TUT-TUT, YOU ALREADY CRIED "WOLF!" ONCE...:

The right (wing) man for the World Bank job (Emad Mekay, 6/01/07, Asia Times)

"Replacing one Bush appointee with another will not resolve the fundamental governance problems of the World Bank," said Peter Bosshard, policy director of the International Rivers Network, a watchdog group that monitors bank projects and policies from San Francisco.

"Member governments should reject a back-door deal that leaves the bank's governance structure intact, and should press for an open, merit-based selection process," he said.

Zoellick's name also raised eyebrows among development groups for his close ties to the US establishment and corporate interests.

Until last July, Zoellick, now 53, was the US deputy secretary of state. He is best known, however, for his role as a former US Trade Representative (USTR), a job in which he campaigned, with mixed results, to force developing countries to open their markets to US businesses and goods.

He is credited with helping bring mainland China and Taiwan into the World Trade Organization, which, like the World Bank and the IMF, often promotes neo-liberal policies criticized as harmful to developing countries. Zoellick also launched the unpopular multilateral Doha Round of trade talks at the WTO, aimed at creating a laissez-faire trade environment, and increased the number of US free trade agreements.

THEIR INTERNAL DISAGREEMENTS ARE THE REAL STORY:

After the talks, Iran starts talking (Kaveh L Afrasiabi, 6/01/07, Asia Times)

[I]ranian liberals and reformists have uniformly reacted positively to the Baghdad meeting. For example, Ahmad Shirzad, a leading member of the Islamic Participation Front, said the dialogue is like passing a difficult and tall obstacle. "If the level of talks increases beyond the ambassadorial level, then we can be hopeful that both sides can reach common points and arrive at agreements on them."

"Changing monologue to dialogue", reads the headline of a reformist paper, Shargh, recently resurrected after a temporary suspension. It states: "Perhaps the most important result of this talk was the pursuit of a common strategy toward resolving the major tensions in the Middle East ... It signaled the need for cooperation based on common grounds ... The continuation of these talks can itself to a large extent reduce or bracket the alternatives of war or absolute sanctions on the plate of American warmongers."

The Shargh editorial ends by optimistically hoping that "perhaps the Baghdad meeting can be a step for resolving the Lebanon crisis in the near future with the participation of Iran, France and other relevant countries".

Hardline groups, on the other hand, have been weary of the dialogue exceeding the limits set by Khamenei. Thus Lotfolah Forouzandeh, associated with the powerful Jamait-e Eesargaran, demanded that the government publish the details of the Baghdad meeting, to make sure it did not surpass the restrictions imposed by the leader.

Hussain Shariatmadari, the publisher of Kayhan and adviser to President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, has minimized the significance of the Baghdad talks by calling it "just a talk".

In contrast, conservative groups have opted for a middle line between the reformists' "optimism" and the hardliners' "guarded cynicism". They say, for example, that the talks might result in nullifying the 1979 revolution's principles reflected in the late ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's comparison of the US and Iran as wolf and sheep.

Thus Foad Sadeghi, writing on the website Baztab.com, interpreted the Baghdad meeting as a "turning point in the third decade of the Islamic Revolution". According to Sadeghi, the United States' willingness to engage in diplomatic interaction with Iran means that "the scenario of regime change is closed and the substitution of soft power for the hard-power approach toward Iran".

The fact that the US government disbanded the anti-Iran "Iran Syria Policy and Operation Group" right after the Baghdad meeting has been hailed as a positive development by all Iranian pundits.

HOW'S THAT AL QAEDA RESURGENCE GOING?:

West Baghdad residents rise up against Al Qaeda (The Associated Press, May 30, 2007)

Heavy fighting raged Thursday in west Baghdad where residents reported U.S. troops backed by helicopter gunships moved in when residents called for American help against al-Qaida intimidation that kept students away from final exams and the people huddled indoors to escape blazing gunfire.

U.S.-funded Alhurra television reported that non-Iraqi Arabs and Afghans were among the fighters. Residents said the gunbattles first erupted Wednesday. [...]

"The events of the past two days are promising developments. Sunni citizens of Amariyah that have been previously terrorized by al-Qaida are now resisting and want them gone. They're tired of the intimidation that included the murder of women," [Lt. Col. Dale C. Kuehl, Commander of 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment] said. [...]

The heaviest fighting shuttered through the neighborhood at 11 a.m. when gunmen — identified by residents as al-Qaida fighters — began shooting randomly into the air, forcing residents to flee into their homes and students from classrooms.

They said the fighters drove through the streets using loudspeakers to claim that Amariyah was under the control of the Islamic State of Iraq, an al-Qaida front group.

Armed residents were said to have resisted, set some of the al-Qaida gunmen's cars on fire and called the Americans for help.

Casualty figures were not immediately available. But a district councilman said the al-Qaida leader in the Amariyah district, known as Haji Hameed, was killed and 45 other fighters were detained.

WHAT DOES LOU DOBBS CARE ABOUT WHITE FOLKS?:

Border Safety at Focus of TB Case (ROBERT BLOCK, 5/31/07, Wall Street Journal)

When news of the TB case first broke, it appeared that the patient had slipped into the country undetected. Andrew Speaker, 31 years old, drove as far as New York City before going to a hospital, despite an international manhunt by U.S. authorities. The Centers for Disease Control had caught up with Mr. Speaker in Rome, where it advised him that under no circumstances should he use commercial aircraft.

In what appears to be a coincidence, Mr. Speaker is the son-in-law of Robert C. Cooksey, a microbiologist who works in the CDC's Division of Tuberculosis Elimination. In a written statement, Mr. Cooksey said Mr. Speaker's ailment "did not originate from myself or the CDC's labs, which operate under the highest levels of biosecurity." Dr. Cooksey said also that he wasn't involved "in any decisions my son-in-law made regarding his travel."

According to people familiar with the investigation, the CDC notified U.S. Customs and Border Protection -- part of the Department of Homeland Security -- last week that Mr. Speaker, a U.S. citizen, may have been attempting to gain entry into the country from Europe. The information was placed into Customs' nationwide database, which is available to agents at every airport, seaport and land-border crossing.

The advisory warned officers that Mr. Speaker was highly contagious. It cautioned them to wear protective masks and gloves and to detain him before notifying the CDC.

According to investigators, it appears that when Mr. Speaker arrived on May 24 at the crossing at Champlain, N.Y., his passport was swiped, activating the flag on his records and the warning. Records show that Mr. Speaker spent less than two minutes at the border post before being cleared to enter the country.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Kevin Corsaro earlier this week said that Mr. Speaker had passed through the Champlain crossing and didn't appear sick to agents.

FIRST THEY CAME FOR OUR CAVITIES:

Cervical cancer vaccine for all women could cut cases by half - study (Polly Curtis, June 1, 2007, The Guardian)

Vaccinating all women against cervical cancer could save hundreds of lives a year in the UK alone, according to the largest study of the vaccine. Government health advisers are considering whether to vaccinate pre-pubescent girls but the research published in Lancet suggests rates would be nearly halved if women in their 20s were offered a catch-up boost.

The study of more than 20,000 women around the world was sponsored by Merck which makes the vaccine Gardasil. The Lancet said the research was peer-reviewed and fast-tracked for publication because it was "clinically important".

The vaccine protects women against the common human papilloma virus (HPV) which causes 70% of cervical cancers. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation is due to meet in three weeks to continue their discussion of whether to recommend the vaccination.

The study finds that it protects against 99% of infections in women who have never had sex before vaccination and has a 44% protection rate in those who are sexually active and likely to have been exposed to an HPV virus. Around 1,000 women die a year in the UK from cervical cancer.

They conclude: "The results of this ... HPV vaccine programme provide strong evidence that implementation of HPV vaccination campaigns in pre-adolescent girls and young adult women will reduce rates of cervical cancer worldwide."

WHAT IS THE SPEED OF CONJECTURE IN A VACCUUM?:

New theory rejects popular view of man's evolution (Ian Sample, June 1, 2007, The Guardian)

The team, led by Robin Crompton at Liverpool University and Susannah Thorpe at Birmingham University, claim our tree-dwelling ancestors learned to walk on two feet because it helped them edge along outer branches while having their hands free to grasp ripe fruit. The tactic also enabled them to clamber between neighbouring trees without having to descend to the forest floor.

The scientists reached their conclusions after spending a year observing the movements of orang-utans in Sumatra. The great apes of the region are the only species to spend their entire lives in the trees. Footage of nearly 3,000 movements showed the apes consistently walked on two legs to reach the outer branches of trees, using their arms primarily for balance. Unlike gorillas and chimps, which bend their knees to walk on the ground, the orang-utans straightened their legs to adopt a more human-like gait.

Professor Crompton said such skills would have benefited early human ancestors enormously between 24m and 5m years ago, when eastern and central Africa experienced dramatic climatic cycles and the forests first thickened and then died back. "As the forests became sparse, the strategy of our human ancestors was more or less to abandon the canopies and come down to the ground, where they could use this bipedalism immediately to get around," he said.

WHERE'S THEO FARON WHEN YOU NEED HIM?:

When drivers complained about children playing in a cul de sac, what did the council do? They banned the children (DAVID WILKES, 5/31/07, Daily Mail)

For generations, children with energy to burn have enjoyed a kickabout in the street.

And the footballing youngsters of Utah Close, a small suburban cul de sac of 15 homes, are no exception.

Now, however, their simple pleasure has been outlawed by the local council which said their games of street soccer 'posed a danger' to the public.

The children can no longer put temporary goalposts in the street, and have even been told "jumpers for goalposts" must be "removed from the road immediately" because they are classed as obstructions.

FOLKS WHO POOH-POOH DEMOGRAPHICS...:

German brain drain at highest level since 1940s (Tony Paterson, 01 June 2007, Independent)

For a nation that invented the term "guest worker" for its immigrant labourers, Germany is facing the sobering fact that record numbers of its own often highly-qualified citizens are fleeing the country to work abroad in the biggest mass exodus for 60 years.

Figures released by Germany's Federal Statistics Office showed that the number of Germans emigrating rose to 155,290 last year - the highest number since the country's reunification in 1990 - which equalled levels last experienced in the 1940s during the chaotic aftermath of the Second World War.

The statistics, which also revealed that the number of immigrants had declined steadily since 2001, were a stark reminder of the extent of the German economy's decline from the heady 1960s when thousands of mainly Turkish workers flocked to find work in the country.

Leading economists and employers say the trend is alarming. They note that many among Germany's new breed of home-grown "guest workers" are highly-educated management consultants, doctors, dentists, scientists and lawyers.

OECD figures show that Germany is near the top of a league of industrial nations experiencing a brain drain which for the first time since the 1950s now exceeds the number of immigrants.

...AND REDDER...:

Sarkozy heads for parliamentary landslide (John Lichfield, 01 June 2007, Independent)

President Nicolas Sarkozy, ever-present, hyperactive, and riding high in the polls, appears to be heading for an overwhelming victory in the French parliamentary elections this month.

According to the most recent poll, M. Sarkozy's centre-right party and its centrist allies could take as many as 430 of the 577 seats in the national assembly in the two-round election on 10 and 17 June.

Such a tidal wave is not unprecedented. The right did even better in 1993. But an electoral landslide would place President Sarkozy in a commanding position - politically and morally - to force through his programme of social and economic reforms.

FORTUNATELY, TRUMAN WASN'T IN CHARGE THIS TIME:

Iraq Is Korea?: Bush's latest appalling historical analogy. (Fred Kaplan, May 31, 2007, Slate)

In 1950, the United States beat back North Korea's invasion of South Korea, became embroiled in a Chinese-assisted guerrilla war, fought the Communists to a stalemate, and, in 1953, after suffering 54,000 combat deaths, negotiated a truce (but not a formal peace). Ever since, American troops—at present, 37,000 of them, stationed at 95 installations across the Korean peninsula—have remained on guard at the world's most heavily armed border.

In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq, overthrew its regime (which posed a hypothetical threat), and, in the four years since, has kept about 150,000 troops in the country to kill terrorists (who weren't in Iraq before the war), to train the Iraqi army (which the Bush administration, for still-mysterious reasons, dismantled at the occupation's outset), and to keep a "low-grade" sectarian civil war (which erupted amid a vacuum of authority) from boiling over.

In the half-century-plus since the Korean armistice of 1953, just 90 U.S. soldiers have been killed in isolated border clashes in Korea. In the mere four years since the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003, more than 3,000 American servicemen and women have been killed, and the number rises every day.

To sum up, we intervened in South Korea as a response to an invasion and as part of a broad strategy to contain Communist aggression.

IF DON IMUS NEEDED TO BE FIRED...:

It's Torture! It's Porn! What's Not to Like? Plenty, Actually: Movie Producers Are Abusing Woman and Making a Profit Off It (Lenore Skenazy, May 28, 2007, Ad Age)
It's enough to make you nostalgic for good ol', all-American porn. Hard core, soft core, Peace Corps -- doesn't matter. All I know is: Bed hopping beats head chopping.

If we start accepting 'Captivity' and other torture porn flicks as just 'extreme' horror, the baseline will change. What once seemed out of line will become mainstream.

But bed-hopping/head-chopping is the worst.

Unfortunately, that's what America is in for, thanks to the newest rage in Hollywood: torture porn.

You know -- movies where women are bound and gagged, have tubes shoved up their noses and blood spurting out. And then they're hung upside down with -- in hommage to Janet Jackson -- a single breast exposed.

And you thought "Wedding Crashers" was crass.

While it is indisputably great to live in a country where freedom of expression is guaranteed, it is also vomit-inducing to hear that this kind of movie is becoming, ho-hum, just another cinematic genre. Let's see, we've got musicals, comedies, dramas and, oh yes, that new category where the star gets raped and disemboweled.

As reported by this magazine, the latest upchuck of this genre is called "Captivity," by the company After Dark. Billboards for the movie, banned by the Motion Picture Association of America, went up all over L.A. in March, ostensibly by accident (as if billboards go around erecting themselves). The series of four photos featured a woman first with a gloved hand over her mouth, then in a cage, then with the bloody nose tubes, and then partly nude and totally dead. As Ethel Merman sang, "Who could ask for anything more?"

Me. Your local, resident school marm. But you know what? School marms speak the truth. Go marms!
...why do the folks in Hollywood who produce such stuff still have jobs?

DECENCY ISN'T SUPPOSED TO BE CONVENIENT:

Don't expect inconvenient loyalty from our great friend (Owen Harries, 6/01/07, Quarterly Essay)

THE three great struggles of the 20th century were conflicts concerning the central balance of the international system. In each case dissatisfied revisionist powers were concerned to challenge the existing balance, and in the case of World War II and the Cold War those revisionist powers had totalitarian values and goals that were inimical to those held by Australians.

In each of the three cases, but especially in the last two, victory for the revisionists would have had profound adverse significance for Australia, whether we were immediately and directly attacked or not. We would have been left a weak liberal-democratic country in an overwhelmingly hostile and menacing international environment. In those circumstances, it made perfectly good sense for Australia to support Britain and the US, the main upholders of the existing central balance, in these conflicts.

Does this then mean that the Howard Government has also been right in its support for the US in Iraq? No, it does not. This for two reasons. First, the Islamist terrorists do not threaten the central balance in the way that Nazi Germany or the Stalinist Soviet Union did, and attempts to pretend that they do are ludicrous. Second, under George W. Bush a hegemonic US went out of its way to emphasise that its overriding concern was no longer to uphold a status quo but to alter the international system profoundly, and by force if necessary. It does not seem to me that this would serve the interest of Australia, a quintessentially satisfied, status quo country.

THEY BREED HORSES, DON'T THEY?:

What I Think About Evolution (SAM BROWNBACK, 5/31/07, NY Times)

If belief in evolution means simply assenting to microevolution, small changes over time within a species, I am happy to say, as I have in the past, that I believe it to be true. If, on the other hand, it means assenting to an exclusively materialistic, deterministic vision of the world that holds no place for a guiding intelligence, then I reject it.

There is no one single theory of evolution, as proponents of punctuated equilibrium and classical Darwinism continue to feud today. Many questions raised by evolutionary theory — like whether man has a unique place in the world or is merely the chance product of random mutations — go beyond empirical science and are better addressed in the realm of philosophy or theology.

The most passionate advocates of evolutionary theory offer a vision of man as a kind of historical accident. That being the case, many believers — myself included — reject arguments for evolution that dismiss the possibility of divine causality.

Ultimately, on the question of the origins of the universe, I am happy to let the facts speak for themselves. There are aspects of evolutionary biology that reveal a great deal about the nature of the world, like the small changes that take place within a species. Yet I believe, as do many biologists and people of faith, that the process of creation — and indeed life today — is sustained by the hand of God in a manner known fully only to him. It does not strike me as anti-science or anti-reason to question the philosophical presuppositions behind theories offered by scientists who, in excluding the possibility of design or purpose, venture far beyond their realm of empirical science.

WHICH EXPLAINS THE SUDDEN POPULARITY OF SOAP-ON-A-ROPE IN THE YANKEE CLUBHOUSE:

As wife packs up, is A-Rod out at home? (ADAM LISBERG in Toronto KATHIE KLARREICH in Miami and DAVE GOLDINER in New York, 5/31/07, NY DAILY NEWS)

In New York, A-Rod used to be a regular at the VIP Club, where he always asked for a dancer who performs under the stage name Monique.

Monique is 5-feet-5 with brown hair and brown eyes and has a well-toned, muscular figure, a pal said.

When the stripper jumped over to the Hustler Club, Rodriguez started going there to see her perform and buy sexy lap dances, a source said.

He even took her out for a pricey shopping spree at the Versace store on Fifth Ave., the source said.

A petite stripper at the Hustler Club said A-Rod "likes the she-male, muscular type. They brought me up to the champagne room one time. I spun around once and that was it. I'm not his type."

THE PATH FORWARD IS NOT WITHOUT POTHOLES:

Real India: the slow road to Agra (Tom Plate, 5/31/07, Seattle Times)

If you want to understand as much as possible about India in a single day, maybe the best way to go is to take the slow bus to Agra. And by slow, I mean slow as in the speed of a backlash of taffy.

There are no fast buses to Agra because the road to Agra more resembles a war zone in which countless people seem to be fleeing somewhere for their life. Someday the new highway will be up and running, but who knows how long that will take? It sometimes seems as if India goes out of its way to be inefficient.

Most people go to Agra to get to the justly famed and fabulous Taj Mahal. From New Delhi, that's about a four-hour trip. The journey itself is worth at least as much as the destination. India itself is too great to rush through, even if that were remotely possible.

India is often touted as the next slam-dunk superpower, after emerging China, and of course, established United States. The big buildup mainly comes from the Western media, especially in the U.S. Both the Clinton and Bush administrations have imagined India as a kind of balancing superpower to China, should the latter get too feisty, aggressive or in any way profoundly obstreperous to U.S interests.

With more than a billion people (half of which are under the age of 25) and a tremendous science and technology base (the legacy of its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru), India might not be a bad bet to make it. But it has a long way to go, perhaps much longer than Western hype or India's own best hopes would suggest.

Travel the road to Agra and you see what's out there in the real world of ancient India. You leave the fancy hotels and well-kept tourist sites in the nation's capital and discover reality.

MORE:
Calm down, the rise of China's power is being exaggerated: Beijing's Leninist corporatism hobbles the nation's economic development (Will Hutton, June 01, 2007, The Australian)

THE China challenge is a mutual collusion of misunderstanding between East and West. China ardently wants the world's respect. And the West's political and business elites want to pin the blame for every ill, from job insecurity to the inability to finance a generous welfare state, on the unstoppable rise of China, so excusing themselves for any responsibility for Western capitalism's travails.

Neither side has an interest in portraying China for what it is: a profoundly dysfunctional economy and society struggling to make the transition from communism to a form of capitalism that will almost certainly lead to political and economic upheavals.

PERHAPS NOT QUITE HOOVERESQUE:

Recovery complete, S&P finally clears dot-com high (Tomoeh Murakami Tse, 5/31/07, The Washington Post)

The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index hit a record high Wednesday, marking a four-year recovery of U.S. stocks battered by the burst of the tech bubble, the collapse of Enron and WorldCom, the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Dow Jones industrials also climbed to a record, and Boeing shares cleared $100 to set an all-time high.

The S&P 500 is in many ways the key major market indicator because it includes a broader range of stocks. It reached its previous high of 1,527.46 on March 24, 2000, at the end of the tech boom that had big guys on Wall Street and college kids on laptops sapping up shares of Silicon Valley wonders that proved too good to be true.

The S&P 500 hit bottom, at 776.76, on October 9, 2002. It has been a long recovery since.

GOD FORBID WE LEAVE MILLIONS OF IRAQIS IN THE SORT OF TYRANNY WE LEFT THE NORKS:

White House envisions "Korean model" in Iraq (Los Angeles Times and The Associated Press, 5/31/07)

President Bush would like to see the U.S. military provide long-term stability in Iraq as it has in South Korea, where thousands of American troops have been based for more than half a century, the White House said Wednesday.

White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters Bush believes U.S. forces eventually will end their combat role in Iraq but will continue to be needed in the country to deter threats and to help handle potential crises, as they have done in South Korea.

The United States has kept forces in South Korea since war erupted with North Korea in 1950 and currently has about 30,000 troops there.

"At some point you want to get to a situation in which the Iraqis have the capability to go ahead and handle the fundamental matters of security ... so that if you need the ability to react quickly you can be there, but the Iraqis are conducting the lion's share of their business," Snow said.

SO WE'RE STUCK WITH LITTLE JOHNSONS?:

Arrest could bring big drop in spam (Kyung M. Song and Jennifer Sullivan, 5/31/07, Seattle Times)

With the arrest Wednesday of a Seattle man accused of sending out tens of millions of spam e-mails, federal prosecutors say that computer users across the globe should see a significant drop in spam messages.

Robert Soloway, a 27-year-old dubbed the "Spam King" by Interim U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Sullivan, was arraigned Wednesday on 35 counts of mail and wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, money laundering and fraud in connection with electronic mail.

Soloway is the first spammer federal prosecutors have charged with aggravated identity theft. The charge stems from his alleged theft of identities and business names for his widespread e-mail broadcasts -- which included advertisements for diplomas and penis enlargement, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn Warma.

BIGGER DIFFERENCES THAN SIMILARITIES:

The lessons of Vietnam: Iraq desperately needs a political solution in the short term to make the war more manageable for the next president (Henry A. Kissinger, May 31, 2007, LA Times)

[A] brief recapitulation of the Indochina tragedy is necessary.

It must begin with dispelling the myth that the Nixon administration settled in 1972 for terms that had been available in 1969 and therefore prolonged the war needlessly. Whether the agreement, officially signed in January 1973, could have preserved an independent South Vietnam and avoided the carnage following the fall of Indochina will never be known. We do know that American disunity prevented such an outcome when Congress prohibited the use of military force to maintain the agreement and cut off aid after all U.S. military forces (except a few hundred advisors) had left South Vietnam. American dissociation triggered a massive North Vietnamese invasion, in blatant violation of existing agreements, to which the nations that had endorsed these agreements turned their backs.

Two questions relevant to Iraq are raised by the Vietnam War: Was unilateral withdrawal an option when Richard Nixon took office? Did the time needed to implement Nixon's design exhaust the capacity of the American people to sustain the outcome, whatever the merit?

When Nixon came into office, there were more than 500,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam, and their number was increasing. The official position of the Johnson administration had been that U.S. withdrawal would start six months after a North Vietnamese withdrawal. The "dove" platform of Sens. Robert F. Kennedy and George McGovern, which was rejected by the Democratic Convention of 1968, advocated mutual withdrawal. No significant group then advocated unilateral withdrawal.

Nor was unilateral withdrawal feasible. To redeploy more than half a million troops is a logistical nightmare, even in peacetime conditions. But in Vietnam, more than 600,000 armed communist forces were on the ground. They might well have been joined by large numbers of the South Vietnamese army, feeling betrayed by its allies and working its way into the good graces of the communists. The U.S. forces would have become hostages and the Vietnamese people victims.

A diplomatic alternative did not exist. Hanoi insisted that to obtain a cease-fire, the U.S. had to meet two preconditions: First, the U.S. had to overthrow the South Vietnamese government, disband its police and army and replace it with a communist-dominated government. Second, it had to establish an unconditional timetable for the withdrawal of its forces, to be carried out regardless of subsequent negotiations or how long they might last. The presence of North Vietnamese troops in Laos and Cambodia was declared not an appropriate subject for negotiations.

Nixon correctly summed up the choices when he rejected the 1969 terms: "Shall we leave Vietnam in a way that — by our own actions — consciously turns the country over to the communists? Or shall we leave in a way that gives the South Vietnamese a reasonable choice to survive as a free people?" A comparable issue is posed by the pressure for unilateral withdrawal from Iraq.

WHAT'S THE HURRY:

Thompson wants to be 2008's outsider (Susan Page, 5/31/07, USA TODAY)

Politician-turned-actor Fred Thompson has been coy with audiences as he flirts with a bid for the Republican presidential nomination.

In an interview with USA TODAY, however, the former Tennessee senator not only makes it clear that he plans to run, he describes how he aims to do it. He's planning a campaign that will use blogs, video posts and other Internet innovations to reach voters repelled by politics-as-usual in both parties.

"I can't remember exactly the point that I said, 'I'm going to do this,' " Thompson says, his 6-foot, 6-inch frame sprawled comfortably across a couch in a hotel suite. "But when I did, the thing that occurred to me: 'I'm going to tell people that I am thinking about it and see what kind of reaction I get to it.' "

His late start carries some problems but also "certain advantages," he says. "Nobody has maxed out to me" in contributions, he notes, and using the Internet already "has allowed me to be in the hunt, so to speak, without spending a dime."

OUR FIRST AFRICAN PRESIDENT:

Bush seeks $30B for AIDS program (David Jackson, 5/31/07, USA TODAY)

President Bush asked Congress Wednesday to boost funding to fight AIDS and treat up to 2.5 million people with the disease around the world.

His proposal for $30 billion over five years would extend an existing AIDS prevention program, which Congress first approved in 2003 and expires next year. The president often has touted the program, which also fights tuberculosis and malaria, as a key piece of his foreign policy.

"Villages in Africa now talk of the 'Lazarus Effect,' dying communities being brought back to life thanks to the compassion of the American people," Bush said in the Rose Garden.

LIFE OF JOHNSON THE E-Z WAY:

Caution: E-mail installments of 'Moby-Dick' may prove habit-forming (CECELIA GOODNOW, 5/31/07, Seattle Post Intelligencer)

Call me Ishmael.

Whew -- that's enough literature for one day.

Fortunately, I can resume this fish tale when DailyLit sends my next "Moby-Dick" installment in tomorrow's e-mail. It's due to arrive at 8:30 a.m.

DailyLit, a free service created by a husband-wife team with roots in publishing and online networking, is like a One-A-Day vitamin for the literarily malnourished.

Choose from among the 370 public-domain works at dailylit.com, specify when and how you want to receive installments -- e-mail or RSS feeds -- and you're good to go.

Each day's fare is sized to be read in five minutes or less. That's about a screenful of single-spaced text -- not quite as pithy as "Call me Ishmael," but less daunting than staring down Herman Melville's 700-page masterpiece in its entirety.

DailyLit creators Susan Danziger and Albert Wenger said the service is designed largely for harried techies who can't break away from the tube long enough to read the books they studiously avoided in high school.

NOT SO ANONYMOUS LAWYER:

Blogger unmasked, court case upended (Jonathan Saltzman, May 31, 2007, Boston Globe)

It was a Perry Mason moment updated for the Internet age.

As Ivy League-educated pediatrician Robert P. Lindeman sat on the stand in Suffolk Superior Court this month, defending himself in a malpractice suit involving the death of a 12-year-old patient, the opposing counsel startled him with a question.

Was Lindeman Flea?

Flea, jurors in the case didn't know, was the screen name for a blogger who had written often and at length about a trial remarkably similar to the one that was going on in the courtroom that day.

In his blog, Flea had ridiculed the plaintiff's case and the plaintiff's lawyer. He had revealed the defense strategy. He had accused members of the jury of dozing.

With the jury looking on in puzzlement, Lindeman admitted that he was, in fact, Flea.

The next morning, on May 15, he agreed to pay what members of Boston's tight-knit legal community describe as a substantial settlement -- case closed.

SHOULDN'T THERE BE A BOND FLICK TO GO WITH IT?:

AND THEY WON'T BE MISSED:

Iraq-friendly Foreign Minister closes lid on Chirac era (Jim Nolan, 31 May 2007, Online Opinion)

The contrast spoke volumes. Last week I mentioned the name Bernard Kouchner to a friend. This well-connected university academic was puzzled and asked who he was. Two days later I asked Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari his thoughts on the appointment by new French President Nicholas Sarkozy of Kouchner as his Foreign Minister, the co-founder of Médecins Sans Frontières having been a minister in the Mitterrand socialist government, the UN governor of Kosovo from 1999 to 2001 and still one of France's most popular politicians.

Zebari, a Kurd and a genuine resistance fighter against Saddam Hussein, greeted the name warmly because he well knew what a local sophisticate had no idea about: that Kouchner was a true friend of all Iraqis. Visits to Iraqi Kurdistan were early examples of the heartburn which Kouchner regularly created for those who are now under him.

Richard Holbrooke, the former US ambassador to the UN, told The New York Times: "It's an amazing appointment, a stunning event in French foreign policy ... He's motivated by an anti-totalitarian drive whether he sees injustice from the Left or the Right."

He added: "It will be very positive for US-French relations, because he does not come with a visceral anger towards the American 'hyperpower'."

Should Hilary Benn become deputy Labour leader and Britain's deputy prime minister, as seems likely, it is hard to imagine Britain and French will not continue to support the democratically elected Iraqis. What has been a pathetic deference to Jacques Chirac's "realism" in the "liberal" West will no longer be a convenient fig leaf. The "sophisticated" Europeans (read France) have just left the building.

THE A-380 WON'T BE LANDING IN DEMOCRACIES:

Budget airlines and green activists unite to fight airport plan (Dan Milmo, May 31, 2007, The Guardian)

Budget airlines and green activists, normally on opposite sides of the argument on climate change, called a truce yesterday as they united to oppose the expansion of Stansted airport.

The makeshift alliance was formed at the start of a public inquiry into allowing more flights at Britain's third largest airport. Environmental groups described it as the sternest test of government aviation policy since climate change became a major political issue.

Ryanair, whose chief executive, Michael O'Leary, regularly refers to climate change campaigners as "tree huggers", joined with other no-frills carriers and green organisations in calling for the plan to be thrown out.

Stansted's owner, BAA, is seeking permission to increase the maximum number of passengers flying in and out of rural Essex from 25 million to 35 million people a year.

ALL ELSE FOLLOWS:

1688 and All That: Michael Barone explains how the "Glorious" Revolution led to the American one. (ANDREW ROBERTS, May 29, 2007, Opinion Journal)

When the English-speaking peoples consider the forces that have made them the global hegemonic political culture since the mid-19th century--representative institutions, the rule of law, religious toleration and property rights among them--they look back to Britain's "Glorious" Revolution of 1688. What at first looks merely like a minor coup d'état that replaced the Catholic King James II with his Protestant Dutch nephew and son-in-law, King William III, was much more than that. It heralded nothing less than a complete realignment of worldview for the Anglosphere. It changed everything.

Michael Barone, the distinguished political commentator and co-author of "The Almanac of American Politics," demonstrates both an encyclopedic knowledge of late 17th-century European politics and a keen appreciation of their long-term implications. He sees in the Glorious Revolution--which he dubs The First Revolution--the genesis of "changes in English law, governance and politics that turned out to be major advances for representative government, guaranteeing liberties, global capitalism, and a foreign policy of opposing hegemonic powers." He argues that it was essentially in defense of the rights won in 1688 that the American colonists rose against George III in 1776.

