine. It's a license to amplify the worst aspects of human nature, to exploit, to harm -- even kill -- in the name of shareholders. One image that comes to mind is hundreds of Magritte's businessmen with bowler hats on, but instead of blank faces or apples for heads, they each have a gaping great white shark's open mouth full of crooked teeth, and they all have body parts sticking out and blood dripping down their nice white shirts.

Their rhetoric about shark's teeth is over the top, but the description of a corporation as an "irresponsibility machine" is apt. The documentary interviews most of the usual left wing suspects such as Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore and Howard Zinn. It should have also included an interview with someone like Wendell Berry, who published an essay in Another Turn of the Crank a few years back that stated:

They are not interested in the good health-economic or natural or human-of any place on this earth. And if you should undertake to appeal or complain to one of these great corporations on behalf of your community, you would discover something most remarkable: you would find that these organizations are organized expressly for the evasion of responsibility. They are structures in which, as my brother says, "the buck never stops." The buck is processed up the hierarchy until finally it is passed to "the shareholders," who characteristically are too widely dispersed, too poorly informed, and too unconcerned to be responsible for anything. The ideal of the modern corporation is to be (in terms of its own advantage) anywhere and (in terms of local accountability) nowhere.

It never ceases to amaze me the way conservatives are so fond of such unconservative institutions such as corporations and the military. It wasn't always the case. People like Russell Kirk and the Southern Agrarians could be strongly critical of corporations and Industrialism. A small Catholic publisher, IHS Press, is substantially devoted to republishing the anti-capitalist and anti-corporate tracts of conservative heroes G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc.

Matters of Conscience

"Conscience clauses" that allow pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions they find morally objectionable (usually birth-control related) are becoming a hot topic in the culture war that grips the country. My first instinct is to be sympathetic to the pharmacists who wish to be able to refuse certain prescriptions as Crispin Sartwell argues in the Los Angeles Times (registration):

What you should ask yourself in this case is not whether you think people should have access to birth control, but whether you should be required to do things that violate your deepest convictions. Should a soldier be required to torture prisoners, for example? Should he refuse to do so if ordered? Should a liberal corporate peon be required to contribute to the Republican Party?

On further reflection, I find such arguments unpersuasive because the assume that dispensing prescription drugs is just another job. It is a tightly regulated profession with stringent entry requirements. Also, it is silly to compare it to being required to torture, which is both illegal and universially considered reprehensible.

When I see a blogger argue that being able to refuse to dispense drugs is a matter of "freedom" I have my doubts. John Brown argues that "a private business should have the right to decide what it wishes to sell and what it doesn't." I agree, but if he thinks they are simply private businesses, he should open a pharmacy and see if any other pharmacies have moral qualms about shutting him down. He also ignores the probability that "conscience clauses" will be used by druggists against their private employers who wish them to fill all prescriptions.

Action Shot

Being a blogger means never having to hold your self to the standards you demand of the big media, or so it seems for some. I noted last year how several bloggers were boasting about their various takedowns of the dreaded MSM, especially over this photo from the Associated Press which "proved" that that organiziation was guilty of working with terrorists because, I think it was Hindpocket at Power Line who said, "the photographer was obviously within a few yards of the scene of the murder, which raises obvious questions, such as 1) what was the photographer doing there; did he have advance knowledge of the crime, or was he even accompanying the terrorists? and 2) why did the photographer apparently have no fear of the terrorists, or conversely, why were the terrorists evidently unconcerned about being photographed in the commission of a murder?" Also, an anonymous source told Salon that the photographer might have been tipped that something was going to happen on that street. High Pockets treats that as an admission of guilt by the Associated Press.

Ryan at Dead Parrot Society suggests that the guys at Power Line, and others who made these accusations don't know what they are talking about:

Do these writers really believe their characterizations of how the stringer got his shots? I can't imagine they do, not in a day where a telephoto lens and a professional crop bring you right into a photo's face.
Here, compare these two versions of the same picture, both carried on Yahoo's feed of news photos. In all likelihood, even the photo on the left was cropped in from full frame; very few news photos aren't cropped at least somewhat to tighten in on the important part of the image. But you can see how easy it is to take a photo from distance and bring the viewer right in close.

His arguement makes sense, I am impressed that he uses facts and logic, instead of simply hurling empty accusations.

Now Hindpocket's partner, Elephant Guy has his snout in a snit because the picture won a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography. He calls it a pulitzer for "felony murder."

One of the things I learned when I started my blog is that it is harder than it looks. That is, if you care about what you are saying. I would never think of making the kind of serious accusations that the Powerliners and numerous others have made on the flimsy "evidence" that they produce.

