May 31, 2005
BRENNAN'S BOYS:
When Court Clerks Rule (David J. Garrow, May 29, 2005, LA Times)
The recent release of Justice Harry A. Blackmun's private Supreme Court case files has starkly illuminated an embarrassing problem that previously was discussed only in whispers among court insiders and aficionados: the degree to which young law clerks, most of them just two years out of law school, make extensive, highly substantive and arguably inappropriate contributions to the decisions issued in their bosses' names.Even Roe vs. Wade, Blackmun's most famous decision, which legalized abortion nationwide in 1973, owed lots of its language and much of its breadth to his clerks and the clerks of other justices. A decade later, when Blackmun's defense of abortion rights shifted from an emphasis upon doctors' medical prerogatives to women's equality, it was his young clerks who were responsible for his increasingly feminist tone.
Blackmun's files, which span his tenure on the court from 1970 to 1994, also show that in some cases over the years, clerks introduced explicitly partisan political considerations into the court's work (once urging that an abortion ruling be issued before a presidential election, so that women could "vote their outrage" if Roe vs. Wade was reversed). Sometimes clerks' unrestrained ideological biases were starkly evident (as when one referred to Justice Antonin Scalia as "evil Nino" in a memo).
According to "Becoming Justice Blackmun," a new book by New York Times Supreme Court correspondent Linda Greenhouse, even Blackmun's most well-known line — "From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death" — was not his own. That 1994 dissent denouncing capital punishment was proposed by one clerk and written by a second. Blackmun accepted virtually every word of the clerk's draft.
Bob Woodward revealed all this years ago in The Brethren, which makes a laughingstock of Blackmun.
SPEAKING OF EMBARRASSING BOOKS BY THE LEFT:
Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries (Human Events, May 31, 2005)
HUMAN EVENTS asked a panel of 15 conservative scholars and public policy leaders to help us compile a list of the Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Each panelist nominated a number of titles and then voted on a ballot including all books nominated. A title received a score of 10 points for being listed No. 1 by one of our panelists, 9 points for being listed No. 2, etc. Appropriately, The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, earned the highest aggregate score and the No. 1 listing.
Ulysses belongs on the list.
AN EVEN EASIER TRANSITION:
Never mind Hillary - it's 'Laura for president' now (John Hughes, 6/01/05, CS Monitor)
Her public opinion ratings are currently higher than the president's. Her performance at the Gridiron dinner in Washington proved she has even more comedic flair than her husband. And on her trip to the Middle East last week, she showed she has a mind of her own and can sometimes, with civility, take positions different from Mr. Bush.Still not persuaded? Think the wife of a former president shouldn't, or couldn't, take a crack at running for the White House? Well Hillary Clinton is the wife of a former president and a lot of people think she's a front-runner for the Democratic nomination in 2008. What a contest that would be: Laura and Hillary. Choose one for first woman president. What a campaign Karl Rove would make.
Of course, Laura would have to elbow out Bill Frist, John McCain, and maybe even brother-in-law Jeb Bush, as well as a string of other aspiring males to get the Republican nomination. But I suspect that beneath that poised and charming exterior are nerves of steel and a canny political sense on issues of great import.
She certainly displayed cool nerve in the midst of rambunctious demonstrating crowds during her five-day Middle East visit. She also shrewdly pitched the president's agenda of freedom and democracy to the audience that could perhaps do more than any other to further that agenda throughout the Arab lands.
If Jeb won't...
ANTIRELIGION IS NOT RELIGION:
A boost for religious practice: A Supreme Court decision on prison rights is seen as a win for minority religious groups, too. (Warren Richey, 6/01/05, The Christian Science Monitor)
The decision marks an important victory not only for religious inmates but for all minority religious groups in the United States that rely on such accommodations to freely practice their faith without government interference. A ruling that invalidated the federal law would have placed in question a wide range of religious accommodations and exemptions.At issue before the court was whether special accommodations to facilitate worship by adherents of minority religions in prison violates the First Amendment's Establishment Clause. Critics of the law - which is called the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) - say that granting certain benefits to religious individuals that are not also granted to the nonreligious violates requirements that the government remain strictly neutral in matters of faith.
The court unanimously rejected this view. "Our decisions recognize that there is room for play in the joints between the two religion clauses of the First Amendment, some space for legislative action neither compelled by the Free Exercise Clause nor prohibited by the Establishment Clause," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in announcing the decision. RLUIPA "fits within the corridor between the two clauses."
Tuesday's ruling stems from a series of lawsuits filed by prison inmates in Ohio. The inmates - all adherents of nonmainstream religions such as Satanism and Wicca - complained that prison officials were refusing to permit them access to religious services, literature, and ceremonial items needed to practice their religions.
It's a horrible ruling--just because you claim your beliefs are a religion does not mean they are entitled to First Amendment protection.
F.B.I. SOUTH:
Is outsourcing the answer to states' foster-care woes?: Florida has now contracted all its child-welfare services to the private sector - a closely watched bid to help children. (Jacqui Goddard, 6/01/05, The Christian Science Monitor)
[F]lorida hopes to become a poster child of a different sort: a model for how privatization child-welfare services work better. Although states have increasingly farmed out tasks to private contractors, Florida's effort is controversial because it relates to one of the most sensitive responsibilities of government: when and how to intervene on behalf of children in troubled circumstances. And it will be closely watched, because other states also face pressure to improve such programs.The results so far appear to be mixed, but Gov. Jeb Bush (R) is counting on the effort over time to help turn around services tarnished by scandal.
"This is a model that other states should look at very carefully and begin to test out," says David Fairbanks, deputy director of the program, called Community-Based Care. CBC is a network of localized, nonprofit agencies to which Florida's Department of Children and Families has gradually turned to provide foster-care, adoption, and child protection services.
With that outsourcing now complete, Florida is the first state to have 100 percent of its child-welfare services in private hands. Officials believe that the 48,972 children it serves are now protected by a more responsive, more accountable system and that other states should follow.
"We have worked hard to improve our image, and CBC has been a big part of that, because now it's hometown agencies that are doing this work," Mr. Fairbanks says. "But we are putting a more local face on the job of child protection - and it's working."
More evidence of the continuity Jeb would provide in '08.
VOTING LIKE THEIR DISTRICTS:
'Purple power' pulls new laws through House: Many Democrats from moderate districts vote with the Republicans on House measures. (Gail Russell Chaddock, 6/01/05, The Christian Science Monitor)
Despite the partisan saber- rattling on Capitol Hill, a significant number of votes in the GOP-controlled House are passing with broad Democratic support.It's a trend that surprises analysts who have noticed the numbers, and it hints at a structural advantage for the GOP as it presses its agenda heading into 2006 elections.
Call it purple power. Although Republican control of the House of Representatives is narrow - a margin of just 30 seats out of 435 total - some 20 percent of House Democrats come from districts that President Bush carried in 2004. Only 8 percent of Republicans come from districts carried by Sen. John Kerry in the presidential vote. In a landscape where most districts are clearly red (Republican) or blue (Democrat), these purple areas represent seats that could be vulnerable.
That looming reality, analysts say, is one of the factors that explains why some Democrats have crossed over to vote with the GOP on issues from tax cuts to abortion.
"For all the focus we've put ... on the growing rift in the Republican discipline, we need to also take a look at how tough it is on the Democratic side, especially for incumbents who sit in Republican districts," says Amy Walter, a congressional analyst for the Cook Political Report.
Who are the experts it surprises? It's a predictable feature of a permanent realignment.
THE ODDEST PARTISAN CHARGE OF '04:
DECADES-LONG DECLINE IN NUMBER AND RATE OF U.S. ABORTIONS CONTINUES, NEW ANALYSIS SHOWS (The Alan Guttmacher Institute, 5/19/05)
A new analysis from The Alan Guttmacher Institute shows that U.S. abortion rates continued to decline in 2001 and 2002, although the rate of decline has slowed since the early 1990s. The Institute estimates that 1,303,000 abortions took place in the United States in 2001—0.8% fewer than the 1,313,000 in 2000. In 2002, the number of abortions declined again, to 1,293,000, or another 0.8%. The rate of abortion also declined, from 21.3 procedures per 1,000 women aged 15–44 in 2000 to 21.1 in 2001 and 20.9 in 2002.
The Stassenmatics never did add up.
THEY ARE BRITISH AFTER ALL:
The Heritage Foundation (DANIEL LAZARE, June 13, 2005, The Nation)
James Atlas, the bow-tied editor in charge of HarperCollins's "Eminent Lives" series of short biographies, is not known for his sense of humor, but in publishing Paul Johnson and Christopher Hitchens back to back, he's revealed a mischievous streak that had previously gone unnoticed. Johnson, the New Statesman editor turned right-wing author of such bestsellers as Modern Times (1983), A History of the Jews (1987) and Intellectuals (1988), once denounced Hitchens for launching an attack on Mother Teresa that he termed "loathsome and mendacious." Hitchens, the ex-Trotskyist turned supporter of Bush's invasion of Iraq, has attacked Johnson over the years as not only a drunken, wife-beating, racist snob but a drunken, wife-beating, racist snob who, when not assailing the morals of others, has been known to enjoy a good spanking at the hands of his friendly local dominatrix. In short, not the sort of couple you'd expect to find sharing a candle-lit dinner at some quiet bistro. Yet here they are, together at last, with nearly simultaneous bios of two of America's most sainted founders
What is with the Left's weird fascination with the sex lives of conservatives? Christopher Hitchens no sooner came out as a man of the Right than his friends started accusing him of being at best a repressed homosexual.