The handful of Whig aristocrats who secretly invited Prince William of Orange over from Holland to overthrow their anointed monarch, James, were undeniably rebels and traitors, as were, of course, the American colonists who signed the Declaration of Independence. Yet they both acted in the name of an ancient, inherent, legitimate and noble cause: liberty. English common-law rights dating back to Magna Carta were perceived to be under threat from King James, and they trumped whatever allegiance might have been owed him. The Founding Fathers were thus repeating 88 years later, and in an American and republican context, largely what the "first" revolutionaries had done in 1688.

WHEN YOU HONEYMOON AT SPRING TRAINING YOU'VE GOTTA KNOW WHAT'S COMING:

My Overactive Fantasy Life: What happens when you love your fantasy baseball team a little too much. (David Roth, May 30, 2007, Slate)

It's already building by the time the players start showing up in Florida and Arizona. When the first drowsy spring training games appeared on television, I could feel it. And so it was with great excitement and anticipation that I did what countless other baseball fans did as Opening Day approached: I turned on my computer and started studying. About a week before the big leaguers began their season, I began mine. Not in sunshine but in the lonely blue glow of my computer, and not with the crack of the bat but with the click of the keyboard.

I am far from alone in this pursuit: Sixteen million people played fantasy baseball in 2006. In basements that smell like pizza and dudes, in conference rooms on the company clock, or in notional, Java Applet-powered online "draft rooms," we fantasy baseball GMs build the teams over which we will obsess for the next six months. And I have no problem with that. The strange part, I have come to realize, is that the baseball team I care about the most this summer will be my fantasy squad. This doesn't mean that I've stopped caring about my favorite big-league team. But it's a certainty that I'll spend more time worrying about a team named "Garkness Visible" (after Indians first baseman Ryan Garko) than about my beloved New York Mets.

I'm sure this indicates that I have any number of problems. But, once again, it's not just me. Over the last decade, fake sports, be they fantasy sports or video-game sports, have come to rival in popularity the professional sports they reference and emulate. Fantasy newbies and nonbelievers are well within their rights to ask why.

The Wife: "So, do you use me name?"

The Husband: "Um, not quite..."

The Wife: "What do you use?"

The Husband: "Um, the name of the centerfielder on my Rotisserie team..."

The Wife: "#@$#@%"

UNFORTUNATE CLARITY:

Barron Staffer: Assassinate Leroy Comrie's Ass (Azi Paybarah, May 30, 2007, NY Observer)

“If it takes an assassination of his ass, he will not be borough president in the borough where I live.”

That was the chief of staff to Charles Barron speaking about another City Council member, Leroy Comrie, who is black and voted to abstain today on a failed proposal today to rename a street after black nationalist Sonny Carson. [...]

Plummer’s “assassination” remark was very much in the tradition of the sort of militant language employed by Carson himself. (“I’m not anti-Semitic, I’m anti-white,” he once said.) Carson's supporters have said that it's unfair to judge his entire life by his most extreme comments.

IT WORKED CSO PERFECTLY IT MAY EVEN HAVE BEEN ACCIDENTAL:

Expert: Sadr gaining ground among Shiites (UPI, 5/30/07)

Mahdi Army leader Moqtada Sadr appears to be gaining ground at the expense of other Iraqi Shiite leaders, a U.S. expert says.

"If reports that (Abdul-Aziz al-) Hakim (leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) is truly ill with lung cancer are true, this could seriously shift the balance of power," Anthony H. Cordesman, who holds the Arleigh A. Burke chair in strategy at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, a Washington think tank, said in a statement.

"SCIRI does seem to be losing political influence and strength in the oil-rich southeast, while Sadr's Mahdi Army remains a major force. Coming back (to Iraq from Iran) allows him to reassert control and game U.S.-led security operations," Cordesman said.

"The Sadrists have also shown that they can cooperate just enough with the United States and the Iraqi Security Forces to take the credit for improvements for local security in the areas where the Sadr militia already plays the role, and get away with claiming the credit for any successes in aid while still blaming the United States and government for the overall lack of progress," the analyst said.

WHERE THERE'S WILL, THERE'S W'S WAY:

A politically-charged question for the candidates (George F. Will, May 30, 2007, Daily News Tribune)

Liberals are more concerned with equality, understood, they insist, primarily as equality of opportunity, not of outcome.

Liberals tend, however, to infer unequal opportunities from the fact of unequal outcomes. Hence liberalism's goal of achieving greater equality of condition leads to a larger scope for interventionist government to circumscribe the market's role in allocating wealth and opportunity.

Liberalism increasingly seeks to deliver equality in the form of equal dependence of more and more people for more and more things on government.

Hence liberals' hostility to school choice programs that challenge public education's semimonopoly. Hence hostility to private accounts funded by a portion of each individual's Social Security taxes. Hence their fear of Health Savings Accounts (individuals who purchase high-deductible health insurance become eligible for tax-preferred savings accounts from which they pay their routine medical expenses - just as car owners do not buy automobile insurance to cover oil changes). Hence liberals' advocacy of government responsibility for - and, inevitably, rationing of - health care, which is 16 percent of the economy, and rising.

Steadily enlarging dependence on government accords with liberalism's ethic of common provision, and with the liberal party's interest in pleasing its most powerful faction - public employees and their unions.

Conservatism's rejoinder should be that the argument about whether there ought to be a welfare state is over. Today's proper debate is about the modalities by which entitlements are delivered.

IT'S NO EASY THING, DISABUSING SUCH VOLK OF THEIR HYGIENE THEORIES:

Truth, Fiction and Lou Dobbs (DAVID LEONHARDT, 5/30/07, NY Times)

Mr. Dobbs argues that the middle class has many enemies: corporate lobbyists, greedy executives, wimpy journalists, corrupt politicians. But none play a bigger role than illegal immigrants. As he sees it, they are stealing our jobs, depressing our wages and even endangering our lives.

That’s where leprosy comes in.

“The invasion of illegal aliens is threatening the health of many Americans,” Mr. Dobbs said on his April 14, 2005, program. From there, he introduced his original report that mentioned leprosy, the flesh-destroying disease — technically known as Hansen’s disease — that has inspired fear for centuries.

According to a woman CNN identified as a medical lawyer named Dr. Madeleine Cosman, leprosy was on the march. As Ms. Romans, the CNN correspondent, relayed: “There were about 900 cases of leprosy for 40 years. There have been 7,000 in the past three years.”

“Incredible,” Mr. Dobbs replied.

Mr. Dobbs and Ms. Romans engaged in a nearly identical conversation a few weeks ago, when he was defending himself the night after the “60 Minutes” segment. “Suddenly, in the past three years, America has more than 7,000 cases of leprosy,” she said, again attributing the number to Ms. Cosman.

To sort through all this, I called James L. Krahenbuhl, the director of the National Hansen’s Disease Program, an arm of the federal government. Leprosy in the United States is indeed largely a disease of immigrants who have come from Asia and Latin America. And the official leprosy statistics do show about 7,000 diagnosed cases — but that’s over the last 30 years, not the last three.

The peak year was 1983, when there were 456 cases. After that, reported cases dropped steadily, falling to just 76 in 2000. Last year, there were 137.

“It is not a public health problem — that’s the bottom line,” Mr. Krahenbuhl told me. “You’ve got a country of 300 million people. This is not something for the public to get alarmed about.” Much about the disease remains unknown, but researchers think people get it through prolonged close contact with someone who already has it.

What about the increase over the last six years, to 137 cases from 76? Is that significant?

“No,” Mr. Krahenbuhl said. It could be a statistical fluctuation, or it could be a result of better data collection in recent years. In any event, the 137 reported cases last year were fewer than in any year from 1975 to 1996.

WELCOMING THE SHEEP-CLOTHED:

Bush's Quiet Idealist: Robert Zoellick has been designated the new president of the World Bank following Paul Wolfowitz's departure. Many Germans remember him as the likeable mediator who helped bring about German reunification. But Zoellick's maxim is still "America first." (Marc Pitzke, 5/30/07, Der Spiegel)

Robert Zoellick will be the first World Bank president to take office already decorated with the Federal Cross of Merit, Germany's distinguished state honorary badge. His predecessors John McCloy and Jim Wolfensohn also received the Cross -- but only later. Zoellick already wears it, in recognition of his efforts to help bring about German reunification. As the main United States mediator in the "Two Plus Four Agreement" -- the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany that emerged from the 1990 talks between the two German states and the four World War II victors, and which led to German reunification -- he vigorously championed German self-determination. The Germans thanked him by awarding him the order.

On Wednesday, US President George W. Bush will nominate Zoellick as the successor to controversial World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz. In Germany, Zoellick is considered a friend, an "Atlanticist" and a bridge-builder. He once described his bond with Berlin in a speech here as a common, German-American vision of the future, a transition to "prosperity, security and hope for hundreds of millions of people."

THE confirmation that Bob Zoellick will be the new president of the World Bank, as predicted by The Australian last week, is good news for the World Bank and very good news for Australia.

Treasurer Peter Costello yesterday spoke to US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson about Zoellick's appointment and Costello welcomed his accession to the leadership of the World Bank.

Zoellick is outstandingly qualified to head the World Bank and a long-time friend of Australia. It was Zoellick, as US trade representative in George W.Bush's first administration, who negotiated the free trade agreement between the US and Australia.

The FTA was an idea that Zoellick had first suggested a decade earlier when he was the shadow of Jim Baker, who was successively White House chief of staff, secretary of the treasury, secretary of state and then chief of staff again, under first Ronald Reagan and then George HW Bush.

Zoellick held senior positions in all those agencies when Baker was in charge of them. Zoellick is one of those ludicrously over-achieving Americans, fuelled by endless ingestions of Diet Coke and with an insane work ethic, who got into a senior position young and has been at the centre of policy almost ever since.

THE PROBLEM IS THE MONEY THEY'RE SPENDING, NOT THE MONEY THEY AREN'T:

All the wrong moves: Yankees are paying price for refusing to play hardball (John Donovan, May 30, 2007, Sports Illustrated)

Hindsight being as eagle-eyed as it is, it's easy to see just where the present-day Yankees went wrong. They tried to restock their farm system and compete at the big league level at the same time. They pulled away from what they do best -- nobody bullies people in baseball with a checkbook quite like the guys in the pinstriped front office, whether it's in the free-agent market or at the trade table -- and that's costing them now.

Face it: These Yankees are dead meat. They might not be completely done, at 14½ games out of first place in the AL East and 8½ behind the wild-card leader with June 1 peeking around the corner. But if I'm looking for medium-well done, this thing already is too far gone. I'm sending it back.

Let's look, with some of that unerring hindsight, at just some of the ways that the Yankees have burned this baby... [...]

4) They forgot just how old they really were. The Yankees saw the aging of their roster coming. They were trying to get younger. That's the whole idea of re-stocking the farm system. It's an admirable goal, and it's needed. But they might have waited too long.

At 29.9 years old the Yankees are among the majors' oldest teams, ranking in the bottom third in average age. That's showing up in a lot of ways: Bobby Abreu's slow start, Johnny Damon's sore wheels, Jason Giambi's heel spurs, Mike Mussina's creaky legs and Mariano Rivera's sudden mortality.

IF SOMEONE IS GOING TO GOUGE, IT OUGHT TO BE US:

A Full Tank of Hypocrisy (Robert J. Samuelson, May 30, 2007, Washington Post)

It's one of those delicious moments when Washington's hypocrisy is on full and unembarrassed display. On the one hand, some of America's leading politicians condemn high gasoline prices and contend that they stem from "gouging" by oil companies. On the other, many of the same politicians warn against global warming and implore us to curb our use of fossil fuels that emit carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. [...]

In late May, gasoline prices hit a national average of $3.22 a gallon, which, after correcting for inflation, is roughly as high as in early 1981, the recent peak. This elicited the usual expressions of outrage. Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) suggested breaking up big oil companies that he says may be to blame for "the sky-high gas prices." By a vote of 284 to 141, the House passed the Federal Price Gouging Prevention Act, which would make it illegal during an "energy emergency" (to be declared by the president) to sell gasoline at a price that is "unconscionably excessive."

The legislation, said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), would "punish those who are cheating America's families by artificially inflating the price of gasoline."

CQ Radio: John McCain (Ed Morrissey, 5/29/07, Captain's Quarters)

Update: We got a chance to continue the conversation past the end of the live stream. Be sure to download the podcast in order to hear Senator McCain's full interview!

Today, on CQ Radio (2 pm CT), we'll talk live with Senator John McCain regarding the immigration bill, his campaign for President, and the Iraq War. Senator McCain will join us in the second half of the show, and before that, we'll tackle the stories of the day.

THE SOCIETY WHERE POVERTY IS VOLITIONAL:

The Rise Of the Bottom Fifth: How to Build on the Gains Of Welfare Reform (Ron Haskins, May 29, 2007, Washington Post)

Imagine a line composed of every household with children in the United States, arranged from lowest to highest income. Now, divide the line into five equal parts. Which of the groups do you think enjoyed big increases in income since 1991? If you read the papers, you probably would assume that the bottom fifth did the worst. After all, income inequality in America is increasing, right?

Wrong. According to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study released this month, the bottom fifth of families with children, whose average income in 2005 was $16,800, enjoyed a larger percentage increase in income from 1991 to 2005 than all other groups except the top fifth. Despite the recession of 2001, the bottom fifth had a 35 percent increase in income (adjusted for inflation), compared with around 20 percent for the second, third and fourth fifths. (The top fifth had about a 50 percent increase.)

Even more impressive, the CBO found that households in the bottom fifth increased their incomes so much because they worked longer and earned more money in 2005 than in 1991 -- not because they received higher welfare payments. In fact, their earnings increased more in percentage terms than incomes of any of the other groups: The bottom fifth increased its earnings by 80 percent, compared with around 50 percent for the highest-income group and around 20 percent for each of the other three groups.

When considering this explosion of work among those in the bottom fifth, remember that they all had children to take care of, that more of these households were headed by single mothers than households in the four better-off groups, and that they had the least money to, say, fix their cars or tide them over if they got sick. Those who do not admire this performance should live for a year on $16,800 and see if they could increase their earnings by 80 percent.

SYNCHRONICITY:

Justices’ Ruling Limits Suits on Pay Disparity (LINDA GREENHOUSE, 5/30/07, NY Times)

The Supreme Court on Tuesday made it harder for many workers to sue their employers for discrimination in pay, insisting in a 5-to-4 decision on a tight time frame to file such cases. [...]

Workplace experts said the ruling would have broad ramifications and would narrow the legal options of many employees.

In an opinion by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., the majority rejected the view of the federal agency, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, that each paycheck that reflects the initial discrimination is itself a discriminatory act that resets the clock on the 180-day period, under a rule known as “paycheck accrual.”

“Current effects alone cannot breathe life into prior, uncharged discrimination,” Justice Alito said in an opinion joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas. Justice Thomas once headed the employment commission, the chief enforcer of workers’ rights under the statute at issue in this case, usually referred to simply as Title VII.

Under its longstanding interpretation of the statute, the commission actively supported the plaintiff, Lilly M. Ledbetter, in the lower courts. But after the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case last June, the Bush administration disavowed the agency’s position and filed a brief on the side of the employer. [...]

As with an abortion ruling last month, this decision showed the impact of Justice Alito’s presence on the court. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, whom he succeeded, would almost certainly have voted the other way, bringing the opposite outcome.

WHEN EVEN THE STATIST BUREAUCRATS AREN'T BUYING...:

Airlines Balking at Latest A350 Design: More bad news for Airbus as clients call for a redesign of the widebody. New technology and infrastructure would send costs soaring (Business Week, 5/29/07)

Aircraft manufacturer Airbus, already struggling with delays to its A380 superjumbo, now faces problems with its A350 long-range widebody aircraft due to customer dissatisfaction with the current design.

The first version of the new A350 was rejected out of hand, now the second version hasn't come up to scratch either. A number of important customers are demanding changes in Airbus' technology, which could cause further delays at the troubled aircraft manufacturer.

The latest incarnation of the A350 has been found wanting by Emirates, Singapore Airplines, Qatar Airways and the leasing company ILFC, Germany's Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reports on Tuesday. "In my opinion the current Airbus proposal represents an intermediate stage," the newspaper quotes Emirates boss Tim Clark.

The customers have called on Airbus to modify its design of the fuselage by baking the body, made out of carbon-fiber composites, on a huge mold, as Boeing does with its 787 Dreamliner, instead of riveting sections together.

AT A MINIMUM...:

A two-state solution could work (Rafi Dajani and Ori Nir, May 30, 2007, Boston Globe)

One alternative is perpetual conflict. Israeli and Palestinian hard-liners say there will be peace only when the other side is defeated. Surrender is not an option for either side, as we have seen in 20 years of on-again-off-again violence. But repeated Israeli attempts to defeat the Palestinians militarily have not brought Israel security. And Palestinian violent resistance has hurt the Palestinian economy, people, and cause rather than force Israel to end the occupation. Neither side can defeat the other, make the other disappear, or drive the other away.

The other alternative is propounded by those, mainly on the Palestinian (and Israeli) far left, who support a "one-state solution," the revival of the old chimera of a binational Israeli-Palestinian state. This two-headed monster is as unrealistic and undesirable today as it ever was. A binational state means, for all practical purposes, dismantling the state of Israel. Would Israeli Jews ever accept that? Would Palestinians -- or anyone else, for that matter -- ever be able to impose it? Why should Israelis give up on their dream and why should Palestinians give up on their yearning for a national homeland? And how would the two communities share in government and administration? [...]

The two-state solution stipulates a historic compromise, a grand deal that a majority of Israelis and Palestinians have repeatedly said they support. It involves an end to Israeli territorial claims in the West Bank and an end to Palestinian claims inside Israel. It requires a Palestinian recognition that those refugees from the 1948 war choosing to return will largely do so to a new Palestinian state rather than to what is now Israel, and an Israeli recognition that a fulfillment of the right they believe they have to settle in the West Bank will be either in a Palestinian state or as part of a negotiated minor West Bank land swap. It requires complex compromise-formulae to both divide and share the holy city of Jerusalem as the capital of two states, to divide and share resources such as water.

We are used to dynamics on the ground making it increasingly difficult for both sides to consider such compromises. But that is not always the case. Now, for example, the League of Arab States is urging Israel to consider a substantial incentive for compromising: full peace and normal relations with all 22 members of the Arab umbrella-organization, in return for an Israeli withdrawal from the territories it occupied 40 years ago. Senior Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his defense and foreign ministers, have lately expressed interest in exploring the Arab League's initiative.

PEOPLE'S WHO HATE PEOPLE:

China's culture of abortion (Kent Ewing, 5/30/07, Asia Times)

What will it take to jar Chinese leaders out of their long-standing fiasco of a family-planning strategy?

Not that it was really needed, but the past two months have provided further evidence that the State Population and Family Planning Commission needs a new game plan - and the sooner, the better. Instead, however, once again the response has been to suppress dissent and soldier on with a policy that has provoked violent protests in the countryside and exacted a terrible price in human life.

Riots in the southern province of Guangxi this month over the one-child policy - implemented in 1979 to curb China's runaway population growth - are only the latest manifestation of that policy's inherent inhumanity. The unrest also serves as a reminder of its erratic and sometimes brutal implementation, which has led to forced abortions and sterilizations. At the same time, there are signs that because of the woeful lack of sex education in China, young women are increasingly turning to abortion - often multiple times - as a favored form of contraception.

While officials seem to note all this with due gravity, they don't pledge to do much about it. The recent riots in Guangxi provide a textbook case in point.

According to a report last month on National Public Radio (NPR) in the United States, dozens of women in Guangxi have been forced to have abortions as late as nine months into their pregnancies. The report, which ran on NPR's Morning Edition, described the harrowing ordeal of Liang Yage and his wife, Wei Linrong. The couple already had one child but wanted a second. But, according to Wei, in the seventh month of her pregnancy, family-planning officials forced her to abort her child in a Baise city maternity hospital. The Christian couple do not believe in abortion.

An unmarried 19-year-old woman, He Caigan, told NPR that her forced abortion occurred just days before her scheduled delivery. The report also cited an anonymous witness who counted 41 occupied beds on one floor of the same Baise city hospital and said he believed all the women on that floor were there against their will.

The vicious nature of the Guangxi enforcement campaign is all the more striking because it directly conflicts with the orders of China's top leaders.

In January, Communist Party and government officials in Beijing issued a joint directive ordering stronger enforcement of China's population planning laws - precisely the aim of the Guangxi authorities. But the national directive clearly emphasized the need to rely on positive financial incentives to reward compliance with birth control policies - not coercive measures.

Indeed, national officials touted the directive as a move away from "administrative" controls on population growth. The director of China's national family planning council even suggested that the authorities would waive fines for poor citizens.

So how can there be such disconnect between the bright ideas coming out of Beijing and the hard reality of the Guangxi streets?

One reason is that the central authorities are not in full control of their country. This may seem difficult to believe, particularly to outsiders accustomed to images of Chinese security forces dragging away protesters in Tiananmen Square. But Beijing actually has major difficulties supervising local officials.

Sure, you can demand that the local authorities meet designated birth control, tax revenue or economic development targets. But how do you supervise this? How do you ensure that local officials don't simply falsify data? Or that they don't rely on their own private goon squads to brutalize local residents into meeting whatever targets have been set?

In other countries, a range of independent, bottom-up channels help monitor and check the behavior of local officials. A free press exposes government corruption. Independent judicial institutions evaluate whether the actions of the local authorities accord with national law. Open elections allow citizens to remove officials engaged in unethical behavior.

These channels don't exist under China's one-party system. Local Chinese party secretaries exercise sweeping control over the local media, legislatures and courts.

Naturally, this breeds corruption and abuse of power. It also means that local party officials can effectively choke off information to Beijing, blinding the central authorities as to exactly how their mandates are carried out.

Some localities have degenerated into private fiefdoms run by local party officials. This has serious consequences for people whose rights have been violated by local officials. Citizens are far from passive. They resort to any and all channels to get redress - lawsuits, petitions, foreign media. But these often don't work.

WHY CAN'T THEY JUST LEARN YIDDISH...:

In Queens, Classes in Mandarin Are Also Lessons in Adaptation (ELLEN BARRY, 5/29/07, NY Times)

[M]an-Li Kuo Lin’s weekly Mandarin class — arranged by Ms. Harrison’s successor, Councilman John C. Liu — provides a different view of Flushing. Ms. Lin’s students filter in after finishing a day’s work as paramedics or elementary school teachers. They set up chairs under pipes labeled “hot kitchen/bath” and “chilled water supply,” which are periodically traversed by mice. Some eat supper discreetly out of paper bags. Then they stumble, with boisterous good humor, over the basics of Mandarin grammar.

In the center of the front row, every Wednesday, sits an old man with a freckled scalp and a frizz of white hair. This is Frank Sygal, 85, a retired stockbroker whose enthusiasm in pursuit of Mandarin amazes and amuses his classmates.

His first question of the night during one recent class, delivered in the accent of his native Poland, was followed rapidly by several dozen follow-ups: “Why do you say two words for ‘bladder’? I have one bladder! For one bladder it’s two words? What is word for state of Israel? What is word for ‘oral surgeon’? If I go to study medicine in China, what do they teach me?”

“Nobody taught you in Poland to speak Chinese,” Mr. Sygal said.

Mr. Sygal grew up outside Krakow and lost his parents on an August day in 1942 when German soldiers rounded up Jews, stripped off their jewelry and machine-gunned them. His facility with languages helped him survive: He spoke Russian with the Russian soldiers, Ukrainian with the Ukrainians and German with the Germans, reserving Hebrew for private spaces. Once he arrived in New York in 1949, there were two more languages to learn — English and Spanish.

Now, at 85, he has embarked on his last great linguistic effort. His progress has been maddeningly slow; at one point, Mr. Sygal approached “dozens” of Chinese people, he said, in a fruitless attempt to translate the word “ka-ching,” a term he had seen in a headline in The New York Post and assumed to be Chinese. He hopes that he will be able to carry on a conversation in Mandarin by the time he is 95.

“If I be around,” he said, “I be able to speak.”

To his left was Cathy Stenger, driven to this class by the stubborn silence in her building’s elevator. She bought an apartment in a Flushing co-op in 1986 and has since seen 90 percent of the units go to Korean and Chinese families. She has a mute bond with a woman from the sixth floor, who embraces her every time they meet, and with an elderly man who soulfully grabs her hand.

“The fact of the matter is, I can’t talk to them,” said Ms. Stenger, 65, whose parents immigrated from Hungary.

Her interest is not casual. Her co-op board is threatened by a breakaway group of Asian tenants, she said, who are challenging bylaws about subletting or dividing units. A downstairs neighbor manufactures medicinal herbs, and though the woman added ventilation after Ms. Stenger complained, the scent sometimes wafts up through her radiator connections. And when gas leaked into a hallway recently, Ms. Stenger said, one of the neighbors hesitated to call 911 because she was afraid that she would be charged for the service.

Still, none of the changes have made her consider leaving Flushing.

“A lot of my friends it bothers,” she said. “My friends moved.”

The Mandarin classes, now in their second 10-week session, were the brainchild of Donald Henton, 73, a retired city bus driver who has lived in Flushing since 1968.

Mr. Henton asked Councilman Liu to sponsor the lessons last year during a community meeting at which most of the comments were made in Mandarin. He feels a responsibility for the classes’ success; on Tuesday nights, he calls 40 people just to remind them to come.

There have been moments of disappointment for Mr. Henton, who expected the classes to be standing-room-only. He has met cold shoulders among his own neighbors in the Bland Houses, where 78 percent of the tenants are black or Hispanic. On a sunny afternoon in the housing project’s courtyard, Robert Winston, whose family moved to New York from Jamaica, responded to the idea of studying Mandarin with a long belly laugh. Anita Garcia, whose parents moved from Puerto Rico, practically spat.

“I was born here,” said Ms. Garcia, who is 44. “Why should I learn their language?”

W, AND NO ONE BUT:

Bush tightens squeeze on Sudan: His new sanctions Tuesday seek to press the regime but not deepen the Darfur crisis. (Peter Grier and Scott Baldauf , 5/30/07, The Christian Science Monitor)

Economic sanctions announced May 29 are an expansion of existing US financial restrictions and reflect US impatience with continued obstinacy on the part of Sudan's president, Lt. Gen. Omar Hassan al-Bashir, on allowing international peacekeepers into his country.

At the same time, the US may not want to alienate other nations crucial to any eventual Sudan settlement, such as China. Nor do officials wish to precipitate a further military and humanitarian crisis to which the world community may be ill-equipped to respond.

HERE'S ONE THAT'LL KEEP YOU READING FOR THE WEEK:

Who's Afraid of Tariq Ramadan?: The Islamist, the journalist, and the defense of liberalism. (Paul Berman, 05.29.07, New Republic)

Everyone knows by now that Al Qaeda can trace its roots to a splinter tendency within the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt during the 1960s and even earlier, and this history raises an awkward question, which Ramadan has had to answer more than once in the years since September 11. He answered the question one more time in Buruma's Times magazine profile in February. He acknowledged that, yes, Al Qaeda emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood. But not from Grandfather al-Banna's legacy. Al Qaeda drew its inspiration, instead, from Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), who enlisted in the Muslim Brotherhood only after al-Banna's assassination. About al-Banna and Qutb, Ramadan said, "They didn't even know each other"--which is true, narrowly speaking. Buruma quoted the remark and had every reason to do so (though it was odd of him not to mention how misleading was Ramadan's observation, seen from a broader angle--a point to which I will return). Still, Buruma did go on to quote Ramadan's account of his grandfather's un-Qutb-like political goals. Al-Banna, in Ramadan's phrase, "was in favor of a British-style parliamentary system, which was not against Islam."

This second observation, though--is it equally correct, from a narrowly factual angle? In the Times magazine, Buruma elected to be wryly noncommittal. "This may or may not be an accurate representation of Hassan al-Banna," he observed--which is the mark of Buruma's charm as a writer, his gift for understatement and indirection. Even so, understated indirection is not always the best way to inform the public. He might have pointed out that Ramadan, in his book Aux Sources du Renouveau Musulman, or The Roots of the Muslim Revival, in 1998, devotes some two hundred pages to al-Banna and his visionary ideas. Ramadan concedes that al-Banna did want to replace the multi-party system in Egypt with a single national council, which might appear to be a one-party state--but Ramadan explains that, because of the fundamentally democratic nature of Islam, al-Banna's proposal was tantamount to a multi-party system. Such is the interpretation in The Roots of the Muslim Revival. And Buruma might have pointed out one of the principal alternative interpretations of al-Banna and his ideas, if only to offer a little perspective on Ramadan and his way of thinking. According to this second interpretation, al-Banna is best described as a fascist.

This used to be a fairly common judgment on the Arab left, not to mention among European Marxists--maybe in some cases because "fascist" is every left-winger's favorite insult, and for no larger reason. Still, something called "clerico-fascism" (to use the traditional term) is an old concept on the left, dating back to the 1920s in Italy, where it used to refer to the militant wing of the Catholic extreme right. And the applicability of that sort of label to al-Banna's new movement in Egypt did seem, at least to some people in the past, hard to miss--an obvious applicability based on the populism and demagogic emotionalism of the Muslim Brotherhood, together with its authoritarianism, intolerance, violence, invasiveness, and a certain kind of giddy twentieth-century-style utopianism, not to mention some of the direct influences that wended across the Mediterranean Sea from fascism's original home in Europe. Then, too, in the eyes of a fair number of scholarly and journalistic observers today, a fascist label, or some reasonably similar term, seems faintly applicable--or more than faintly--even now.

You can see a sophisticated political-theory presentation of this analysis in the writings of Bassam Tibi, the Syrian-German scholar, though in regard to al-Banna and his legacies, Tibi, in his precision, prefers the loftier Arendtian word "totalitarian" (which, anyway, was coined by Mussolini) to the label "fascist" (likewise coined by Mussolini). A discussion of al-Banna's fascism turns up repeatedly in the current literature on Tariq Ramadan. Paul Landau, in The Saber and the Qur'an, describes al-Banna, in his position as chief guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, as a figure comparable to Il Duce and the Führer. Landau attributes a lot of importance to al-Banna's friendship with Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem--who, as Hitler's ally, helped organize a Muslim division of the Waffen-SS and then, after the war, when he was wanted for war crimes (owing to his SS division), succeeded in escaping to Egypt, thanks to help from al-Banna himself. Ian Hamel reprises Landau's point about al-Banna and the mufti of Jerusalem in The Truth About Tariq Ramadan--though Hamel's purpose is normally to knock down everything said by Landau, if he can. Even Hamel describes al-Banna as a man with a "totalitarian organization and an extremist program."

Caroline Fourest offers a more striking observation in Brother Tariq by pointing to al-Banna's Epistle to the Young. The epistle lays out, under the six clauses of his slogan ("God is our goal; the Prophet is our guide; the Qur'an is our constitution; struggle is our way; death on the path of God is our ultimate desire; God is great, God is great"), the five stages of his program. To wit: the creation of a properly Muslim individual person, in thought and belief; of a properly Muslim family; of a properly Muslim people or community; of an Islamic state; and, finally, the resurrection of the ancient Islamic Empire--which al-Banna describes by referring admiringly to what he calls the "German Reich" and to Mussolini's dream of a resurrected Roman Empire, though naturally al-Banna regards his own resurrected Islamic Empire as vastly preferable and theologically more legitimate than anything Mussolini could have contemplated.

Back in the early 1940s, the British authorities in Egypt took this sort of sentiment seriously enough and, in the hope of avoiding anything resembling the pro-Axis coup d'état that took place in Iraq in 1941, presided over al-Banna's arrest more than once. But the pointed aspect of Fourest's discussion of al-Banna and his Epistle lies in her observation that Ramadan, in presenting the Epistle in one of his own popular audio recordings, has omitted the fascist references--which raises anew the question about forthrightness.