Moral Values

For perhaps billions--including many non-Catholics-- the death of Pope John Paul II is a tragic loss. For others, it is simply another wedge issue.

Bookchat

Belatedly, I take up the challenge from Jesse Walker, to throw away a few minutes or so of my life.

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451. Which book do you want to be?

I would pick the as yet unwritten, Harry Potter Book Seven. That way I would be one of the most important and powerful people around.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

That's a little weird. Maybe Marie "Slim" Browning from To Have and Have Not, because she was played by Lauren Bacall in the Movie.

The last book you bought is:

I'm not really sure.

The last book you read is

Put Out More Flags By Evelyn Waugh.

What are you currently reading?

Several Things.

Five books you would take to a deserted island.

1 Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Selfhelp Book by Walker Percy. Percy covers all the critical issues: Wednesday afternoons, the Last Phil Donahue Show and "Why it is that of all the billions and billions of strange objects in the Cosmos--novas, quasars, pulsars, black holes--you are beyond doubt the strangest."
2 I'll Take My Stand by Twelve Southerners.
3 Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette by Bill Kauffman. My review may explain why I would need an occasional Kauffman fix while on the Island.
4 The Marble City by Jack Neely, Knoxville's answer to Bill Kauffman.
5 The Simpsons A complete Guide to Our Favorite family. I assume I wouldn't have TV on this Island. This would be a good substitute.

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

I don't know. My first choice would be Jesse, but he already did it and didn't take it very seriously the first time.

Vote with Your Wheels

John Tierney has an article in the New York Times detailing the political affiliations of various car buyers, most of which is predictable. ". . . buyers of American cars tend to be Republican -- except, for some reason, those who buy Pontiacs, who tend to be Democrats. Foreign-brand compact cars are usually bought by Democrats -- but not Mini Coopers, which are bought by almost equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans."

While skimming over a later paragraph I came across came across this quote: "In truth, a lot of fans would be sore about ending the all-American monopoly. Nascar has become a covert ethnic-pride celebration for red-state whites of Northern European descent." This sounds like Steve Sailer, I thought, and looked up at the previous paragraph and saw that it is.

Well Said

The Wandering Hillbilly clearly states what needed to be said:

Ifn ye lack to read the cunservative side of thangs, then i recommend ye check out clark stooksburys blog name of clarkstooksbury, witch the bes thang bout it is how ye caint perdick whut he is a'gone say bout mos innythang. verr thoughtful n not the kind to repeat spin points, far as i kin see, witch that means he bleeves in the cunservative values that wuz importunt to my daddy n his generayshun. ye kin git a lil idee bout how this by readin one of his posts lack "Freedom" of Speech or sum of his longer ritin such as Red Team, Blue Team. ye mite notice rite away how this feller is a real riter that has published thangs in places lack the american conservative.

Normalcy, Anyone?

The military will run out of gas sometime in 2006, according to the military analysts quoted in this article in the Arizona Republic. "With recruitment lagging and no end in sight for U.S. forces in Iraq, the 'breaking point' for the nation's all-volunteer military will be mid-2006, agreed Lawrence Korb, a draft opponent and assistant defense secretary in the Reagan administration, and Phillip Carter, a conscription advocate and former Army captain."

Carter co-wrote a case for the draft in the Washington Monthly that has drawn a lot of attention. I oppose such a draft, but then again I oppose U.S. attempts to impose democracy around the world. When a draft is required to sustain Bush's Wilsonian foreign policy, I expect that more and more Americans will favor a return to Harding-style "Normalcy."

The Iraq War has remained for most Americans a "livingroom war," as Andrew Bacevich calls it, with real sacrifices made by a tiny minority:

The attack of Sept. 11 elicited from the American people a universal sense of shock, anger, and outrage. But when it came to tapping the energies inherent in that instantaneous emotional response, the administration of George W. Bush did essentially nothing.
Instead of a Lincolnesque summons to "think anew and act anew," President Bush instructed his fellow citizens to "enjoy America's great destination spots." Within weeks of the terrorist attack, he was urging folks to "Get down to Disney World in Florida." Rather than announcing that the imperative of victory had now transcended all other priorities—in his day, FDR had pointedly retired "Dr. New Deal," making way for "Dr. Win-the-War"—Bush thought it more important for Americans to "enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed."