ASK MORE, GET MORE:
The Power of the Mustard Seed: Why strict churches are strong. (Judith Shulevitz, May 12, 2005, Slate)
You wouldn't expect an economist to do a better job than the religious at explaining religion. But one has, using the amoral language of rational choice theory, which reduces people to "rational agents" who "maximize utility," that is, act out of self-interest. (Economists assume that people are rational for methodological reasons, not because they believe it.) In his 1994 essay "Why Strict Churches Are Strong," which has become quite influential in the sociology of religion, economist Laurence Iannacone makes the counterintuitive case that people choose to be strictly religious because of the quantifiable benefits their piety affords them, not just in the afterlife but in the here and now.Iannacone starts by asking why people join strict churches, given that doing so exacts such a high price. Eccentric customs invite ridicule and persecution; membership in a marginal church may limit chances for social and economic advancement; rules of observance bar access to apparently innocent pleasures; the entire undertaking squanders time that could have been spent amusing or improving oneself.
According to Iannacone, the devout person pays the high social price because it buys a better religious product. The rules discourage free riders, the people who undermine group efforts by taking more than they give back. The strict church is one in which members with weak commitments have been weeded out. Raising fees for membership doesn't work nearly as well as raising the opportunity cost of joining, because fees drive away the poor, who have the least to lose when they volunteer their time, and who also have the most incentive to pray. Fees also encourage the rich to substitute money for piety.
What does the pious person get in return for all of his or her time and effort? A church full of passionate members; a community of people deeply involved in one another's lives and more willing than most to come to one another's aid; a peer group of knowledgeable souls who speak the same language (or languages), are moved by the same texts, and cherish the same dreams. Religion is a " 'commodity' that people produce collectively," says Iannacone. "My religious satisfaction thus depends both on my 'inputs' and those of others." If a rich and textured spiritual experience is what you seek, then a storefront Holy Roller church or an Orthodox shtiebl is a better fit than a suburban church made up of distracted, ambitious people who can barely manage to find a morning free for Sunday services, let alone several evenings a week for text study and volunteer work.
The new Pope seems to grasp this dynamic.
SHELF LIFE ANYONE?:
Note to You Liberal Weenies -- Yes, the Right Really Can Write (Brian C. Anderson, May 15, 2005, LA Times)
Oh, how we conservatives once envied liberal writers. Just 10 years ago, liberal writers could propose a book on, say, how American capitalism stiffs the workingman or how the bourgeois family spawns injustice. Major publishers would respond by throwing oodles of money their way, or at least consider putting out the book. But pitch a critique of affirmative action or a defense of limited government and, unless your name was Buckley or Will, you'd be lucky to get a personalized rejection letter.There was "a tremendous amount of marketplace and institutional resistance" to publishing conservative books, said Adam Bellow, an editor at Doubleday. The New York publishing world was a liberal preserve.
How things have changed. Over the last 18 months, three superpower publishers have launched conservative imprints: Random House (Crown Forum), Penguin (Sentinel) and, most recently, Simon & Schuster (Threshold, headed by former Bush aide Mary Matalin). Nor is that all. ReganBooks and the Christian publisher Thomas Nelson are putting out mass market right-of-center books, while mid-list conservative titles pour forth from Peter Collier's 5-year-old Encounter Books and several smaller imprints. There's never been a better time to be a conservative author.
What's behind the shift? Crown Forum chief Steve Ross thinks Sept. 11 made the industry less reflexively liberal. There's doubtless some truth to that. But what really turned the big New York publishers was the steady stream of bestsellers that Washington-based Regnery (my publisher) was producing, including Bernard Goldberg's "Bias," which spent seven weeks cresting the New York Times bestseller list. Sentinel's first year produced two New York Times bestsellers and Crown Forum published four, with Ann Coulter's polemic "Treason" reaching more than half a million copies in print.
One would like to think that the shift is at least partly a result of the fact that when you look back at the political writing of the 20th Century, the conservative texts remain quite readable and often pertinent, the liberal ones are uniformly embarrassing
NOT QUITE JUST SO:
Murder Is in Our Blood (David M. Buss, May 20, 2005, LA Times)
On May 11, 2005, a jury convicted Pete Terrazas of murdering his next-door neighbor, Miguel Ruiz. Terrazas had been dating Ruiz's housekeeper, Maria Santillana, whom he deeply loved. When she abruptly broke off the relationship, Terrazas concluded that she had begun an affair with Ruiz. Terrazas loaded his .410-gauge shotgun, went over to his neighbor's driveway, blasted Ruiz in the back and then took deadly aim at the man's chest. Pete Terrazas had never before been violent. Nor had Scott Peterson before he killed his wife, Laci. Nor had Clara Harris before she ran over her adulterous husband with her Mercedes in a hotel parking lot in Houston. [...]Evolutionary theory also explains why men kill so much more than women — 87% of killers worldwide are men. Women are the more valuable reproductive resource because of a fact of human reproductive biology: Women, not men, bear the burdens of the nine-month investment to produce a child. Competition is always fiercest among the sex that invests less. As a result, men battle to avoid mating failure and to "win big" by getting to the top to mate with desirable (and sometimes multiple) women. Mating is inextricably intertwined with murder.
If we all have mental mechanisms designed for murder, why don't more of us kill? For one thing, killing is so costly for victims that natural selection has fashioned finely honed defenses — anti-homicide strategies — designed to damage those who attempt to destroy us. We kill to prevent being killed, so attempting murder is a dangerous strategy indeed. Second, we live in a modern world of laws, judges, juries and jails, which have been extremely effective in raising the cost of killing. Homicide rates among traditional cultures lacking written laws and professional police forces are far higher than those in modern Western cultures. Among the Yanomamo of Venezuela and the Gebusi of Africa, for example, more than 30% of men die by being murdered.
To begin with, it's unjust to include Ms Harris with the others since she was morally justified in her action.
But he goes badly off the rails when he tries drawing Darwinian conclusions. (Is Michael Kinsley running a series of silly editorials on this topic?) For one thing, if evolution is such a powerful factor in murder and protects women for reasons of reproductive advantage it certainly can't be reconcoiled with the mass murder of female babies. However, he has the accidental sense to immediately contradict himself and note that while man in a state of nature is quite murderous our adoption of morality has successfully controlled us. We stopped kiling each other for unnatural reasons, not Darwinian ones.
SETTING OUR OWN HOUSE IN ORDER:
Contending for Marriage (Roberto Rivera y Carlo, May 2005, Boundless)
The late David Orgon Coolidge, who headed the Marriage Law Project at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law, described what he called the “contending models of marriage.” By “model,” Coolidge meant a “claim about what marriage ‘really’ is.” The “traditional model ... views marriage as [an] institution.” While this model understands and honors the role that love and affection -- what Coolidge called the “interpersonal dimension” -- plays in the decision to get married, the “traditional” model nevertheless insists that this love and affection are lived out within an institution whose essence and purpose transcends the desires and intentions of the people getting married.This essence and purpose is rooted in what Coolidge called “sexual complementarity -- the reality that men and women are ‘different from, yet designed for’ one another.” This complementarity is expressed in the procreation and nurture of children but is not exhausted by these “particular functions.” In other words, while having and raising children helps to order and make sense of marriage, there’s more to marriage than the kids. Sexual complementarity results in a bonding between two people wherein “one plus one adds up to more than two.”
The other “contending models” root marriage in something other than sexual complementarity. And unlike the communal dimension inherent in the “Traditional” model,” they see marriage in more private and even individualistic terms. The “Choice” or “Liberal” model defines marriage as “essentially an agreement” between “sovereign selves.” While the agreement between the parties “may take an institutional form,” the marriage itself is a “contractual reality ... defined and created by the individuals who enter into the contract.” And, as with all contracts, the purposes of the marriage grow out of the desires of the contracting parties: in most cases, an increase in their personal happiness.
The third model, the “Postmodern” one, while also rejecting sexual complementarity as the basis for marriage, rejects the off-putting idea of marriage as an agreement for the more palatable one of marriage as a “relationship.” Just as with the “Liberal” model, the relationship “can be institutionalized,” but in this model, what holds a marriage together isn’t a set of a priori beliefs about the nature of marriage; rather, it’s the obligations that grow out of being in a relationship with someone and, as Georgetown Law professor Milton Regan put it, the “web of interdependence” that is created by this interaction with another person.
Apart from some churches, it’s difficult to name a part of Western society where the “Traditional” view of marriage still holds sway. Certainly not in marriage and family law where the “Liberal” model is virtually unchallenged. “No-fault” divorce laws are the near-perfect embodiment of the idea of marriage as an agreement or contract. When one “sovereign self” decides that happiness lies outside the marriage, they are free to leave, subject to a satisfactory division of marital property. The only acknowledgment that someone besides the couple has a stake in what is happening are child-support laws. Even there, it’s not clear who the “someone” is: the child or the taxpayer who might be forced to support the child in the absence of parental support.
The situation outside the courthouse is scarcely better. If you surveyed a representative sample of Americans and other residents of the industrialized world, you would almost certainly find their understanding of marriage is closer to the “Liberal,” and, especially, the “Postmodern” models than to the “Traditional” one. The answer to the question “why do people get married?” would seem so obvious to them -- “because they love each other” -- that they might think it’s a trick question. For most people, marriage is an expression of the shared affection between two people. It is a public celebration of an already-existing relationship between the two.
You see this belief in the increased popularity of writing one’s own vows and in celebrating the wedding in nontraditional places, especially places that figure prominently in what Regan calls the couple’s “shared history.” But even when people get married in a traditional setting, the decision is rooted more in aesthetics than in our beliefs about marriage. White gowns and church weddings are garnish, not the meal. For most people in the West, the public, as distinct from communal, dimension of marriage lies in the financial and legal benefits associated with marriage and the desire for others to celebrate and affirm the relationship.