Among the present-day commentaries on al-Banna and fascism that I have lately stumbled on, the most eye-opening turns up in an essay by the Iranian scholars Ladan Boroumand and Roya Boroumand, which appears in an anthology called Islam and Democracy in the Middle East, edited by Larry Diamond, Marc F. Plattner, and Daniel Brumberg. The Boroumands (who are sisters) arrive at a grim evaluation: "The man who did more than any other to lend an Islamic cast to totalitarian ideology was an Egyptian schoolteacher named Hassan al-Banna." By "totalitarian ideology," the Boroumand sisters have in mind the doctrines of the Italian Fascists and the German Nazis, whose influence on al-Banna they underline. And they point out the disastrous consequences: "From the Fascists--and behind them, from the European tradition of putatively transformative' or purifying' revolutionary violence that began with the Jacobins--Banna also borrowed the idea of heroic death as a political art form."

There is nothing especially novel or bizarre in noticing that al-Banna displayed an eager interest in the aesthetic cult of death. The classic history of the Muslim Brotherhood, The Society of the Muslim Brothers, by Richard P. Mitchell, which appeared in 1969, was quite lucid on this topic even then. Al-Banna came up with a double phrase about the importance of death as a goal of jihad--"the art of death" (fann al-mawt) and "death is art" (al-mawt fann). This phrase became, in Mitchell's description, a famous part of al-Banna's legacy. Stringing together his own paraphrases with al-Banna's words, Mitchell wrote: "The Qur'an has commanded people to love death more than life" (which, I might add, is a phrase that we have heard more than once in terrorist statements during the last few years, for instance in the videotape that was made by the Islamist group that attacked Madrid in 2004). And al-Banna continued, in Mitchell's presentation: "Unless the philosophy of the Qur'an on death replaces the love of life which has consumed Muslims, they will reach naught. Victory can only come with the mastery of the art of death."

But what might strike some people as novel or controversial is the Boroumand sisters' observation that al-Banna borrowed these grisly ideas from Europe, instead of deriving them, as al-Banna himself claimed to have done, from Qur'anic tradition. Hassan al-Banna, seen in this light, did something dreadful to Islam. He founded the modern vogue for suicide terror--the cult of death as political art form par excellence--and he attached this cult to Islam. This interpretation of al-Banna corresponds to Bassam Tibi's view, though Tibi emphasizes that al-Banna served mostly to clear the way for Sayyid Qutb, and it was Qutb who played the crucial role. [...]

Ramadan's various opinions and interpretations ought not to be conflated with Islam itself--and this point, as I have learned from experience, requires emphasis, and even double emphasis. When I wrote about Ramadan some years ago, I noticed that all too many non-Muslim readers are quick to seize on any disagreeable or troubling statement by a Muslim thinker and pin it on Islam as a whole--even if these readers are warned not to do anything of the sort. So I stress the point. Nor does Ramadan himself claim to be speaking for every last Muslim on the planet. He identifies several modern currents of Islamic thought or Muslim self-identification, even apart from the ancient denominations that have transfixed everybody's attention right now, and he knows that all these currents do not accord with one another. In the Times magazine, Buruma very properly asked Ramadan to specify which of the currents is his own, and Ramadan answered with a simple phrase. His own current of Islamic thought is the one that goes under the paradoxical-sounding label of "salafi reformist."

Which means? Buruma came up with a definition by plucking a sentence out of Ramadan's Western Muslims and the Future of Islam. A "salafi reformist," Buruma explained, quoting Ramadan's book, is someone who aims at the following goals: "to protect the Muslim identity and religious practice, to recognize the Western constitutional structure, to become involved as a citizen at the social level, and to live with true loyalty to the country to which one belongs." This quotation is accurate, in a fashion--I have located it on page 27 of Ramadan's book, as well as in a slightly different setting in To Be a European Muslim--but, then again, less than accurate because of the way that Buruma has severed the quoted words from some other remarks on the same page and the previous one. Taken by themselves, the quoted words make salafi reformism sound like an earnest and slightly dowdy do-good effort to adapt Islam to the modern liberal world. But that is a mistake. It is an old mistake, too, that journalists persist in making, as both Fourest and Landau point out with a lot of exasperation in their respective books. In a footnote on the topic of "reformism" in his book The Roots of the Muslim Revival, back in 1998, Ramadan himself halfway acknowledges the potential for misunderstanding, though he thinks he is justified in using the term anyway.

Salafi reformism, in his usage, signifies something precise, which has nothing to do with liberal reformism in the conventional sense. Buruma asked Ramadan to list his two favorite Muslim philosophers. Ramadan duly named Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Muhammad Abduh--the late nineteenth-century figures whom Ramadan regards as the progenitors of Hassan al-Banna's Islamic revival and the Muslim Brotherhood (though other people would insist rather sharply that al-Banna's Islamism, in its radicalism and rigidity, departed fundamentally from those nineteenth-century thinkers). Anyway, not many readers of the Times magazine are likely to have recognized these nineteenth-century names. And yet if Buruma had thought to ask Ramadan about some more recent thinkers in the salafi reformist mode, Ramadan could have gone on listing names, and some of those additional names would, in fact, be recognizable to a good many readers. Ramadan has already listed the names in Western Muslims and the Future of Islam--has done this, as it happens, in the paragraph directly preceding the one from which Buruma has plucked his misleading definition.

Here, on page 26, is Hassan al-Banna; and Abul Ala Mawdudi from the South Asian subcontinent, whose activities Tariq's father, Said Ramadan, coordinated with the Muslim Brotherhood; and Ali Shariati, Ayatollah Khomeini's fellow thinker in Iran. And here is Sayyid Qutb, one more influential reformist among the others, listed without comment--even if Qutb's legacy, in one of its offshoots, did lead to Al Qaeda. In Ramadan's usage, salafi reformism turns out to be the philosophical underpinning for modern Islamism in the sundry versions that descend from al-Banna's (and Mawdudi's) original idea. Naturally, these sundry versions do not always chime with one another, and this, too, Ramadan carefully spells out. In Western Muslims and the Future of Islam, he divides the descendants of the original reformist idea into subcurrents or tendencies--though in order to distinguish among these tendencies, you have to inspect his account rather closely, unto the fine print, meaning the footnotes. And this kind of close inspection is worth undertaking, not just to shed a little light on Ramadan's philosophy but also to cast an extra glance at the related but different theme of Ramadan's image in the press.

So, then, the subcurrents of salafi reformism, as per Tariq Ramadan. One of these subcurrents turns out to be his own: the outspokenly Western variant, the version whose particularities Ramadan defines with the attractive language that Buruma has mistakenly applied to the entire movement--a language of preserving Muslim identity and becoming loyal citizens of democratic countries. Ramadan's subcurrent is not the principal one, however. The principal subcurrent flourishes only in the Muslim world (and, in Ramadan's book, only in the footnotes)--though "flourishes" may give the wrong impression, since, as he observes with a touch of bitterness, the organizations and movements within this subcurrent "are almost everywhere, though in different degrees, subjected to imprisonment, torture, and persecution." Plainly, Ramadan is writing here about the Muslim Brotherhood, together with (I suppose) its several national and sectarian variations and offshoots--the Muslim Brotherhood in the Muslim countries themselves, where martyrdom has come to figure as part of the movement's identity. The intention of this, the most prominent current of the salafi reformists, is fully revolutionary: it is to establish an Islamic society.

And then, in his honesty, Ramadan somewhat ruefully cites still another sub-current that flows from the salafi reformist source--though, in his view, this final tendency has emptied salafi reformism of almost all of its original content. This final tendency, he tells us, has gone over to "strictly political activism," joined to "a literalist reading" of the sacred texts, leading to "radical revolutionary action." Ramadan describes this tendency as "political literalist Salafism"--which Buruma in the Times magazine mentions by name, though without identifying it as an offshoot of the salafi reformist idea. Ramadan explains that political literalist salafism has attracted "a lot of public attention"--though it is represented in the Western countries only "by structures and factional networks." This last phrase is incomprehensible to me, but it communicates an impression that, in spite of the public attention, political literalist salafism does not count for much. Ramadan disapproves of this tendency, owing to its textual literalism and its unspecified departures from salafi reformist principles--though he also rushes to ascribe the tendency's errors not to any elements intrinsic to its salafi reformist roots but to the ghastly way that Muslim governments have suppressed the mainstream salafi reformists.

As to why the political literalist salafists should have attracted "a lot of public attention," Ramadan says nothing at all in his main text. Only in a footnote does he mention "violent and spectacular actions," and not even there does he remark on any sort of radical departure from basic morality. Nor does he define any relation that might exist between this sort of thing and the legacies of Qutb. A veil of timidity and euphemism hangs over the entire discussion, which could lead a sleepy reader to miss his meaning altogether.

And yet it is obvious what Ramadan is talking about in this particular passage. Political literalist salafism is the doctrine underlying the terrorism that has emerged from salafi reformism--the vast wave of random murder, the vogue for "violent and spectacular actions," that has swept across so many regions of the Muslim world and beyond. That is what he means by "radical revolutionary action." He does refer somewhat cautiously in a footnote to "a section" of the Islamic Salvation Front of Algeria, by which he must have in mind the people who went about slaughtering whole villages in Algeria during the 1990s and who are evidently not finished yet. But mostly he is the sphinx. At least Ramadan does not deny the estranged sibling relation between his own wing of salafi reformism and the champions of "radical revolutionary action"--these different currents that descend from the same source. Ramadan is, on this particular theme, more straightforward than his Times profiler.

Still, Ramadan has left out a few details, and these do add up to something. On the topic of al-Banna and Qutb, for instance, it is true, yes, that in spite of being exact contemporaries, the two men never did meet in person. Al-Banna was a salafi reformist from the start, but Qutb, in his younger years, was a secular intellectual, a poet, and a literary critic--which meant that al-Banna and Qutb disapproved of each other. Still, they did not live on opposite sides of the earth. Qutb, as I learn from a biography by Adnan A. Musallam called From Secularism to Jihad: Sayyid Qutb and the Foundations of Radical Islamism, adhered to a school of Romantic poetry in Egypt, influenced by Coleridge among others, and his ideas about poetry led him to seek truth in his own heart (as opposed to following the traditions of established schools) and at the same time to yearn romantically for death. Qutb's poetry took an apocalyptic turn as well--which, though his biographer does not make the point, could be compared stanza for stanza with some of the apocalyptic poetry of the fin-de-siècle European Symbolist poets. And all of this, the Romantic and Symbolist literary impulses, mirrored al-Banna's Islamic thinking pretty closely.

What was salafi reformism, after all, if not a belief that truth could be obtained directly from the Qur'an and the seventh century (as opposed to following the traditions of the established schools of Islamic jurisprudence)? And what was al-Banna's phrase about "the art of death" and "death is art" if not an Islamic variation on Qutb's Romantic-poetry yearning for the eternity of the tomb? As for Qutb's Symbolist-poetry apocalyptic fantasies--well! This was Islamism itself, in its Mussolinian, Third Reichstyle yearning for the final showdown. Seen from this angle, Qutb's Romantic secularism and al-Banna's Romantic Islamism were variations on a theme.

THE ONLY STATES THAT MATTER:

Presidential Preferences (American Research Group, Inc., May 29, 2007)

John McCain continues to receive support from independents who are likely Republican primary voters/caucus goers in Iowa (48%), New Hampshire (40%), and South Carolina (41%).

JUST TELL THEM THE RESULT YOU WANT AND THEY'LL FAKE THE SCIENCE (via Jim Yates):

I Was On the Global Warming Gravy Train (David Evans, 5/28/2007, Mises.org)

I devoted six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian government to estimate carbon emissions from land use change and forestry. When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty conclusive, but since then new evidence has weakened that case. I am now skeptical.

In the late 1990s, this was the evidence suggesting that carbon emissions caused global warming:

1.

Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, proved in a laboratory a century ago.
2.

Global warming has been occurring for a century and concentrations of atmospheric carbon have been rising for a century. Correlation is not causation, but in a rough sense it looked like a fit.
3.

Ice core data, starting with the first cores from Vostok in 1985, allowed us to measure temperature and atmospheric carbon going back hundreds of thousands of years, through several dramatic global warming and cooling events. To the temporal resolution then available (data points more than a thousand years apart), atmospheric carbon and temperature moved in lockstep: they rose and fell together. Talk about a smoking gun!
4.

There were no other credible causes of global warming.

This evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we are absolutely certain when we apparently need to act now? So the idea that carbon emissions were causing global warming passed from the scientific community into the political realm. Research increased, bureaucracies were formed, international committees met, and eventually the Kyoto protocol was signed in 1997 to curb carbon emissions.
"Correlation is not causation, but in a rough sense it looked like a fit."

The political realm in turn fed money back into the scientific community. By the late 1990s, lots of jobs depended on the idea that carbon emissions caused global warming. Many of them were bureaucratic, but there were a lot of science jobs created too.

I was on that gravy train, making a high wage in a science job that would not have existed if we didn't believe carbon emissions caused global warming. And so were lots of people around me; there were international conferences full of such people. We had political support, the ear of government, big budgets. We felt fairly important and useful (I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet!
But starting in about 2000, the last three of the four pieces of evidence above fell away. Using the same point numbers as above:

2. Better data shows that from 1940 to 1975 the earth cooled while atmospheric carbon increased. That 35 year non-correlation might eventually be explained by global dimming, only discovered in about 2003.
3.

The temporal resolution of the ice core data improved. By 2004 we knew that in past warming events, the temperature increases generally started about 800 years before the rises in atmospheric carbon. Causality does not run in the direction I had assumed in 1999 — it runs the opposite way!

It took several hundred years of warming for the oceans to give off more of their carbon. This proves that there is a cause of global warming other than atmospheric carbon. And while it is possible that rising atmospheric carbon in these past warmings then went on to cause more warming ("amplification" of the initial warming), the ice core data neither proves nor disproves this hypothesis.

4. There is now a credible alternative suspect. In October 2006 Henrik Svensmark showed experimentally that cosmic rays cause cloud formation. Clouds have a net cooling effect, but for the last three decades there have been fewer clouds than normal because the sun's magnetic field, which shields us from cosmic rays, has been stronger than usual. So the earth heated up. It's too early to judge what fraction of global warming is caused by cosmic rays.

There is now no observational evidence that global warming is caused by carbon emissions.

Evolution is the belief that life spontaneously erupted from non-living chemicals—all life today coming from that eruption. It includes the idea that all creatures alive today have, after many varied steps, come into existence from some previously existing creatures. For example, it is claimed that a fish in the past began changing, then, over millions of years and many intermediate steps, became a mammal of today.

Evolution supporters suggest that fish somehow became amphibians and amphibians somehow became mammals. This process is supposed to have taken many millions of years, involving millions of intermediate steps to achieve.

Do not confuse the theory of evolution with adaptation of a species or genetic variation. Adaptation simply means that something changes to fit its environment, not that it changes into some other species. Genetic variation occurs when there are limiting factors in the available gene pool. But again, it does not produce some new species—only changes within the same species.

This can be seen in the different breeds of animals such as horses. Draft horses have been bred to produce size and power; miniature horses for smallness and quarter horses for quickness. No one denies that they have common ancestors, but no one suggests they are no longer horses either. These differences do not represent evolution. Horses are still horses. The evolutionist suggests that perhaps walruses changed into horses, or the other way around.

To investigate evolution, it is necessary to observe the evidence and decide whether the conclusions of evolutionists follow logic and are in harmony with the physical evidence, or if those conclusions are established by conjecture and opinion based on preconceived beliefs. [...]

Another example worth mentioning is that of the peppered moths. “Most peppered moths were light-colored in the early part of the 19th century, but during the Industrial Revolution in Britain the moth populations near heavily polluted cities became predominantly ‘melanic,’ or dark-colored. … [E]xperiments suggested that predatory birds ate light-colored moths when they became more conspicuous on pollution-darkened tree trunks, leaving the dark-colored variety to survive and reproduce” (Wells, op. cit.).

To demonstrate the camouflage of the dark moths, many books, when explaining evolution, have pictures of peppered moths on tree trunks. The dark moths blend in and the light moths stand out clearly. This is supposed to prove the theory of “natural selection.” But fraud and lies permeate this deception as well.

As ridiculous as it may seem, the pictures are themselves faked. Peppered moths do not land on tree trunks in nature; they light on the undersurface of small horizontal branches higher in the trees. One researcher (Cyril Clarke) noted that in 25 years of observation he had only seen one peppered moth on a tree trunk. So where did the pictures of peppered moths on tree trunks come from? Dead moths were glued or pinned to the tree trunks. This fact has been known since about 1980, and still the faked pictures are being published in textbooks as proof of evolution.

IT'S A LOT HARDER GAME WHEN YOU GO OFF THE JUICE:

Mr. 3,000?: Hitters with the best shot at joining the exclusive club (Tom Verducci, May 29, 2007, Sports Illustrated)

On the cusp of 2,000 hits this week at age 33, and having cranked out at least 165 hits for nine consecutive seasons, Johnny Damon would seem to have 3,000 hits in his long-term sights. Indeed, the Bill James Handbook projects Damon to a career total of 2,922. (Only one player in the stat-savvy modern era ever exceeded 2,900 hits and didn't continue to 3,000: Frank Robinson at 2,943.)

But when I asked the Yankees center fielder if the occasion of his 2,000th hit brought to mind the possibility of 3,000, Damon gave me an answer that might surprise you -- or not if you've watched him struggle somberly through this season.

"I don't know," he said. "I'll enjoy this, and then we'll see what happens. You're talking about six more productive years, maybe five if I finish this year strong. Five [more] very productive years with 180 hits or so.

"It's not out of the question, but right now I don't know if this is what I want to be doing when I'm 37, 38, 39 -- playing baseball. I don't know about that."

Who could have predicted that Damon, the chief Idiot of the frenetic Red Sox teams and the rabble rouser last season of the otherwise placid Yankees clubhouse, would lose his mojo suddenly at 33?

JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE WHINNIER THAN YOUR GRANDAD DOESN'T MAKE YOU POORER THAN HE (via John Resnick):

The Great American Savings Myth (GENE EPSTEIN, 5/28/07, Barron's)

IF YOU BELIEVE THE OFFICIAL NUMBERS, personal saving in the U.S. has collapsed: It fell in the late 1990s, tumbled all the way to a 70-year low by 2001, then cascaded off that cliff into minus territory in 2005 and has languished there ever since. It seems like an impending catastrophe. If Americans live beyond their means they can't accumulate the wealth to provide for their retirement, much less create a nest egg big enough to see them through rainy days.

But a look at that nest egg calls into question the whole personal savings story. Household net worth -- assets minus debt -- has never been higher, having grown rapidly even as the personal savings rate nose-dived (see chart below). How can we be getting richer without saving? It's more likely that the existing definition of personal savings will no longer do. In fact, a broader measure, far from running negative, reached a 50-year peak in 2004 and was still near it by 2006 (lower chart). [...]

PEOPLE OFTEN ASSOCIATE "SAVINGS" WITH THE quaint picture of a hard-working employee dutifully depositing part of a paycheck in a passbook bank account. Such venues are hardly extinct. Of the $55.6 trillion in household net worth by year-end 2006, $6.7 trillion was in checking accounts, time deposits and money-market funds. But in a modern economy, most saving is money put at risk, often with the hope of large returns and the chance of substantial losses.

YOU ONLY BUY THE AIRBUS... (via Kevin Whited):

Boeing spares no detail streamlining innards of new 787 (Elizabeth M. Gillespie, 5/29/07, AP)

Boeing Co. has snagged hundreds of orders for its new 787 with a sales pitch that leans heavily on the light, sturdy carbon-fiber composites replacing most of the aluminum on the plane to make it guzzle less fuel and cost less to maintain.

But Boeing says it has designed everything inside the plane, from air filters and electric generators to high-tech cabin lighting and in-flight-entertainment systems, with an equally steadfast eye toward cost-cutting and comfort.

The 787 will have much less wiring than the comparably sized 767 — about 61 miles (98 kilometers) compared to 91 (145) — which will make it cheaper and easier for airlines to repair while opening up space for bigger overhead bins and more elbow room for passengers.

Philippine Airlines Inc. doubled its firm order for Boeing Co. 777-300ER planes to four Monday as part of plans to boost U.S. flights.

Asia's oldest airline, and Philippines' largest carrier, decided to exercise options on two planes at a board meeting, spokesman Rolando Estabillo said in a phone interview in Manila. "We have to increase our capacity to the U.S. and other long-haul routes." [...]

The Philippine carrier, which is owned by the nation's second-richest man, Lucio Tan, plans to add services to the U.S., where it gets a fifth of its revenue, to capture sales from Singapore Airlines Ltd. and other Asian carriers.

EASILY SURPRISED:

U.S., Iran Open Dialogue On Iraq: Diplomats Call Meeting Positive; More Talks Likely (John Ward Anderson, 5/29/07, Washington Post)

Monday's four-hour meeting between diplomats from the United States and Iran yielded no breakthroughs, but comments by Crocker and Qomi suggested that the two countries shared surprisingly similar assessments of the security problems facing Iraq, if not the causes. Both men characterized the meeting as positive.

"The two sides dealt with the issues in a very frank and transparent and clear way," Qomi told reporters in a news conference at the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad. "The views of both sides were unified and identical on the question of the security issue."

Crocker said, "There was pretty good congruence right down the line -- support for a secure, stable, democratic, federal Iraq, in control of its own security, at peace with its neighbors." But then the two sides parted ways, he said.

"This is about actions, not just principles, and I laid out to the Iranians direct, specific concerns about their behavior in Iraq and their support for militias that are fighting Iraqi and coalition forces," he said. Crocker said he did not present a dossier of evidence, but he impressed upon his Iranian counterpart that the United States was "looking for results" and wanted "a change in Iranian behavior."

He said Qomi did not respond to the comments.

At his news conference, Qomi said allegations that Iran is supplying insurgents with weapons, munitions and training have been denied by Iran on numerous occasions and "don't prove anything."

In what may be one of the more significant ideas raised at the meeting, Qomi said that Iran had proposed the creation of a special security committee composed of Iranian, U.S. and Iraqi officials that could deal with all U.S. allegations about Iranian activities in Iraq. Such a committee could also offer a framework for future meetings, Qomi said.

Crocker said he would forward the proposal to Washington, adding, "My comment at the time was that [the proposed committee] sounded very much like the meeting we were sitting in.

"Their main focus was on the mechanisms, if you will, and principles, rather than the detailed security substance that we need to see improvement on," Crocker said.

Both sides said the talks were instigated by Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, and were held in his office. Maliki welcomed the ambassadors, who shook hands, and then escorted them into a conference room. The prime minister did not attend the meeting; Iraq was represented at the session by national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie.

SOMETIMES, NOTHING IS A REAL CRUEL HAND:

Do-Nothing Democrats - Quelle Surprise! (Ronald A. Cass, 5/29/07, Real Clear Politics)

The seeds were planted in the strategy for winning last fall. Democrats Chuck Schumer and Rahm Emanuel saw a road to getting back majorities in the Senate and House. Their strategy built on Republican negatives: public anger over scandals involving Mark Foley, Jack Abramoff, and Tom Delay, special interest earmarks, inflated spending, and a war that - judging from the daily drumbeat of bad news in mainstream media - was going badly without clear purpose or end-game.

Rather than push hard-core liberal themes that lost elections for a dozen years, Schumer and Emanuel followed a different path. Their plan was to find moderates or even conservatives to run as Democrats in potential swing districts, criticize the Bush Administration and Republicans, talk a lot about hope and civility and bipartisanship, and let the candidates say whatever their constituents wanted to hear. The strategy worked, giving Democrats majorities in both Houses of Congress.

Given the sources of the victory last fall, the story of this Congress has to be told in three parts: ethics, Iraq, and everything else. Ethics concerns included the misbehavior of individual congressmen as well as the systemic problems with earmarks and lobbyists.

From the very start, things got off on the wrong foot. Nancy Pelosi's first act as Speaker was to push anti-war activist and vocal critic of all things Republican, John Murtha, as her choice for House majority leader, despite serious issues respecting Murtha's ethics. The Democratic Caucus helped Ms. Pelosi out by rejecting her choice, but Pelosi has made Murtha her caucus' number one voice on war policy.

Another ethics problem for Democrats is William Jefferson of Louisiana, whose "frozen assets" consisted of $90,000 wrapped in foil in his freezer, marked bribe money demanded by Jefferson in exchange for helping a business secure government contracts. Jefferson was filmed taking the bribe, but his colleagues have not censured him, and the work of the House Ethics Committee on this matter stopped when Democrats took over last January.

Ms. Pelosi has been eager to make a show of raising ethical standards, but not at the expense of her colleagues' or her own ability to bring home the bacon. She tacked an earmark for $25 million for California strawberry farmers onto the emergency appropriations bill for US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bill, which the President just signed into law, ultimately was stripped of every significant Democrat initiative on Iraq but still became a wonderful Christmas tree decorated with provisions giving special favors - and $17 billion in extra spending - for the pet projects of dozens of Democrats. In addition to something for Ms. Pelosi, it has a $23 million earmark for Mr. Murtha's district. When criticized for that earmark, Mr. Murtha responded with a choice four-letter curse, and a threat to prevent his Republican critic from ever getting anything for his district. So much for civility and bipartisanship!

If the practice of earmarking hasn't ended, it has changed a bit - for the worse. House Appropriations Chair David Obey, Democrat of Wisconsin, says he has so many requests for earmarks to add to major legislation - over 30,000 in five months - that he has no choice but to tack them on after work on the bill is complete and won't reveal them until after both Houses vote. The other real change is that not all earmarks are put in writing - now Democrats who don't want anyone to know what they're doing can simply phone in the instructions on where to send the money (a practice Washington insiders now call "phone-marking"), as Harry Reid did in a call to the Energy Department.

Far from draining the swamp, Democrats have been wallowing in it.

FLECK TUNE:

OUTLASTED ANOTHER ONE:

Sheehan quits as face of US anti-war fight (Dan Glaister, May 29, 2007, The Guardian)

Cindy Sheehan, whose soldier son was killed in Iraq three years ago, said yesterday she was stepping down from her role as the figurehead of the US campaign against the war.

"This is my resignation letter as the 'face' of the American anti-war movement," she wrote in a sometimes bitter diary entry on the website Daily Kos. "I am going to take whatever I have left, and go home. I am going to go home and be a mother to my surviving children, and try to regain some of what I have lost."

ARMS AND AGE, NOT ATTITUDE:

Yankees hold hour-long meeting before Monday night's game in Toronto (CBS SportsLine.com, May 28, 2007)

His team stuck in a rut, manager Joe Torre wanted to talk to the New York Yankees.

For an hour.

Sensing an attitude problem on his struggling team, Torre held a lengthy meeting before Monday night's game in Toronto. The session ran so long the Yankees were nearly a half-hour late taking the field for stretching and batting practice.

"I've seen some tentativeness," Torre said. "If there's a word to characterize this whole thing, it's 'frustration."'

EV...:

Murtha sent earmark letter five weeks after deadline (Susan Crabtree, May 22, 2007, The Hill)

Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) submitted an earmark certification letter for the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) May 1, more than five weeks after the Intelligence Committee’s deadline and the day before the panel marked up its authorization bill, according to copies of the letter and the notice of the deadline sent to the entire committee.

Murtha addressed the letter only to Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas), not Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the panel’s ranking member. Hoekstra has said he was not given a copy—an apparent violation of House rules. All earmarks must be disclosed in writing to both the chairman and ranking member.

THERE IS NO IRAQ:

Iraqi Kurdish region to take charge of own security (AFP, 5/28/07)

Iraqi Kurdistan's autonomous government will take charge of security in its mountainous northern region this week in a transfer of command from the US-led coalition, officials said.

At a ceremony Wednesday in the regional capital Arbil the commanders of the peshmerga - former anti-Baghdad guerrillas and now staunch US allies - will be handed responsibility for three northern provinces.

"This week, the responsibility for security in the Kurdistan region will be officially transferred from multinational forces to the peshmerga affiliated with the regional government," said Jabar Yawar, a Kurdish military spokesman.

IF IT WEREN'T FOR THEIR RACIST TACTICS HE'D BE GOVERNOR NOW:

Name game can have racial tinge: Foes ignore Jindal's chosen nickname (Bill Walsh, 5/28/07, New Orleans Times Picayune)

Mention the name "Bobby" in Louisiana political circles these days and most everyone will assume you are talking about Bobby Jindal, the popular second-term congressman now running at the top of the polls for governor.

But some Democrats would like to remind voters that Bobby Jindal has another name: Piyush.

In news releases, interviews and small talk, they frequently refer to Jindal by his Indian, given first name. Last week, "Piyush" popped out of the mouth of former Sen. John Breaux, D-La., who briefly considered running for governor.

EVERYBODY WANTS TO KILL SOMEBODY:

Amnesty in hot water on abortion (Barney Zwartz, May 28, 2007, The Age)

AMNESTY International is facing upheaval and mass resignations after it decided last month to advocate that abortion be decriminalised worldwide.

Many Christians, especially Catholics, are expected to resign and may establish an alternative human rights organisation.

The Australian Catholic Bishops' Conference is considering its response, but a senior Catholic said yesterday he thought "a parting of the ways" was inevitable. Amnesty estimates that 500 Catholic schools in Australia have member groups, as do other Christian schools.

UBERTITLES:

The director Timur Bekmambetov turns film subtitling into an art (Alice Rawsthorn, May 27, 2007, International Herald Tribune)

There is nothing conventional about the subtitles in Timur Bekmambetov's movie, "Dnevnoy dozor" (Day Watch), which will introduce American schlock-horror-chopper movie fans to the screaming vampire, shape-shifting lover and other equally implausible characters, after opening in the United States on Friday. (The film opened last year in Russia and will open in many European countries in the autumn.) [...]

We live at a time when most things are neurotically over-designed. We can all think of examples. Over-styled cars. Overcomplicated cellphones. "Come-in-Cape-Canaveral" espresso machines. I could continue, but it's too depressing. Over-design is so rife that it is rare for any area of contemporary life to escape it (and rarer still if it would actually benefit from more design attention) but one example is the subtitling of foreign language films.

Subtitles are almost always badly designed. Illegible typefaces drift on- and off-screen at the wrong moments, lurking so low that the bottoms of the letters are chopped off, and obstructing the audience's view of gripping twists in the plot, or especially beautiful scenes. It doesn't seem to matter how good - or bad - the film is, the size of its budget, the quality of the cinematography, sets, costumes or titles, because the subtitles are still dire. Every other area of movie aesthetics has a proud design history, except subtitling.

"It's not exactly an after-thought, but people tend to do it expediently," said Stuart Comer, curator of film at Tate Modern museum in London. "Subtitling often takes place after the film is completed. It isn't necessarily done by the director, and there is less quality control. That's why it can seem thoughtless."

In fairness to filmmakers, the traditional method of making subtitles wasn't exactly conducive to creativity. After coating each frame of film in paraffin wax, the words of the subtitle were stamped on in a zinc strip. The film was then bathed in bleach, which stripped off everything that wasn't protected by the wax, namely the subtitles. It was an unreliable process that often resulted in the subtitles being out of synch with the narrative, and in spelling mistakes.

Digital technology has since made the process simpler and more flexible, but filmmakers have been slow to take advantage. In the unlikely event that someone compliments a movie's subtitles, it is likelier to be because of their literary qualities, than the design; except for Timur Bekmambetov's films.

WELL WE KNOW WHERE THE BUCH DOESN'T STOP...FOR LONG...:

SEA DOGS SWEEP PHILLIES -- BUCHHOLZ ROLLS IN 4-1 WIN (SeaDogs.com, 5/28/07)

Clay Buchholz fanned eight over 5.2 shutout innings, becoming the first Sea Dog pitcher with at least seven strikeouts in eight straight starts, as the Portland Sea Dogs completed a four-game sweep of the Reading Phillies with a 4-1 win before 7,217 fans at Hadlock Field. The win was Portland's 500th at Hadlock Field in franchise history.

Buchholz (2-1) earned his second Double-A win, allowing only two singles and three walks with his eight strikeouts. The Phillies did not put a runner past second base against the right-hander and advanced only two runners past second base on the afternoon. Buchholz broke Josh Beckett's record of consecutive 7-strikeout games and moved into the Eastern League lead with 69 strikeouts on the season.