"Freedom" of Speech

Justin Raimondo points to this Washington Post(registration) story about Bush adminstration officials ejecting potential trouble makers from one of the president's Stepfordian 'town meetings.' "Three Denver residents yesterday charged that they were forcibly removed from one of President Bush's town meetings on Social Security because they displayed a bumper sticker on their car condemning the administration's Middle East policies. The three, all self-described progressives who oppose Bush's Social Security plan, said an unidentified official at an event in Denver last week forced them to leave before the president started to speak, even though they had done nothing disruptive, said their attorney, Dan Recht. Initially, the three believed Secret Service agents had grabbed them and ushered them out of the auditorium, Recht said. But he said that Lon Garner, the Secret Service agent in charge of the Denver office, told them the service investigated the matter and found it was a 'Republican staffer' who removed them because they had a 'No More Blood for Oil' bumper sticker on their car."
This is the norm the Bush administration, which likes to keep the president from being exposed to dissenting opinion. James Bovard told the story of retired steel worker, James Neel, who was arrested at a Bush event a couple of years ago while carrying a sign that read, "The Bush family must surely love the poor, they made so many of us." That case was thrown out of court:

At Neel’s trial, police detective John Ianachione testified that the Secret Service told local police to confine "people that were there making a statement pretty much against the president and his views" in a so-called free speech area. Paul Wolf, one of the top officials in the Allegheny County Police Department, told Salon that the Secret Service "come in and do a site survey, and say, 'Here’s a place where the people can be, and we'd like to have any protesters put in a place that is able to be secured.'" Pennsylvania district judge Shirley Rowe Trkula threw out the disorderly conduct charge against Neel, declaring, "I believe this is America. Whatever happened to ‘I don’t agree with you, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it'?"

All the president's men shelter him from opposing viewpoints to avoid having him wind up like this other emperor:

So now the Emperor walked under his high canopy in the midst of the procession, through the streets of his capital; and all the people standing by, and those at the windows, cried out, "Oh! How beautiful are our Emperor's new clothes! What a magnificent train there is to the mantle; and how gracefully the scarf hangs!" in short, no one would allow that he could not see these much-admired clothes; because, in doing so, he would have declared himself either a simpleton or unfit for his office. Certainly, none of the Emperor's various suits, had ever made so great an impression, as these invisible ones.

"But the Emperor has nothing at all on!" said a little child.

"Listen to the voice of innocence!" exclaimed his father; and what the child had said was whispered from one to another.

"But he has nothing at all on!" at last cried out all the people. The Emperor was vexed, for he knew that the people were right; but he thought the procession must go on now! And the lords of the bedchamber took greater pains than ever, to appear holding up a train, although, in reality, there was no train to hold.

Huh?

I don't know why, but this site is pointing its readers to mine.

Little Mengeles

Jay Nordlinger is the managing editor of National Review. Most of the articles I have read by him in the last few years have been fawning profiles of the macho men in the Bush administration, like this one from The American Enterprise .

Another matter that Nordlinger addresses regularly in his Impromptus column in NRO is the rhetorical excess of leftists and liberals. His most recent column is no exception. He quotes Jesse Jackson saying "Today the Congress reconvenes to save a woman — Terri Schiavo — from starving to death, but then votes to starve millions every day," and "There is a fascist attack on civil rights and civil liberties. We cannot be silent." Outrageous stuff, to be sure. Fortunately, few people pay attention to Jackson anymore. I remember when he was a powerful media figure. Those days are long gone.

Below that, Nordlinger disdainfully quotes from an article by Leslie Gelb referring to "Republican Ayatollahs." This would seem to be an example of such extreme language except that in context it is clear that Gelb is not denouncing Republican extremism:

Mr. Cheney also does well at herding his party's ever-feuding foreign policy ayatollahs and keeping them faithful to White House policy. Republican ayatollahs come in three varieties: The old-fashioned conservatives of the Jesse Helms and John Bolton type, torn between their traditional isolationism and the impulse to nuke the bad guys and get it over with. The neoconservatives, mainly former Democratic conservatives, ever eager to wield U.S. power to change the world to suit our interests and values. And the classic realists . . . who like power, but who give equal weight to limits imposed by human nature, culture and politics.

Also, one should point out that the Ayatollah who has received the most publicity in the last few months is supposedly one of the good guys.

I am devoting all of this space to Nordlinger, ordinarily one of the minor stars in the neocon cosmos, because the most extreme words by far in his column are those he uses. Refering to the Terry Schiavo case he reproduces a brief exchange with an unidentified friend: "In a discussion with a friend, I mentioned something about Dr. Mengele's laboratory. He said, 'No, this is worse. Mengele had the pretense — indeed, the argument — that he was benefiting humanity [with his inhuman experiments]. Where's the argument here? They're just starving her to death."

Talk about not doing nuance! Nordlinger and his friend casually reduce Michael Schiavo, his lawyer and numerous judges to the level of not just ordinary Nazis--but worse than one of the most contemptible and repulsive monsters of the Third Reich. Note how black and white the issue is--"They're just starving her to death." End of story. There are no open questions about Terry Schiavo's intentions or level of consciousness.