Which brings us back to Valladolid and Nebraska. If you replace sexual complementarity, procreation and the nurture of children with “mutual obligations” and “interdependence” as the basis for marriage, extending marital rights to same-sex couples isn’t much of a conceptual leap.
Which is why the entire Liberal model needs to be rooted out, starting with divorce.
BE BOLDER (via mc):
New savings program for poor gaining attention: Lawmakers searching for ways to move beyond Social Security (Elana Schor, 5/27/05, Medill News Service)
A new program to promote savings of low-income Americans is attracting increased attention on Capitol Hill as Congress remains deadlocked over adding private investment accounts to Social Security and lawmakers search for other ways to help Americans save for their retirement.The savings tool that some lawmakers are beginning to shift their political capital to is individual development accounts or IDAs, which Congress authorized in 1998 as part of government aid for the needy. Participating financial institutions offer IDAs to low-income individuals and match their contributions to the accounts on either a partial or one-to-one basis, but several proposals attracting attention on Capitol Hill would require the government to contribute to IDAs.
IDA holders receive their free money under one condition: they must undergo financial literacy education that is intended to prepare them for a life of cautious savings and no debt. President Bush has steadily increased the yearly budget for IDAs, but this year Sen. Rick Santorum has been the accounts' most tireless promoter.
IDAs are state-sponsored in Pennsylvania, home of Santorum, the Senate's third-ranking Republican and head of its Social Security subcommittee. He has leveraged his leadership to pitch two IDA proposals, one that would make government-funded IDAs available to anyone who meets income requirements (typically around $38,000 per year for a family of four) and one that would bestow an IDA on every child born in America.
"IDAs are one of the most promising tools that enable low-income and low-wealth Americans to save, build assets and enter the financial mainstream," Santorum told members of his subcommittee at an IDA hearing last month. [...]
Especially worrisome to fiscal conservatives is the easy access to IDAs. Social Security benefits cannot be spent until retirement, but both of Santorum's plans permit IDA accountholders to take money out for any purpose, from education to home purchasing to Christmas presents. [...]
Though IDAs were created to increase savings and assets for poor Americans and not as a part of the Social Security issue, some legislators who have signed onto Santorum's bills refer to universal IDAs as a partial fix for the national asset vacuum that throws Social Security's solvency problems into such sharp relief.
"I think that's part of the risk for the (IDA) field - that we'll be inadvertently linked to the privatization of these accounts that the field as a whole really believes ought to remain risk-free," Mangan said.
Paul O'Neill's approach is better, give them more money up front, but don't let them draw it down.
IF THINGS ARE SO BAD, WHY DO WE ALL FEEL SO GOOD?:
Consumer Confidence Unexpectedly Rebounds (ANNE D'INNOCENZIO, 5/31/05, AP)
Consumer confidence unexpectedly rebounded in May after declining in April, as worries about the economy and jobs eased, a private research group said Tuesday. But another closely watched report that tracks Midwestern manufacturing activity dropped in May, spooking Wall Street.The Conference Board said that its Consumer Confidence Index rose to 102.2 from a revised 97.5 in April. The reading was much better than the 96 that analysts had expected, which would have been a decline from the original April reading of 97.7.
The consumer confidence index is now at the highest level since it reached 103 in March.
Gas prices are falling and the only way you can not have a job is through superhuman effort, yet they're surprised confidence is up? The only real drag on the economy is the picture the press paints.
THE OWEN STANDARD:
Majority vote remains on the table for future use (John Cornyn, 5/31/05, San Antonio Express-News)
It is...important to recognize three important elements of the deal reached by these 14 senators:First, although it doesn't solve the problem today, the deal does keep all options open — including, of course, the Byrd option — for solving the problem in the future.
Second, with Owen's confirmation, it should now be settled that disagreement over judicial philosophy is not an "extraordinary circumstance" — and, thus, no justification for a filibuster. Call it the "Owen standard." Senators should vote their conscience, but debates over judicial philosophy and disagreements about past rulings are no grounds for violating Senate tradition by imposing a supermajority voting requirement for confirming judges.
Third, should the Owen standard be violated and a baseless filibuster against a judicial nomination be launched in the future, that would be a violation of the agreement — and, thus, grounds for the use of the Byrd option to restore Senate tradition.
Indeed, this is the stated intent of at least four of the Republican senators who signed the agreement.
Just appoint Janice Rogers Brown to be Chief and watch them try to explain opposing her.
TAKES ONE...:
German 'chancellor-in-waiting' was award-winning Communist (Tony Paterson, 29/05/2005, Sunday Telegraph)
Angela Merkel, the woman fêted as Germany's chancellor-in-waiting, was an award-winning Communist in her youth whom the Stasi secret police tried to recruit as an agent.Details of her upbringing in East Germany, which emerged last week, explain why Mrs Merkel, 50, is viewed with suspicion by hardline members of her traditionally Catholic party, the Christian Democrats, whose heartlands are in the west.
Tomorrow, however, she is expected to win the party nomination to stand against the chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, in the general election this autumn. While even her supporters concede that she lacks charisma, inspiring respect rather than affection, Mrs Merkel led the Christian Democrats to a stunning victory in recent state polls in North Rhine Westphalia - forcing Mr Schröder to bring the election forward by a year.
Her dour childhood as a reluctant Communist sheds new light on why, unlike Mr Schröder, Mrs Merkel backed the US-led invasion of Iraq. "I know what it is when you don't have freedom," she said recently. "In the West, freedom is taken for granted. Fighting for it is not as necessary as it was for us."
THE ARRIVAL:
Hispanics arriving as a political force (RUBEN NAVARRETTE JR., May 29, 2005, THE UNION-TRIBUNE)
[A] lot of people are saying that Hispanics have finally arrived. They serve in the top tier of the Bush administration – among them, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Surgeon General Richard Carmona, Treasurer Anna Cabral and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez. And the prospect of a Hispanic on the Supreme Court seems closer than ever, especially if President Bush sticks to his promise to put one there before he leaves Washington. [...]Look at what happened in Los Angeles, a city that is now more than 47 percent Hispanic and where Hispanics outnumber every other ethnic group. Antonio Villaraigosa is soon to be sworn in as the first Hispanic mayor of the city in 133 years.
Given that this is the nation's second-largest city we're talking about, that means the 52-year-old former Assembly speaker has just arrived on the A-list of Hispanic political talent.
For Villaraigosa, who defeated incumbent Mayor James K. Hahn, getting there was half the fun. The candidate pulled together an impressive coalition of blacks, Jews, labor and progressive whites. That was an improvement over Villaraigosa's failed bid for the same office four years ago, when a black minister famously joked that African-Americans shouldn't vote for "someone whose name they can't pronounce." This time around, Villaraigosa got half the black vote.
But it was Hispanics who made the difference. The mayor-elect walked off with 84 percent of their vote. That added up in a hurry, given that Hispanics accounted for one in four votes cast.
Note to Democrats: This is the same group of voters that your party complains doesn't turn out often enough.
Democrats miss the point. It's not that Hispanics don't care enough to vote. It is that they don't care to vote for white liberals who take their votes for granted. Democratic Party leaders should look toward Los Angeles and take note. The party of John F. Kennedy had better get used to running more candidates like Villaraigosa – or get used to coming in second.
And blacks to being marginal in both parties.
YEAH, WE'RE SHAKING IN OUR WELLIES:
This Document Should Make America Nervous (Jeanne Rubner, May 29, 2005, LA Times)
The draft constitution that the French will vote on today is the best that could be designed to accommodate the wishes of the EU's 25 members.It is a rational compromise, as much of a historical necessity as the Baltics and Czechoslovakia joining the union was a historical necessity.
Europeans tend to take fewer risks than Americans — which is why they are so apprehensive. But what seems to be a risk now will later turn into a benefit. The coming of the constitution is fortunate because it will strengthen the new union by giving it the tools for better organizing its affairs, speaking with a single voice and formulating common economic and political goals as a transatlantic strategy. It will anchor Europe's future as a network of 25 countries while leaving each country its national freedom.
Do not underestimate the future power of the EU. The new Europe has strong political and cultural traditions. With an expanding market, it will revitalize its economy. And with a constitution, Europe will have, more than ever, the chance of becoming a global player with real political power. Watch out, America, here we come.
Was this supposed to be a joke?
NO SCIENCE INVOLVED:
Creating a Controversy: Today's anti-evolutionists don't want to abolish science -- they just want to render it irrelevant. (Chris Mooney, 05.16.05, American Prospect)
Kansas’s previously proposed science standards had appropriately defined science as "the human activity of seeking natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us." Anti-evolutionists want to change this language to the following: "Science is a systematic method of continuing investigation, that uses observation, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, logical argument and theory building, to lead to more adequate explanations of natural phenomena."This may seem harmless at first glance. But the change carefully removes any reference to science's search for natural explanations in favor of “more adequate” explanations, creating a opening for creationists to insert the supernatural. Such a change reflects the fact that the new generation of anti-evolutionists has launched an attack on modern science itself, claiming that it amounts, essentially, to institutionalized atheism. Science, they say, has a prejudice against supernatural causation (by which they generally mean “the actions of God”). Instead, the new anti-evolutionists claim that if scientists would simply open their minds to the possible action of forces acting beyond the purview of natural laws, they would suddenly perceive the weaknesses of evolutionary theory.
Anti-evolutionists are trying to bring religion back into the picture with this maneuver and to free up science teachers to speak to their classes about matters involving the supernatural. But religion isn't all they may bring back. As far as I can tell, keeping an open mind about supernatural causes would also mean that when you or I investigate claims that a house might be haunted, we should be on the lookout for a ghost. Similarly, it would mean that when we look into reports of a weeping icon, we should get ready to investigate a paranormal event, rather than a mere case of pious fraud. And so on.