THE TASK OF SEVEN GENERATIONS...SO FAR:

President Bush Commemorates Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery (George W. Bush, 5/28/07, Arlington National Cemetary)

Thank you, all. Secretary England, members of the Cabinet, General Pace, members of Congress, members of the United States military, veterans, families of the fallen, our fellow citizens: Welcome.

Today we honor the warriors who fought our nation's enemies, defended the cause of liberty, and gave their lives in the cause of freedom. We offer our love and our heartfelt compassion to the families who mourn them. We pray that our country may always prove worthy of the sacrifices they made.

For seven generations, we have carried our fallen to these fields. Here rest some 360,000 Americans who died fighting to preserve the Union and end slavery. Here rest some 500,000 Americans who perished in two world wars to conquer tyrannies and build free nations from their ruins. Here rest some 90,000 Americans who gave their lives to confront Communist aggression in places such as Korea and Vietnam.

Many names here are known: the 18-year-old Union soldier named Arthur MacArthur, who grabbed a falling flag and carried it up Missionary Ridge; the Tuskegee Airmen who defended America abroad and challenged prejudice at home; the slain war hero and President who asked that we "assure the survival and success of liberty" and found his rest beneath an eternal flame. Still others here are remembered only by loving families. Some are known only to God.

Now this hallowed ground receives a new generation of heroes -- men and women who gave their lives in places such as Kabul and Kandahar, Baghdad and Ramadi. Like those who came before them, they did not want war -- but they answered the call when it came. They believed in something larger than themselves. They fought for our country, and our country unites to mourn them as one.

We remember Army Specialist Ross Andrew McGinniss. Ross was born on Flag Day in 1987. When he was in kindergarten, he said he wanted to grow up to be "an Army man." He enlisted at 17 -- the first day he was eligible. He deployed to Iraq. Last December, a grenade was thrown into his Humvee as Ross was patrolling the streets of Baghdad. The soldiers inside could not escape in time, so Ross leapt into the vehicle and covered the grenade with his own body. By sacrificing himself to save four other men, he earned a Silver Star -- and the eternal gratitude of the American people.

We remember Marine Sergeant Marc Golczynski of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Marc volunteered for a second tour of duty in Iraq. He knew the dangers his service would entail. Before he deployed, he wrote the following in an email to his family and friends: "Please don't feel bad for us. We are warriors, and as warriors have done before us we fight and sometimes die so our families do not have to." Marc left behind an eight-year-old son, Christian, who is with us today; he managed to be brave while he held his father's folded flag.

With us are other children and families mourning moms and dads and sons and daughters. Nothing said today will ease your pain. But each of you need to know that your country thanks you, and we embrace you, and we will never forget the terrible loss you have suffered. I hope you find comfort in knowing that your loved ones rest in a place even more peaceful than the fields that surround us here.

The greatest memorial to our fallen troops cannot be found in the words we say or the places we gather. The more lasting tribute is all around us -- a country where citizens have the right to worship as they want, to march for what they believe, and to say what they think. These freedoms came at great costs -- and they will survive only as long as there are those willing to step forward to defend them against determined enemies.

As before in our history, Americans find ourselves under attack and underestimated. Our enemies long for our retreat. They question our moral purpose. They doubt our strength of will. Yet even after five years of war, our finest citizens continue to answer our enemies with courage and confidence. Hundreds of thousands of patriots still raise their hands to serve their country; tens of thousands who have seen war on the battlefield volunteer to re-enlist. What an amazing country to produce such fine citizens.

Laura and I have met many of them; we've sat at the bedsides of the wounded. This morning, I met service members who received medals for distinguished service -- and found myself humbled by their grace and their grit. I had the honor of meeting with families of the fallen in the Oval Office, and was amazed by their strength and resolve and decent grace under pressure. We've heard of 174 Marines recently -- almost a quarter of a battalion -- who asked to have their enlistments extended. For these extensions, they would earn no promotion and no promise of a favored posting. They want to serve their nation. And as one of them put it this way: "I'm here so our sons don't have to come and fight here someday."

Those who serve are not fatalists or cynics. They know that one day this war will end -- as all wars do. Our duty is to ensure that its outcome justifies the sacrifices made by those who fought and died in it. From their deaths must come a world where the cruel dreams of tyrants and terrorists are frustrated and foiled -- where our nation is more secure from attack, and where the gift of liberty is secured for millions who have never known it.

This is our country's calling. It's our country's destiny. Americans set off on that voyage more than two centuries ago, confident that this future was within our reach -- even though the shore was distant, and even though the journey may be long. And through generations, our course has been secured by those who wear a uniform, secured by people who man their posts, and do their duty. They have helped us grow stronger with each new sunrise.

On this Day of Memory, we mourn brave citizens who laid their lives down for our freedom. They lived and died as Americans. May we always honor them. May we always embrace them. And may we always be faithful to who they were and what they fought for.

Thank you for having me. May God bless you and may God continue to bless our country. (Applause.)

LEAVING THE LEFT BEHIND:

The French Correction The principled new foreign minister shows how much France has changed of late. (Christopher Hitchens, May 28, 2007, Slate)

During the early debates over the Iraq war, one was constantly being challenged to contrast the "unilateralism" of the Bush administration with the more mature and "European" approach of Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schröder and Vladimir Putin, the gleesome threesome who (along with the Chinese dictatorship) protected Saddam Hussein at the United Nations. What a difference a couple of years has made. Tony Blair may be stepping down as prime minister of the United Kingdom, but for the first time in a very long time, the heads of state in Paris and Berlin are both "Atlanticist" in their outlook. One might add that Chirac quit the Élysée Palace looking and sounding like a stroke victim who had long ceased to have anything relevant to say and that Schröder disgraced the German Social Democrats by barely waiting to leave office before signing up as a lobbyist for a Russian-based energy cartel. And is it necessary to add that Putin has revived the worst traditions of Great Russian chauvinism, crushing all domestic opposition at home while bullying Ukraine, Georgia, and most recently Estonia, and flaunting his connection to the ultra-reactionary Russian Orthodox Church. What a crew they were and are! The fourth member of the anti-Bush coalition of the willful, the cold-eyed Chinese post-Stalinists, are still engaged in a blood-for-oil scandal whereby Beijing provides the sinews of war to the genocidal regime that cleanses Darfur, while paying to buy most of Sudan's petroleum.

The single best symbol of the change in France is the appointment of Bernard Kouchner to the post of foreign minister. Had the Socialist Party won the election, it is highly unlikely that such a distinguished socialist would ever have been allowed through the doors of the Quai d'Orsay. (Yes, comrades, history actually is dialectical and paradoxical.) In the present climate of the United States, a man like Kouchner would be regarded as a neoconservative. He was a prominent figure in the leftist rebellion of 1968, before breaking with some of his earlier illusions and opposing the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan—the true and original source of many of our woes in the Islamic world. The group he co-founded—Doctors Without Borders, or Médecins Sans Frontières—was a pioneer in the highly necessary proclamation that left politics should always be anti-totalitarian. (His former counterpart, Joschka Fischer of Germany, also took a version of this view before Schröder's smirking Realpolitik became too much, and too popular in Germany, for him to withstand.)

His principles led Kouchner to defend two oppressed Muslim peoples—those of Yugoslavia and Iraqi Kurdistan—who were faced with extermination at the hands of two parties daring to call themselves socialist. The Serbian Socialist Party of Slobodan Milosevic and the Arab Baath Socialist Party of Saddam Hussein are at last receding into history, leaving behind them a legacy of utter stagnation, hysterical aggression, and mass graves. I personally find it satisfying that a French socialist was identified with both these victories.

WHAT BO KNEW (via Brad S.):

The legend of Bo: Bo Jackson didn’t believe the hype, saying he was just another guy. But really, he was superhuman. (JOE POSNANSKI, May. 26, 2007, Kansas City Star)

Bo said he was just another guy. He wasn’t some sort of folk hero, like John Henry or Pecos Bill. No, he hurt like other players. He made mistakes like other players. He struck out a lot. He wasn’t forged out of steel, and he couldn’t outrun locomotives, and he couldn’t turn back time by flying around the world and reversing the rotation of the earth.

“I’m just another player, you know?” he said.

Then the game began, Royals vs. Yankees at Yankee Stadium.

First time up, Bo hit a 412-foot homer to center field.

Second time up, Bo smashed a 464-foot opposite-field home run. Longtime Yankees fans said that ball landed in a far-off place where only home runs by Ruth, Gehrig and Mantle from the left side ever reached.

“Colossal,” teammate George Brett would say. “I had to stop and watch.”

Third time up, Yankees manager Stump Merrill walked out to the mound to ask pitcher Andy Hawkins how he intended to get Bo out this time.

“I’ll pitch it outside,” Hawkins said.

“It better be way outside,” Merrill replied.

Hawkins threw it way outside. Jackson poked the ball over the right-field fence for his third homer. The New York crowd went bananas.

Bo never got a fourth time up that day. Instead, Bo hurt his shoulder while diving and almost making one of the great catches in baseball history. New Yorkers stood and cheered Bo as he walked off the field. It’s possible that no opposing player ever heard those sorts of cheers at Yankee Stadium.

“You know what?” Royals Hall of Famer Frank White would say almost 20 years later. “I really did play baseball with Superman.”

SMALL BEANS BY THE TYPICAL STANDARDS OF THE THE LEFT'S HEROES:

Chirac and the ‘secret £30m account in Japan’ (Matthew Campbell, 5/27/07, Times of London)

ON HOLIDAY last week, Jacques Chirac, the former French leader, took his usual suite at La Gazelle d’Or, a luxury hotel in Morocco. He may consider extending his restful sojourn under the palms indefinitely.

It has emerged that besides being questioned about an illegal fundraising scandal when his immunity from prosecution expires on June 17, Chirac will also face a grilling over £30m he allegedly kept in a secret Japanese bank account.

He had previously denied the existence of any account but judges investigating a separate scandal recently stumbled across statements showing deposits being made in his name over several years.

ANTI-TERRORISM IS THE SKIRT...:

Study: Immigration agencies talk big on anti-terrorism (MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN, 5/28/07, The Associated Press)

U.S. immigration agencies say anti-terrorism is their primary mission, but they tried to deport only 12 people on terrorism-related charges from 2004 through 2006, according to a private research study released Sunday. [...]

The overwhelming majority of deportation cases – 86.5 percent – were based on traditional immigration violations such as sneaking past border inspections, not having a valid visa or overstaying a student visa, TRAC said.

BECAUSE YOUR DIET SHOULD REFLECT YOUR CULTURE:

Grilled Beef Fajitas (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)

5 pounds Western griller or shoulder London broil, 3/4-inch thick

4 teaspoons salt

2 1/4 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper

1 1/2 cups lime juice

3 tablespoons minced garlic

3/4 cup minced yellow onion

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 red bell peppers, seeded and cut into thin strips

2 green bell peppers, seeded and cut into thin strips

2 yellow bell peppers, seeded and cut into thin strips

1/2 red onion, sliced

16 corn or flour tortillas, 6 inches in diameter

Trim the meat to remove any visible fat. In a medium bowl, combine the salt, pepper, lime juice, garlic and minced onion. Transfer to a baking dish. Add the beef, cover and refrigerate. Marinate for at least 2 hours and up to 24 hours.

When ready to cook, preheat a gas grill to high. If you are using a charcoal grill, build a fire and let it burn down until the coals are glowing red with a light coating of white ash. Spread the coals evenly. Clean the cooking grate.

Grill the steaks for 7 to 8 minutes per side for medium done. Remove the steaks from the grill and allow them to cool, about 5 minutes. Cut the steaks into 1/4-inch-thick strips, being sure to cut across the grain, and on a slight bias. Set aside.

In a large saute pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Saute the peppers and onions for 5 to 7 minutes, or until they just begin to soften. Add the steak and cook until just heated through, about 2 to 3 minutes.

Meanwhile, grill or toast the tortillas until softened and warm, about 20 seconds per side.

Serve the steak mixture with the tortillas and a variety of toppings, such as cheese, sour cream, guacamole or salsa.

HARDLY NEWS THAT HE CAN'T DISCIPLINE HIMSELF:

RUDY'S DÉJÀ VU FEELING: REPEATS '89 ERRORS (CARL CAMPANILE and MAGGIE HABERMAN, May 28, 2007, NY Post)

Rudy Giuliani's White House campaign has been going retro - getting tangled in issues that haunted his first-ever political run, for City Hall, in 1989, political observers say.

Politicians try to learn from past missteps, but Giuliani has been reliving some of his - from his stumbles over the abortion issue to controversies about his business clientele.

"He's maximized the discussion of [his vulnerable points], and that's not smart," said GOP consultant Nelson Warfield, the spokesman for Giuliani's 1989 Republican primary rival, Ronald Lauder.

"There's something missing when it comes to the discipline required to stay on his message. He doesn't seem to have the campaign gene."

BUT WE ROMANTICIZE OUR OWN TERRORISTS (via Jim Yates):

The Real Jack Sparrow: He would have eaten Johnny Depp for breakfast (CHRISTOPHER HUDSON, 26th May 2007, Daily Mail)

His name was Bartholomew Roberts. The most successful raider in the history of piracy, he took prisoner an astounding 470 vessels, and so renowned was his ferocity that many of those ships were surrendered to him without a fight.

Black Bart was the nickname he was given - and not only because of his black locks and dark eyes. When this swashbuckling Welsh buccaneer had to fight for his prizes, he was merciless.

In 1720, the crew of a 42-gun Dutch vessel anchored off Dominica in the Caribbean dared to resist. In the close-quarters cannonade which followed, several of his crew were cut down. Even more were slaughtered in the hand-to-hand fighting as Black Bart’s pirates swarmed over the vessel.

Roberts ordered an exemplary revenge. Those Dutchmen who had not been killed in the fighting were hung from the yardarm, or stripped of their shirts and lashed at the masthead until they lost consciousness in the blistering sun, then mutilated.

The Dutch captain’s ears were cut off and presented to him as a reminder to listen harder when Roberts told him what to do. The torture and butchery did not end until the last Dutchman had been dragged out and carved up in similar fashion.

Roberts renamed the ship the Royal Fortune, and sailed it with his great black flag at the helm, which showed Black Bart standing, with cutlass uplifted, on two skulls, representing his dominance over the islands of Barbados and Martinique.

He was one of the many sailors who took to freebooting after his own ship had been captured by pirates.

Born in Wales, 325 years ago this month, he went to sea in 1695 at the age of 13.

IT'S HIS JOB:

Kerry said to weigh politics in 2002 vote (Michael Kranish, May 28, 2007, Boston Globe)

[Bob] Shrum, who was brought into the campaign to help provide Kerry with a strategic overview, provides a vivid de scription about the events leading up to Kerry's decision to vote for the war.

He writes that Kerry telephoned him on the eve of the Oct. 11, 2002, vote. Shrum said Kerry was skeptical of Bush's claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that he "didn't trust Bush to give the diplomatic route a real chance." Nonetheless, Kerry asked Shrum whether he would "be a viable general election candidate if he was in the small minority of senators who voted no."

Shrum wrote that he told Kerry it was "impossible to predict the political fallout if we went to war." But he wrote that Jim Jordan, Kerry's former Senate press secretary and future campaign manager, "was insisting that he had to vote with Bush."

Shrum wrote that Jordan had "hammered" Kerry with a warning: "Go ahead and vote against it if you want, but you'll never be president of the United States." Kerry voted for the war resolution and Jordan became Kerry's campaign manager three months later.

JUST ANOTHER BOTCHED VICTORY:

His was the 'war to end all wars': Frank Buckles, 106, is one of three living U.S. veterans of World War I. He will be the toast of a capital parade (Aamer Madhani, May 28, 2007, Chicago Tribune)

The life of Frank Buckles in some ways tracks a timeline in the rise of America as a superpower. World War I brought about the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and the United States has been ascendant since. He has been witness to it all — and is one of very few alive to tell about it.

At 106, Buckles is thought to be one of three living American veterans of World War I, the Department of Veterans Affairs says.

Buckles' voice is raspy, he has difficulty walking and he needs help getting dressed each morning. But his mind is keen and the memories of his two years in Europe during the war remain clear.

Today, Buckles will serve as a marshal in the National Memorial Day Parade in Washington, sharing the starring role with actor Gary Sinise.

Buckles said he didn't mind all the attention. It's a salute to his generation, and he just happens to be the only one of his contemporaries available to take a bow. But he said he was a bit concerned over whether he was the right guy for the parade.

"What are you supposed to do when you lead a parade?" he asked.

The other living World War I veterans are Harry Landis, a 107-year-old in Sun City Center, Fla., and Russell Coffey, a 108-year-old in North Baltimore, Ohio.

After the last Navy veteran and the last American woman to serve in World War I died days apart in March, the Department of Veterans Affairs made a public appeal to identify additional veterans of the war besides Buckles, Landis and Coffey. There were no responses.

Although World War I marked the decline of the British Empire and led to the remapping of the Middle East, it has largely become the forgotten war of American history, said Eli Paul, director of the newly opened National World War I Museum in Kansas City, Mo.

Paul said the story of "the war to end all wars" had been eclipsed by the "Greatest Generation" of Americans who fought in World War II.

"These World War I veterans raised a generation that did them one better," said Paul, who added that museum visitors regularly commented that they hadn't realize the scope or importance of the war. "They got overshadowed in this country on Dec. 7, 1941, and never got out of the shadow."

NEGOTIATING THEIR SURRENDER:

Changes to immigration bill possible: Republican senators on opposite sides say they are ready to negotiate (Molly Hennessy-Fiske, May 28, 2007, LA Times)

Leading Republican senators on both sides of the immigration debate said Sunday that they would work together to modify the bipartisan legislation being considered in the Senate.

Initially, some conservative Republicans condemned what has been dubbed the "grand bargain" on immigration that emerged this month. The legislation would increase border security and workplace enforcement of immigration laws, long favored by Republicans, in exchange for delivering on the Democrats' promise to offer legal status to an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants and to create guest worker programs.

The compromise, backed by President Bush, won support from conservative Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) but was criticized by another GOP conservative from a border state, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas.

Last week, Bush met with Hutchison and several other Republican opponents at the White House. On Sunday, Hutchison said she considered the legislation "better than the status quo."

BILL WHO?:

John Edwards' populism is a risky bet: The presidential candidate takes a forceful tone on poverty that appeals to the Democratic base but might alienate others (Janet Hook, May 28, 2007, LA Times)

For more than two years, Edwards has been methodically building his campaign around an issue long shunned by leading Democratic candidates: the plight of the poor and working class. He has backed up his public appearances with unusually detailed proposals to provide universal healthcare, raise taxes on the rich and eliminate poverty over the next 30 years.

"This is a huge moral issue facing the country," Edwards said in a telephone interview as he headed into a Memorial Day weekend campaign swing through Iowa. "I don't see in polls that it is a driving issue [for voters], but it is for me."

In adopting poverty and low-wage work as his themes, Edwards has struck a far more combative, populist tone than in his 2004 presidential campaign. And that has helped him elbow into the top tier of a field dominated by better-financed candidates Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) — and has even boosted him to a lead in polls in the key early-voting state of Iowa.

But Edwards' 2008 strategy carries risks, in part because it speaks most directly to a slice of the electorate that has notably little political clout. Perhaps the last major presidential candidate to make fighting poverty a central theme was Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-N.Y.) in 1968, before his assassination that June. Some analysts warn that an agenda that might suggest "class warfare" risks alienating middle-class swing voters and moderate Democrats who do not want to revive criticisms that theirs is the party of the poor.

CAKEWALK INTO TOWN

Dwight D. Eisenhower: Order of the Day (June 6, 1944)

SOONER OR LATER WE'LL LEARN SOMETHING OUR FOREFATHERS DIDN'T KNOW:

How brewing your tea for five minutes can make you live longer (NICK MCDERMOTT, 28th May 2007, Daily Mail)

The traditionalists say that the best cuppa is made by giving tea leaves a lengthy soak in a pot.

And now scientists have been forced to agree.

Research suggests that tea left to steep for five minutes releases more health-giving properties than tea bags briefly dipped in a mug of hot water.

The old-fashioned brew has a higher concentration of antioxidants - disease-fighting molecules which help to neutralise the free radicals which damage cells and play a role in everything from ageing to cancer.

The antioxidants reach their peak after five minutes' brewing. It does not matter whether the tea is loose or in bags - so a tea bag left in a mug of hot water for five minutes would have the same beneficial effect.

AMERICAN FOR STARVE:

365 Days #148 - Roger Hallmark - A Message to Khomeini / Maharishi (mp3s) (John Mitchell, WFMU Beware the Blog)

Just classic.

HAPPINESS IS EVERYONE IN YOUR REARVIEW MIRROR:

Sweep in heart of Texas: Red Sox get away with one (Amalie Benjamin, May 28, 2007, Boston Globe)

Waiting beside Coco Crisp's locker in the visiting clubhouse was a crush of reporters, anxious to hear Crisp's thoughts on his running, diving, game-saving catch to end the seventh inning. Crisp greeted them, smiled at the notion that their presence signaled a good day at the ballpark, and noted his preference for a good day and no questions to answer over a good day and a pack of media.

So, after slowly dressing, slowly donning his jewelry, and slowly packing his No. 10 duffel bag, Crisp politely declined to speak with those assembled, saying, "Thank you, though."

Quite a departure from the speed he used to recover from a bad initial move on a gap shot to right center by Frank Catalanotto with two on in the seventh, but the catch spurred on the Sox' efforts to retake the lead and claim a 6-5 series-sweeping win yesterday in front of 40,323. [...]

"The key was Coco's play there," said Joel Pineiro, the beneficiary of the eighth-inning comeback, as he took the win in relief of starter Julian Tavarez, who gave one of his best performances of the season. "He picked me up. He picked everybody up. That kind of gave us the momentum when we came back then, and scored those runs."

MORE:
MUST SEE TV (SeaDogs.com)

The Sea Dogs look for the four-game sweep on Memorial Day with Clay Buchholz (1-1) facing Heath Totten (2-4) at 1:05 p.m. The game can also be seen live throughout New England on NESN with Eric Frede and the Voice of the Sea Dogs Mike Antonellis with the call.

VEHICULAR:

A Foreign Policy for America (Roger Kimball, 5/28/07, Real Clear Politics)

A friend recently passed along a 5000-word essay by Senator Barry Goldwater called "A Foreign Policy for America." This remarkable work, which appeared in March, 1961 in National Review, is instructive on many levels. I was impressed not only by the substance of the essay--its sober appreciation of the realities of human interplay on the stage of foreign affairs--but also by its tone. The word is out of fashion, I know, but no other term will do: Senator Goldwater's essay exhibits a manly tone, his sober insights are expressed in a sober, virile manner. This is a serious man writing seriously about a most serious subject.

You might think that an essay written in 1961 would, in mid-2007, be little more than an historical curiosity, a sepia-tinged memento from a bygone era. After all, Goldwater was writing at the height of the Cold War: John F. Kennedy had only recently taken office, most people hadn't even heard of Vietnam, Ronald Reagan was a B-list movie actor, Islam was a curiosity, not a threat, and the new wall separating East from West Berlin seemed as impermeable as the Soviet Union itself.

How different the world looks today! As different, I suppose, as the world in 1961 seemed in comparison with the world of 1914--forty six years encompasses a deal of change. But the curious thing about Senator Goldwater's reflection is not how dated but how pertinent it seems. Substitute the phrase "radical Islam" for "Communist," make allowances for a few other anachronisms, and "A Foreign Policy for America" could as well have been written today as in 1961. This is partly because of the clear-eyed view of human nature that informs the essay. The "ultimate objective" of American foreign policy, Goldwater argues, is to foster the largest measure possible of peace, freedom, and economic prosperity around the world, but especially in the United State. The qualification "largest possible measure" is critical, he explains, "because any person who supposes that these conditions can be universally and perfectly achieved--ever--reckons without the inherent imperfectability of himself and his fellow human beings, and is therefore a dangerous man to have around."

That last phrase is a good indication of Goldwater's anthropological maturity--and his political wisdom.

NOT THE POSTER BOY THE NFL IS LOOKING FOR:

Source: Vick 'one of the heavyweights' in dog fighting (Kelly Naqi, 5/28/07, ESPN.com)

Our confidential source said he's been involved in dog fighting for more than 30 years. He has trained and fought -- by his estimation -- about 2,000 pit bulls and was poised to tell "Outside the Lines" about the time in 2000 when his dog squared off against a dog owned by someone he referred to as one of the "heavyweights" of the dog fighting world: Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick.

"He's a pit bull fighter," the source said of Vick. "He's one of the ones that they call 'the big boys': that's who bets a large dollar. And they have the money to bet large money. As I'm talking about large money -- $30,000 to $40,000 -- even higher. He's one of the heavyweights."

On April 25, authorities raided a house in Surry County, Va., owned by Vick and reportedly found -- among other things -- 66 dogs (most of which were pit bulls), a dog-fighting pit, bloodstained carpets and equipment commonly associated with dog fighting. Vick was not at the scene and denied knowledge of dog fighting at the property. To this point, no charges have been filed against him. But questions about Vick and his possible connection to dog fighting linger.

This source -- who required anonymity as a condition of our interview -- has helped law enforcement by supplying information on dog fights that has led to dozens of felony arrests.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: SPARE A THOUGHT:

Paying his respects: At Mass. National Cemetery, groundsman serves his countrymen (Thomas Caywood, May 29, 2006, Boston Herald)

Morris Monette Jr. of Falmouth never stormed a beach or waded through a rice paddy under fire.

But the 38-year-old Massachusetts National Cemetery groundskeeper knows about the sacrifice of veterans. He’s dug graves for thousands of American heroes in his eight years tending the leafy Bourne burial ground.

Monette has stood shivering on raw January mornings sawing grave sites out of the frozen earth with a trenching machine. He’s planted flowerbeds to beautify the final resting place of more than 40,000 veterans and their spouses.

“My father, all my uncles were in the service,” Monette said yesterday as he directed Memorial Day traffic through the winding roads of the 749-acre cemetery.

Friends ask how he can work with a sea of the dead under his feet. He says that digging and filling graves day after day has mostly anesthetized him to the melancholy wafting over the grassy meadows.

Even so, Monette admits that burying Marine Lance Cpl. Michael Ford of New Bedford in late April got to him. “He was only 19. He was never married or had any kids. That bothered me,” he said.

Ford was killed by a roadside bomb after only a month in Iraq’s bloody Al Anbar province.

Marine Lance Cpl. Patrick Gallagher of Fairhaven, 27, also was buried at the Bourne cemetery last month. He was killed in a truck rollover in Iraq.

“I try not to think about it too much,” Monette said.

(Originally posted: 5/29/06)

FROM THE ARCHIVES: OF EVER HONORED MEMORY (via Mike Daley)

Teen's efforts ID vets' graves (Ralph Montaño, May 29, 2004, Sacramento Bee)

Two years ago, Eagle Scout Samuel Nassie of Paradise spent most of Memorial Day alone in a cemetery raising flags on veterans' graves.

Two other Scouts helped but said they had to leave early, Nassie recalled. He refused to leave the task unfinished. Sweat poured off his body as he wandered the grassy grounds to post the last of about 1,600 flags. He discovered that many graves at the Paradise Cemetery could not be identified using existing maps.

"The veterans deserved to be honored for what they did," said Nassie, now 16. "I knew there had to be a better way."

That day, Nassie began a quest of honoring those who served the nation during war and are buried in Paradise. He would spend hundreds of hours locating and documenting veterans scattered across 23 acres.

Because of Nassie's efforts, almost 2,000 flags will fly in the cemetery this weekend. About two dozen local Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts will begin placing flags today using a massive two-volume guide that Nassie organized.

"It has been the best education for him," said Samuel Nassie's mother, Linda. "He sat down recently with some survivors of the Bataan Death March (of World War II), and a few told him their stories. It has been a real journey."

MORE (via Jim Siegel)
Subject: Memorial Day

Words don't see to come as easy for me as they do for others. Might explain why I went Infantry and not Military Intelligence.

I just got home and my arm is a little stiff and my back a bit sore. 40 plus doesn't bounce back like a 20 year old.

I spent two hours or more today placing flags on graves in the cemetery. 12 inches, center, push down, two steps right, repeat, flag after flag. It's hot here, getting up to 90 today, not much when you compare to 115 in Iraq. Row after row

It really hits home. The first hour I was in the Phoebus cemetery. Veterans of the Spanish American War, WWII, Vietnam. Row after row.

Lots of volunteers, but never too many. The VFW, the Boy Scouts, a bus from

the local school, and of course Soldiers. Some by themselves, some in uniform, some with their children. Row after row.

Looks like we are about done. No, sir, we still have the Hampton side, that's another 30,000 graves, only 23,000 over here. Row after row.

Hampton is half done by the time I arrive. Grade school children, middle school and the Cub Scouts have started already. They place a flag and move on. Row after row.

The children have forgotten to mark the backsides of the stones so we head out. The backside contains the names of the widows and the children; they too get a flag. Row after row.

Our beloved son CJ, we will miss you so much. Lou Ann, wife. Susan, daughter. Infant son. Simple words, simple stones. Row after row.

Christians, Jews and a Buddhist, side by side, under the shade of a tree. Fresh flowers mark a grave from yesterday. The backhoe beeps as they start to dig one for tomorrow. Row after row.

The Sergeant notices some of the children have placed the flags 6 inches from the stones. He bends over, pulls it up, and starts down the row, moving each flag to the required distance. Row after row.

Memorial Day is special, every day, every year, but even more so when we have troops in combat. I hope to help do this every year. But I pray we don't add any more rows.

May God bless and keep our troops safe from harm.

Michael S. McGurk
Lieutenant Colonel, Infantry
Fort Monroe, VA

Remarks from Colin Powell, US Secretary of State (World Economic Forum, On 26 January 2003, US Secretary of State Colin Powell (profile) spoke at the Annual Meeting 2003 in the session Dialogue with the US Secretary of State.)

We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last hundred years and we’ve done this as recently as the last year in Afghanistan and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in, and otherwise we have returned home to seek our own, you know, to seek our own lives in peace, to live our own lives in peace. But there comes a time when soft power or talking with evil will not work where, unfortunately, hard power is the only thing that works.

[Originally posted: 5/31/04]

FROM THE ARCHIVES: OUR HONORED DEAD :

Let us take our text today from the words and deeds of T.J. Jackson, Gen., C.S.A. In his final delirium, Jackson was still coming to Lee's aid. ("Order A.P. Hill to prepare for action! Pass the infantry to the front rapidly! Tell Major Hawks...") Then he paused, and said his last. The words capture the right spirit for this quiet Memorial Day morning in what, Glory Be, turned out to be his country and all of ours after all: Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.

Have a good holiday, Gentle Reader, a restful holiday, and return from the land of memory strengthened and renewed. Nations need rest and remembrance, too, because the battles are far from over.

Ode to the Confederate Dead (Allen Tate 1899-1979)

Row after row with strict impunity
The headstones yield their names to the element,
The wind whirrs without recollection;
In the riven troughs the splayed leaves
Pile up, of nature the casual sacrament
To the seasonal eternity of death;
Then driven by the fierce scrutiny
Of heaven to their election in the vast breath,
They sough the rumour of mortality.

Autumn is desolation in the plot
Of a thousand acres where these memories grow
From the inexhaustible bodies that are not
Dead, but feed the grass row after rich row.
Think of the autumns that have come and gone!-
Ambitious November with the humors of the year,
With a particular zeal for every slab,
Staining the uncomfortable angels that rot
On the slabs, a wing chipped here, an arm there:
The brute curiosity of an angel's stare

Turns you, like them, to stone,
Transforms the heaving air
Till plunged to a heavier world below
You shift your sea-space blindly
Heaving, turning like the blind crab.