I am sympathetic towards arguments in favor of saving Terry Schiavo. It is easy to see that her husband, who has two children with another woman, may not have his wife's best interests at heart. But I haven't seen anything that justifies the recent interference by the Bush administration and the Congress. But if one takes Nordlinger seriously, then Bush brothers--who are standing by while Judge George Greer opens up an Auschwitz in the Sunshine State--are both moral cowards of the first order worthy only of the contempt of decent people. And speaking of the people; some conservative have criticized poll results that show most people oppose congressional interference in the Schiavo case, but I haven't seen any reason to doubt that such results are largely accurate, so Nordlinger can't have much regard for the American people either.

His statement reminds me of the recent controversy surrounding Ward Churchill's reference to victims of 9/11 as "little Eichmanns." Churchill's use of such contemptable rhetoric has led to a campaign on the right to deprive him of his job in the department of "Ethnic Studies" at the University of Colorado. I wonder if any of the same people will be outraged by Nordlinger.

Update: Ben Stein confirms it. We now live in Nazi Germany:

I wonder if a poll of Aryan Germans would have found a majority who cared enough to pull a lever to save the Jews. I suspect a good majority -- voting in total secrecy, of course -- would have said, "Let them die. They're inferior and not worth providing food for." So now we are at that level.

Hideout

The guys at Libertas, "a forum for conservative thought on film" are big fans of Turner Classic Movies, (TCM) as am I. Unlike them, I don't feel the need to offer my daily reccommendations other than to say that it is the perfect TV hideout from the present sad state of American pop culture.
Their reccomendations from March 26 includes Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.
One of the more famous films from one of the most celebrated directors doesn't need a plug from anybody. A casual movie fan will be aware of the movie even if he hadn't yet seen it. Turner Classic Movies shows most of the great movies like that. Pay attention long enough and you will see Gone With The Wind, Casablanca and most of the other greats. What Makes TCM so great are the films they show that aren't as celebrated. Take, for example, Shadow of a Doubt, another Hitchcock film that I hadn't heard of until I saw it on TCM a few months back. It stars Joseph Cotten as a handsome and debonair, murderous sociopath. Another great discovery I made is In a Lonely Place, starring Humphrey Bogart as a mercurial screenwriter who is suspected of murder he didn't commit, and whose violent behavior makes those who believe in his innocence have second thoughts.
I haven't yet checked the TCM April schedule, but I am sure that it contains hours of great entertainment for anyone who cares to look.

Never say die?

Thomas Fleming has one of the more worthwhile columns on the whole Terry Schiavo situation:

But supposing we still believe, despite the strong weight of evidence, that Mrs. Schiavo remains conscious at some level and might someday lead a normal life. The question then becomes not “What is the right thing to do,” but “Who is to decide?” As in so many human affairs, it is easier to have moral knowledge than knowledge of facts. We do know that, in our tradition, spouses are next of kin and empowered by law to make decisions when their wife or husband is incapable. That is why Mr. Schiavo, when the physicians concluded the case to be hopeless, was free to decide his wife’s fate. To change this legal tradition, in the heat of a passionate case, is a perilous undertaking.

I do not know what Mrs. Schiavo’s husband ought to do, but I do know that the decision belongs to him and not to either Jeb or George Bush. To those who wish to defend physical existence for its own sake at any cost, this will seem like Pilate’s decision. They are wrong. Pilate shirked his responsibility as Roman procurator by giving in to the mob. He should not have allowed the execution of Jesus, but neither should he have overturned both Roman and Jewish laws in order to strip families of their legal rights. The analogy, used with increasing frequency, between Mrs. Schiavo and Christ is blasphemous on many counts. She is not the God who willingly accepted death in order to redeem mankind. She is only a poor, frail mortal, like the rest of us, and her condition and death, so far from being a willing sacrifice, is the result, apparently, of binge dieting.

New Destructive Generation

Justin Raimondo correctly pegs the repellent Frontpage of David Horowitz:

Desperate for attention -- and, increasingly, for more funds from his right-wing backers -- Horowitz has been getting increasingly crazed lately, working himself and his dwindling band of supporters into a frothy-mouthed lather in a effort to convince himself that anything he says really matters.
What's interesting to note is that the Horowitzian technique hasn't really changed since his heyday as a New Leftist. Back then, his enemies were "capitalist running dogs" and agents of "the ruling class." Today, as then, there can be no honest disagreements with Horowitz: his enemies are all "terrorists" and agents of "Al Qaeda."
Horowitz, Plaut, and their fellow nutjobs are the real anti-Americans: fanatics who want to see their alleged enemies silenced, shut down, and jailed. That of course is the real intent of someone who labels their political opponents "pro-Al Qaeda."
No conservative, no matter what their view of the Iraq war, should countenance this kind of intellectual dishonesty -- and outright hooliganism. That's why we're urging all conservatives and libertarians of good will to boycott Horowitz, and all his works. People that irresponsible need to be marginalized.