In reality, though, while they may leave open the theoretical possibility of a supernatural occurrence, scientists don't operate in this way -- and for good reason. Science seeks to explain natural phenomena in a way that other scientists (including those of varying religious faiths) can understand and independently evaluate. So, for at least two different reasons, scientists would not leap to a supernatural conclusion about a phenomenon like creaky floorboards and suddenly slamming doors in an old house. For one, they can construct a more simple explanation that does not require stretching beyond the reach of science. And for another, invoking supernatural causation (a ghost) ultimately doesn't work. Instead, postulating a supernatural cause effectively ends the inquiry, because we have no way of further investigating such a cause -- save more supernatural speculation. Supernatural "explanations" can't be tested, because scientific testing itself depends upon the constancy of natural laws.
For these reason, scientists since the Enlightenment have seen fit to distinguish between supernatural beliefs based on faith or metaphysics and scientific findings based on observed evidence and inferences about natural causation. Such inquiry is technically termed "methodological naturalism," more commonly known as the "scientific method." It has quite a successful track record over the years, from medicine to nuclear science.
But methodological naturalism deeply offends today's anti-evolutionists. Because the theory of evolution is perceived to have contributed to the undermining of religious belief, the intelligent design movement has taken to arguing that the theory itself betrays a deep philosophical prejudice against God and the supernatural. Hence, they seek to overturn not just evolution but methodological naturalism itself
To the contrary, it is precisely because Darwinism violates the scientific method--invoking just such a supernatural cause, one beyond observance and experimentation and not subject to natural laws--that it is opposed so vigorously. The dispute is not between Reason and Faith but between opposing faiths.
THE LION WILL LAY WITH THE LAMB, AND WE WON'T INVESTIGATE MISSING LAMBS:
Church to let gay clergy 'marry' but they must stay celibate (Times of London, 5/29/2005; via The Anchoress)
Homosexual priests in the Church of England will be allowed to "marry" their boyfriends under a proposal drawn up by senior bishops, led by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury....Under the proposal, a priest intending to register a civil partnership would inform his or her bishop in a face-to-face meeting....
Some bishops, however, are uncomfortable about subjecting their priests to the proposed interviews.
One said this weekend: "We all have clergy in gay partnerships in our dioceses and there is a genuine reluctance on the part of a number of us to make their lives more difficult."
The Church of England seems to be devoted to eliminating all suffering, including the suffering entailed in meeting with a bishop. The reporter neglected to ask the bishops how they reconcile this goal with Jesus's call to "take up your cross and follow Me" (Luke 9:23, Matt 10:38 and 16:24). The orthodox view is that the absence of suffering is a characteristic of the world to come, not this world of sin and sadness; so that the hope of creating heaven on earth is less realistic even than the hope of creating gay "marriage" without sex. Anglican theology appears to be more optimistic.
IT'S FELT:
Ex-FBI official says he's 'Deep Throat'
Magazine quotes him as saying he was 'doing his duty' (MSNBC, May 31, 2005)
W. Mark Felt, who retired from the FBI after rising to its second most senior position, has identified himself as the "Deep Throat" source quoted by The Washington Post to break the Watergate scandal that led to President Nixon's resignation, Vanity Fair magazine said Tuesday."I'm the guy they used to call Deep Throat," he told John D. O'Connor, the author of Vanity Fair's exclusive that appears in its July issue.
Timothy Noah nailed that one.
MORE:
Washington Post Confirms Felt Was 'Deep Throat': Woodward, Bernstein and Bradlee Reveal Former FBI Official as Secret Watergate Source (William Branigin and David Von Drehle, May 31, 2005, Washington Post)
The Washington Post today confirmed that W. Mark Felt, a former number-two official at the FBI, was "Deep Throat," the secretive source who provided information that helped unravel the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s and contributed to the resignation of president Richard M. Nixon.The confirmation came from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the two Washington Post reporters who broke the Watergate story, and their former top editor, Benjamin C. Bradlee. The three spoke after Felt's family and Vanity Fair magazine identified the 91-year-old Felt, now a retiree in California, as the long-anonymous source who provided crucial guidance for some of the newspaper's groundbreaking Watergate stories.
The Vanity Fair story said Felt had admitted his "historic, anonymous role" following years of denial.
In a statement today, Woodward and Bernstein said, "W. Mark Felt was 'Deep Throat' and helped us immeasurably in our Watergate coverage. However, as the record shows, many other sources and officials assisted us and other reporters for the hundreds of stories that were written in The Washington Post about Watergate."
TRY PLAN C:
Turkey, other EU rejects have palatable Plan B (JOHN O'SULLIVAN, 5/31/05, Chicago Sun-Times)
Under this particular Plan B, the United States would rescue Turkey and the EU from their joint crises while also advancing U.S. interests in transatlantic integration.It would work as follows:
First, the EU and the United States (together with its partners in NAFTA) would merge their markets to form TAFTA -- or a transatlantic free trade area.
Second, they would invite all the existing European countries not in the EU, including Turkey, Norway and Switzerland, to join this enlarged TAFTA. (Ukraine, Russia and Latin American countries outside NATFA would be eligible to join once they met criteria similar to those required for EU entry.)
Third, this TAFTA would establish joint procedures for harmonizing existing and new regulations between NAFTA, the EU and non-EU states,.
Fourth, free movement of labor would not be a provision in TAFTA, but there would be preferential immigration rules between members.
Laid out in this way, such a Plan B inevitably sounds utopian. Many of its individual features, however, have been widely discussed for years. Indeed, a full-scale EU-U.S. free trade area almost came about a decade ago.
At the time it was vetoed by the French. But Europeans might now see the value of a program for economic integration that does not involve free immigration -- but that would offer Turkey a solid substitute for EU membership, mollify the Islamic world, and build an long-term economic bridge to Russia, North Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.
And in their currently shaken state, even the French might be prepared to accept American leadership out of the crisis -- so, Condi, act quickly.
Why would we want to include the dying secular nations of Western Europe in the Axis of Good?
THE FAVORITE IF HE RUNS (via Daniel Merriman):
'08: DUELING DYNASTIES? (John Podhoretz, May 31, 2005, NY post)
LET me build the perfect 2008 Republican candidate for you. He would be a governor, because recent history demonstrates the nearly insuperable advantage governors (Carter, Reagan, Clinton and Bush the Younger) have when it comes to running for president.He would be from a populous state, because his success there statewide might win him 10 percent of the electoral-college votes he would need on Election Day.
He would have to be acceptable to social conservatives with resolute stands on social issues like abortion, because the Bush victory in 2004 demonstrated the importance of being able to bring evangelical churchgoers to the polls. But in manner and style he should be easygoing, in order to undercut the ability of Democrats and the mainstream media to paint him as a crazed extremist.
He should have particular appeal to Hispanics, because (again) the Bush 2004 victory was built in part on pulling Hispanic voters away from the Democratic Party. And he should probably have Southern credentials, because the GOP has to be able to rely on the votes of the solid South to prevail in the Electoral College.
Fortunately for the GOP, there is a dream candidate that fits all these categories and more. But remember, nightmares are dreams too. And the candidate described here is, nightmarishly, the brother of the current president and the son of the president two guys back.
Strange that RFK and Teddy were only considered presidential material because they were a president's brothers--but we're supposed to rule out Jeb for the same reason? He has all of W's advantages and then some, with none of his weaknesses.
MONEY WON'T BE A PROBLEM:
Waiting for Harris has GOP antsy: Republicans are hoping that U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris will run against incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson in next year's Senate elections. (LESLEY CLARK, 5/31/05, Miami Herald)
Republicans say U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson will be one of their leading targets for elimination when he's up for reelection next year.Yet, 18 months from the election, not a single Republican has stepped forward to challenge the freshman Democrat. The leading reason? U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris.
The Republican star of the 2000 presidential election recount is looking at taking on Nelson, and her interest has other Republican hopefuls on ice, given the conventional wisdom that Harris would be the runaway primary favorite should she decide to run. [...]
Some Republicans are beginning to become antsy, suggesting that time is getting short for someone to start raising the millions it will require to challenge Nelson -- particularly if Harris decides against running. But as Republicans look around the state, they're at a bit of a loss to see a ready alternative. [...]
Two of the state's most prominent Republicans, Attorney General Charlie Crist and Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher, are running against each other to succeed Gov. Jeb Bush. Some party leaders hope one of them could be convinced to change races, but both have said they're not interested.
Barring a switch, Republicans have even suggested Bush, who can't run for reelection as governor in 2006 because of term limits, and retired Army Gen. Tommy Franks, a part-time Tampa resident. Both have rejected such entreaties.
Then there are Florida House Speaker Allan Bense and U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, neither of whom have run statewide before but could have easy access to campaign cash. A spokesman for Bense didn't rule him out. Foley, who was a leading candidate for an open Senate seat in 2004 before bowing out to tend to an ailing father, suggested he's interested -- if the party wants him.
''I'm not interested yet in jumping into the middle of it, but if someone wants to recruit Mark Foley, I'd be willing to talk,'' said Foley, noting that he still has about $2 million in his campaign account -- just $1 million less than Nelson.
While Ms Harris would be their best candidate--assuming Jeb has his sight set higher--they'll have no trouble raising money for whoever runs. It's pretty much Jeb's first presidential primary to win the seat for the Party.
DARWINISM UNMOORED:
Natural Selection Killed Desdemona: Jealousy, hate, fear -- human biology beats in the heart of good literature. (David P. Barash and Nanelle R. Barash, May 31, 2005, LA Times)
That's how we like our literary figures: real, believable, true to human nature. Like us, they must be gooey, breathing, eating, sleeping, defecating, reproducing, evolving and evolved Homo sapiens, shaped by genetics and evolution, and then twisted and gnarled by life itself.This is what lies behind Beowulf's foolhardy courage, Heathcliff's obsessive passion, Jane Eyre's spunkiness, Huck Finn's mixture of naiveté and wisdom, Augie March's antic yearning for self-realization.