Dazed by the wind, only the wind
The leaves flying, plunge

You know who have waited by the wall
The twilight certainty of an animal,
Those midnight restitutions of the blood
You know-the immitigable pines, the smoky frieze
Of the sky, the sudden call: you know the rage,
The cold pool left by the mounting flood,
Of muted Zeno and Parmenides.
You who have waited for the angry resolution
Of those desires that should be yours tomorrow,
You know the unimportant shrift of death
And praise the vision
And praise the arrogant circumstance
Of those who fall
Rank upon rank, hurried beyond decision-
Here by the sagging gate, stopped by the wall.

Seeing, seeing only the leaves
Flying, plunge and expire

Turn your eyes to the immoderate past,
Turn to the inscrutable infantry rising
Demons out of the earth-they will not last.
Stonewall, Stonewall, and the sunken fields of hemp,
Shiloh, Antietam, Malvern Hill, Bull Run.
Lost in that orient of the thick-and-fast
You will curse the setting sun.

Cursing only the leaves crying
Like an old man in a storm

You hear the shout, the crazy hemlocks point
With troubled fingers to the silence which
Smothers you, a mummy, in time.

The hound bitch
Toothless and dying, in a musty cellar
Hears the wind only.

Now that the salt of their blood
Stiffens the saltier oblivion of the sea,
Seals the malignant purity of the flood,

What shall we who count our days and bow
Our heads with a commemorial woe
In the ribboned coats of grim felicity,
What shall we say of the bones, unclean,
Whose verdurous anonymity will grow?
The ragged arms, the ragged heads and eyes
Lost in these acres of the insane green?
The gray lean spiders come, they come and go;
In a tangle of willows without light
The singular screech-owl's tight
Invisible lyric seeds the mind
With the furious murmur of their chivalry.

We shall say only the leaves
Flying, plunge and expire

We shall say only the leaves whispering
In the improbable mist of nightfall
That flies on multiple wing;
Night is the beginning and the end
And in between the ends of distraction
Waits mute speculation, the patient curse
That stones the eyes, or like the jaguar leaps
For his own image in a jungle pool, his victim.

What shall we say who have knowledge
Carried to the heart? Shall we take the act
To the grave? Shall we, more hopeful, set up the
grave
In the house? The ravenous grave?

Leave now
The shut gate and the decomposing wall-
The gentle serpent, green in the mulberry bush,
Riots with his tongue through the hush-
Sentinel of the grave who counts us all!

FROM THE ARCHIVES: GOD SENT:

Remarks by the President at National World War II Memorial Dedication (National World War II Memorial, Washington, D.C.)

In the history books, the Second World War can appear as a series of crises and conflicts, following an inevitable course -- from Pearl Harbor to the Coast of Normandy to the deck of the Missouri. Yet, on the day the war began, and on many hard days that followed, the outcome was far from certain.

There was a time, in the years before the war, when many earnest and educated people believed that democracy was finished. Men who considered themselves learned and civilized came to believe that free institutions must give way to the severe doctrines and stern discipline of a regimented society. Ideas first whispered in the secret councils of a remote empire, or shouted in the beer halls of Munich, became mass movements. And those movements became armies. And those armies moved mercilessly forward -- until the world saw Hitler strutting in Paris, and U.S. Navy ships burning in their own port. Across the world, from a hiding place in Holland to prison camps of Luzon, the captives awaited their liberators.

Those liberators would come, but the enterprise would require the commitment and effort of our entire nation. As World War II began, after a decade of economic depression, the United States was not a rich country. Far from being a great power, we had only the 17th largest army in the world. To fight and win on two fronts, Americans had to work and save and ration and sacrifice as never before. War production plants operated shifts around the clock. Across the country, families planted victory gardens -- 20 million of them, producing 40 percent of the nation's vegetables in backyards and on rooftops. Two out of every three citizens put money into war bonds. As Colonel Oveta Culp Hobby said, "This was a people's war, and everyone was in it."

Laura Bush and Former First Lady Barbara Bush stand during the National Anthem at the National World War II Memorial on the National Mall, Saturday, May 29, 2004. White House photo by Eric Draper. As life changed in America, so did the way that Americans saw our own country and its place in the world. The bombs at Pearl Harbor destroyed the very idea that America could live in isolation from the plots of aggressive powers. The scenes of the concentration camps, the heaps of bodies and ghostly survivors, confirmed forever America's calling to oppose the ideologies of death.

As we defended our ideals, we began to see that America is stronger when those ideals are fully implemented. America gained strength because women labored for victory and factory jobs, cared for the wounded and wore the uniform, themselves. America gained strength because African Americans and Japanese Americans and others fought for their country, which wasn't always fair to them. In time, these contributions became expectations of equality, and the advances for justice in post-war America made us a better country.

With all our flaws, Americans at that time had never been more united. And together we began and completed the largest single task in our history. At the height of conflict, America would have ships on every ocean, and armies on five continents. And on the most crucial of days, would move the equivalent of a major city across the English Channel.

And all these vast movements of men and armor were directed by one man who could not walk on his own strength. President Roosevelt brought his own advantages to the job. His resolve was stronger than the will of any dictator. His belief in democracy was absolute. He possessed a daring that kept the enemy guessing. He spoke to Americans with an optimism that lightened their task. And one of the saddest days of the war came just as it was ending, when the casualty notice in the morning paper began with the name, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Commander-in-Chief.

Across the years, we still know his voice. And from his words, we know that he understood the character of the American people. Dictators and their generals had dismissed Americans as no match for a master race. FDR answered them. In one of his radio addresses, he said, "We have been described as a nation of weaklings, playboys. Let them tell that to General McArthur and his men. Let them tell that to the boys in the flying fortresses. Let them tell that to the Marines."

In all, more than 16 million Americans would put on the uniform of the soldier, the sailor, the airman, the Marine, the Coast Guardsman or the Merchant Mariner. They came from city streets and prairie towns, from public high schools and West Point. They were a modest bunch, and still are. The ranks were filled with men like Army Private Joe Sakato. In heavy fighting in France, he saw a good friend killed, and charged up a hill determined to shoot the ones who did it. Private Sakato ran straight into enemy fire, killing 12, wounding two, capturing four, and inspiring his whole unit to take the hill and destroy the enemy. (Applause.) Looking back on it 55 years later, Joe Sakato said, "I'm not a hero. Nowadays they call what I did 'road rage.'" (Laughter.)

President George W. Bush gives remarks at the dedication of the National World War II memorial on the Mall in Washington, DC on May 30, 2004. White House photo by Paul Morse. This man's conduct that day gained him the Medal of Honor, one of 464 awarded for actions in World War II. Americans in uniform served bravely, fought fiercely and kept their honor -- even under the worst of conditions. Yet they were not warriors by nature. All they wanted was to finish the job and make it home. One soldier in the 58th Armor Field Artillery was known to have the best-kept rifle in the unit. He told his buddies he had plans for that weapon after the war. He said, "I want to take it home, cover it in salt, hang it on a wall in my living room so I can watch it rust."

These were the modest sons of a peaceful country, and millions of us are very proud to call them Dad. They gave the best years of their lives to the greatest mission their country ever accepted. (Applause.) They faced the most extreme danger, which took some and spared others, for reasons only known to God. And wherever they advanced or touched ground, they are remembered for their goodness and their decency. A Polish man recalls being marched through the German countryside in the last weeks of the war, when American forces suddenly appeared. He said, "Our two guards ran away. And this soldier with little blonde hair jumps off his tank. 'You're free,' he shouts at us. We started hugging each other, crying and screaming, 'God sent angels down to pick us up out of this hell place.'"

Well, our boys weren't exactly angels. They were flesh and blood, with all the limits and fears of flesh and blood. That only makes the achievement more remarkable -- the courage they showed, in a conflict that claimed more than 400,000 American lives, leaving so many orphans and widows and Gold Star Mothers.

The soldiers' story was best told by the great Ernie Pyle, who shared their lives and died among them. In his book, "Here Is Your War," he described World War II as many veterans now remember it. It is a picture, he wrote, "of tired and dirty soldiers, who are alive and don't want to die; of long, darkened convoys in the middle of the night; of shocked, silent men wandering back down the hill from battle; of Jeeps and petrol dumps and smelly bedding roles and C-rations; and blown bridges and dead mules and hospital tents and shirt collars greasy-black from months of wearing; and of laughter, too, and anger, and wine, and lovely flowers and constant cussing. All these, it is composed of; and of graves and graves and graves."

On this Memorial Day weekend, the graves will be visited, and decorated with flowers and flags. Men whose step has slowed are thinking of boys they knew when they were boys together. And women who watched the train leave, and the years pass, can still see the handsome face of their young sweetheart. America will not forget them, either.

At this place, at this Memorial, we acknowledge a debt of long-standing to an entire generation of Americans: those who died; those who fought and worked and grieved and went on. They saved our country, and thereby saved the liberty of mankind. And now I ask every man and woman who saw and lived World War II -- every member of that generation -- to please rise as you are able, and receive the thanks of our great nation.

May God bless you.

[Originally posted: 6/01/04]

FROM THE ARCHIVES:

IT IS THE SOLDIER (Father Dennis Edward O'Brien , United States Marine Corps)

It is the Soldier, not the reporter
Who has given us freedom of the press.

It is the Soldier, not the poet,
Who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the Soldier, not the campus organizer,
Who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.

It is the Soldier, not the lawyer,
Who has given us the right to a fair trial.

It is the Soldier, who salutes the flag,
Who serves beneath the flag,
And whose coffin is draped by the flag,
Who allows the protestor to burn the flag.

(originally posted: 5/30/2005)

FROM THE ARCHIVES: DECORATION DAY:

MEMORIAL DAY (Mark Steyn, 5/30/05, Chicago Sun Times)

Memorial Day in my corner of New Hampshire is always the same. A clutch of veterans from the Second World War to the Gulf march round the common, followed by the town band, and the scouts, and the fifth- graders. The band plays "Anchors Aweigh," "My Country, 'Tis of Thee," "God Bless America" and, in an alarming nod to modernity, Ray Stevens' "Everything Is Beautiful (In Its Own Way)" (Billboard No. 1, May 1970). One of the town's selectmen gives a short speech, so do a couple of representatives from state organizations, and then the fifth-graders recite the Gettsyburg Address and the Great War's great poetry. There's a brief prayer and a three-gun salute, exciting the dogs and babies. Wreaths are laid. And then the crowd wends slowly up the hill to the Legion hut for ice cream, and a few veterans wonder, as they always do, if anybody understands what they did, and why they did it.

Before the First World War, it was called Decoration Day -- a day for going to the cemetery and "strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion." Some decorated the resting places of fallen family members; others adopted for a day the graves of those who died too young to leave any descendants.

I wish we still did that. Lincoln's "mystic chords of memory" are difficult to hear in the din of the modern world, and one of the best ways to do it is to stand before an old headstone, read the name, and wonder at the young life compressed into those brute dates: 1840-1862. 1843-1864.

In my local cemetery, there's a monument over three graves, forebears of my hardworking assistant, though I didn't know that the time I first came across them. Turner Grant, his cousin John Gilbert and his sister's fiance Charles Lovejoy had been friends since boyhood and all three enlisted on the same day. Charles died on March 5, 1863, Turner on March 6, and John on March 11. Nothing splendid or heroic. They were tentmates in Virginia, and there was an outbreak of measles in the camp.

For some reason, there was a bureaucratic mixup and the army neglected to inform the families. Then, on their final journey home, the bodies were taken off the train at the wrong town. It was a Saturday afternoon and the stationmaster didn't want the caskets sitting there all weekend. So a man who knew where the Grants lived offered to take them up to the next town and drop them off on Sunday morning.

When he arrived, the family was at church, so he unloaded the coffins from his buggy and left without a word or a note to anyone. Imagine coming home from Sunday worship and finding three caskets waiting on the porch. Imagine being young Caroline Grant, and those caskets contain the bodies of your brother, your cousin and the man to whom you're betrothed.

[Originally posted: 5/30/05]

FROM THE ARCHIVES:

Enjoy your Decoration Day

If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love.

These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.

This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you.

Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.

Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.

These things I command you, that ye love one another.

MORE:
-Arlington National Cemetery
-Memorial Day (History Channel)
-National Memorial Day Concert (PBS)
-SPEECH: Memorial Day Speech (Peter W. Schramm, May 2004)

[Originally posted: 5/30/05]

FROM THE ARCHIVES: "IN OUR YOUTH OUR HEARTS WERE TOUCHED WITH FIRE" :

Not long ago I heard a young man ask why people still kept up Memorial Day, and it set me thinking of the answer. Not the answer that you and I should give to each other-not the expression of those feelings that, so long as you live, will make this day sacred to memories of love and grief and heroic youth--but an answer which should command the assent of those who do not share our memories, and in which we of the North and our brethren of the South could join in perfect accord. So far as this last is concerned, to be sure, there is no trouble. The soldiers who were doing their best to kill one another felt less of personal hostility, I am very certain, than some who were not imperilled by their mutual endeavors. I have heard more than one of those who had been gallant and distinguished officers on the Confederate side say that they had had no such feeling. I know that I and those whom I knew best had not. We believed that it was most desirable that the North should win; we believed in the principle that the Union is indissoluable; we, or many of us at least, also believed that the conflict was inevitable, and that slavery had lasted long enough. But we equally believed that those who stood against us held just as sacred conviction that were the opposite of ours, and we respected them as every men with a heart must respect those who give all for their belief. The experience of battle soon taught its lesson even to those who came into the field more bitterly disposed. You could not stand up day after day in those indecisive contests where overwhelming victory was impossible because neither side would run as they ought when beaten, without getting at least something of the same brotherhood for the enemy that the north pole of a magnet has for the south--each working in an opposite sense to the other, but each unable to get along without the other. As it was then , it is now. The soldiers of the war need no explanations; they can join in commemorating a soldier's death with feelings not different in kind, whether he fell toward them or by their side. But Memorial Day may and ought to have a meaning also for those who do not share our memories. When men have instinctively agreed to celebrate an anniversary, it will be found that there is some thought of feeling behind it which is too large to be dependent upon associations alone. The Fourth of July, for instance, has still its serious aspect, although we no longer should think of rejoicing like children that we have escaped from an outgrown control, although we have achieved not only our national but our moral independence and know it far too profoundly to make a talk about it, and although an Englishman can join in the celebration without a scruple. For, stripped of the temporary associations which gives rise to it, it is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for the country in return. So to the indifferent inquirer who asks why Memorial Day is still kept up we may answer, it celebrates and solemnly reaffirms from year to year a national act of enthusiasm and faith. It embodies in the most impressive form our belief that to act with enthusiam and faith is the condition of acting greatly. To fight out a war, you must believe something and want something with all your might. So must you do to carry anything else to an end worth reaching. More than that, you must be willing to commit yourself to a course, perhpas a long and hard one, without being able to foresee exactly where you will come out. All that is required of you is that you should go somewhither as hard as ever you can. The rest belongs to fate. One may fall-at the beginning of the charge or at the top of the earthworks; but in no other way can he reach the rewards of victory. When it was felt so deeply as it was on both sides that a man ought to take part in the war unless some conscientious scruple or strong practical reason made it impossible, was that feeling simply the requirement of a local majority that their neighbors should agree with them? I think not: I think the feeling was right-in the South as in the North. I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived. If this be so, the use of this day is obvious. It is true that I cannot argue a man into a desire. If he says to me, Why should I seek to know the secrets of philosophy? Why seek to decipher the hidden laws of creation that are graven upon the tablets of the rocks, or to unravel the history of civilization that is woven in the tissue of our jurisprudence, or to do any great work, either of speculation or of practical affairs? I cannot answer him; or at least my answer is as little worth making for any effect it will have upon his wishes if he asked why I should eat this, or drink that. You must begin by wanting to. But although desire cannot be imparted by argument, it can be by contagion. Feeling begets feeling, and great feeling begets great feeling. We can hardly share the emotions that make this day to us the most sacred day of the year, and embody them in ceremonial pomp, without in some degree imparting them to those who come after us. I believe from the bottom of my heart that our memorial halls and statues and tablets, the tattered flags of our regiments gathered in the Statehouses, are worth more to our young men by way of chastening and inspiration than the monuments of another hundred years of peaceful life could be. But even if I am wrong, even if those who come after us are to forget all that we hold dear, and the future is to teach and kindle its children in ways as yet unrevealed, it is enough for us that this day is dear and sacred. Accidents may call up the events of the war. You see a battery of guns go by at a trot, and for a moment you are back at White Oak Swamp, or Antietam, or on the Jerusalem Road. You hear a few shots fired in the distance, and for an instant your heart stops as you say to yourself, The skirmishers are at it, and listen for the long roll of fire from the main line. You meet an old comrade after many years of absence; he recalls the moment that you were nearly surrounded by the enemy, and again there comes up to you that swift and cunning thinking on which once hung life and freedom--Shall I stand the best chance if I try the pistol or the sabre on that man who means to stop me? Will he get his carbine free before I reach him, or can I kill him first?These and the thousand other events we have known are called up, I say, by accident, and, apart from accident, they lie forgotten. But as surely as this day comes round we are in the presence of the dead. For one hour, twice a year at least--at the regimental dinner, where the ghosts sit at table more numerous than the living, and on this day when we decorate their graves--the dead come back and live with us. I see them now, more than I can number, as once I saw them on this earth. They are the same bright figures, or their counterparts, that come also before your eyes; and when I speak of those who were my brothers, the same words describe yours. I see a fair-haired lad, a lieutenant, and a captain on whom life had begun somewhat to tell, but still young, sitting by the long mess-table in camp before the regiment left the State, and wondering how many of those who gathered in our tent could hope to see the end of what was then beginning. For neither of them was that destiny reserved. I remember, as I awoke from my first long stupor in the hospital after the battle of Ball's Bluff, I heard the doctor say, "He was a beautiful boy", [Web note: Lt. William L. Putnam, 20th Mass.] and I knew that one of those two speakers was no more. The other, after passing through all the previous battles, went into Fredericksburg with strange premonition of the end, and there met his fate.[Web Note: Cpt. Charles F. Cabot, 20th Mass.] I see another youthful lieutenant as I saw him in the Seven Days, when I looked down the line at Glendale. The officers were at the head of their companies. The advance was beginning. We caught each other's eye and saluted. When next I looked, he was gone. [Web note: Lt. James. J. Lowell, 20th Mass.] I see the brother of the last-the flame of genius and daring on his face--as he rode before us into the wood of Antietam, out of which came only dead and deadly wounded men. So, a little later, he rode to his death at the head of his cavalry in the Valley. In the portraits of some of those who fell in the civil wars of England, Vandyke has fixed on canvas the type who stand before my memory. Young and gracious faces, somewhat remote and proud, but with a melancholy and sweet kindness. There is upon their faces the shadow of approaching fate, and the glory of generous acceptance of it. I may say of them , as I once heard it said of two Frenchmen, relics of the ancien regime, "They were very gentle. They cared nothing for their lives." High breeding, romantic chivalry--we who have seen these men can never believe that the power of money or the enervation of pleasure has put an end to them. We know that life may still be lifted into poetry and lit with spiritual charm. But the men, not less, perhaps even more, characteristic of New England, were the Puritans of our day. For the Puritan still lives in New England, thank God! and will live there so long as New England lives and keeps her old renown. New England is not dead yet. She still is mother of a race of conquerors--stern men, little given to the expression of their feelings, sometimes careless of their graces, but fertile, tenacious, and knowing only duty. Each of you, as I do, thinks of a hundred such that he has known.[Web note: Unfortunately for New England, no such "conquerors" have played for the Red Sox since 1918]. I see one--grandson of a hard rider of the Revolution and bearer of his historic name--who was with us at Fair Oaks, and afterwards for five days and nights in front of the enemy the only sleep that he would take was what he could snatch sitting erect in his uniform and resting his back against a hut. He fell at Gettysburg. [Web note: Col. Paul Revere, Jr., 20th Mass.]. His brother , a surgeon, [Web note: Edward H.R. Revere] who rode, as our surgeons so often did, wherever the troops would go, I saw kneeling in ministration to a wounded man just in rear of our line at Antietam, his horse's bridle round his arm--the next moment his ministrations were ended. His senior associate survived all the wounds and perils of the war, but , not yet through with duty as he understood it, fell in helping the helpless poor who were dying of cholera in a Western city. I see another quiet figure, of virtuous life and quiet ways, not much heard of until our left was turned at Petersburg. He was in command of the regiment as he saw our comrades driven in. He threw back our left wing, and the advancing tide of defeat was shattered against his iron wall. He saved an army corps from disaster, and then a round shot ended all for him. There is one who on this day is always present on my mind. He entered the army at nineteen, a second lieutenant. In the Wilderness, already at the head of his regiment, he fell, using the moment that was left him of life to give all of his little fortune to his soldiers.I saw him in camp, on the march, in action. I crossed debatable land with him when we were rejoining the Army together. I observed him in every kind of duty, and never in all the time I knew him did I see him fail to choose that alternative of conduct which was most disagreeable to himself. He was indeed a Puritan in all his virtues, without the Puritan austerity; for, when duty was at an end, he who had been the master and leader became the chosen companion in every pleasure that a man might honestly enjoy. His few surviving companions will never forget the awful spectacle of his advance alone with his company in the streets of Fredericksburg. In less than sixty seconds he would become the focus of a hidden and annihilating fire from a semicircle of houses. His first platoon had vanished under it in an instant, ten men falling dead by his side. He had quietly turned back to where the other half of his company was waiting, had given the order, "Second Platoon, forward!" and was again moving on, in obedience to superior command, to certain and useless death, when the order he was obeying was countermanded. The end was distant only a few seconds; but if you had seen him with his indifferent carriage, and sword swinging from his finger like a cane, you would never have suspected that he was doing more than conducting a company drill on the camp parade ground. He was little more than a boy, but the grizzled corps commanders knew and admired him; and for us, who not only admired, but loved, his death seemed to end a portion of our life also. There is one grave and commanding presence that you all would recognize, for his life has become a part of our common history. Who does not remember the leader of the assault of the mine at Petersburg? The solitary horseman in front of Port Hudson, whom a foeman worthy of him bade his soldiers spare, from love and admiration of such gallant bearing? Who does not still hear the echo of those eloquent lips after the war, teaching reconciliation and peace? I may not do more than allude to his death, fit ending of his life. All that the world has a right to know has been told by a beloved friend in a book wherein friendship has found no need to exaggerate facts that speak for themselves. I knew him ,and I may even say I knew him well; yet, until that book appeared, I had not known the governing motive of his soul. I had admired him as a hero. When I read, I learned to revere him as a saint. His strength was not in honor alone, but in religion; and those who do not share his creed must see that it was on the wings of religious faith that he mounted above even valiant deeds into an empyrean of ideal life. I have spoken of some of the men who were near to me among others very near and dear, not because their lives have become historic, but because their lives are the type of what every soldier has known and seen in his own company. In the great democracy of self-devotion private and general stand side by side. Unmarshalled save by their own deeds, the army of the dead sweep before us, "wearing their wounds like stars." It is not because the men I have mentioned were my friends that I have spoken of them, but, I repeat, because they are types. I speak of those whom I have seen. But you all have known such; you, too, remember! It is not of the dead alone that we think on this day. There are those still living whose sex forbade them to offer their lives, but who gave instead their happiness. Which of us has not been lifted above himself by the sight of one of those lovely, lonely women, around whom the wand of sorrow has traced its excluding circle--set apart, even when surrounded by loving friends who would fain bring back joy to their lives? I think of one whom the poor of a great city know as their benefactress and friend. I think of one who has lived not less greatly in the midst of her children, to whom she has taught such lessons as may not be heard elsewhere from mortal lips. The story of these and her sisters we must pass in reverent silence. All that may be said has been said by one of their own sex--- But when the days of golden dreams had perished, And even despair was powerless to destroy, Then did I learn how existence could be cherished, Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy. Then did I check the tears of useless passion, weaned my young soul from yearning after thine Sternly denied its burning wish to hasten Down to that tomb already more than mine. Comrades, some of the associations of this day are not only triumphant, but joyful. Not all of those with whom we once stood shoulder to shoulder--not all of those whom we once loved and revered--are gone. On this day we still meet our companions in the freezing winter bivouacs and in those dreadful summer marches where every faculty of the soul seemed to depart one after another, leaving only a dumb animal power to set the teeth and to persist-- a blind belief that somewhere and at last there was bread and water. On this day, at least, we still meet and rejoice in the closest tie which is possible between men-- a tie which suffering has made indissoluble for better, for worse. When we meet thus, when we do honor to the dead in terms that must sometimes embrace the living, we do not deceive ourselves. We attribute no special merit to a man for having served when all were serving. We know that, if the armies of our war did anything worth remembering, the credit belongs not mainly to the individuals who did it, but to average human nature. We also know very well that we cannot live in associations with the past alone, and we admit that, if we would be worthy of the past, we must find new fields for action or thought, and make for ourselves new careers. But, nevertheless, the generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience. Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing. While we are permitted to scorn nothing but indifference, and do not pretend to undervalue the worldly rewards of ambition, we have seen with our own eyes, beyond and above the gold fields, the snowy heights of honor, and it is for us to bear the report to those who come after us. But, above all, we have learned that whether a man accepts from Fortune her spade, and will look downward and dig, or from Aspiration her axe and cord, and will scale the ice, the one and only success which it is his to command is to bring to his work a mighty heart. Such hearts--ah me, how many!--were stilled twenty years ago; and to us who remain behind is left this day of memories. Every year--in the full tide of spring, at the height of the symphony of flowers and love and life--there comes a pause, and through the silence we hear the lonely pipe of death. Year after year lovers wandering under the apple trees and through the clover and deep grass are surprised with sudden tears as they see black veiled figures stealing through the morning to a soldier's grave. Year after year the comrades of the dead follow, with public honor, procession and commemorative flags and funeral march--honor and grief from us who stand almost alone, and have seen the best and noblest of our generation pass away. But grief is not the end of all. I seem to hear the funeral march become a paean. I see beyond the forest the moving banners of a hidden column. Our dead brothers still live for us, and bid us think of life, not death--of life to which in their youth they lent the passion and joy of the spring. As I listen , the great chorus of life and joy begins again, and amid the awful orchestra of seen and unseen powers and destinies of good and evil our trumpets sound once more a note of daring, hope, and will.

TRADE SIZZLE FOR STEAK:

Picking up the pieces: As draft approaches, heat's on Cashman to change past (BILL MADDEN, May 27th 2007, NY Daily News)

The annual June draft - i.e. "The Great Baseball Crapshoot" - will take place a week from Thursday, and while most fans greet this as a day of anticipation, intrigue and hope, Yankee legions have come to view it as a day of dread. For until last year, when GM Brian Cashman took over the supervision of the draft from the incompetents (read: since-fired scouting director Lin Garrett) in Tampa, the Yankees' record in this annual exercise was abysmal.

Although the jury remains out for at least a couple of years on the trio of blue-chip starting pitchers - Ian Kennedy, Joba Chamberlain and Dellin Betances - Cashman & Co. took with their first, second and eighth picks last year (Kennedy and Chamberlain are off to good starts in the minors at Tampa, while Betances is set to open at Staten Island), the fact that the Yankees haven't produced a single impact position player out of the draft since taking Derek Jeter in the first round in 1992 speaks directly to the crisis they face now with an aging team and no saviors looming in the system. It's been said here before - with the exception of Phil Hughes (who certainly looks like the real deal) as their No. 1 pick 2004 - the Yankees have drafted more than 700 players since 1992 and for none of them to make it to the big club as starters, well, you can't try to be that bad.

BLUTO TAKES A JOURNALISM CLASS:

Dartmouth alumni elect conservatives to trustee board (5/25/07, Associated Press)

For two decades, Dartmouth College has tried to rein in rowdy fraternities -- such as the one that inspired the movie "Animal House" -- and make the campus more welcoming to women, minorities and scholars.

Now, some alumni who appreciated the old Dartmouth are pushing back.

However much we all might like to see the press be more open about it's biases, it's a riot watching them write stuff like that and then tell us they're fair.

A MEETING OF rEPUBLICANS:

What's on Tehran's Mind? (David Ignatius, 5/27/07, Washington Post)

Tehran fears the same thing it has since 1979: an American plot to undermine the Islamic revolution. This suspicion of foreign conspiracies animates every Iranian decision. The Americans say they support Iraq's Shiite prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, but Tehran doesn't fully believe it. Why would America create a friendly Shiite government in Iraq and thus give Iran more power in the region?

Tehran asks: What is Bush's real game? America's friends the Saudis favor a coup in Baghdad by Ayad Allawi, the former Iraqi interim prime minister who was trained by the master of all secret conspiracies, the British spy service MI-6. The American conspirator in chief, Vice President Dick Cheney, went to Riyadh this month and told the Saudis to support Iran's ally, Maliki. The Iranians are perplexed. If the Bush administration really does support Maliki, the Iranians want to hear it from Ambassador Ryan Crocker on May 28 in Baghdad.

In Tehran's mind, there looms the larger American conspiracy of regime change. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice disavowed this goal in a recent interview with the Financial Times, but she didn't halt spending from the $75 million fund created last year to broadcast pro-democracy messages to Iran and help Iranian NGOs. Tehran believes this money is really aimed at encouraging a "soft revolution'' in Iran, on the model of the recent color revolutions in Lebanon, Georgia and Ukraine. [...]

For Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the overriding task is to preserve the legitimacy of the revolution -- not an easy task in a country where the clerical rulers are unpopular. Khamenei wants a U.S.-Iranian dialogue about Iraq that generates enough domestic support so he can sign his name to it. In that sense, he is a follower more than a leader. Khamenei fears American attempts to play factional politics -- to play off pragmatists against hard-liners -- which will make his job as keeper of consensus more difficult.

OUT HERE IN THE FIELDS:

Democrat presidential hopefuls shun Fox News debate: But Congressional Black Caucus still hopes to salvage the event on network seen as conservative and pro-Republican (RAYMOND HERNANDEZ and JACQUES STEINBERG, 5/27/07, New York Times)

Four years ago, the leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus began looking for a television outlet to co-sponsor and broadcast a presidential debate to address the concerns of minority voters.

Only one news channel made a proposal acceptable to the caucus, and an unlikely channel at that: Fox News, in what some Democrats viewed as an effort to associate itself with a group that could help it make good on its claim of presenting "fair and balanced" news coverage.

But now that relationship is being shaken by the decision of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina to shun the debate, a move that has exposed fault lines among two major constituencies of the Democratic Party. While the withdrawals frustrated members of the black caucus, it mollified liberals who had objected to the involvement of Fox News, whose programming includes some of the most conservative and pro-Republican commentary on the air.

IT'S BEEN ALL WOGS SINCE WE LET THE SCOTS IN:

America the Generous: A Lost Story of Citizenship (LAWRENCE DOWNES, 5/27/07, NY Times)

Congress has taken the week off from the debate, with members going home to districts that have already been inflamed by the loud and loony right, which has decided that the bill is that filthy thing “amnesty” and that the nation’s character would be defiled if it ever forgave illegal immigrants for coming here to do our worst jobs, or let too many more people in to put down roots. You could call that view unkind and uncharitable. You could also call it unwise, given economic realities.

I would add un-American.

My view has been informed by “Americans in Waiting,” a book by Hiroshi Motomura, a law professor at the University of North Carolina, about what he calls a lost story of a confident young country that opened itself to newcomers in ways that seem unthinkably generous today.

For about 150 years, Professor Motomura writes, from shortly after the country’s birth to the end of the Ellis Island heyday in the 1920s, when there were no numerical limits to immigration and the flow was mostly from western Europe, new immigrants could gain many of the rights of citizens by signing a document declaring their intention to naturalize. They became Americans in waiting, able to work, vote, buy land and clear homesteads.

The elegant idea was that immigration was simply the beginning of an inevitable transition toward full membership in a growing country. The ancestors of so many Americans, including today’s immigration hard-liners, benefited from it.

OUR MAN IN SOMALIA:

My Life as a Diplomat (NURUDDIN FARAH, 5/2/07, NY Times)

My career as an emissary began last July. A man in the executive directorate of the Islamic Courts Union, then in control of Mogadishu, telephoned me in Cape Town, where I now live. (I was born and raised in Somalia.) The man, who shall remain nameless, asked if I would “carry fire between the two sides,” as the Somali idiom has it.