Horowitz was a leftwing nutcase when that was the fashionable thing to be, now he is a rightwing crazy. It seems that the only consistency in his life is extremism.
At Frontpage, one of whose more hysterical writers threatens a lawsuit every time he gets his panties in a wad, most of the other contributors follow the Horowitz tone. Stephen Schwartz is one of the more looney of the Frontpagers, but he fits right in. Raimondo quotes Steven Plaut as describing Antiwar.com as "pro al Qaeda" even though if a Raimondoesqe foreign policy had been followed for the last fifteen years or so al Qaeda would be a marginal organization that noone had ever heard of.

The Coming Battle

If you ignore Andrew Sullivan's silly nonsense about "Stone Age conservative isolationism," he provides a compelling take on the coming battle on the right: "The race to succeed Bush will become, in part, a battle for the future of American conservatism. I have no idea how it will turn out. But I do have one clear prediction: the Republican internal battle in the next four years is going to be bloody. After the mid-term elections in 2006 it will be brutal."

The Question is . . .

When will Stephen sue?

The Barone of Hackery

Michael Barone has a remarkable column that I saw via Instapundit. It is remarkable because he has so little of substance to say on his chosen topic, the "trustfund left." Such a demographic may well, in fact probably does exist, but you get no substantive evidence fro Barone. He doesn't even use the cool word "trustafarian."
Instead he offers a vague description:

Who are the trustfunders? People with enough money not to have to work for a living, or not to have to work very hard. People who can live more or less wherever they want. The "nomadic affluent," as demographic analyst Joel Kotkin calls them.
These people tend to be very liberal politically. Aware that they have done nothing to earn their money, they feel a certain sense of guilt. At the elite private or public high schools they attend, and even more at their colleges and universities, they are propagandized about the evils of capitalism and globalization, and the virtues of environmentalism and pacifism. Patriotism is equated with Hiterlism.

And a vague idea of where they reside:

Where can you find trustfunders? Not scattered randomly around the country, but
heavily concentrated in certain areas. Places with kicky restaurants, places tolerant of alternative lifestyles, places with lots of art galleries and organic food stores and Starbucks competitors. The heaviest concentration is in the San Francisco Bay area, which, Kotkin says, has the largest percentage of trustfunders of any major metro area in the country. The Bay area stands out in stark relief on the political map. It voted 70 percent to 29 percent for John Kerry in 2004, up from the 64 percent to 30 percent margin it cast for Al Gore in 2000. Without the Bay area's 1.15 million-vote margin for Kerry, California would have come within 82,000 votes of voting for George W. Bush.

So on that slim basis their is a large class of rich liberals who don't work, vote for Democrats and think everybody else is Hitler. He cites Joel Kotkin as saying that the Bay area has a lot of trustfunders but he doesn't say how many. Then he assumes that this group is solely responsible for Kerry's huge margin in that area. He doesn't even consider that the Bay area might have a lot of wealthy people in the tech industry who tend to be liberal.
As Walker Percy said about a certain Wednesday afternoon a few years ago, the only thing about Barone's column that is notable is that nothing about it is notable. I guess it is easy to be a columnist when all you have to do is toss off a few generalities in order to demonize your political enemies.

Do Nothing Congress

It seems that I a always denouncing the American Spectator. I never got around to praising this fine article on the atrocity of sending young women and mothers into war last week. Now they have dissipated the good will that they built up with me by publishing a silly article urging President Bush to go on the offensive against a Congress controlled in both houses by members of his own party.
The author, Patrick Hynes believes president Bush, who won his first political office in 1994, the year that Republicans took over the House and Senate, "more than anyone else, helped to create" a Republican Congress. Newt Gingrich, call your office.
He also urges the president to denounce the Congress for wasting time with steroids hearings last week. Which would be fine except for the fact that I have reason to believe that Mr. Bush doesn't think it is a waste of time.
By all means Mr. President, go to war against the Republican Congress. Just be prepared to work closely with Speaker Pelosi in 2007.