There is something instantly recognizable about such basic, obviously natural traits as Romeo and Juliet's hormonally overheated teenage love, Hamlet's intellectualized indecisiveness, Lady Macbeth's ambition as well as her remorse, Falstaff's drunken cavorting, Viola's resourcefulness, Lear's rage.
Take Othello. Evolutionary scientists know that males are especially vulnerable to sexual jealousy simply because of their biology. Whereas women can rest serene in the confidence that they are genetically related to any offspring that emerges from their bodies, men have to take their mate's word for it. Othello, as a perfectly good male mammal, is therefore susceptible to suspicions of marital infidelity by his wife, Desdemona. Add the fact that sperm-makers are selected (naturally) to compete (often violently) with other sperm-makers for access to egg-makers, and Shakespeare's tragedy makes biological sense.
Think Othello might have known whether the kids were his or not?
CAN I JUST GO PART WAY DOWN THE SLOPE?:
Welcome to the Brave New Jersey (Paul Mulshine, May 26, 2005, Newark Star Ledger)
As a coldhearted, rational type of guy, I can't get too excited about the pro-life objection to embryonic stem cell research. The pro-lifers argue that it's wrong to destroy fertilized human eggs for research purpose. But the eggs in question are going to be destroyed eventually anyway. Why not put them to good use?However, the other day I came upon some aspects of the research that frightened even me. Wesley J. Smith is the author of a book titled "A Consumer's Guide to a Brave New World." He's a lawyer and sometime Ralph Nader collaborator who is skeptical about just where the biotech industry is leading us with its incessant call for infinitely more spending on the research.
It's not leading us to test-tube cures for such diseases as diabetes and Parkinson's, Smith said when I gave him a call at his California home. There is simply no reliable method for turning an embryonic stem cell into the type of cell that can be safely implanted in the body of a disease victim.
"Embryonic stem cells cause tumors in mice," Smith said. "You simply can't control their growth."
The same problems are likely to occur in any attempt to implant embryonic stem cells in humans, he said. But there's a much easier -- and more ominous -- means of employing the technology, he said. The most efficient way of turning embryonic stem cells into the cells needed to treat a certain disease would be to create an embryo that is a clone of the patient. If that embryo could then be implanted into a uterus, the resulting fetus would contain a perfect copy of every cell in the patient's body. The ominous part is that the only way to gain access to those cells would be to abort the fetus. Smith fears that's where we're headed.
"What I think will happen is that when everything that can be obtained from research in a petri dish is obtained, then there will be a move to go from a petri dish to early gestation," Smith told me.
That's a disturbing thought. Even more disturbing is that such a practice would be perfectly legal in at least one state: New Jersey. A bill signed into law last year by Gov. James McGreevey permits exactly that sort of practice, Smith said. The bill's ostensible purpose was to enable stem cell research, but it also contained language regulating the traffic in fetal tissue. And the only way to turn stem cells into fetal tissue is through implantation in the womb, Smith notes.
The bill also purports to ban human cloning, but it defines cloning as "cultivating a cell with genetic material through the egg, embryo, fetal and newborn stages."
That would seem to permit cloning as long as the fetus in question were to be aborted, Smith notes.
Smith's reading of the bill is supported by Princeton University ethicist Robert George, who serves on the president's council on bioethics.
Stinks when reality disturbs reason, huh?
WELL THAT WAS FUN, BUT NOW IT'S BACK TO BUSINESS
De Villepin appointed French PM (BBC, May 31st, 2005)
Dominique de Villepin has been named as France's new prime minister, following the country's rejection of the EU constitution in Sunday's referendum.The former interior minister replaces Jean-Pierre Raffarin, who tendered his resignation following the vote. [...]
Mr de Villepin is best known abroad for expressing France's implacable opposition to the war in Iraq at the United Nations, and is likely to go down well with European allies.
He is also regarded as a consensual politician and is personally loyal to Mr Chirac.
But the BBC's Caroline Wyatt in Paris says that as a career diplomat never elected to public office, he of all candidates most typifies the French elite so roundly rejected by the French people on Sunday.
Isn’t this like trying to placate the mob by appointing Cardinal Richelieu?
WHAT'S GOOD FOR RON IS GOOD FOR ARMSTRONG, NO?:
On Filibuster and Stem Cells, GOP Bears Pain of Compromise (Ronald Brownstein, May 30, 2005, LA Times)
Conservatives are guaranteed the dominant voice in the GOP for the foreseeable future. But after last week, they no longer appear to be the only voice. No wonder so many of them are howling.(Full disclosure: My wife recently took a job as an aide to Sen. John McCain [R-Ariz.], one of the judicial deal's architects. Marriages that span the divide between the media and politics are common in Washington. They require both parties to draw a firm line between their personal attachments and professional responsibilities. I do not intend to treat McCain any differently as a result of my marriage, and my wife does not expect favored treatment for her boss. I certainly don't expect any special treatment from McCain or his aides. Readers, of course, will have to make their own judgments, but I am confident that her new job will not affect my judgments, pro and con, about McCain and his initiatives.)
"AMERICA, WHERE NO 'FOLK' EXISTS":
The Laach Maria monster (Spengler, 6/01/05, Asia Times)
[S]omething of the instinct for self-preservation spurred the French to vote down the European constitution. Europe's conservative parties oppose the putrefaction of the continent into a multi-cultural mush dominated prospectively by a growing Muslim population.Benedict XVI's election as pope should not be underestimated as a catalyst for these tendencies. During the year prior to his election, Benedict inveighed against the admission of Turkey to the European Union and against Europe's abandonment of its cultural heritage.
In the first two installments of this series this month (The pope, the musicians and the Jews, and Why the beautiful is not the good), I considered Benedict's two points of emphasis: the Hebrew Bible and the classical heritage of European culture, above all its music. The trouble, I argued, is that Europe has destroyed both its cultural heritage as well as its Jews, and the tools available for rebuilding are more symbolic than real. To understand how this came to be it is useful to focus on a single place and a single moment in European history, namely a Rhineland monastery in April 1933.
The creature of Loch Ness may be a fable, but a real monster lived beside the crater lake near Trier, where stands the Benedictine Abbey of Maria Laach. It was there that a prominent wing of the institution that once had created European civilization openly embraced the new Nazi barbarism. Maria Laach's Abbot Ildefons Herwegen stated in 1933 after Adolf Hitler took power: "Let us say 'yes' wholeheartedly to the new form of the total [Nazi] state, which is analogous throughout to the incarnation of the Church. The Church stands in the world as Germany stands in politics today."
Herwegen embraced the so-called Reichstheologie, or theology of the German Empire, along with a group of prominent German Catholic theologians who saw in Hitler "a Christian counterrevolution to [the French Revolution of] 1789".
In some respects, the entire career of Joseph Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, has been dedicated to repudiating this ghastly mistake, which Herwegen himself recognized as the Nazi terror unfolded.
Left-wing Catholics have built a small manufacturing industry around the claim that the conservative wing of the Church had ties to Hitler. Years of mudslinging at Pius XII, the hapless wartime pope, failed to prove him guilty of anything worse than timidity in the face of Nazi occupiers. James Carroll's 2001 bestseller, The Sword of Constantine, makes its villain the miserable Herwegen, but Carroll discovers to his confusion that he has more in common with the pro-Hitler Benedictines of 1933 than with the present leadership of the Church. As Carroll reports, the "liturgical movement" of the 1920s introduced congregational participation in the Mass, that is, making the "people of God" (whoever might have wandered in) into the actor. Carroll approves, explaining, "No longer do we attend Mass as a collection of isolatos, each on his or her knees, face buried in hands from which dangle rosary beads. We do not approach God alone but as members of a praying community, members of a folk." Benedict XVI rejects the "folk" Mass on the simple grounds that God, rather than the "folk", is the actor in the Mass.
In America, where no "folk" exists, Carroll's notion merely seems banal. In Europe, where the heathen folk has persisted in uneasy coexistence with Christianity, the people's liturgy became a Volkisch, that is, national-racist expression. The Catholic Church created Europe by converting waves of barbarian invaders over the span of a thousand years; as I have emphasized elsewhere, its genius lay in the syncretic adoption of pagan saints and customs as a catalyst for Christianization. At best, that left the Church the uneasy overlord of restive pagan remnants, kept at bay by the dual reign of Church and empire. At its worst, as at Maria Laach, the Church "went native" and surrendered to the pagan impulses of its congregation. [...]
Only because a pope now reigns who spent his career attempting to set matters right do I venture to report this today. The "theology of aesthetics", as I described it in the last installment of this series, "Why the beautiful is not the good", attempts to win back the true high culture of the West for Christianity. Benedict honors, as a matter of course, the Church musical tradition of Palestrina-style polyphony and Gregorian chant, but he looks to the music of Mozart and Bach as a demonstration of faith. As I wrote, Western classical music creates a goal in time, that is, teleology, making sensuous the Christian promise of life beyond the grave. There is nothing particularly Christian, by contrast, in so-called Gregorian chant, except to the extent that people used to associate it with Catholic service, like incense. New-age types who dabble in Eastern religions comprise the largest audience for recordings of chant, for its timelessness and lack of directionality conform to their state of mind.
Benedict is right to draw on the musicians - by which I mean the high classic art of Mozart - as well as the Jews, that is to say, the Hebrew Bible. The musicians are dead and the Jews are departed, but the pope must play the hand that history has dealt him. He works under the sign of the mustard seed - the infinitesimal quantity of faith that moves mountains. The inspirational character of scripture and of classical music are the weapons he has at hand, rusty though they might be. Something is stirring in the ashes of the West, and Benedict XVI yet might bring forth a flame.