The timing was understandable. Talks between the Islamists and the government had broken down; the Islamists were laying siege to Baidoa, the seat of the government, and Ethiopia was sending troops to defend the garrisoned town.

The choice of a mediator, however, wasn’t so readily apparent. “Why me?” I asked.

“Because the I.C.U. admires your opposition to Ethiopia, Somalia’s archenemy, and because of your avowed interest in peace,” he replied.

And, truth be told, I admired some of what the Islamists had accomplished. Indeed, they had done the impossible: in a series of fierce battles from March to June last year, they had routed the warlords and pacified Mogadishu. For the first time in many years, the city enjoyed peace.

Like many Somalis, though, I also had my reservations about them. Even though almost all Somalis are Muslim, very few embrace the union’s fervent brand of faith: the group supports Shariah law and it treats the federal charter, which is secular, with disdain. Then there was the matter of clan rivalry, which hinted that devotion might be masking politics: the top Islamists belonged to the clans known to be antagonistic to the president’s clan.

Of course, my feelings about the transitional government were also ambivalent. The government came into being in 2004 after a two-year-long national reconciliation conference held in exile. I supported the president’s desire for an African peacekeeping force to stabilize Somalia; at the same time, I was fearful that he was susceptible to pressure from Ethiopia.

Still, the Islamic Courts Union, as my interlocutor told me, was holding out a proposal that just might lead to peace. According to him, the union was offering to let the government move to Mogadishu from Baidoa and to let the president bring with him a force of 1,000 from his home province, Puntland.

I felt this was promising. A peace deal would not just bring stability — it would reduce the opportunities for foreign intervention by Ethiopia, which had thwarted every national and international effort to bring Somalia’s strife to a peaceful end, and by the United States, which seemed inclined to support Christian-run Ethiopia as a bulwark against the Islamists. (It didn’t help, of course, that the union’s defense spokesman had used the red-flag word “jihad” in his firebrand declamations.) [...]

My first meeting in town was with Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, then the spiritual head of the Islamic Courts Union; he struck me as being more reasonable than many others in the group. In all, I spent three and a half hours in our first meeting, much of it alone with him. [...]

After my meeting with the Islamists, I headed for Baidoa to meet the president. When we met in his office, across the courtyard from his residence — he emerged dressed in gray, his bearing immaculate, hair groomed with care and face glowing, after a good night’s sleep. (How, I asked myself, was this possible in a town with no modern amenities?)

The president and I sat facing each other, and his intent stare reminded me that he and Sheik Aweys come from the same part of the country; I couldn’t help being mindful that the two of them had engaged in armed skirmishes in the early ’90s, soon after the structural collapse of the state. The sheik had led an Islamist takeover of Puntland; the president, opposing him, had won that round.

The president accepted my offer to open channels between the two sides. But it was another message from him that would ring in my ears: “I know what war is,” he said. “I have fought in three of them. I won’t attack Mogadishu, but if the I.C.U. invades Baidoa, someone will regret it. Tell the sheik this. From me.”

Back to Mogadishu. I met Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, the executive director of the union; also present was the interlocutor who had called me in the first place. Regrettably, my interlocutor would allude neither to our initial conversation, nor to his suggestion that the transitional government move to Mogadishu, with guarantees. As we spoke, officials came and went, some bowing low, others kneeling in deference to the sheik. It was clear that I was in the presence of a power — a power who was unwilling to confirm that he had knowledge of my interlocutor’s offer.

I had to wonder. Was the Islamic union negotiating in bad faith? Had I embarked on a peace mission that was doomed to fail? Or did the powers that be in the Islamic union reject the idea of a rapprochement with the government and forget to tell me? I chose to play dumb, and so I provided the sheik’s secretary with contact information for the president’s men — as if everything else was on track.

The following day, I went to meet Sheik Aweys at his home. I got lost on the way. He lived in a part of town unfamiliar to me. With no paved roads, and with the rains having created ravines with crumbly sides, and with no street names, the entire area was virtually impassable. My driver and I got stuck in the sandy chasms.

After I arrived, the sheik and I talked amicably, with his 2-year-old son sitting on his lap. I dared not share with him the president’s threatening remarks.

Before we parted, he commended me for my “audacious” attempt to bring the Islamic union and the transitional government closer. He suggested not giving up hope, however, adding that there was bound to be further need for my involvement once “the Somali people” routed their enemies, “and you know who these are,” he grinned. I offered to return in a few months.

I didn’t make it back. Over Christmas, Ethiopia, perhaps intending to provide a gift for the festive season to its American ally, invaded Mogadishu and expelled the Islamists.

GREAT STARTING PITCHING COVERS A MULTITUDE OF SINS:

Sox’ lead as big as Texas: Win adds to strong start to season (Jeff Horrigan, May 27, 2007, Boston Herald)

Red Sox hitters and pitchers are working in perfect synchronicity and the rest of the American League is paying the price.

Once again operating under the complementary formula of strong pitching making the most of generous offensive support and vice versa, the Sox took the latest step in their historic start to the season by pounding the pitiful Texas Rangers, 7-4, last night at Rangers Ballpark.

Keyed by Manny Ramirez’ four hits, the Red Sox won their 32nd consecutive game when scoring at least five runs and widened their AL East to an almost unthinkable 11 games before the arrival of Memorial Day. The lead is the Sox’ largest this early in a season and the biggest since an 11-game advantage on Sept. 17, 1995. The earliest occasion in franchise history with a lead of at least 11 had been 106 games into 1995 (Aug. 20). The 2001 Seattle Mariners, who ended up winning 116 games, are the only other team ever to hold such an enormous lead this early in the season.

IT'S FALWELL'S AMERICA, NOT KEVORKIAN'S:

Kevorkian's Cause Founders As He's Freed (KATHY BARKS HOFFMAN, 5/26/07, AP)

For nearly a decade, Dr. Jack Kevorkian waged a defiant campaign to help other people kill themselves.

The retired pathologist left bodies at hospital emergency rooms and motels and videotaped a death that was broadcast on CBS' "60 Minutes." His actions prompted battles over assisted suicide in many states.

But as he prepares to leave prison June 1 after serving more than eight years of a 10- to 25-year sentence in the death of a Michigan man, Kevorkian will find that there's still only one state that has a law allowing physician-assisted suicide - Oregon.

Experts say that's because abortion opponents, Catholic leaders, advocates for the disabled and often doctors have fought the efforts of other states to follow the lead of Oregon, where the law took effect in late 1997.

THE LETHAL SPRING OFFENSIVE...:

Hunt for 'traitors' splits Taliban: Spy mania grips the Afghan rebels as top commanders fall victim to tip-offs by informers to coalition troops (Jason Burke, May 27, 2007, The Observer)

Taliban insurgents fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan have been hit by a wave of defections and betrayals that has resulted in a witch-hunt within the militant movement. [...]

[T]wo of the Taliban's most senior commanders have now been killed after being betrayed by close associates. Up to a dozen middle-ranking commanders have died in airstrikes or other operations by Afghan, Nato or Pakistani forces based on precise details of their movements received from informers. Few details have been publicly released, but senior military sources speak of 'major hits' that they wish they could talk about openly.

The successes may be the result of the more sophisticated strategy now employed by coalition, Afghan and Pakistani forces, say observers.

'There have been desultory efforts over several years to penetrate the Taliban and to play off the various factions within the militancy and along the frontier against each other, but now that has become the keystone of the intelligence effort,' said one Pakistan-based source. 'That's paying off.'

YOU SHOULD SEE THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY...:

Boy purportedly tops 'Hogzilla' kill (AP, 5/26/07)

>Hogzilla is being made into a horror movie. But the sequel may be even bigger: Meet Monster Pig. An 11-year-old Alabama boy used a pistol to kill a wild hog his father says weighed a staggering 1,051 pounds and measured 9-feet-4 from the tip of its snout to the base of its tail. Think hams as big as car tires.

If the claims are accurate, Jamison Stone's trophy boar would be bigger than Hogzilla, the famed wild hog that grew to seemingly mythical proportions after being killed in south Georgia in 2004.

Hogzilla originally was thought to weigh 1,000 pounds and measure 12 feet in length. National Geographic experts who unearthed its remains believe the animal actually weighed about 800 pounds and was 8 feet long.

POTEMKIN VILLAGE IDIOTS:

‘Sicko,’ Castro and the ‘120 Years Club’ (Anthony DePalma, 5/27/07, New York Times)

Cuba works hard to jam American TV signals and keep out decadent Hollywood films. But it’s a good bet that Fidel Castro’s government will turn a blind eye to bootleg copies of “Sicko,” Michael Moore’s newest movie, if they show up on the streets of Havana.

“Sicko,” the talk of the Cannes Film Festival last week, savages the American health care system — and along the way extols Cuba’s system as the neatest thing since the white linen guayabera.

Mr. Moore transports a handful of sick Americans to Cuba for treatment in the course of the film, which is scheduled to open in the United States next month, and he is apparently dumbfounded that they could get there what they couldn’t get here.

“There’s a reason Cubans live on average longer than we do,” he told Time magazine. “I’m not trumpeting Castro or his regime. I just want to say to fellow Americans, ‘C’mon, we’re the United States. If they can do this, we can do it.’ ” [...]

Dr. Robert N. Butler, president of the International Longevity Center in New York and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author on aging, has traveled to Cuba to see firsthand how doctors are trained. He said a principal reason that some health standards in Cuba approach the high American level is that the Cuban system emphasizes early intervention. Clinic visits are free, and the focus is on preventing disease rather than treating it.

Dr. Butler said some of Cuba’s shortcomings may actually improve its health profile. “Because they don’t have up-to-date cars, they tend to have to exercise more by walking,” he said. “And they may not have a surfeit of food, which keeps them from problems like obesity, but they’re not starving, either.”

Cuban markets are not always well stocked, but city streets are dotted with hot dog and ice cream vendors. Bellies are full, but such food can cause problems in the future, as they have in the United States.

Dr. Butler has just completed a study that shows it is possible that because of the epidemic of obesity in children, “this may be the first generation of Americans to live less long than their parents.”

There could be one great leveler for Cubans and Americans. While all Cubans have at least minimal free access to doctors, more than 45 million Americans lack basic health insurance. Many are reluctant to seek early treatment they cannot afford, Dr. Butler said. Instead, they wait to be admitted to an emergency room.

“I know Americans tend to be skeptical,” he said, “but health and education are two achievements of the Cuban revolution, and they deserve some credit despite the government’s poor record on human rights.”

FINALLY, A REASON TO VISIT FRANCE (via Bryan Francoeur):

France considers paying migrants to go home (Renata Goldirova, 5/25/07, EU Observer)

France's newly set up ministry of immigration and national identity has made itself heard for the first time, with its chief, Brice Hortefeux, floating an idea to financially reward those immigrants who voluntarily return to their native country.

"We must increase this measure to help voluntary returns. I am very clearly committed to doing that," French minister Brice Hortefeux was cited as saying by the BBC.

According to the long-time friend and ally of president Nicolas Sarkozy, a family with two children would be paid €6,000 to leave French territory.

IT'S JUST ONE VICTORY AFTER ANOTHER:

Winning on Iraq, Bush Turns to Immigration (SHERYL GAY STOLBERG, 5/26/07, NY Times)

Having won his fight with Congressional Democrats on an Iraq war spending bill, President Bush is now waging an equally aggressive battle with Republicans, as he tries to persuade them to support an immigration bill that he hopes will be a signature domestic achievement.

As the Senate debated the immigration measure, Mr. Bush spent the past week lobbying behind the scenes to build support for it.

THE NAZI DEBT TO BRIGHTNESS:

Haunting Echoes of Eugenics (Andrew J. Imparato and Anne C. Sommers, May 20, 2007, Washington Post)

This month marked the 80th anniversary of the disgraceful Supreme Court decision in Buck v. Bell, which upheld Virginia's involuntary sterilization laws. In his majority opinion, Holmes declared: "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind . . . Three generations of imbeciles is enough."

Although eugenics was eventually dismissed as "junk science," it didn't happen before states authorized more than 60,000 forcible sterilizations and segregated, institutionalized, and denied marriage and parental rights to those deemed "genetically unfit."

Though society may be inclined to regard Holmes's detestable opinion in Buck v. Bell as a relic of a time past, eerie similarities exist in contemporary remarks of the well-respected.

Justifying the sterilization of "genetically unfit" individuals, Holmes wrote that Carrie Buck was "the probable potential parent of socially inadequate offspring."

Some 72 years later, renowned embryologist Bob Edwards said, "Soon it will be a sin for parents to have a child that carries the heavy burden of genetic disease. We are entering a world where we have to consider the quality of our children."

Not long ago, an embryo entrepreneur boasted on her business's Web site, "In the process of screening donors, we select only those that have clean medical backgrounds. . . . The embryos that are available have all been medically 'graded,' so that the recipient family knows the quality of the embryos that they will be implanting."

In the past, eugenicists emphasized the "burden" of disability. Holmes wrote that individuals with disabilities "sap the strength of the State."

In recent years, Peter Singer, a professor of bioethics at Princeton University, has said, "It does not seem quite wise to increase any further draining of limited resources by increasing the number of children with impairments."

Whatever proportions these crimes finally assumed, it became evident to all who investigated them that they had started from small beginnings. The beginnings at first were merely a subtle shift in emphasis in the basic attitude of the physicians. It started with the acceptance of the attitude, basic in the euthanasia movement, that there is such a thing as life not worthy to be lived. This attitude in its early stages concerned itself merely with the severely and chronically sick. Gradually the sphere of those to be included in this category was enlarged to encompass the socially unproductive, the ideologically unwanted, the racially unwanted and finally all non-Germans. But it is important to realize that the infinitely small wedged-in lever from which this entire trend of mind received its impetus was the attitude toward the nonrehabilitable sick.

It is, therefore, this subtle shift in emphasis of the physicians' attitude that one must thoroughly investigate.

SHOULDN'T THAT BE "KAN"?:

Comic rapper's CD stirs serious reaction (Agustin Gurza, May 26, 2007, LA Times)

Chingo Bling, the Tex-Mex rapper known for his cultural parodies, wasn't ready for the sobering response he got to his new album, "They Can't Deport Us All," a defiant retort to opponents of illegal immigration.

The title — emblazoned on T-shirts, bumper stickers and Chingo Bling's promotional van — triggered death threats, dirty looks and vandalism.

The van got the worst of it during a series of incidents earlier this year in Houston, where he lives. Somebody scrawled "Go Home" on the side and erased the letter "t" in "can't," thus reversing the slogan to say "They Can Deport Us All." At another point, the vehicle's front windshield was shattered by what appears to be gunshots. Then one day, the van was inexplicably towed from its legal parking spot at a roadside flea market, where it was visible to passing motorists. Earlier this month it vanished again. It was reported stolen, but hasn't been seen since.

The satirist, whose real name is Pedro Herrera III, had always been good at attracting attention to his act. But nothing like this.

"I was surprised to see it really upset people," Herrera told me this week. "It just brings to light, I guess, the feelings at the core of this debate: the fear, xenophobia, ethnocentrism and all kinds of good stuff."

HECK, SOME OF US MADE IT 4 YEARS:

Impostor shakes up Stanford: University to check security after woman is accused of living on campus as a student for 8 months (Richard C. Paddock and Jennifer Delson, May 26, 2007, LA Times)

Azia Kim arrived at Stanford University last fall from Fullerton and took up residence on campus at Kimball Hall.

She ate in the dining hall and seemed to do her homework, often working late into the night on school papers. She told people she was a human biology major and talked about her upcoming exams.

There was only one problem: She had not been admitted as a student.

Relying on the generosity and friendliness of Stanford's students, the Fullerton Troy High School graduate managed to keep up the pretense for eight months, until she was found out this week, according to university officials, Kim's friends and news accounts.

FREEING THE OTHER HAND:

Algeria's quiet revolution: Gains by women (Michael Slackman, May 26, 2007, NY Times)

In this tradition-bound nation scarred by a brutal Islamist-led civil war that killed more than 100,000, a quiet revolution is under way: women are emerging as an economic and political force unheard of in the rest of the Arab world.

Women make up 70 percent of Algeria's lawyers and 60 percent of its judges. Women dominate medicine. Increasingly, women contribute more to household income than men. Sixty percent of university students are women, university researchers say.

In a region where women have a decidedly low public profile, Algerian women are visible everywhere. They are starting to drive buses and taxicabs. They pump gas and wait on tables.

Although men still hold all of the formal levers of power and women still make up only 20 percent of the work force, that is more than twice their share a generation ago, and they seem to be taking over the machinery of state as well.

"If such a trend continues," said Daho Djerbal, editor and publisher of Naqd, a magazine of social criticism and analysis, "we will see a new phenomenon where our public administration will also be controlled by women."

WHICH SURGES EBBS:

White House weighs big Iraq troop cut for '08 (DAVID E. SANGER and DAVID S. CLOUD, 5/26/07, New York Times)

The Bush administration is developing what are described as concepts for reducing U.S. combat forces in Iraq by as much as half next year, according to senior administration officials in the midst of the internal debate.

It is the first indication that growing political pressure is forcing the White House to turn its attention to what happens after the current troop increase runs its course.

The concepts call for a reduction in forces that could lower troop levels by the midst of the 2008 presidential election to roughly 100,000, from about 146,000, the latest available figure, which the military reported on May 1. They would also greatly scale back the mission that President Bush set for the U.S. military when he ordered it in January to win back control of Baghdad and Anbar province.

The mission would instead focus on the training of Iraqi troops and fighting al-Qaida in Iraq, while removing Americans from many of the counter-insurgency efforts inside Baghdad.

EV...:

Challenging Nancy (Robert Novak, 5/26/07, Real Clear Politics)

Nancy Pelosi staved off the biggest intraparty challenge during her brief tenure as speaker of the House Monday, standing her ground in support of two free-trade treaties during an uproarious meeting of the House Democratic Caucus behind closed doors.

Pelosi backed deals on Peru and Panama treaties negotiated by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel despite fierce protests by rank-and-file Democrats. The caucus was to consider Iraq, immigration and the trade treaties, but the debate over trade was so extended that it took up all the time.

CRANK UP THE VCR:

GREAT PERFORMANCES AT THE MET: "The Barber of Seville" (Premieres May 26, 2007 on PBS)

Composer: Gioacchino Rossini

Librettist: Cesare Sterbini, based on the play by Pierre Beaumarchais

Production: Bartlett Sher

Conductor: Maurizio Benini

Performers: Joyce DiDonato (Rosina), Juan Diego Flórez (Count Almaviva), Peter Mattei (Figaro), John del Carlo (Dr. Bartolo), John Relyea (Don Basilio), Claudia Waite (Berta), Mark Schowalter (Sergeant), Brian Davis (Fiorello), Rob Besserer (Ambrogio)

THE REACTION EATS ITS OWN:

Et tu, Sherrod, Zack and Charlie? (And more: a Kucinich aide leaves) (Sabrina Eaton and Stephen Koff, May 25, 2007, Cleveland Plain Dealer)

Anti-war bloggers and web site activists are fuming over yesterday's congressional vote to keep funding the Iraq war without requiring a pull-out date. They say they feel betrayed by Democrats -- including Sen. Sherrod Brown and Reps. Zack Space and Charlie Wilson -- who won office opposing the war, then voted to keep sending money that, activists say, merely keeps the war going.

Off with their heads, say some, including Democrats.com, a progressive group seeking defeat of Democrats who supported the war-funding bill. Its web site has posted calls for "aggressive progressive" candidates to mount primary challenges against several dozen Democrats including Space and Wilson.

The site's entries on Wilson and Space were penned by none other than David Swanson, a media consultant who sends out press releases on behalf of Cleveland Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich's presidential campaign. Or who did until a few minutes ago, anyway. After we asked him and Kucinich's congressional office about the propriety of soliciting primary opponents to run against Kucinich's Democratic colleagues, Swanson sent an e-mail saying he is "taking a leave of absence from the Kucinich campaign."

IF HE'S NOT WE COULD HAVE SAVED THE NAILS:

The Pope's Favorite Rabbi (DAVID VAN BIEMA, 5/24/07, TIME)

In his new book, Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI devotes 20 pages to A Rabbi Talks with Jesus, a 161-page grenade [Jacob] Neusner lobbed in 1993. In that volume, the professor (now at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.) and noncongregational rabbi projected himself back into the Gospel of Matthew to quiz Jesus on the Jewish law. He found the Nazarene's interpretation irredeemably faulty. In his 14-years-delayed response, Benedict not only compliments Neusner as a "great Jewish scholar" but also recapitulates the thesis of A Rabbi Talks and spends a third of one of his 10 chapters answering it.

There is no real precedent for this. The last time Christianity and Judaism had knockdown debates was during medieval "disputations" convened by Christian authorities and decisively rigged against the Jews. Although the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65 renounced the Roman Catholic teaching that Jews were Christ killers and John Paul II acknowledged Jews' ongoing presence by visiting a synagogue, postwar papal discourse has focused on Christianity's view of Judaism, not the reverse, and steered serenely around fundamental controversies. Jesus of Nazareth takes the next huge step: "a Pope taking seriously what a Jew says--and says critically--about the New Testament," marvels Eugene Fisher, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' liaison for Catholic-Jewish relations. "Wow. This is new."

In choosing Neusner as his muse, Benedict selected a man as formidable and controversial in the field of Jewish studies as the Pope is in Catholicism. An expert on the sprawling literature of the 1st through 6th century rabbis who shaped modern Judaism, Neusner is an empire builder, a central figure in wrestling an examination of Judaism into America's universities. He accomplished this through brilliance (he developed his own secularly comprehensible synthesis of rabbinics), superhuman productivity (he has written more than 950 books, although he will admit to a certain reprocessing of material) and a knack for grooming gifted protégés who now run Jewish studies at top schools. He is equally famous for alienating many of his disciples with what came to be known as "Neusner's drop-dead letters." (Neusner calls the complaint "overstated.") He can keep friends--Harvard classmate John Updike wrote a fond 1986 short story featuring a "Josh Neusner"--but as Neusner admits, he remains one of the most contentious people he knows.

Contention was the very soul of A Rabbi Talks. Neusner based his book on the common scholarly understanding that the New Testament's Gospel of Matthew was written as an invitation to Jesus' fellow Jews, trying to convince them, by dint of purportedly predictive passages in the Jewish Bible and Jesus' striking interpretations of Jewish Scripture, that he was Israel's longed-for Messiah. His claim in the Sermon on the Mount that he came "not ... to abolish the Torah and the [writings of the] prophets ... but to fulfill them" is one of the great hinge sentences connecting Western monotheisms.

But Neusner insists it doesn't parse. A Rabbi Talks argues, for instance, that Jesus' line that "he who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me" defies the commandment to "honor thy father and mother" and that his liberties with Saturday rules on grounds that "the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath" flout the one that explicitly orders all humans to observe the day. Most important, Neusner read Jesus' repeated rhetorical formula "You have heard that it was said [in the Torah] ... But I say to you ... " as his claim to be not merely the religio-military Messiah some Jews hoped for at the time but also above the Torah and hence God...

ROOTING FOR THE BOOT:

The state is always wrong and the individual is always right. Don't old habits die hard?:
The term Kafkaesque answers to a deep anxiety in us about power being wielded cruelly (Howard Jacobson, 26 May 2007, Independent)

Does literature serve us ill sometimes? Or, to put that another way, do we sometimes learn the wrong lessons from it?

What if Joseph K. was guilty? "Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K," is how Kafka's great novel The Trial begins, "for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning." But what if no one was telling lies and Joseph K really had done something wrong?

Part of what makes that opening so chilling is its understated menace. The morning is fine. Terrible things happen in storms, in literature as in life, but at least you get a bit of warning with a storm. Our greatest dread is catastrophe striking when we least expect it, when the weather's good, all seems right with the world, and our defences are lowered. Unprepared, we are at our most vulnerable.

And more vulnerable still when the attack comes not only from a clear blue sky but through an agency unknown. Someone. An unidentified person or persons, acting we don't know where or when or why. It's all surmise. Not "someone was telling lies about Joseph K" but someone "must have" been telling lies about Joseph K. A deduction, in the dark of day, working backwards from the inexplicable arrest. Inexplicable, because the man is innocent.

Assuming that he is.

IT EVEN RUINED THE CLAMPETTS:

Latin America: Beating The Oil Curse: Mexico's troubled national oil company could siphon some good ideas from Brazil's petroleum success story (Geri Smith, 6/04/07, Business Week)

With oil prices as high as they are, you'd think Mexico's state-run oil company, Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), would be awash in cash. But it lost money five out of the past six years and racked up just $3.9 billion in profits in 2006 on a record $97 billion in sales. Why? Because it had to hand almost $54 billion in taxes and royalties to the national treasury last year, accounting for nearly 40% of the government's revenues.

Pemex is Mexico's piñata. Politicians are so accustomed to the steady flow of cash from the company that they've never mustered the discipline to cut government spending or carry out major tax reform. Now, after years of underinvesting in exploration, Pemex is watching helplessly as output from its biggest oil field, Cantarell, declines by 20% a year. At current production rates, Mexico's oil reserves will last less than 10 years, meaning the world's sixth-largest oil-producing country runs the risk of becoming an oil importer.

Contrast Pemex's woes with the situation in Brazil. At the time of the price shocks of the 1970s, Brazil imported all its crude and the economy nearly collapsed. Since then, state oil company Petróleo Brásileiro (PBR ) (Petrobras) has been driven with a missionary zeal that led the country to become self-sufficient in oil last year. The richest deposits were offshore, at depths that hadn't been attempted even by Big Oil multinationals. But Petrobras' engineers developed innovative techniques and equipment that allowed them to pump crude in more than 6,000 feet of water—a record at the time and still among the deepest operations worldwide. To help pay for the effort, Brazil's political leaders floated Petrobras shares on the New York Stock Exchange (NYX ) in 2000, raising $4.1 billion while keeping 56% of voting power under government control. Investors have been rewarded: The stock has since quadrupled in value.

Two state-owned oil companies, two different stories. Pemex and Mexico represent a classic example of what economists call the "oil curse" that plagues countries endowed with so much of the valuable resource that they become complacent—and dependent. Mexico, which nationalized its oil industry in 1938, has spent decades "administering the abundance," as one former President put it, with little planning for the future. The result: By some estimates, production could fall as low as 2 million barrels daily by 2012 from a peak of 3.8 million barrels a day in 2004. Petrobras, in contrast, started from scratch in 1954, pumping just 2,700 barrels of oil daily. Today it produces 1.9 million. "Pemex is like a well-fed dog that has never needed to search for its next meal," says John Albuquerque Forman, a Brazilian energy consultant. "Petrobras is that lean, scrawny dog that has to rummage through the trash cans to survive."

Now Pemex is turning to the hungry hound for help. With 60% of its reserves in deep water, Mexico needs Petrobras' knowhow. The companies signed a broad cooperation agreement last year that may give Pemex a helping hand. "The situation in Mexico is desperate—they are losing their reserves very quickly," says Guilherme Estrella, Petrobras' chief of exploration and production.

SOMETIMES THE NUMBERS STATE THE OBVIOUS:

Can Adam Everett lead MLB for the fifth straight season? (John Dewan, May 23, 2007, ACTA Sports)

Here are the top shortstops in 2007 thus far:
Adam Everett, Hou +11
Tony Pena, KC +9
John McDonald, Tor +7
Julio Lugo, Bos +5
Troy Tulowitzki, Col +5
J.J. Hardy, Mil +5

Vizquel is at a respectable +2 so far while last year's American League Gold Glover, Derek Jeter, is at -9, second worst in MLB at shortstop to Hanley Ramirez at -10.

WHICH IS WHY CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH FIRE:

House Republicans Jolt Democrats on Lobbying Overhaul (Congressional Quarterly, 5/24/07)

Democrats who campaigned successfully last year against a “culture of corruption” in the Republican-controlled Congress found themselves one-upped today when more than 30 of their own members voted for a GOP motion to strengthen the package.

By 228-192, the House adopted a motion by Lamar Smith, R-Texas, to recommit the first of two lobbying bills — a measure requiring quarterly disclosure by lobbyists of bundled contributions to candidates and party units — to broaden the disclosure requirement to cover bundled donations to other PACs as well.

SELF-TRANSFORMATION:

The American Liberal Liberties Union: The ACLU is becoming very selective about what it considers "free" speech. (WENDY KAMINER, May 23, 2007, Opinion Journal)

"ACLU Defends Nazi's Right to Burn Down ACLU Headquarters," the humor magazine The Onion announced in 1999. Those of us who loved the ACLU, and celebrated its willingness to defend the rights of Nazis and others who had no regard for our rights, considered the joke a compliment. Today it's more like a reproach. Once the nation's leading civil liberties group and a reliable defender of everyone's speech rights, the ACLU is being transformed into just another liberal human-rights group that reliably defends the rights of liberal speakers.

LOSING BATTLE:

China Publishes Commentaries Shunning Democratic Reforms (Edward Cody, 5/25/07, Washington Post)

China dropped another hint of internal debate over political reform Friday, publishing commentaries saying the country should shun European-style democratic socialism.

The brief commentaries, by a pair of established Beijing academics, ran side by side in People's Daily, the official Communist Party organ. Both argued that China could borrow useful policies from democratic countries but should remain faithful to the "socialism with Chinese characteristics" that has been official doctrine here since the 1980s.

"The path of democratic socialism is not able to save China," said Xin Xiangyang of the government-sponsored Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. "Only the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics can make China flourish."

The commentaries, by contesting the idea that democracy would be good for China, suggested some within the party are pushing for political reforms to match the dramatic economic loosening that has taken place during the past 25 years.

HAIR OF THE SEA DOGS:

Once considered suspect, he’s now something special (Rob Bradford, May 25, 2007, Boston Herald)

“That,” Sox first base coach Luis Alicea said, pointing to the out-of-place 22-year-old, “is the next big-time pitcher.”

Skeptics would say Alicea’s analysis was smothered in bias, considering he had managed Buchholz in each of the hurler’s first two professional seasons. The opinion, however, soon spread throughout City of Palms Park. The wide-eyed, wiry, 6-foot-3 Texan has a tendency of wasting no time in making an impression.

“The kid is going to be something else,” Red Sox starter Curt Schilling [stats] said in an e-mail one day after Buchholz first faced big league hitters in that spring training game against Tampa Bay. “He’s an incredible athlete with a dream body for a young power guy. He’s thin and will fill out, and his fastball has hair, big time. He’s going to be special. . . . When catchers talk up a guy after a bullpen (session), the way they were with him, you know you’re seeing something special.”

That’s the type of reaction the Red Sox had hoped Buchholz would elicit since June 7, 2005 - the day when, through a somewhat convoluted set of circumstances, the former all-everything high school wide receiver, shortstop and occasional pitcher became part of their club.

Clay Buchholz gets all the buzz, but the Red Sox [team stats] do have another pitching prospect every bit as worthy: Michael Bowden.

A 20-year-old right-hander, Bowden was the 47th overall pick in the 2005 draft. He was taken five spots after the Sox selected Buchholz, his current teammate at Double-A Portland.

Bowden started this season at Single-A Lancaster (Calif.) and showed that his 2006 numbers - 3.56 ERA, 131 strikeouts, 36 walks over 118 innings in stops at Single-A Greenville (S.C.) and Wilmington (Del.) - were no fluke. Pitching in the hitter-friendly California League, Bowden went 2-0 with a 1.37 ERA in eight starts, striking out 46 and walking just eight. Those results prompted a call-up to Portland this month.

He made his second start there yesterday and got the no-decision in the Sea Dogs’ 3-2 win against Trenton. Although he struggled with his control, walking five in four innings, he did not allow a run and struck out three. In his first start May 18, he recorded the win, allowing one run in five innings.