Law & Etiquette

the professor takes note of the Schwartz v. Raimondo copyright imbroglio: "I think that AntiWar.com has the better of the law here, but I think that web etiquette is being violated all around. I think it's OK to link somebody's image if you're not causing them bandwidth problems, but I think that it's churlish not to take the link down if they complain. On the other hand, it's also churlish to complain too readily. "
It's good that he reviews the issue and notes that the law is on Antiwar.com's side, but he misses the point, I think. Schwartz didn't just complain, he threatened an utterly baseless lawsuit, for apparently the second time. I don't usually assume that people I disagree with on political issues are simply bad people, but Schwartz's behavior seems perfectly in keeping with his deranged writing at Frontpage. His obsession with referring to Raimondo as "Dennis"(which Reynolds was taken enough with to provide a smirking second-hand link to the other day) is only the tip of the iceburg. In this, Schwartz is in tune with the style of Frontpage and the rest of the Horowitz web empire (not the use of a Raimondo picture, not just a link).
Reynolds doesn't regularly read Antiwar.com which is sad. I have noted a tendency towards groupthink on the right which I discuss in my forthcoming review of Blog (already available to electronic subscribers of The American Conservative). I try to read a broad spectrum of opinion including Instapundit, The Corner and other sites on both the left and the right.

Sue Google?

Stephen Schwartz has been having fits because Justin Raimondo linked to a copyrighted picture of him in his Antiwar.com column last Friday. Schwartz seems to have problems understanding that a link simply points in the direction of another webpage. Perhaps he should sue Google.

Legal Question

Prof. Reynolds links to a blog that quotes Sen. Barbara Boxer as saying, "Why would we give lifetime appointments to people who earn up to $200,000 a year, with absolutely a great retirement system, and all the things all Americans wish for, with absolutely no check and balance except that one confirmation vote. So we're saying we think you ought to get nine votes over the 51 required." He concludes that Boxer wants to change the constitution.
Perhaps Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee and a graduate of Yale Law School can help me out. I searched the document for relevant passages. I found the following:

Article I, Section 5, Clause 2: "Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings . . ."
Article II, Section 2, Clause 2: "[the president] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law . . ."

Note that it specifies a two thirds vote to approve a treaty, but not to approve judges and other officers appointed by the president. I assume that since the second clause I quote is silent on the matter, the first controls and the Senate can make its own rules which currently provide for filibusters when 60 senators don't vote to cut off debate.
The good professor should explain why it is unconstitutional for the requirement to apply to judicial nominees, but not other votes.

Update: I just noticed the post below the one that Reynolds linked to. It describes the "plain words of the framers" saying that "51 votes to confirm a nominee is all that is required." Of course, the "plain words" say no such thing, especially since there would have only been 26 senators at the time of the founding.
You have to actually read the constitution sometimes.
UdateII: George Will comes to the same conclusion on the Constitutional issue and quotes from article I, section 5, clause 2 of the Constitution as well. I guess you aren't required to have read the Constitution to graduate from Yale Law School, or to teach it at the University of Tennessee.

Ha Ha Ha

I think it's official, Susan Estrich ill-advised attack on Michael Kinsley has made her a laughing stock. The Washington Post's Anne Applebaum is forced to spend a column addressing the issue:

In the paragraph I have remaining (this, girls, is truly the hardest thing about newspaper columns: making the idea fit the space) I'm not going to discuss the thorny question of whether some affirmative action policies do some good, of whether newspapers matter anymore anyway, or even return to the subject of Sinn Fein. Those are complex, gender-neutral issues, and I've now used up my allotted weekly slot on a "women's issue" instead. Happy, Susan Estrich?

Dubious Note

Dubious blogger, Glenn Reynolds holds Thomas Woods' endorsement against Jim Powell's new book, Wilson's War. I'd be more inclined to hold P.J. O'Rourke's endorsement against it; but with Thomas Fleming's magisterial Illusion of Victory, I doubt Powell's book is neccessary . I am confused as to why two strong supporters of the president's most Wilsonian of crusades as O'Rourke and Reynolds are, would be partial to a work critical of Woodrow in the first place.

Deep Thoughts

Suzanne Fields shares her deep thoughts on Condoleezza Rice, and her political future:

Call it Condimania. Her fans call themselves "Condistas." A team of teens who will be barely old enough to vote in 2008 have already opened the campaign, distributing "Condi for president" buttons.

The Germans call her "coquettish"; the French admire her chic pointy shoes. When I stepped into a beauty salon in Madrid the other day, the hairdresser curled the coif in back, handed me a mirror, and told me proudly: "That's the Condi flip."

It's not easy to further trivialize American politics, but Fields succeeds. She makes Dick Morris' ravings on the the same issue seem profound.

Historically Correct

I haven't read the Politically Incorrect Guide To American History beyond flipping through it in a bookstore. I imagine that if I read it I would find some areas of disagreement with the author, Thomas Woods; but the book's growing ranks of enemies make it sound interesting. The latest attack is by David Greenberg and appears in Slate.