Perhaps we could bring some much-needed clarity to our prior dispute over nationalism by noting, as Spengler does, that America lacks a vital element of European nationalism in the absence of a folk and folkism.
HONORARY FRENCH:
Paris Hilton Said Engaged to Shipping Heir (AP, 5/30/2005)
Hotel heiress and "The Simple Life" reality TV star Paris Hilton is reportedly engaged to Greek shipping heir Paris Latsis.
How could Paris love anyone so well as Paris?
A 1.4% CRISIS?:
States say $5.15 an hour too little: Minimum wages top federal rate (Dennis Cauchon, 5/31/05, USA TODAY)
More states are raising their minimum wages, pushing hourly rates above $7 in some and shrinking the role of the federal minimum wage, which hasn't gone up in eight years.Eleven states have raised their rates since January 2004, and Wisconsin will become the 12th on Wednesday. Employers there must pay at least $5.70 an hour through June 2006, when the minimum wage rises again to $6.50 an hour.
In all, 17 states and the District of Columbia — covering 45% of the U.S. population — have set minimums above the federal rate of $5.15. That has helped cut the number of workers earning the minimum or less (for those earning tips) from 4.8 million in 1997 to 2 million last year, or 2.7% of hourly earners, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says.
About half of minimum-wage earners work at restaurants. Millions more have wages that are influenced by the minimum. Its buying power is at its lowest point since 1949.
So almost no one is actually paid the minimum wage and those that are get tips as well?
TREATING A SYMPTOM, NOT THE DISEASE:
Woman to Lead Conservatives in German Election (Christian Retzlaff, May 31, 2005, LA Times)
Germany's conservative opposition parties announced Monday that Angela Merkel, chairwoman of the Christian Democratic Union, would be their candidate for chancellor in early national elections expected to be held this autumn.Merkel, who was raised in the former communist East Germany, had been widely expected to seek the chancellorship and would become the nation's first female leader if she prevailed against current Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
At a news conference Monday, Merkel promised to present an electoral platform by mid-July that would emphasize the "courage to be honest."
"Finding ways to create jobs for the people in Germany will be at the center of my work," she said
Except the problem is they aren't creating Germans.
WE CAN AT LEAST STOP IT HERE:
Does Science Trump All? (HENRY FOUNTAIN, 5/29/05, NY Times)
In the case of stem cells, some concerns are overshadowed by the tantalizing promise of the research: rejection-free organ transplants, regenerated spinal cords, perfectly matched blood transfusions, cures for diabetes and Alzheimer's.But those promises run headlong into questions raised by a dark history of research. Take eugenics. According to Christine Rosen, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington and the author of "Preaching Eugenics," scientists who supported eugenics claimed that it could cure disease and end poverty - involuntary sterilizations were one result.
But the scientific underpinnings cited by early eugenics researchers were often wrong, Ms. Rosen said. "The heritability of certain diseases and eye colors were right, but broader claims they made as a result were incorrect," she said.
Many religious groups tried to stop eugenics, Ms. Rosen said, but they were called obstructionists.
"The only thing that stopped this," Ms. Rosen said, "was war and the lessons of Nazi Germany and improvements in science."
The controversy over eugenics is particularly relevant to the current debate, argues Wesley J. Smith, an opponent of therapeutic cloning at the Discovery Institute, a conservative research group in Seattle.
When eugenics was popular, he said, "people at the top levels of society were accepting of the idea that you could improve the human race by improving the gene pool." Even the United States Supreme Court, he said, supported involuntary sterilization, in the 1927 case Buck v. Bell.
To Mr. Smith and others, the march of science toward therapeutic cloning can be stopped. Indeed, cloning may be halted by its own deficiencies, Mr. Smith said. Cloned animals have developed health problems, and there is a potential for tumors in cloned tissue. And research using non-cloned, adult stem cells, which are drawn from bone marrow and blood, "will not have the moral baggage of cloning," he said.
But Dr. Lee M. Silver, a geneticist who is a professor of molecular biology at Princeton, said that therapeutic cloning could not be stopped because the world has changed.
"The difference today is that we're a global village," he said. "Thirty or 40 years ago, Asia had no scientific prominence whatsoever. Now Asia is a real player in the world."
It was a global village then too--after all, the Germans just adopted eugenics, euthanasia and the like from us. And, just as they went ahead with the experiment after the religious stopped it here, so too may Asia follow a mostrous path that we've wisely stepped off of.
From a certain point of view Christian history is all about the intermittent reiteration of standards of observance. -Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion
...AND LOWER...:
Daily Forex Commentary (Jack Crooks, 5/31/05, Asia Times)
The euro continues to be hammered lower. Oversold it is, but now we could be seeing what we thought we might be seeing - longer-term players capitulating to the dollar trend higher. The catalyst of course for this move was the French vote on the proposed European constitution and now the likely prospect that the Dutch will follow suit with a "no" vote.Something about "the best laid plans of mice and men" might be appropriate here.
The next question: how low can it go? Short answer: a lot lower than most people would have believed last Friday. Euro 1.20 is in sight on the weekly chart below:
Can't go lower than we expect it to: we predict they'll be using it to stoke the ovens sooner or later.
IS THAT YOUR BEST DEFENSE?:
FDR at Yalta (Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., 25 May 2005, Times Literary Supplement)
A great foreign-policy fear that haunted Roosevelt’s generation was the fear of resurgent American isolationism. We sometimes forget how brief an interval separated the two World Wars. FDR was thirty-eight years old when the Senate rejected the League of Nations; he was only fifty-seven when war broke out again in Europe in 1939 – the war predicted by Woodrow Wilson “with absolute certainty”, in September 1919, if America did not join the League. During the inter-war years the struggle against isolationism consumed much of FDR’s time and energy. As foreign-policy spokesman for the Democratic Party, he declared in a Foreign Affairs article in 1928 that only by actions of international collaboration could the United States “regain the world’s trust and friendship”.The experience of an internationalist moment followed by a profound and impassioned isolationist revival had engraved itself indelibly on the consciousness of the old Wilsonians. In the 1942 mid-term Congressional election, internationalists launched a major campaign for a “win-the-war” Congress, targeting isolationist legislators on a hit list. The leading isolationists in Congress survived the primaries. In FDR’s own Congressional district, internationalist Republicans like Wendell Wilkie and Thomas E. Dewey opposed the renomination of the bitter isolationist, Hamilton Fish, but Fish won the primary two to one. In the General Election, only five of 115 Congressmen with isolationist records were beaten. The Republicans gained forty-four seats in the House and nine in the Senate – their best performance in years.
After the Election, Secretary of State Cordell Hull told Vice President Henry Wallace that “the country was going to keep the sequence of events from following the 1918–1921 pattern because he felt if we went into isolationism this time, the world was lost forever”.
For Roosevelt the critical task in 1943–5 was to commit the United States to a post-war structure of peace. FDR regarded a permanent international organization, in Bohlen’s words, as “the only device that could keep the United States from slipping back to isolationism”. The memory, still vivid, of the repudiation of the League two decades before suggested that the task would not be easy. Unilateralism had been the American norm for a century and a half. Internationalism had been a two-year Wilson-ian aberration. No one could assume that isolationism would simply wither away. It had to be brought to a definitive end by American commitments to international order, and, as the
master politician knew, Congress and the people were more likely to make such commitments while the war was still on. FDR said privately, “Anybody who thinks that isolationism is dead in this country is crazy. As soon as this War is over, it may well be stronger than ever”.He proceeded to lay the groundwork in 1943–5 with the same skill and circumspection with which he had steered the nation away from isolationism in 1937–41. The challenge of contriving a smooth transition from unilateralism to internationalism shaped Roosevelt’s diplomatic strategy. He moved quietly to prepare the American people for a larger international role. By the end of 1944, a series of international conferences, held mostly at American initiative and generally with bipartisan American representation, had created a post-war agenda – international organization (Dumbarton Oaks), finance, trade and development (Bretton Woods), food and agriculture (Hot Springs), civil aviation (Chicago), relief and reconstruction (UNRRA). These conferences established a framework for the world after the war – an impressive achievement for a President whom historians used to charge with subordinating political to military goals.
Against this background we can consider Roosevelt’s objectives in this last meeting with Stalin. In order of priority, they were, I surmise: first, to get the United Nations under way before the end of the war on terms that would assure American and Soviet participation – a result Roosevelt deemed imperative both to provide the means of correcting any mistake that harassed leaders framing the peace might make and also to save his own country from a relapse into isolationism. The second priority was to get the Soviet forces to join the war against Japan by a date certain (the atomic bomb was five months in the future) on terms that would strengthen Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist regime in China. A third priority was to work out some compromise on Eastern Europe as a test of Soviet intentions; and a fourth, to get a few modest preliminary agreements for the occupation of Germany. “I dislike making detailed plans”, Roosevelt explained to Hull in October 1944, “for a country which we do not yet occupy.”
Roosevelt achieved his objectives. [...]
[A]fter Yalta, the Russians indeed went their own way. The Second World War left the international order in acute derangement. With the Axis states vanquished, the European Allies exhausted, the colonial empires in tumult and dissolution, great gaping holes appeared in the structure of world power. The war left only two states – the USA and the USSR – with the political dynamism to flow into these vacuums. The two states were constructed on opposite and antagonistic principles, marvellously incarnated in Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. No one should be surprised by what ensued. The real surprise would have been if there had been no Cold War.
You'll not find many Eastern Europeans who think it was worth their freedom just so FDR could create conditions that would keep America involved in Europe. Far better for all concerned to have gotten rid of Stalin and reverted to a healthy non-interventionism.