“He’s a little (two years) younger than Clay, coming out of high school, but he’s a similar pitcher,” said Mike Hazen, the Red Sox’ director of player development. “Michael is one of our hardest workers and best makeup guys. He’s tremendously driven.”

Baseball America describes Clippard's outlook as "solid #4." He's lost a little velocity on the heater, and doesn't have that one nasty out pitch. He does throw a decent curve and change, and has a deceptive delivery. He should stick in the Yanks' rotation until Phil Hughes returns, which might be four starts from now. Worth a look in AL-only, at least until the scouting reports get around.

NATIVISM IS LITERALLY UNAMERICAN:

Immigration Bill Provisions Gain Wide Support in Poll (JULIA PRESTON and MARJORIE CONNELLY, 5/25/07, NY Times)

As opponents from the right and left challenge an immigration bill before Congress, there is broad support among Americans — Democrats, Republicans and independents alike — for the major provisions in the legislation, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

Taking a pragmatic view on a divisive issue, a large majority of Americans want to change the immigration laws to allow illegal immigrants to gain legal status and to create a new guest worker program to meet future labor demands, the poll found. [...]

Two-thirds of those polled said illegal immigrants who had a good employment history and no criminal record should gain legal status as the bill proposes, which is by paying at least $5,000 in fines and fees and receiving a renewable four-year visa.

Many Republican lawmakers have rejected this plan, calling it amnesty that rewards immigrants who broke the law when they entered the United States. But the poll showed that differences are not great between Republicans and Democrats on this issue, with 66 percent of Republicans in the poll favoring the legalization proposal, as well as 72 percent of Democrats and 65 percent of independents.

SURPRISINGLY ACCURATE:

First, Get the Knowledge (DIANE RAVITCH, May 25, 2007, NY Sun)

Who was the greatest American president? According to the latest Gallup poll, 18% of Americans picked Abraham Lincoln. Second place goes to Ronald Reagan, 16%, followed by John F. Kennedy, 14%, Bill Clinton, 13%, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, 9%.

AMERICAN PURITANISM IS A GROUND-UP PHENOMENON (via Bryan Francoeur):

Study: Smoking forbidden in most U.S. households (AP, 5/25/07)

Smoking is forbidden in nearly three out of four U.S. households, a dramatic increase from the 43 percent of homes that prohibited smoking a decade ago, the federal government reported Thursday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which conducted the survey in 2003, said it was the first study to offer a state-by-state look at the prevalence of smoking in American homes.

Utah led the nation, with people in nearly nine out of 10 homes saying smoking was never allowed. The state's large population of Mormons, who eschew tobacco, probably contributed to that statistic, the agency said.

Kentucky was in last place, with a little more than half of households sending smokers outside (or, at least, to the garage).

But even in Kentucky, smokers found fewer place to light up. Ten years earlier, only a quarter of the state's households barred smoking.

BUBBLICIOUS (via Jim Yates):

How economic bubbles built America (NEIL REYNOLDS, 5/23/07, Globe and Mail)

In 1820, as calculated by the English economist Angus Maddison in The World Economy: Historical Statistics, the United States produced 1.8 per cent of the world's gross domestic product. China and India together produced 50 per cent.

In 1920, the U.S. produced 15 per cent of world GDP, the same percentage as China and India. With 4 per cent of world population, the U.S. now produces 25 per cent of world GDP, twice the combined share of China and India. With a $13-trillion (U.S.) economy, the country now routinely increases GDP by hundreds of billions a year -- or more than the entire GDP of such dynamic economies as South Korea. What explains this explosive American growth -- uniquely sustained for two centuries?

Normally, by way of explanation, people cite democratic institutions, the rule of law and free-market capitalism. But these essential attributes of most prosperous countries don't explain the profound differences between rowdy, expansive American growth and (for example) discreet, orderly European growth. [...]

In his new book Pop! Why Bubbles are Great for the Economy, [Daniel Gross, a columnist for Slate] argues that excessive enthusiasms - "outbursts of entrepreneurial id" - are indeed a defining aspect of the American Way. These outbursts invariably produce bubbles, he says, the long-term consequences of which are invariably good. All by themselves, bubbles have given the United States a huge competitive advantage and constitute one reason why the country was able to build itself "from almost nothing to become, for all its faults and failings, the most prosperous nation in the history of mankind."

DOES ANYBODY EDIT BUSINESS WEEK?:

Another Reason to Go Wii: Metroid Prime 3: Corruption continues Retro Studios' science fiction series. Using the nunchuk controller makes for intense action (Chris Buffa, 6/04/07, Business Week)

There are plenty of really cool looking games being developed for the Nintendo Wii, chief among them Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, the third installment in Retro Studios' successful science fiction series. Once again, you'll assume the role of bounty hunter Samus Aran and do battle against a myriad of evil space pirates and other bizarre creatures, all the while solving intricate puzzles and navigating our heroine around detailed alien environments. But while Corruption looks similar to its predecessors (and that's both good and bad), it sure doesn't play like them. That's where the Wii remote comes into play, providing us with a different type of experience we just can't get anyplace else.

By and large, Metroid Prime 3 bears a striking resemblance to the last two games, and that's actually wound up being both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, we're quite fond of the work Retro's done over the years in bringing the Metroid universe to life. The architecture, creepy aliens, and various effects shine, especially on a high definition monitor. But the fact remains that Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes were released ages ago, and while they still look good, that's not the type of visuals we want to see from a supposed "next generation" console. We know that the Wii isn't a graphical powerhouse, but we were looking for some extra oomph, some pristine sparkle that we'd never seen before. But unfortunately, Corruption looks like a GameCube title. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and for all we know the game's appearance might be significantly beefed up in the time leading up to its release, but for now, we're not pissed, just content.

Now that we've gotten that issue out of the way, we definitely subscribe to the theory that there's more to a game than its graphics, and with that being said, Corruption (at least what we've played of it) has the potential to be one of Nintendo's premier games, and it all has to do with the innovative control scheme.

THE PERIODIC AMNESTY:

Globalization vs. Immigration Reform: Can we have free flow of goods and capital without free flow of labor? ( Michael Mandel, 6/04/07, Business Week)

How can this borderless view of the global economy be reconciled with a bill that actually requires the construction or acquisition of at least 20 new detention facilities capable of holding 20,000 "aliens," as they are called in the bill? The answer is it can't, at least for now. One view of the world tears down the walls that separate countries; the other view builds them up.

Europe is wrestling with the same conflicts as the U.S. The European Commission is considering proposals for a crackdown on the large number of illegal immigrants, even as it looks for new ways to admit legally the temporary workers needed for construction, tourism, and agriculture. Meanwhile, Britain has gotten a substantial boost to growth from the migrants from those Eastern European countries that joined the European Union in May, 2004, while France and Germany still have tougher rules for these workers.

Lant Pritchett, an economist at the World Bank and Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and the author of the 2006 book Let Their People Come, argues that the global pressure for labor movement across national borders is rising. He cites, in particular, the combination of big gaps in wages between rich and poor countries and the slow population growth of many developed countries, which will soon lead to a shrinking workforce unless more immigration is allowed. Cheap communications make a difference as well, says Pritchett, since "it is less psychically costly to move when one can stay in touch."

If Pritchett is right, immigration seems likely to increase rather than decrease in the future, just as trade and communications between countries have grown by leaps and bounds. And no piece of legislation, no matter how finely balanced, is likely to change that.

THE CRIPPLED PHOBICS (via Matt Murphy):

Live Free or Else!: A walk on the libertarian side. (Jonah Goldberg, April 27, 2007, National Review)

Obviously, every political movement has its own problems, conservatism included. But if you had to identify libertarianism’s Achilles’ heel, it would almost certainly be its tolerance for zealots, purists, mavericks, and, well, whack-jobs. Since the libertarians don’t see themselves as Left or Right, one can’t use the phrase “no enemies on the left [or right]” to explain their stance. But “love me, love my whack-job” gets close to the heart of it.

The revolutionary ardor of libertarianism combines with its fetishization of rationalism and consistency to make a soft spot in the libertarian heart for intellectual extremism. Murray Rothbard, the genius father figure of modern libertarianism, converted to anarcho-capitalism from classical liberalism when someone asked him: If the social contract can justify a small government, “why can’t society also agree to have a government build steel mills and have price controls and whatever? At that point I realized that the laissez-faire position is terribly inconsistent, and I either had to go on to anarchism or become a statist.” Now, there are good answers to this social-contract question — though obviously none of them satisfactory to Rothbard. The point is that only something akin to inconsistency-phobia would force someone to believe that one must endorse a Soviet Five-Year Plan if one is willing to enjoy the protection of police or courts. But Rothbard was a highly unusual type: He refused to vote for president for fear of being conscripted into “compulsory jury slavery.” Indeed, while Doherty treats him lovingly, he notes that Rothbard was a man of “crippling phobias” of such things as “traveling, bridges, and planes.”

Or consider the Libertarian party, once the repository of libertarian dreams of social transformation and now little more than an ideological chum bucket for the political refuse of the American two-party system. As Doherty notes, there is now a high wall of separation between libertarianism’s best and brightest intellectuals and policy experts and the party that ostensibly speaks for them. Gary Greenberg, the founder of the New York State LP, tells Doherty that any attempt to be relevant to electoral politics amounts to “selling out.” The “very idea of worrying about the LP becoming a major force is essentially selling out,” he explains, “because hardcore libertarianism has no mass constituency. And if you are constantly covering it up you are just playing games. There is no mass constituency for seven-year-old heroin dealers to be able to buy tanks with their profits from prostitution, and once you face that the LP has to decide: Are they compromising their principles for votes, or are they running candidates for the opportunity to educate people?”

THE BARGHOUTI OPTION:

Al-Sadr is back in Iraq, U.S. says (Thomas E. Ricks and Sudarsan Raghavan, 5/25/07, The Washington Post)

Muqtada al-Sadr, the influential Shiite cleric and militia leader who went into hiding before the launch of a U.S.-Iraqi security offensive in February, is in the southern city of Kufa, senior U.S. military commanders said Thursday. [...]

Al-Sadr's movement is wooing Sunni leaders and purging extremists in the cleric's Mahdi Army militia in an attempt to strengthen his image as a nationalist who can lead all Iraqis at a time when anti-war sentiments are growing in the United States and Iraq's political landscape is fractured.

Al-Sadr's apparent re-emergence comes days after his main Shiite rival, the influential cleric Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, went to Iran for treatment of lung cancer. Hakim also is trying to strike a nationalist stance, recently renaming his party from the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq to the Supreme Islamic Council in Iraq.

There are growing signs that extremists in al-Sadr's militia are disobeying his orders to stand down, as U.S. troops raid and patrol their strongholds.

After three months of sharp declines, sectarian violence is rising again in Baghdad, a possible indication that Shiite militiamen are resuming reprisal attacks. Al-Sadr's aides have described the cleric's orders as intended to improve his credibility and dispel allegations that the Mahdi Army was fueling sectarian violence.

YOU MEAN IT ISN'T DDT?:

Pigeon club members face U.S. charges: Area hobbyists kill thousands of hawks and falcons annually, wildlife officials allege, because some raptors attack their birds (Joe Mozingo, May 25, 2007, LA Times)

Federal agents went undercover, conducting nighttime surveillance, setting up remote cameras and digging through trash cans, searching for possible criminal activity among Southern California's roller pigeon rings.

Roller pigeons, you ask?

Roller pigeons are bred for a genetic quirk that strikes in mid-flight, causing a brief seizure that sends the birds spiraling uncontrollably toward the ground. Thousands of hobbyists compete to see who can best make their birds roll in unison.

But for a hawk or falcon, a plummeting roller pigeon is fast food. Fed up by raptors spoiling their sport, some of the leading competitors in the roller pigeon field began illegally killing the predators, according to a federal indictment released Thursday.

HOW'S THAT RESURGENCE GOING?:

Is al-Qaeda on the Run in Iraq? (JOE KLEIN, 5/23/07, TIME)

There is good news from Iraq, believe it or not. It comes from the most unlikely place: Anbar province, home of the Sunni insurgency. The level of violence has plummeted in recent weeks. An alliance of U.S. troops and local tribes has been very effective in moving against the al-Qaeda foreign fighters. A senior U.S. military official told me—confirming reports from several other sources—that there have been "a couple of days recently during which there were zero effective attacks and less than 10 attacks overall in the province (keep in mind that an attack can be as little as one round fired). This is a result of sheiks stepping up and opposing AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq] and volunteering their young men to serve in the police and army units there." The success in Anbar has led sheiks in at least two other Sunni-dominated provinces, Nineveh and Salahaddin, to ask for similar alliances against the foreign fighters. And, as TIME's Bobby Ghosh has reported, an influential leader of the Sunni insurgency, Harith al-Dari, has turned against al-Qaeda as well. It is possible that al-Qaeda is being rejected like a mismatched liver transplant by the body of the Iraqi insurgency.

EV...:

House Approves Stricter Lobbying Limits (CHARLES BABINGTON, 5/25/07, Associated Press)

Top Democrats had a few minor setbacks when several freshman joined most Republicans in approving proposals that Democratic leaders initially opposed.

One item, offered by Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, would require disclosure of lobbyists' bundled donations not only to individuals but also to political action committees, or PACs.

Democrats receive more PAC money than do Republicans, said Smith, who called the omission of bundled PAC donations a loophole ``big enough to ride a Democratic donkey through.''

Also added to the broader bill was a GOP amendment to apply the disclosure requirements to lobbyists for public universities and state and local governments.

The House earlier had changed its rules to bar members and employees from accepting gifts, meals or trips from most lobbyists. A Republican proposal Thursday would extend that ban to state and local government lobbyists.

BUT SHE WENT OUT ON TOP:

Life after Polly: Connie Booth (a case of Fawlty memory syndrome): Most people would be happy to trade on the success of 'Fawlty Towers'. But the American actress who co-wrote the sitcom with John Cleese has declined to appear in a programme reuniting the stars. (Cahal Milmo, 25 May 2007, Independent)
Mblockquote>Connie Booth has a simple explanation for why she lost her enthusiasm for sitcoms. The actress and co-writer of Fawlty Towers once said: "I used to watch a lot of comedy until I got divorced. Then I went off it."

The American-born actress - whose status as a creator of the show voted the greatest in British television history has often been overlooked - endeared herself to millions as Polly, the sensible but harried waitress who was the comic foil to the insanity of Basil Fawlty, played by John Cleese, her husband at the time.

But when their marriage began to unravel just as the couple were writing the second series of Fawlty Towers in 1978, Booth began to go off other things as well.

Not least among those was acting itself and the media spotlight that followed her every move, resulting in one of the more perplexing changes of heart in recent showbusiness history. [...]

The couple, who had a young daughter, Cynthia, at the time they were writing Fawlty Towers between 1975 and 1978, were separated when they began writing the second series and yet still managed to work together under Cleese's exacting requirements.

Speaking soon after the marriage ended in divorce in the autumn 1978, Booth said: "There had been difficulties for some time in the marriage, which is why we went for counselling. If it hadn't been for group therapy, I don't think we could have worked on the second series."

Although neither Cleese nor Booth has offered any insight to the reasons for the break-up beyond the fact that no one else was involved, the crucible-like atmosphere in which Fawlty Towers was created was a significant contributory factor.

In a recent interview, Cleese said: "Each episode took me and Connie six weeks to write and a week to rehearse and record. Before every recording, which was on a Sunday, I'd work all day Saturday to make sure the timing and the words were as good as possible.

"I had a perfectionist streak and I got terribly wound up over things. Writing Fawlty Towers meant going over everything again and again until we got it right. That attitude contributed to our break-up."

Cleese met Booth in the late 1960s while he was working the comedy circuit in New York. He was a Cambridge graduate in the early stages of a promising but as yet low-level performing career.

She was the daughter of a Wall Street magnate and a actress who had moved to New York state after Connie was born in rural Indiana. With her mother's encouragement, Booth began an acting career and was balancing jobs as a Broadway understudy and a waitress when she met her future husband.

Cleese said: "I went into a restaurant where all the waitresses were great-looking out-of-work actresses. Connie was one of them.

"With Connie, I had at last met someone who could express themselves as I would like to have done. It was instant attraction. But the tensions that took over during the making of Fawlty Towers struck a killer blow."

The couple, who married in 1968, got the idea for Fawlty Towers while working in Britain with the Monty Python team.

They stayed at the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay where the owner, a former naval officer, made it clear he cared little for the foibles of his guests, throwing out those who complained until he was locked in his private apartment by his domineering wife.

Cleese hinted that both he and Booth, the first of his three wives, recognised a fiery side to their own temperaments. It is one of the ironies of the couple's subsequent and separate lives that Cleese is now married to a American psychotherapist, Alyce Faye Eichelberger. He is still friends with Booth and the couple both attended the marriage of Cynthia in 1995.

Cleese said: "Connie and I have always had a thing about people who can't suppress their rage, which neither of us can. There was a certain part of me in Basil... and, I suppose, a certain part of Connie too."

For her part, Booth has spoken only of the demonstrative nature of her upbringing. The rows between her parents were so loud that at times police were called by concerned neighbours.

She said: "My family was given to affection and anger and it was expressed with less restraint than in England. You could easily get smacked or spanked."

When the first six episodes of Fawlty Towers were broadcast on BBC2 in 1975, it was slated by critics and largely ignored. But when it was repeated on BBC1 the next year, it was a huge hit, attracting 12 million viewers and became a comedy classic.

Cleese's career continued on its upward trajectory thereafter but Booth's stuttered as she fell out of love with the glamour and clamour of showbusiness.
He didn't actually go upward from the pinnacle of tv comedy, though he's done much other good work.

CRAZY WON'T RUN AN ECONOMY:

Iran interest rate cut sparks panic selling (Robert Tait, May 25, 2007, The Guardian)

Iran's financial system suffered a fresh jolt yesterday with panic selling on the stock market after the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, abruptly ordered banks to cut interest rates sharply, despite surging inflation.

The order, which Mr Ahmadinejad issued by telephone during a visit to Belarus and which flew in the face of expert advice - has triggered warnings of a financial crisis and spiralling corruption amid fears of a capital flight from the country's lending institutions.

Mr Ahmadinejad's decree forced all state-owned and private banks to slash borrowing rates to 12%. Inflation is officially 15% but is generally believed to be much higher. State banks had been offering rates of 14%, while those in the private sector ranged from 17% to 28%.

The decision caused panic in the Tehran stock exchange, with private banks losing much of their share value overnight. Shareholders in one bank, Karafarin, queued on Wednesday to sell their stock when previously there had been 1.2 million applicants to buy its shares.

WHICH IS WHY THE SOX 21ST CENTURY IS LOOKING LIKE THE YANKS' 20TH:

Sox prospect outperforms Clemens (Rob Bradford, May 24, 2007, Boston Herald)

It was the Red Sox’ little secret.

While more than 100 media members and Waterfront Park’s largest crowd ever converged on the home of the Trenton Thunder to digest all things Roger Clemens, a few onlookers focused their attention elsewhere.

Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein, his assistant, Allard Baird, and a smattering of scouts focused on the pitcher much of baseball is truly drooling over. And it wasn’t the one scheduled to make more than $18 million over the next four months.

Clay Buchholz used baseball’s latest big stage to show why losing the Roger Clemens sweepstakes might not sting for Sox fans too much longer.

“I would have more confidence in this kid (Buchholz) starting a major league game tomorrow than the other guy (Clemens),” said one American League scout in attendance for Clemens’ second minor league tune-up for the New York Yankees, a start for the Double-A Thunder in their 4-3, 10-inning loss to the Portland Sea Dogs. “We need one game to win the division and you’re giving me a choice between starting (Buchholz) or Clemens, I’m taking (Buchholz) off of what I saw tonight.”

It was one thing to hit 95 mph, but to drop the hammer of a curve he has developed was impressive. A huge positive was that he throws all four pitches (fastball, curve, slider, change) for strikes. As one scout said, “You can see why he strikes guys out so much.”

An interesting aspect of last night’s start for Buchholz was that he actually got pushed back a day so that he could pitch on the big stage. While it was Michael Bowden’s turn, the organization wanted to allow Buchholz a chance to experience the pomp and circumstance that went with the Roger Clemens media circus. It was the second step down this path, with Buchholz’s outing in the final game of spring training serving as the first step. It was effective (thanks Mike) as Buchholz admitted to being a bit nervous at the beginning. It showed not only in four straight singles, but also because of his delivery, which was unusually quick with those first few runners on base.

EV...:

Dems’ panel chiefs cash in on bundling (Alexander Bolton, May 24, 2007, The Hill)

Powerful Democratic chairmen and subcommittee chairmen have relied on lobbyists to raise money during the first three months of this year, according to recent fundraising reports, which cast light on the strong opposition to lobbying reform legislation scheduled to reach the floor today. [...]

It appears many Democrats — and Republicans, for that matter — would prefer that the public not know how much fundraising help lobbyists provide. Recent campaign-finance reports offer a glimpse of the interactions between lobbyists and lawmakers in private dining rooms around Washington.

Lobbyists have hosted at least three fundraisers for Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.), the chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Lobbyists at Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds and Wiley Rein spent $2,600 on catering and room rental fees to hold fundraisers for Oberstar in January and March, according to a fundraising report. [...]

Many lawmakers have questioned whether these proposed regulations are too ambiguous.

“If a lobbyist helps put on the fundraiser, are you saying that everyone who contributes is part of a bundled contribution?” Schadl said.

THE RING CYCLE:

The frayed knot (The Economist, 5/24/07)

There is a widening gulf between how the best- and least-educated Americans approach marriage and child-rearing. Among the elite (excluding film stars), the nuclear family is holding up quite well. Only 4% of the children of mothers with college degrees are born out of wedlock. And the divorce rate among college-educated women has plummeted. Of those who first tied the knot between 1975 and 1979, 29% were divorced within ten years. Among those who first married between 1990 and 1994, only 16.5% were.

At the bottom of the education scale, the picture is reversed. Among high-school dropouts, the divorce rate rose from 38% for those who first married in 1975-79 to 46% for those who first married in 1990-94. Among those with a high school diploma but no college, it rose from 35% to 38%. And these figures are only part of the story. Many mothers avoid divorce by never marrying in the first place. The out-of-wedlock birth rate among women who drop out of high school is 15%. Among African-Americans, it is a staggering 67%.

Does this matter? Kay Hymowitz of the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think-tank, says it does. In her book “Marriage and Caste in America”, she argues that the “marriage gap” is the chief source of the country's notorious and widening inequality. Middle-class kids growing up with two biological parents are “socialised for success”. They do better in school, get better jobs and go on to create intact families of their own. Children of single parents or broken families do worse in school, get worse jobs and go on to have children out of wedlock. This makes it more likely that those born near the top or the bottom will stay where they started. America, argues Ms Hymowitz, is turning into “a nation of separate and unequal families”.

A large majority—92%—of children whose families make more than $75,000 a year live with two parents (including step-parents). At the bottom of the income scale—families earning less than $15,000—only 20% of children live with two parents. One might imagine that this gap arises simply because two breadwinners earn more than one. A single mother would have to be unusually talented and diligent to make as much as $75,000 while also raising children on her own. And it is impossible in America for two full-time, year-round workers to earn less than $15,000 between them, unless they are (illegally) paid less than the minimum wage.

But there is more to it than this. Marriage itself is “a wealth-generating institution”, according to Barbara Dafoe Whitehead and David Popenoe, who run the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University. Those who marry “till death do us part” end up, on average, four times richer than those who never marry.

WON AND DONE:

Israel's wasted victory: Six days of war followed by 40 years of misery. How can it ever end? (The Economist, May 24th 2007)

Part of the trouble was the completeness of the triumph. Its speed and scope led many Israelis to see a divine hand in their victory. This changed Israel itself, giving birth to an irredentist religious-nationalist movement intent on permanent colonisation of the occupied lands (see article). After six days Israel had conquered not just Sinai and the Syrian Golan Heights but also the old city of Jerusalem and the West Bank—the biblical Judea and Samaria where Judaism began. In theory, these lands might have been traded back for the peace the Arabs had withheld since Israel's founding. That is what the UN Security Council proposed in Resolution 242. But Israelis were intoxicated by victory and the Arabs paralysed by humiliation. The Arabs did not phone to sue for peace and Israel did not mind not hearing from them. Instead, it embarked on its hubristic folly of annexing the Arab half of Jerusalem and—in defiance of law, demography and common sense—planting Jewish settlements in all the occupied territories to secure a Greater Israel.

The six-day war changed the Palestinians too. They had been scattered by the fighting that accompanied Israel's founding in 1948. Some fled beyond Palestine; others became citizens of the Jewish state or lived under Egypt in Gaza and Jordan in the West Bank. The 1967 war reunited them under Israeli control and so sharpened their own thwarted hunger for statehood.

HYPOCRISY IS JUST ABOUT OPPORTUNITY:

Syriana Writer Weds Oil Heiress (Radar, May 2007)

For filmmaker Stephen Gaghan, oil money is the gift that keeps on giving.

Gaghan, the writer-director behind 2005's Syriana, got married last weekend, to Minnie Mortimer, a member of one of New York's most prominent society clans. Mortimer is the great-granddaughter of Standard Oil president Henry Morgan Tilford (and sister-in-law of sometime Radar mascot Tinsley Mortimer).

Syriana, of course, was a "scathing" (as it was invariably described in reviews) look at the politics of the international oil business. Promoting the film in a Huffington Post blog, Gaghan wrote, "This massive pile of wealth, of found money from a puddle under the earth, has the same effect as the gravity of a black hole that bends and swallows the morality of all who pass into its orbit. You think you're immune? Well, I suspect you just haven't been induced yet, you haven't met your devil."

Gaghan and his devil met at Barry Diller's annual pre-Oscars picnic, according to parkavenuepeerage.com, and were wed on Saturday at Manhattan's St. Thomas Church.

THUMP UP THE VOLUME:

It's even got a nice shot at nativists.

PHONEY BUSINESS:

In the Democratic Congress, Pork Still Gets Served: 'Phonemarking' Is Among Ways Around Appropriations Process (John Solomon and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, May 24, 2007, Washington Post)

When the new Democratic majority in the House of Representatives passed one of its first spending bills, funding the Energy Department for the rest of 2007, it proudly boasted that the legislation contained no money earmarked for lawmakers' pet projects and stressed that any prior congressional requests for such spending "shall have no legal effect."

Within days, however, lawmakers including Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) began directly contacting the Energy Department. They sought to secure money for their favorite causes outside of the congressional appropriations process -- a practice that lobbyists and appropriations insiders call "phonemarking."

2AM? (profanity alert):

Red Eye for the Straight Guy (George Gurley, May 22, 2007, NY Observer)

If Red Eye isn’t quite Fox’s answer to The Daily Show—that distinction belongs to Fox’s truly awful The ½ Hour News Hour—the show’s giddy roster of New York–area media stars and camera-craving bloggers, who are probably unknown and unattractive to the vast majority of Fox viewers, is evidence that Fox wishes to make itself a respectable place to do business for the next-generation New York media elite.

While the show runs largely on jokes, riffs and loopy news bits, it’s prevented from relaxing too much into apolitical anarchy by the hand of Fox News president Roger Ailes, who dropped sultry conservative Toronto Sun columnist Rachel Marsden smack in the middle of the merry band of pranksters to make it clear that politics with a rightward bent is still the Fox brand, particularly if it arrives on long legs.

So far, about 300,000 viewers are tuning in to the show, which is taped at 8:40 p.m. and airs at 2 a.m. The format is unscripted. In the studio with Mr. Gutfeld are his sidekick, Bill Schulz (a Muppet-like fellow that Mr. Gutfeld described as “the funniest person I’ve ever met in my life”); the coltish (and Coulter-ish) Ms. Marsden; and guests, who recently have included gadfly Christopher Hitchens, comic Jackie Mason, blogger Rachel Sklar, Fox News correspondent Laurie Dhue and redneck comedian Larry the Cable Guy. The topics whiz past—most segments barely last a minute. Mr. Gutfeld has a stack of blue cards with things written on them such as “woman’s severed finger found in purse,” and he’ll toss the conversational ball around.

“I feel like I’m a lion tamer holding chain saws,” Mr. Gutfeld said. “Because I want to say something funny, but I’m too busy going, O.K., what do I do next?” The surreal feeling of the show blends into the type of commercials running at that insomniac hour—Vermont Teddy Bears, adjustable beds, giant tomatoes. [...]

While Mr. Gutfeld tries to keep the show from idling too long on partisan territory (“They get that 23 hours a day”), his own politics are fairly at home on Fox. He dismisses liberalism as “romantic notions that are false, based on the idea of making yourself look good to other people. That’s why most men—Bill Clinton is a good example—are liberal, because they need to get laid. If you look at most left-wing guys, they’ve made a deal with the devil. They don’t really believe that s[***]—they’re going against their own innate nature, because liberalism is anti-man. If you believe that peace and love work, you’re not a man, because this world works on war. The only people who respect you are people who are scared of you—and that’s why Reagan was a great President. And the idea that you can negotiate with people who want you dead is a complete lie. That’s why the left is the most self-absorbed, vanity-driven enterprise. These are people who would rather feel good about themselves at a cocktail party that actually protect people’s lives. If you’re at a party and you say, ‘The war on terror is the most important thing in the world’—you won’t get a nod. But if you say, ‘Global warming is the biggest threat,’ you will get laid.”

Jon Stewart?

“His show is an arena built on self-congratulation,” said Mr. Gutfeld. “He meets his audiences’ assumptions, and that makes them feel good. And I think that’s weak. At times he’s funny, but that’s the easiest job in the world—to show up and have people kiss your a[**].”

Mr. Gutfeld’s journey from lad-magazine editor to Fox personality happened the way Fox does a lot of things—quickly and without much fuss. Last summer, after his contract at Maxim UK wasn’t renewed, he was living in London, writing for The American Spectator and drinking.

He flew to Los Angeles to visit his friend Andrew Breitbart, a regular contributor at the Drudge Report. Over dinner, a guy from Fox News told Mr. Gutfeld about a new show. “I was drunk enough to say, ‘I’ll be the host!’” said Mr. Gutfeld. “I never probably would have said that otherwise. It was still a vague idea. They didn’t know what they wanted, but they knew that they wanted something.”

He flew to New York and met with Fox News producer John Moody and Fox News president Roger Ailes. “[Ailes] liked me and asked me how much I was making,” Mr. Gutfeld said. “I said, ‘It’s not important—working at Fox is a perfect fit for me, because I’m an outsider and Fox is an outsider.’ In some bizarre way, I charmed them into letting me do this.”

THIS TIME W'S POODLE IS EVEN FRENCH:

France's Sarkozy calls to tighten sanctions on Teheran (JPOST.COM STAFF AND AP, 5/24/07)

French President Nicholas Sarkozy called Wednesday for sanctions on Iran to be tightened if the country does not adhere to the West's demands to cease its nuclear agenda.

If Iran attains nuclear weapons, Sarkozy warned, a road to an arms race will be paved that could endanger Israel and southeast Europe, he said during an interview with a German magazine.

Sarkozy announced that France will join the official US-led struggle against head of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohamed ElBaradei, who recommended that Iran be allowed to enrich uranium in some of its nuclear plants.

MORE:
The Kouchner effect: A new minister signals a new foreign policy (The Economist, 5/24/07)

“OUR silence in the face of the 200,000 deaths and 400,000 refugees of wars in Chechnya is not tenable. Nor is our indifference in the face of the 200,000 deaths from ethnic massacres in Darfur. We need urgently to act, so that Darfur does not remain a shameful page of our own history.” France's new humanitarian foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner? Actually, his boss, Nicolas Sarkozy, during his campaign.

Mr Kouchner's appointment is more than just a deft political gesture. It reflects Mr Sarkozy's desire for a new French “doctrine”, based on values, designed to strengthen France's voice. One element is more emphasis on human rights, particularly in Darfur and Russia. This is where Mr Kouchner, co-founder of Médecins Sans Frontières, and a former UN governor in Kosovo, comes in. The day after taking office, he held a weekend meeting about Darfur.