But Woods' book is incorrect in more than just its politics. Take, for example, Page One, where Woods opens with what he calls the "first basic fact": "The colonists were not paragons of 'diversity.' " I don't know any historians who teach that the colonists were "paragons of 'diversity' "—whatever that phrase, scare quotes and all, is supposed to mean. Most students of early America, however, would agree that Woods' elaboration of his claim is far from accurate. The colonists, Woods continues, "came from one part of Europe. They spoke a common language. They worshiped the same God." He then briefly describes the major waves of British immigration that came to American shores in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, as laid out in David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed (though Woods does not cite Fischer).
It doesn't take a Ph.D. to see why Woods' statement is false. Obviously, one large segment of Colonial Americans didn't come from England and didn't, at least initially, share their religion or language: the millions of Africans shipped to the colonies as slaves. But then, slavery doesn't appear in Woods' account until his discussion of the pre-Civil War era, by which time the peculiar institution was 200 years old.

Greenberg, a history professor, is saying that African slaves were "colonists" as well. Africans were captured, sold into slavery, and brought to the colonies against their will. After the Civil War it took a constitutional amendment to grant citizenship to ex-slaves. Would Thomas Jefferson, who said; "nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these [black] people are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government," have described a slave from Africa as a fellow colonist?
From their, Greenberg's article is a mess. He notes the criticisms from some neocons, denounces some of Woods' theories without bothering to justify his positions. He makes some general comments about conservative anti-intellectualism that are not totally unjustified, but it is clear that he didn't do his homework. If he can't tell the difference between Sean Hannity and Pat Buchanan, whom he mentions as proponents of Woods' book; then he his a fool. It is more likely that he did not bother to find out first hand like he didn't bother to actually refute his claims about the Politically Incorrect Guide.

Safe For Democracy

I see that Liberty is putting more of their archive on the web, including my review of The Illusion Of Victory, by Thomas Fleming. Fleming's Book is about a previous war that the US won. It should be required reading for the democracy brigades.

Dull Blade

Maureen Dowd has wasted yet another column writing about her feelings about being criticized for her writing: "Guys don't appreciate being lectured by a woman . . . the metaphors used to describe my column play into the castration theme: my scalpel, my cutting barbs, razor-sharp hatchet, Clinton-skewering and Bush-whacking. 'Does she,' The L.A. Times's Patt Morrison wondered, 'write on a computer or a Ronco Slicer and Dicer?'"
I suppose some people might think that Dowd is "cutting" and "razor-sharp," I can't see why. I find her to be one of the weakest columnists working today. I can't remember anything that she has written that is, well, memorable. I find a couple of her colleagues at the Times, Paul Krugman and Nicholas Kristof, to be worth reading; if often full of it. They, at least have something to say.

Blame the Eco-Whackos

Maybe Neal Boortz can show everybody how stupid the "eco-whackos" are by building himself a house across from a refinery. . .

Ready. Set. ZZZ.

Every neocon in the world, no matter how boring or lame will eventually get a syndicated column. Case-in-point: National Review Online's Kathryn Jean Lopez will be starting hers next week. The NEA could have found someone with something, anything to say, such as Scott Richert, or Bill Kauffman or Steve Sailer. Instead, K-Lo will join the daily Republican echo chamber at Townhall.
I can't wait

Boo Hoo

Is it unraveling already? The American Spectator's George Neumayr complains that the Republicans are wimping out on tax cuts and Social Security reform. I want my taxes cut as much as the next guy, but the Republicans are the party of Big Government, no Monstrously Large Government. You would think that would be obvious by now, but not this howler from Neumayr:

Didn't rudimentary Reaganomics teach them that tax cuts are not a source of deficits but a solution to them -- a spur to reducing the federal government's size and a stimulus to the economy that makes Americans less dependent on the federal government? Tax cuts at once boost the economy (and can actually increase government tax revenues) while sending a signal to Washington that it must back away from the trough. Cut taxes and fiscal discipline may follow; suspend tax cuts and continued bloated government spending is guaranteed.

What planet does he live on? The budget was balanced after repeated tax increases in the 80s & 90s; along with a divided government with a Democratic president. President Hilary Clinton is more likely to cut spending and balance the budget than President Bush.

Film Comment

I have been following a debate at LIBERTAS, a "forum for conservative thought on film" about the film, American Beauty. One poster, Dave Ross thinks that it is the only film from the last quarter century to deserve its best picture Oscar. Jason, apparently co-editor of the site, disagrees:

The stock conservative villain (Chris Cooper) is a racist military guy who beats his wife, forces his son to watch Ronald Reagan movies, collects Nazi china, and is secretly gay(!). The hero (Kevin Spacey) is a pot-smoking, shiftless, narcissistic liberal who lusts after his daughter’s teenage friends. And Annette Bening - a fine actress, who is otherwise wasted in this role - plays a shrieking, conformist, uptight harridan … who is supposed to be an indictment of suburban womanhood. Instead she comes across as no-one so much as Hillary Clinton. The film seems to be a strange allegory for the Clinton years, with Kevin Spacey as Clinton, Annette Bening as Hillary, Mena Suvari as Monica Lewinsky, and the villain a composite Henry Hyde/George Bush/Ken Starr.