SUDDENLY?:
Suddenly, euro isn't looking so good (Mark Landler, 5/31/05, The New York Times)
The euro wobbled in trading on Monday, hitting a seven-month low of $1.246 to the dollar, before closing at $1.247. It has fallen steadily against the dollar in recent weeks, as traders expected a negative vote in France, and steeled themselves for another rejection in the Netherlands on Wednesday.
Few experts are predicting a full-blown crisis for the euro, which is safeguarded by the politically independent European Central Bank. France's refusal to ratify the constitution will have little impact on the day-to-day running of the monetary union, or on the maze of regulations that govern the world's largest trading bloc.
Still, as Paul De Grauwe, a Belgian expert on the currency, put it: "Something psychological has changed."
Like many economists, he believes that the long-term viability of the euro hinges on the gradual political integration of the countries that use it - a prospect that, for now at least, is dashed. "Can the euro survive without a political union?" De Grauwe said. "I have my doubts."
Which begs the question: how would the Union help it survive?
S.O.P.:
House members in both parties scramble to disclose free travel (Larry Margasak, 5/31/05, Associated Press
Scrutiny of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's travel has led to the belated disclosure of at least 198 previously unreported special interest trips by members of Congress and their aides, including eight years of travel by the second- ranking Democrat, an Associated Press review has found.At least 43 House members and dozens of aides had failed to meet the one-month deadline in ethics rules for disclosing trips financed by organizations outside the U.S. government.
The AP review of thousands of pages of records covered pre- 2005 travel that was disclosed since early March. That's when news stories began scrutinizing DeLay's travel, prompting lawmakers to comb through their files to make sure they had disclosed their travel.
While most of the previously undisclosed trips occurred in 2004, some date back to the late 1990s. House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer recently disclosed 12 trips, the oldest dating back to 1997.
Stacey Bernards, a spokeswoman for the Maryland Democrat, said the office searched the files after the travel issue was raised initially by "Republicans doing opposition research to deflect from their own ethical issues."
Hoyer's undisclosed trips were nearly doubled by Rep. Ellen Tauscher, a California Democrat, with 21. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, an Illinois Democrat, reported 20 past trips and Rep. Elijah Cummings, a Maryland Democrat, reported 13.
Republican and Democratic House members were nearly equal rules violators in failing to disclose their personal trips within 30 days after the trip's completion.
No fair, this was supposed to be about Tom DeLay...
BLOWBACK:
Purgatory without end: Why is America still so prone to wars of religion? (Lexington, 5/26/05, The Economist)
Why are Americans so keen on arguing about religion? The answer is that America is simultaneously a highly religious culture and a highly secular one. The public square is all but naked when it comes to religion. Public schools cannot hold school prayers. Americans have taken to wishing each other the ghastly “Happy Holidays” rather than “Happy Christmas”. Step over the line dividing church from state and there are plenty of aggressive secular interest groups that will push you right back again.But at the same time religion—and particularly de Crèvecoeur's “strict” religion—is thriving. In the 2004 presidential exit polls, most Americans described themselves as regular churchgoers. Only 10% admitted to having no religion. A higher proportion of Americans say they would be willing to vote for an openly gay presidential candidate (59%) than an openly atheist one (49%). Evangelical or “born-again” Christians make up a quarter of the population; and they are on the march.
In the wake of the creationist “Scopes monkey trial” in 1925, the evangelicals (though technically victorious) realised they had lost the PR battle, and retreated from American public life. Now they are popping up all over the place, from the bestseller lists to pop music. In the wake of Scopes, the Bible Belt (H. L. Mencken's tag) was seen as a home of hicks. Now evangelism is the religion of the upwardly mobile, of McMansions and office parks, with evangelicals almost drawing level with (traditionally upper-crust) Episcopalians in terms of wealth and education.
Over the past 25 years, these more confident evangelicals have become the most powerful voting block in the Republican Party. Now they want to redefine the boundaries of church and state to make more room for public displays of religiosity and for faith-based social policy, and to put the “culture of life” back at the heart of the American experiment.
For evangelicals all these positions are as mainstream as it comes. They point out that the banishment of religion from the public square is a recent development. You only have to go back to 1960 to find children praying in schools and Hollywood sentimentalising Christmas. They point out that Roe v Wade (1973), which protects abortion, was a wonky decision, based on a post-modern reading of the constitution; and that the revolution that removed religion from public life has led to social breakdown.
Yet for a growing number of secularists these positions are the very definition of extremism.
Of course it's extremist, in precise measure to the extremism of the damage the secularists did over the last four decades. The Counter-Revolution has to undo the Revolution.
The fact that God could create free beings vis-à -vis of Himself is the cross which philosophy could not carry, but remained hanging therefrom. -Soren Kierkegaard
May 30, 2005
AFRICA TOO:
Democracy gains in Ethiopia, a key US ally in terror war: Initial results Monday show opposition parties have won at least 174 seats, up from 12. (Abraham McLaughlin, 5/31/05, The Christian Science Monitor)
In a sign of strengthening democracy in one of Africa's historically repressive countries - and a US ally in the war on terror - opposition parties in Ethiopia have increased their power in parliament to at least 174 seats, from just 12.The nation's first relatively free and fair election was held May 15, with 90 percent of the country's 26 million registered voters casting ballots. Preliminary results, released Monday, gave the ruling party a majority of at least 274 seats in the 547-seat parliament. Final results could be announced June 8.
The campaign included surprising signs of openness: massive opposition rallies being allowed in the capital; coverage of the opposition in government-controlled media; and, for the first time ever, more than 300 international observers being invited in to watch the vote. [...]
The ruling party - the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, which is led by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi - has won all three elections since overthrowing a brutal Marxist dictator, Mengistu Haile Mariam, in 1991.
Having a stronger opposition in parliament could further increase pressure on the government to deliver basic goods and services, like food and housing, to the country's 73 million people.
Remember when being our ally against an ism meant you didn't have to liberalize yourself?
WHIP HAND:
Battle for the heart of Europe (Anthony Browne and Rosemary Bennett, 5/31/05, Times of London)
TONY BLAIR is preparing to battle with President Chirac of France over Europe’s political direction for the coming decades.The chaos in Brussels caused by France’s unexpectedly emphatic rejection of the European constitution has put Mr Blair, who takes up the EU presidency in July, in a powerful position to impose his vision of the future shape of the Union. [...]
Victory on settling the future direction of the EU would give Mr Blair the European legacy that he has long hoped for.
The day after the unexpectedly large “non” vote, it became clear in Brussels that several fronts have been opened by the demise of the constitution.
These include future Euro-pean social and economic policy, the British rebate, the size of the European budget, and enlargement, including Turkey’s application for membership, which Mr Blair championed.
Marco Incerti, of the Centre for European Policy Studies, which is funded by the Euro-pean Commission, said: “There will be a fight for the heart of Europe.”
President Chirac is expected to push hard to reassert his political authority. Sources close to the French President have given warning that he will be “more difficult, less co-operative and less European-minded than before”. One said: “The French Government will interpret ‘no’ as against being European-minded and reasonable on things like the budget.”
Charles Grant, the director of the Centre for European Reform, which is close to Mr Blair, said: “The British presidency will be a very difficult act to pull off well. France’s ability to be bloody-minded is great.”
Put them in their place, for once.
SON TO THE FATHER, FATHER TO THE SON (via Daniel Merriman):
Fathers, Sons and the Lessons of War (Frank Schaeffer, May 30, 2005, LA Times)
I never served in the military. Before my son unexpectedly volunteered for the Marines, I was busy writing my novels and raising my family, and giving little thought to the men and women who guard us. My attitude has changed. I did not choose to change. I was forced to.When my son was at war in Iraq I felt anger toward my circle of oldest friends — mostly well-off, well-educated people. I didn't know one other parent with a son or daughter in harm's way or even in the military. And no leaders were asking Americans outside the military to make any sacrifices. Were we all in this together or not?
My son, Marine Sgt. John Schaeffer, recently came home alive from two back-to-back combat tours in the Middle East. [...]
There are Americans on their knees next to fresh graves from Arlington to Bozeman, from Tampa to Fargo. There are young men and women learning to walk again and receiving skin grafts for horrible burns.
Before my son went to war I never would have shed tears for them. My son humbled me. My son connected me to my country. He taught me that our men and women in uniform are not the "other."
They are our sons, daughters, brothers and sisters. Sometimes shedding tears for strangers is a sacred duty. Sometimes it's all we can do.
YOUR LIFE AIN'T WORTH MINE:
Cancer-Stricken US Senator Urges Expanded Stem Cell Research (Michael Bowman, 29 May 2005, VOA News)
A U.S. Senator and cancer sufferer says countless lives could be saved if the United States expanded medical research involving embryonic stem cells. President Bush has threatened to veto a bill that would broaden federal support for the controversial area of study.Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter is a Republican ally of President Bush on Capitol Hill, but a political moderate and notoriously independent-thinker.
Said the senator: "I'd eat babies if it'd make me better."
CLEAR CONSTRUCTION:
Filibuster Deal Evaded Key Question on High Court Nominees (Dan Balz, May 30, 2005, Washington Post)
DeWine and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) have disputed the assertion by Reid and other Democrats that the nuclear option is off the table. DeWine said he explicitly raised the issue just before the group announced the deal on Monday night. "I said at the end, 'Make sure I understand this now, that . . . if any member of this group thinks the judge is filibustered under circumstances that are not extraordinary, that member has the right to vote at any time for the constitutional option.' Everyone in the room understood that."Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), another member of the group, concurred, saying that while he hopes the nuclear option is gone for the duration of the 109th Congress, circumstances could bring it back. "I really think Senator DeWine and Senator Graham have it right," he said.
It's the only common sense reading of the text.