This silly rant sounds as if Jason didn't actually see the movie and is reading from some sort of rightwing, Hollywood-watchdog factsheet. Lester Burnham, Kevin Spacey's character only resembles Bill Clinton in the most superficial sense--his lust for a girl young enough to be his daughter. Other than that, Clinton is an ambitious schemer who lusts for power as much as women. Burnham on the other hand is devoid of ambition and ends up working at a fast food place. His other complaints are silly as well. While we can assume that the gay-psycho-Marine character is politically conservative, I don't see how Burnam is especially liberal. Here he provides further a further brief against American Beauty:

which gratuitously defecates on Reagan, our military, etc. I don’t see why is this so hard to understand - or why I should care what the film says about Kevin Spacey’s acting abilities, which are nil, so far as I can tell. The man is an absolute cipher, a kind of ‘man without qualities’ to borrow a phrase from Musil.

Sam Mendes directed American Beauty, and I’ve been in the editorial suite of his next film. It’s pretty obvious that his new film Jarhead is going to be another screed against the ‘dehumanizing’ U.S. military (Jarhead is an account of the first Gulf War, starring Jamie Foxx and Chris Cooper). And I noticed Mr. Mendes smiling gleefully during the Oscars at Chris Rock’s repeated jabs at Bush - so what is there not to understand here?

His defacation comment is just wierd. Reagan's only appearance is via an old movie on TV that the Psycho Nazi-plate collector is not forcing his son to watch. Note also, his review of the yet unreleased film Jarhead. Jason doesn't let the reader in on what the Internet Movie Database does--that Jarhead will be based on the 2003 book of former Marine, Anthony Swofford. So if it portrays military life as 'dehumanizing,' it will be coming straight from the horses mouth.

Thinking of Smedley

Whenever I read about Marine veterans like this person:

The man was beside himself with fury. He accused me and the AFSC of being
shameful and that the AFSC wanted to see all of our soldiers in Iraq "tried for
war crimes." I just sat at the hospitality table trying to let the veteran blow
off some steam – I couldn’t answer his concerns at that point anyway – I felt
his accusations were for the representatives of the AFSC.
The very, very
angry man finally screamed one thing that I couldn’t ignore. He was practically
frothing at the mouth when he roared: "You people are all cowards. You wouldn’t
die for anything."
That’s when I had had just about enough of Mr. Marine. I
stood up to him and I said: "You are wrong about that, sir. I would have gladly
gone to Iraq instead of my son. I would have died in his place without
question."

I comfort myself by remembering Smedley Butler:

I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a
total of about 50,000 destroyed men-men who were the pick of the nation eighteen
years ago. The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital at Milwaukee .
. . told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those
who stayed home. Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the fields and
offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were
remolded; they were made over; they were made to "about face"; to regard murder
as the order of the day. They were put shoulder to shoulder and, through mass
psychology, they were entirely changed . . . Then suddenly, we discharged them
and told them to make another "about face"! This time they had to do their own
readjusting, sans mass psychology, sans officers' aid and advice, sans
nation-wide propaganda. We didn't need them any more . . . Many, too many, of
these fine young boys are eventually destroyed, mentally, because they could not
make that final "about face."

More Tyrrell

I previously noted Emmitt Tyrell's lame column on Jon Stewart's America, describing it as the worst book of 2004 (which is impossible since Tyrrell also released a book last year). Now I see that Tyrrell has made that the cover story in the March issue of the American Spectator. Imagine paying the outrageous ($7.95 last time I checked) to get a month old reprint of a syndicated column.

Gotcha!

Sometimes bloggers go to great lengths to catch big media people in falsehoods and errors. Matthew Hoy, for example thinks he has the goods on Paul Krugman:

"Nearly two months ago, in what appears now to be a fit of pique, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman made a promise to his readers.

In the next few weeks, I'll explain why privatization will fatally undermine
Social Security, and suggest steps to strengthen the program.

Well, as the graphic indicates, Krugman has suggested no real "steps to strengthen the program" in any subsequent column. Counting today's column, Krugman has written 15 pieces in the Times, but not one has contained the promised plan."

So Krugman, in a very general way, pledge to "suggest steps to strengthen" Social Security at some point in "the next few weeks." So what's the big deal? Krugman is still working on the Bush plan it would seem. Hoy should work to find genuine examples of dishonesty and incompetence among big media figures instead of trying to whip up a phony controversy. The professor disagrees, however.