BASQUE ETA? ASAP:
Spain is split over talks with Basque rebels (Renwick McLean, 5/30/05, International Herald Tribune )
The Basque militant group ETA may be weakening, but any discussion over its possible demise is dividing Spain to a degree that its attacks rarely have. Two weeks ago, Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero won parliamentary backing for a proposal to negotiate with the group if it would renounce violence.
The government said the future of ETA was bleak enough that it might be persuaded to disband if offered a chance to negotiate small concessions from Madrid, like the return of imprisoned ETA members to Basque jails.
But the proposal has drawn sharp criticism from the families of victims of ETA bombings, as well as from scholars and editorial writers, and has driven a wedge between the major parties on an issue once considered exempt from partisan politics: the fight against ETA.
Members of the main opposition group in Parliament, the Popular Party, have attacked Zapatero's proposal as tantamount to appeasing terrorists.
The only way to defeat ETA, the opposition party says, is to crush it using all the powers available to Spain's law enforcement agencies.
They've already won, just give them their state.
IT'S UNANIMOUS (via Robert Schwartz):
Europe unites in hatred of French (Henry Samuel, 17/05/2005, Daily Telegraph)
Language, history, cooking and support for rival football teams still divide Europe. But when everything else fails, one glue binds the continent together: hatred of the French.Typically, the French refuse to accept what arrogant, overbearing monsters they are.
But now after the publication of a survey of their neighbours' opinions of them at least they no longer have any excuse for not knowing how unpopular they are.
Why the French are the worst company on the planet, a wry take on France by two of its citizens, dredges up all the usual evidence against them. They are crazy drivers, strangers to customer service, obsessed by sex and food and devoid of a sense of humour.
But it doesn't stop there, boasting a breakdown, nation by nation, of what in the French irritates them.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Britons described them as "chauvinists, stubborn, nannied and humourless". However, the French may be more shocked by the views of other nations.
For the Germans, the French are "pretentious, offhand and frivolous". The Dutch describe them as "agitated, talkative and shallow." The Spanish see them as "cold, distant, vain and impolite" and the Portuguese as "preaching". In Italy they comes across as "snobs, arrogant, flesh-loving, righteous and self-obsessed" and the Greeks find them "not very with it, egocentric bons vivants".
Interestingly, the Swedes consider them "disobedient, immoral, disorganised, neo-colonialist and dirty".
But the knockout punch to French pride came in the way the poll was conducted. People were not asked what they hated in the French, just what they thought of them.
"Interviewees were simply asked an open question - what five adjectives sum up the French," said Olivier Clodong, one of the study's two authors and a professor of social and political communication at the Ecole Superieur de Commerce, in Paris. "The answers were overwhelmingly negative."
What gets them crazy is that Americans describe them as "smelly."
STRIKER TO THE LINE:
Runs, Hits and an Era: Hurlers and batsmen in a Bay Area 'base ball' league play according to 1880s rules and customs. Its vintage feel is a far cry from today's game. (James Ricci, May 30, 2005, LA Times)
Players in the South County Jasper dugout tried to conjure an era-appropriate term as they exhorted batsman Mike "Professor" Ballen to drive home his teammates at first and third base."All right, Professor, two horses in the barn!" yelled Jasper captain Gary "Pops" Cooper. "Two roosters in the henhouse!" offered another teammate. "Two fleas on the dog!" cried a third.
The expression "two ducks on the pond," sometimes used by present-day broadcasters, clearly wouldn't do — not for this group of "ballists" intent on re-creating not only the look and play but even the argot of "base ball" as practiced during the presidency of Grover Cleveland.
"Striker to the line," called umpire Jim Saeger, black top hat bobbing and gold pocket-watch chain glinting in the sunlight of a recent Sunday morning. Ballen, with his blousy lace-up shirt, long stockings and trousers that tie below the knee, stepped up to home base, hefting his thick-handled replica bat.
"How would you like your pitches?" the umpire, as required by the old rules, asked.
"Low," Ballen replied.
"Low strikes," the ump informed Steve "Cappy" Gazay, hurler for the San Jose Dukes.
Gazay delivered as instructed, a pitch between the belt and knees. With an "oomph," Ballen lofted a high single to left field, allowing both runners to leg it home for a 12-5 Jasper lead.
When the game was over and the clubs had cheered "huzzah!" for each other, the unbeaten Jaspers had a 13-10 victory, stretching their winning streak to five games.
Which meant the Duke losing streak was now at five.
The two clubs are the only members of Bay Area Vintage Base Ball, which began its inaugural season last month. The organization is the only one in California devoted to playing the game according to the rules and customs of the 19th century.
Its players welcome the old game as an alternative to frequently quarrelsome adult baseball and softball leagues. It also represents a kind of purity that is lost in the din of the modern professional game, with its high-tech equipment, tantrum-prone millionaire players and rock-concert sound systems.
The vintage game, said author and former New York Yankee pitcher Jim Bouton, "is the wave of the future. It has all the things that people love most about baseball, and none of the things they hate."
Vintage baseball — "base ball," as it was called 125 years ago — has been a fixture in the East and upper Midwest for as long as two decades. Members of nearly 200 amateur clubs can be found on weekends running sand-filled bases in knickers and pillbox hats and trying to field hardballs with gloves no thicker than a gardener's — or with no gloves at all.
Some clubs are affiliated with local historical museums. Others were started by Civil War reenactment groups, which emulate Union and Confederate soldiers' recreational activities.
But there is a crucial difference between ballists and soldier-reenactors: On the base ball diamond, the competition isn't scripted, and it's often intense. The equivalent would be Civil War reenactors firing live musket balls at one another's potbellies, with the victory awarded to those left standing.
EVERY TIME A BOMB GOES OFF WE WIN:
Son of Slain Former Leader Triumphs in Beirut Vote (Megan K. Stack, May 30, 2005, LA Times)
Saad Hariri, the son of assassinated former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, swept parliamentary elections in Lebanon's capital Sunday, inheriting the public mantle left by his father and shoring up his chances of becoming prime minister.A soft-spoken, billionaire businessman who insists that he wasn't groomed for politics, the 35-year-old Hariri headed a bloc of candidates that won all 19 of the city's seats in the first election since Syrian troops ended their 29-year domination of Lebanon.
Hariri, who presides over his father's business empire, is poised to take over the public role left vacant by the assassination three months ago. Voter turnout was light Sunday, but the win was hailed as a triumph of public confidence for the Hariri family. Hariri's campaign rhetoric was heavy with invocations of "the martyr," and pictures of the slain patriarch were plastered on shop windows, cars and even bottles of water.
"Today national unity was won in the face of the old regime. Lebanon is united in you," a beaming Hariri told hundreds of raucous well-wishers who thronged the streets outside the family's mansion, beating drums, tossing fistfuls of petals and screaming his name. "This is a win for Rafik Hariri."
And a loss for Baby Assad.
APRES VOUS, ALPHONSE
EU reacts swiftly to France's "non" (Deutsche Welle, May 30th, 2005)
EU leaders were also quick to react to France's no vote in Sunday's referendum. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told reporters that the result would require a period of reflection on the future of the EU. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said that France's rejection of the EU constitution was regrettable and presented Europe with "great challenges". The President of the EU Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, described the no vote as a problem which had to be solved. German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder said the French rejection was a setback but did not spell the end of the road for the treaty.
In these difficult and uncertain times, it is reassuring to know Europe is led by courageous men of vision and conviction.
SEND BOMBERS INSTEAD:
Pressure on North Korea: U.S. Stealth Jets Sent to South (JOEL BRINKLEY, 5/30/05, NY Times)
The deployment last week of 15 stealth fighters to South Korea, along with the severing of the American military's only official interaction with North Korea, appears to be part of a new push by the Bush administration to further isolate North Korea despite China's hesitation to join the effort.The deployment, confirmed by the Pentagon on Friday after several news reports, came just after the Defense Department said Wednesday that it was suspending the search for soldiers missing in action since the Korean War.
The search was the Pentagon's only mission inside North Korea and its only formal contact with the country's military. The Pentagon said it acted to ensure American troops' safety in the "uncertain environment created by North Korea's unwillingness to participate in the six-party talks," as a spokesman put it, referring to the lack of negotiations on the North's nuclear arms program over 11 months.
Although senior Pentagon officials say the F-117 stealth fighters are part of preparation for a long-planned training exercise, the show of force comes at a delicate moment both militarily and politically. China, South Korea and some experts in the United States have urged the administration to make a more specific offer to North Korea, laying out what it would get in return for giving up its nuclear arms program.
Force should be the specific offer.
HAVING WON:
Abbas insists era of suicide bombers is over (Daily Star, May 30, 2005)
In an interview broadcast on ABC-TV in the U.S. last night, Abbas renewed calls for Hamas to renounce violence and enter into dialogue with Fatah."The climate right now is ready for political negotiations," said Abbas.
"Hamas should reach that conclusion that now the way is the political way and not any other way," he said.
Abbas said violent attacks in the Gaza Strip area had been reduced by 90 percent since his government took office four months ago.
Asked whether the era of suicide bombing was over, Abbas said: "I believe it is over. We have started to deal with the culture of violence, we stopped the culture of violence and the Palestinian people have started looking at it as something that should be condemned and it should stop."
Remarkable what imposing the state they wanted has done.
CONSOLIDATION, THEN GROWTH:
Pope's vision of a smaller church (Ian Fisher, 5/30/05, The New York Times)
Joseph Ratzinger, as a theologian and cardinal, returned to the question often over the years. And now that he is Pope Benedict XVI, his paper trail on the issue provokes skepticism about him among more liberal Roman Catholics. The question, in his own words: "Is the church really going to get smaller?"
At another point, in an interview published in 1997 in "Salt of the Earth," he explained it this way: "Maybe we are facing a new and different kind of epoch in the church's history, where Christianity will again be character