A contempt for knee-jerk French anti-Americanism also unites the two men. Mr Sarkozy has called America “the greatest democracy in the world”, and denounced the “arrogance” (if not substance) of France's hostility to war in Iraq. Mr Kouchner was one of the few Frenchmen to see merit in the Iraq intervention, though he criticised its aftermath. Both would hope for better Franco-American relations, which soured after 2003 (though Mr Sarkozy has no plans yet for an official trip). One plus is the choice of Jean-David Levitte, France's ex-ambassador to America, as Mr Sarkozy's national security adviser.

NATURAL MINORITY:

War spending bill splits Democrats (Carl Hulse, May 24, 2007, NY Times)

Congressional contortions over the Iraq spending bill could end up with most House Democrats momentarily occupying the position they were so desperate to vacate: the minority.

The decision by the Democratic majority to strip the measure of a timetable for troop withdrawal has raised the prospect that it could be approved mainly by Republicans with scattered Democratic support.

The idea that many Democrats would be left on the losing side in a consequential vote has exposed a sharp divide within the party, drawn scorn from antiwar groups, confused the public and frustrated the party rank hand file.

PASCAL'S SCHOLARSHIP:

Atheist Wilson Gives $22.5 Million for Catholic Fund (Patrick Cole, 5/24/07, Bloomberg)

Philanthropist and retired hedge-fund manager Robert W. Wilson said he is giving $22.5 million to the Archdiocese of New York to fund a scholarship program for needy inner-city students attending Roman Catholic schools.

Wilson, 80, said in a phone interview today that although he is an atheist, he has no problem donating money to a fund linked to Catholic schools.

``Let's face it, without the Roman Catholic Church, there would be no Western civilization,'' Wilson said. ``Shunning religious organizations would be abhorrent. Keep in mind, I'm helping to pay tuition. The money isn't going directly to the schools.''

BECAUSE, UNLIKE THE MAYOR, SHE'S ACTUALLY RUNNING:

Clinton Camp Resists Aide’s Advice to Skip Iowa (ADAM NAGOURNEY, 5/24/07, NY Times)

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign has considered — and rejected — a plan to stop competing in Iowa, the traditional kickoff state in the nominating process, and to concentrate instead on later states, including the 20 or so that are slated to vote on a single day in early February.

The recommendation to pull out of Iowa was in a memorandum written by Mike Henry, Mrs. Clinton’s deputy campaign manager. He made a case that Iowa would consume too much time and money that could be better invested elsewhere.

Mr. Henry’s memorandum, dated May 21, said Mrs. Clinton would have to spend $15 million and 70 days in the state to be competitive there, and suggested that if she did not pull out she might not have the money she would need for the rapid-fire series of contests that follow. The Iowa caucuses are scheduled for Jan. 14, with the New Hampshire primary eight days later, Florida a week after that and about 20 other states on Feb. 5.

The Clinton campaign said Mr. Henry’s advice had been rejected. Soon after learning that the memorandum would become public, the campaign announced that Mrs. Clinton, a New York Democrat, would be campaigning in Iowa this weekend.

February 5, a.k.a. "Tsunami Tuesday," is not just going to be anchored by California’s primary. Other big states, like New York, New Jersey, Illinois and possibly Texas, are going to be on the same day.

This guarantees that California will get no more attention than it gets in any other cycle. In fact, arguably because of the cost of talking to California voters, it may get even less since there are so many other states one can concentrate on.

From my perspective, all this frontloading has done only one thing: make Iowa even more important.

As the very first test, the "winner(s)" of the Iowa Caucuses is (are) going to take on greater significance than ever before – particularly since there is no break between Iowa and everything else. Momentum will be the driving force for these candidates post-Iowa, not money or message.

The only chance Iowa and (to a lesser extent) New Hampshire have in becoming less relevant to the process this year is if the two states move up so early that there are a few weeks, rather than just a few days, between them and every other state.

IN THEIR DEFENSE...:

Poll: Are you OK with bombing civilians? (Preeti Aroon, 5/23/07, FP Passport)

Some people think that bombing and other types of attacks intentionally aimed at civilians are sometimes justified while others think that this kind of violence is never justified. Do you personally feel that such attacks are often justified, sometimes justified, rarely justified, or never justified?

In December of last year, a sample of Americans was asked this question in a poll by the Program on International Public Attitudes, and their responses were:

* often- 5%
* sometimes- 19%
* rarely- 27%
* never- 46%
* The remainder said "don't know" or refused to respond.

Recently, a survey by the Pew Research Center (pdf) asked Muslim Americans:

Some people think that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets are justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies. Other people believe that, no matter what the reason, this kind of violence is never justified. Do you personally feel that this kind of violence is often justified to defend Islam, sometimes justified, rarely justified, or never justified?

The responses were:

* often or sometimes- 8% (15% for those ages 18-29)
* rarely- 5% (11% for those ages 18-29)
* never- 78% (69% for those ages 18-29)
* The remainder said "don't know."

AMERICANIZE OR DIE:

No Decline Here: Rumors of our demise have been greatly exaggerated. (Victor Davis Hanson, 5/24/07, National Review)

After the collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1991, America proclaimed itself at the “end of history” — meaning that the spread of our style of democratic capitalism was now inevitable. Now a mere 16 years later, some are just as sure we approach our own end.

But our rivals are weaker and America is far stronger than many think.

Take oil. With oil prices at nearly $70 a barrel, Vladimir Putin, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Hugo Chavez seem invincible as they rally anti-American feeling.

But if we find alternate energy sources, or reduce slightly our oil hunger, we can defang all three rather quickly. None of their countries have a middle class or a culture of entrepreneurship to discover and disseminate new knowledge.

Russia and Europe are shrinking. China is an aging nation of only children. The only thing the hard-working Chinese fear more than their bankrupt Communist dictatorship is getting rid of it.

True, the economies of China and India have made amazing progress. But both have rocky rendezvous ahead with all the social and cultural problems that we long ago addressed in the 20th century.

And European elites can’t blame their problems — a bullying Russia, Islamic terrorists, unassimilated minorities, and high unemployment — all on George Bush’s swagger and accent. The recent elections of Angela Merkel in Germany and Nicolas Sarkozy in France suggest that Europe’s cheap anti-Americanism may be ending, and that our practices of more open markets, lower taxes, and less state control are preferable to the European status quo.

In truth, a never-stronger America is being tested as never before. The world is watching whether we win or lose in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Middle East is either going to reform or remain an oil-rich tribal mess that endangers the entire world.

A better way to assess our chances at maintaining our preeminence is simply to ask the same questions that are the historical barometers of our nation’s success or failure: Does any nation have a constitution comparable to ours? Does merit — or religion, tribe, or class — mostly gauge success or failure in America? What nation is as free, stable, and transparent as the U.S.?

ONLY MORE SO:

Olney saw end of Yanks’ dynasty before anyone else (BILL REYNOLDS, 5/24/07, Providence Journal)

Think of it this way: If you took away the pinstripes and the mystique, took away the history and the amount of money spent on payroll, would anyone be in awe of this particular team? Would anyone right now be thinking of them as a great team?

In fact, it was two years ago that Buster Olney, who covered the Yankees for five years, wrote The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty, a book whose premise was that the Yankees already were a very different team than the one that lost in the 2001 World Series to Arizona, that we were seeing the last days of the dynasty, like the morning after the party, just the stragglers and the empty bottles left.

It was Olney’s contention that the glory days had been built on a foundation of great pitching and a core of players who had all come of age together, a core whose whole was greater than the sum of the parts. In short, it was a team with a shared purpose, run by a manager who both trusted his players and had their respect.

But all of that was gone now, as the Yankees tried to buy the future with a succession of free agents. To the point they began to resemble more of an all-star team than a team that had grown up together, some who bought into the team’s ethos, some who didn’t. All in an environment that had no patience with anything other than winning world championships, everyone from the owner, to the fans, to the tabloids that screamed out every morning with their big bold headlines.

“The others in the Yankee clubhouse had inherited the legacy, and like second-generation scions, they found that everything they did was held up against the daunting standard of years before,” wrote Olney. “The burden of those expectations weighed on the team, especially the newcomers.”

It was Olney’s contention that what we were seeing in 2004 was the dynasty’s last gasp, an attempt to cling to something that was already gone.

Now it’s three years later, and it’s only more so.

THE ORIGINS OF I. D.:

Stanley Miller, 77; chemist was a pioneer in studying the origins of life (Thomas H. Maugh II, May 24, 2007, LA Times)

Stanley Miller, the UC San Diego chemist who was the first to demonstrate that the organic molecules necessary for life could be generated in a laboratory flask simulating the primitive Earth's atmosphere, died Sunday from heart failure in a hospital in National City. He was 77.

Miller had suffered a series of strokes since 1999 and had been living in a nursing home, according to his brother, Donald.

"Stanley Miller was the father of origin-of-life chemistry," said marine chemist Jeffrey L. Bada of UC San Diego, a former graduate student of Miller's. "And he was the leader in that field for many decades…. It was the Miller experiment that almost overnight transformed the study of the origin of life into a respectable field of inquiry."

MOUTHS OF BABES:

Children say they prefer daddy to drive (Daily Mail, 24th May 2007)

Women drivers have long faced slurs from men over their prowess behind the wheel. Now it seems even their children are critics.

Research among youngsters has found 47 per cent feel unsafe being driven by their mother, compared with 39 per cent who feel unsafe with their father.

NO, NO, NO, HE'D BE THE TOUGHEST NOMINEE TO BEAT SINCE LBJ IN '64...:

Is Edwards an Easy Mark (Steve Kornacki, May 22, 2007, NY Observer)

Granted. The issue of John Edwards’ pricey haircut is a silly one. And its staying power—the story is weeks old, yet the press still asks about it—is rightly insulting to Democrats who want their Presidential primary defined by weightier things.

But the truth is that it matters. It’s exactly the kind of tidbit that Republicans have used—to devastating effect—against three of the last four Democratic nominees, utterly overwhelming Democratic efforts to focus the elections on policy. [...]

The stories generated by the revelation that the Edwards campaign had spent $400 for a trim fed into an ongoing attempt to caricature the former Senator as a slick, rich hypocrite—a “limousine liberal” who lectures about poverty while living in gated opulence.

The haircut affair, remember, was preceded by this winter’s story about Mr. Edwards’ new home—a 28,000-square-foot “compound” outside Chapel Hill, N.C., complete with an indoor basketball court. All for a man who has used his stump speech to implore audiences not to live in economic segregation.

A HANDY MEASURE:

What happens when you have one candidate telling the GOP to get over baby-killing and the other cursing out fellow pols? Exactly what you'd expect.

THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS PRIVATE EXPLORATION:

Elon Musk Is Betting His Fortune on a Mission Beyond Earth's Orbit (Carl Hoffman, 05.22.07, Wired)

For a rich guy with a private jet and a million-dollar sports car, Elon Musk is unusually quiet and shy. He is tall, with long arms and big hands and a boyish face that often looks distracted; you can tell the wheels inside his head never quite stop spinning.

Before he founded SpaceX in 2002, Musk created two Internet companies: Zip2, which he sold to Compaq in 1999 for $307 million in cash, and PayPal, which went public shortly before being sold to eBay. Musk, the largest shareholder, was 30 years old, crazy rich, and "tired of the Internet."

Sitting in traffic on the Long Island Expressway in 2001, mulling the problems of the world, Musk started wondering about NASA's plans to send people to Mars. Which, he discovered when he finally reached a computer, didn't exist. Musk was horrified. A native of South Africa, he had earned physics and business degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and dropped out of a graduate program in physics at Stanford. He had always been interested in space, convinced that humans were destined to be a multiplanet species. But where were the Columbuses and da Gamas of the 21st century?

Still on Earth — because going to space is hard. An object in low Earth orbit stays there, 250 miles up, only when the force that put it up there equals the gravity trying to pull it back down. And that force comes from one thing: massive amounts of kinetic energy, also known as speed.

"Look," Musk says, scribbling equations on a notepad, "the energy increases with the square of the velocity. To go 60 miles into suborbital space, like Rutan and the X-Prize, you need to travel at Mach 3. The square of that is 9. But to get to orbit, you need to go Mach 25, and the square of that is 625. So you're looking at something that takes 60 to 70 times more energy. And then, to come back, you need to unwind that energy in a meteoric fireball, and if there's one violation of integrity, you're toast."

To date, only the interests of national security have harnessed the capital and intellectual muscle necessary to get to orbit. "Virtually every rocket that exists today in the US fleet is a legacy of ballistic missiles," says Roger Launius, a historian at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. The American and Russian space programs required armies of engineers working with nearly unlimited budgets. The Apollo lunar program cost more than $150 billion in 2007 dollars and took 300,000 people and more than 3 percent of the US federal budget for 1964 through 1966. Even the "cheap," reusable space shuttle is such a thoroughbred that it requires a ground crew of 50,000 and costs $1 billion every time it flies. (It also remains the most dangerous rocket system ever created.)

The handful of private companies that have managed to get something into orbit have basically used hardware developed under government programs. Their services aren't cheap: Lofting a satellite into orbit on a Sea Launch Zenit sets DirecTV or XM Satellite Radio back $50 million to $75 million. Putting a 550-pound payload into low Earth orbit on an Orbital Sciences Pegasus costs the Air Force $30 million. "If we can't figure out how to get to Earth orbit at a much lower price," Launius says, "we'll never be able to do the things we want to do in space." Musk's fee for hauling a 1,400-pound payload: $6.9 million.

The list of companies that have tried and failed to go orbital is long enough to have spawned a hackneyed joke: What's the fastest way to become a commercial space millionaire? Start as a commercial space billionaire. "Moore's law does not apply to rockets," says John Pike, a space analyst at GlobalSecurity.org. "Humanity has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on space exploration in the past half century, and the numbers have not changed: about $10,000 per pound to put something in low Earth orbit. Elon Musk is asserting that his future is going to be remarkably different, and that's a tall claim."

IN LILLIPUT?:

Pork tastes good – and is good for you (JIM ROMANOFF, 5/23/07, The Associated Press)

Though its name is practically synonymous with bad health, pork doesn’t have to be banished from a good-for-you diet.

Thanks to advances in breeding and feeding techniques, pork actually is leaner than it was 30 years ago. In fact, cuts such as tenderloin are among the leanest meats you can buy, with just 139 calories and 4 grams of fat per 3-ounce serving.

Pork tenderloin also is convenient because it’s small – usually no more than 1½ pounds – and cooks quickly.

Though tenderloin can be pricey (as much as $7 a pound), compared to other cuts of pork there’s little waste. And a 1-pound pork tenderloin can easily feed four people.

BUT HIS HAIR WAS PERFECT:

Fight Club: Bob Shrum v. John Edwards (Michael Crowley, 5/23/07, TNR Online)

Shrum discovered Edwards during the North Carolinian's first Senate campaign in 1998. Shrum writes that, after his encounter with Edwards, he telephoned his business partner and declared, "I think I just met a future President of the United States." But that view would change dramatically.

Shrum went on advising Edwards for several years, including as Edwards was contemplating his vote on the fall 2002 Iraq war resolution. In the one passage of the book already widely leaked, Shrum recounts how he and other political advisers pushed Edwards into a vote for the resolution that Edwards--and, even more so, his wife, Elizabeth--didn't want to cast. The episode didn't make Shrum look great. But the real damage is to Edwards, who comes across as a cipher taking orders from his handlers. As Shrum puts it: "[H]e was the candidate and if he was really against the war it was up to him to stand his ground. He didn't."

(Edwards aides have said Shrum exaggerates the importance of this meeting and wasn't in other pivotal meetings where Edwards deliberated. But, as an aide to a rival campaign recently pointed out to me, in a moment that passed largely unnoticed, Edwards seemed to confirm the basic thrust of this story during the first Democratic presidential debate last month in South Carolina. "I was wrong to vote for this war," Edwards said. "And the lesson I learned from it is to put more faith in my own judgment." It does sound as though Edwards is admitting that he allowed handlers to overrule his conscience.)

By early 2003 Shrum faced a choice: Would he work for Edwards's presidential 2004 campaign? Or would he go with another longtime client and friend, John Kerry? (Shrum had already ruled out two other would-be candidates seeking his services: Joe Lieberman had become "too monochromatic ... the Republicans' favorite Democrat," while Dick Gephardt's "time had passed.")

Shrum decided to go with Kerry. By now, he was coming to see Edwards as a lightweight--"a Clinton who hadn't read the books," as he puts it. Edwards didn't take the news well. Shrum writes that, in a dramatic early 2003 phone call, Edwards told him: "I can't believe you would do this to me and my family. I will never, ever forget it, even on my deathbed." The relationship has been poisoned ever since.

That surely helps to explain why No Excuses repeatedly portrays Edwards as a hyper-ambitious phony. Nowhere is that clearer--and more startling--than in a passage recounting Kerry's first meeting with Edwards during the summer 2004 running-mate selection process. Kerry had qualms about Edwards from the start, Shrum writes, but grew

even queasier about Edwards after they met. Edwards had told Kerry he was going to share a story with him that he'd never told anyone else--that after his son Wade had been killed, he climbed onto the slab at the funeral home, laid there and hugged his body, and promised that he'd do all he could to make life better for people, to live up to Wade's ideals of service. Kerry was stunned, not moved, because, as he told me later, Edwards had recounted the exact story to him, almost in the exact same words, a year or two before--and with the same preface, that he'd never shared the memory with anyone else. Kerry said he found it chilling, and he decided he couldn't pick Edwards unless he met with him again.

BIG BACKYARD BBQ WEEKEND (via Mike Daley):

Cole Slaw with Pecans and Spicy Dressing

1 head napa or savoy cabbage, shredded
4 carrots, shredded
2 Granny Smith apples, thinly sliced
1 medium red onion, thinly sliced
1 cup pecans, toasted and chopped
Leaves from 1 bunch fresh mint, for garnish

Dressing:
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
3/4 cup mayonnaise
1 lemon, juiced
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Combine the cabbage, carrots, apples, onion, and pecans in a large bowl. Mix well with your hands and set aside.

In a small bowl, stir together the mustard, sugar, cayenne, cumin, mayonnaise, and lemon juice until blended. Season with salt and pepper. Pour the dressing over the cabbage mixture and toss well to coat. Taste again for seasoning, then mound onto a platter and garnish with mint leaves.

THE GRAY NESSMEN:

Democrats Find Ethics Overhaul Elusive in House (DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, 5/23/07, NY Times)

House Democratic leaders pushing a promised lobbying overhaul are facing resistance from balky lawmakers and fending off accusations that a prominent member is flouting new ethics rules.

The Democratic leaders were forced to scrap a promise to double the current one-year lobbying ban after lawmakers leave office. Now, they are struggling to pass legislation requiring lobbyists to disclose the campaign contributions they “bundle” — collect and deliver — to lawmakers. Failing to deliver on both measures would endanger similar provisions already passed by the Senate.

Other House rules changes this year appear to have done little to alter business as usual on Capitol Hill. House Democrats voted along party lines on Tuesday to block the censure of one of their most powerful members, Representative John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania. He was accused of violating a new ethics rule that prohibits lawmakers from swapping pork for votes.

Still to come is a long-overdue report by a House committee considering the creation of an independent watchdog to monitor compliance with ethics rules. Democrats say the House is unlikely to endorse the idea, which the Senate has already rejected.

The House’s new Democratic majority is flirting with disaster as it guts key provisions of the strict lobbying reform it promised voters last November. Rebellious lawmakers, worried about their own career path, fought their leaders to defeat tighter restrictions on the sleazy, revolving-door culture by which members of Congress move on from an apprenticeship of merely serving the people to real Washington money as insider lobbyists. [...]

For all the promises, the bundling disclosure mandate is in deep trouble as opposition mounts from Blue Dog, Hispanic and black caucus Democrats intent on protecting their re-election campaigns. The pity is that the proposal they are fighting doesn’t even stop this ethically indefensible practice — it merely puts the details on the record.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knows failure to approve bundling disclosure will reduce the Democrats’ vaunted vows to political farce and shorten their chances of retaining the majority. Republicans are chortling, but the smarter moderates in their ranks better keep their eyes on the people’s agenda, not the lobbyists’ A.T.M.’s. A crucial vote over the lobby bill’s debating rule is about to determine whether reform dies at the hands of greedy incumbents. They might remember that next year’s voters will check for enactment of last year’s promises.

UP THE CHATTOOGA WITHOUT A PADDLE:

Democratic Caucus Split by Iraq Troop-Withdrawal Concession (Nicholas Johnston and Laura Litvan, May 23, 2007, Bloomberg)

Anti-war Democrats criticized the decision. ``We've given everything away,'' Virginia Democrat Jim Moran said. ``It will split the Democratic caucus.''

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was so disappointed with the outcome that she said she might vote against the Iraq portion of the package, which will be split into two parts when it comes before the House. "I'm not likely to vote for something that doesn't have a timetable," she said.

WE LIKE MIKE (via Glenn Dryfoos):

LSU likely to ignore PETA, obtain new tiger mascot (Associated Press, 5/23/07)

A group of animal advocates is urging LSU not to replace its recently departed mascot with another live tiger but school officials appear unlikely to accept that idea.

"Big cats in captivity are denied everything that is natural and important to them, such as the opportunity to run, climb, hunt, establish their territory, and choose their mates," Lisa Wathne, of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, says in a letter to school officials.

"The LSU mascot is part of the LSU community, part of the LSU family; a tradition for 71 years," said Dr. David Baker of the LSU Veterinary School, who cared for Mike and was visibly shaken last week by the tiger's death from kidney failure. "And we intend to obtain another tiger."

FLOWER POWER:

The cauliflower clan is chock full of flavor and benefits (ANN LOVEJOY, 5/23/07, THE P-I)

Relatively low in carbs and high in fiber, the cauliflower family also contains health-promoting, cancer-fighting phytonutrients. The cauliflower clan -- members of the cabbage family -- offers almost 2 grams of protein per cup, for around 20 calories (and almost no fat).

So why don't we eat this stuff every day? Mostly because we don't know to cook it well. [...]

ROASTED CAULIFLOWER AND BROCCOFLOWER WITH CHERRY TOMATOES
SERVES 4

* 3 cups cauliflower (cheddar if available), cut into florets
* 3 cups broccoflower, cut into florets
* 2 cups tart cherry tomatoes
* 2-3 teaspoons olive oil
* 1/4 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
* 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Toss all ingredients, spread one layer thick in a large baking pan and bake at 350 degrees until tender (30-40 minutes).

THE ACME OF INSANITY (via Lou Gots):

Second child attacked by coyote in Middletown (CHRIS NEWMARKER, 5/22/07, Associated Press)

For the second time in as many months, officials believe a coyote has attacked a small boy in this wooded, suburban town in central New Jersey.

Police and state wildlife officials set traps Tuesday, and were looking for the animal that attacked 5-year-old Brayden Gazette.

Joann Gazette saw her son and 8-year-old daughter, Sydney, screaming as they ran to their home.

"He was bloody and they were crying," Gazette said.

She said the children were in the Lawrence family's yard across the street from their home at about 8:15 p.m. Monday when the animal bolted from a stand of trees and jumped on Brayden, biting his head.

IT'S NOT FRANCE, THERE IS NO RIGHT TO PERFECT GOVERNMENT:

Rights not violated in home search, justices rule: A Southern California couple had been rousted from bed and held naked at gunpoint by deputies. (David G. Savage, May 22, 2007, LA Times)

Mistakes sometimes happen when police conduct home searches, the Supreme Court said Monday in throwing out a lawsuit brought by a white couple in Southern California who were rousted from bed and held naked at gunpoint by deputies looking for several black suspects.

The search of Max Rettele and his girlfriend, Judy Sadler, in their bedroom may have been an error, and it was certainly embarrassing to them, the justices said. But it did not violate their rights under the 4th Amendment, which protects against "unreasonable searches and seizures," they added.

Police obtain search warrants based on probable evidence, not "absolute certainty," the court said in an unsigned opinion. "Valid warrants will issue to search the innocent, and people like Rettele and Sadler unfortunately bear the cost."

GETTING OUT FROM UNDER:

The six-day war is not over. Today, it brings the spectre of al-Qaida in Gaza: Victory in 1967 was as much curse as blessing. It paved the way for 40 years of mortal, political and moral disaster (Jonathan Freedland, May 23, 2007, The Guardian)

I am as old as this war. Officially the war of 1967, the year of my birth, lasted for six days. In reality, it's still going on: it is the 14,600-day war. Witness the violence in Gaza, one chunk of the territory which the young state of Israel - then just 19 years old - conquered in that extraordinary, whirlwind victory. In Gaza, there is fighting among the Palestinians - a barely repressed civil war between the old Fatah movement of Yasser Arafat and the Islamists of Hamas - but also between them and the Israelis. Hamas has resumed firing Qassam rockets from Gaza into Israel, a break in their ceasefire. On Monday, one rocket succeeded in killing a civilian, a woman in the southern Israeli town of Sderot. And Israel has resumed its targeted assassinations, including one attack on the home of a Hamas member of parliament, killing eight people. The war which marks its 40th anniversary in a fortnight may have brought Israel a breathtaking victory - but it has brought no peace.

Ever since I first travelled properly in Israel, as a young student, I came to believe that what had been won in 1967 was as much curse as blessing. Yes, Israel had done something remarkable, defeating the armies of three nations that had vowed its destruction. And yes, it salved the wounded psyche of Jews all over the world to see that, just two decades after Auschwitz, the Jews were not fated to be history's permanent victims, but could defend themselves and win. I understood the pride of 1967, the sense of recovered dignity that it brought; subliminally, as a child raised in the glow it brought, I even shared in it.

But I could see 20 years ago what Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, had seen 20 years earlier. Even before the war was over, he was advocating a conditional withdrawal from the territories just won. He understood what holding on to those lands, and the Palestinian people who lived in them, would mean: a mortal, political and moral disaster for the state he had founded and loved.

MORE:
Resistance, not terror: The Grand Ayatollah Ahmed Alhasani al-Baghdadi (Munthir Alkewther, 5/24/07, Asia Times)

Munthir Alkewther: What do you think of the resistance in Iraq?

Grand Ayatollah al-Baghdadi: In the name of Allah and from him we seek help. There is a demagogic propaganda against the national and Islamic practical and political resistance, which asserts that [the resistance] targets and kills children, women and old people. Those who carry this propaganda are forgetting that the world is becoming a village and there is a difference between resistance and terror.

Resistance is the right to fight in order to kick out the occupiers from the Islamic homeland. This opinion is based on the Koran and the correct teachings of the Prophet Mohammed. It is also based on international law according to the Geneva Conventions. Terrorism, on the other hand, is what targets the infrastructure and popular areas, and this is one of the biggest sins from an Islamic point of view.

MA: Does this mean you support the resistance carrying guns to enable them to attack the American and British troops?

Al-B: There should be no doubt about it. People have the right to free their countries from any occupation; even President [George W] Bush in a speech condemned terrorism in Iraq and complimented the resistance when he said, "If my country was occupied, I would have fought."

MA: Are you demanding that the Americans leave immediately or gradually?

Al-B: I repeated many times: the Americans should be removed immediately from Iraq, but after I found that all the people who are resisting the occupation were asking for a timetable for the Americans to leave, then I accepted the principle of having a timetable. Even if the Americans' claims come true and a civil war broke out in Iraq, then that should not be a big issue, because as Iraqis we will reach an agreement in the end.

MA: What is the alternative you suggest to the Americans and the Iraqi government, which you describe as American agents?

Al-B: When the Americans and their agents leave we will establish an advisory council to have people with differing political opinions from this nation. We give the Americans a period of two years to leave, then a constitution has to be written by people who are specialized in law, and then this constitution is submitted to the Iraqis for their approval.

HE EVEN INVOKES DARWINISM CORRECTLY:

VIDEO: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, with Robert A. Pape (Harry Kreisler, Conversations with History)

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes political scientist Robert A. Pape for a discussion of how social science can help us understand suicide terrorism. Professor Pape also reflects on international relations theory and its implications for foreign policy. Series: "Conversations with History"

MORE:
What Makes Suicide Bombers Tick?: A new report provides essential info for filtering fact from fantasy. The President would be wise to study its conclusions closely (Stan Crock, 7/06/05, Business Week)

"The presumed connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism is misleading and may be encouraging domestic and foreign policies likely to worsen America's situation and to harm many Muslims needlessly," he writes. Here's a summary of his analysis, which is based on the 315 suicide terrorist attacks from 1980 to 2003:

Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers, a Marxist-Leninist Hindu group opposed to religion, committed the largest number of suicide attacks, 76. The Kurdish PKK, which used the tactic 14 times, is headed by a secular Marxist-Leninist, Abdulah Ocalan. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, another Marxist-Leninist group, and the al-Aqsa Brigade, which has ties to the socialist Fatah movement, account for a third of the attacks against Israel. Communist and socialist groups account for 75% of the attacks in Lebanon. Islamic fundamentalists, he concludes, were associated with about only half of the attacks from 1980 to 2003. And such fundamentalist Islamic countries as Iran and Sudan aren't producing any suicide bombers.

Pape argues that the common denominator among the bombers in 95% of the cases is that they're nationalist insurgents with a secular, strategic goal: ousting the military forces of democratic countries from land the insurgents believe is theirs. The suicide terrorists, who account for about 5% of all terrorist incidents but about 75% of all fatalities, believe their land and way of life are threatened. The religions of the occupier and the insurgents invariably are different, Pape notes, but he contends that difference is merely a useful recruiting tool and isn't at the root of the animosity.

KILLING IS THE POINT:

The Real Planned Parenthood (Tom McClusky, 5/23/2007, American Spectator)

How much have you spent this year on the abortion-oriented services of Planned Parenthood? This question may seem too personal, or out of line with your religious beliefs. But the truth is that if you pay taxes, you support Planned Parenthood.

As the media runs stories of candidates getting into trouble for donating to Planned Parenthood, it's noteworthy to mention how much the controversial organization receives on the public dole. In 2005 Planned Parenthood got $272 million in our taxes, twice the money it made from its 255,000 surgical abortions. Since 1987, Planned Parenthood has taken in $3.2 billion in taxpayer funds for its deadly agenda. So, since 1973 Planned Parenthood has aborted 3.8 million babies with the help of over 3.9 billion tax dollars.

But the buck doesn't stop there. A number of companies also donate large amounts of money to the pro-abortion organization including Walt Disney Co., Bank of America, Johnson and Johnson, Cole, Levi Strauss, Nationwide Insurance, Prudential, Unilever, Wachovia and Whole Foods. Between taxpayer dollars, corporate monies and other donations, Planned Parenthood had over $882 million in total revenue in 2005. [...]

The true story of Planned Parenthood is more easily told by how it treats the young women who come in for "counseling." Two recently controversial cases come from Ohio where girls, one as young as 14, were brought in for abortions. In one case it was the young girl's soccer coach who brought the underage girl in for the abortion. In the other case, it was the victim's own father, who had repeatedly raped and abused her. Despite laws requiring Planned Parenthood officials to report the crimes of statutory rape or incest, the law was not followed. The victims were only sold abortions, paid for by their abusers.

Sadly, Planned Parenthood so routinely gets exposed instructing statutory rapist on how not to get caught, there are videos which can be watched even now at YouTube.

Interestingly, Planned Parenthood opposes true pregnancy care centers where adoption counseling and assistance for mothers can be found as well as medical assistance. A real pregnancy care center offers women a true choice, and such centers clearly explain to women that the choice they are about to make is not between a woman and her doctor, but between a mother and her child.

Because Planned Parenthood is most concerned with "terminating the pregnancy," the organization also fights against issues like parental notice, medical facility standards for abortion clinics, and the release of records of underage abortions, even with names and addresses deleted. This is key because such pregnancies indicate that crimes have been committed against the girls. Planned Parenthood hides under the guise of "patient privacy," as they have in Indiana and Kansas.

MORE:
Adult Approaches (Michael Fumento, 5/22/2007, The American Spectator.)

If you or a loved one is currently ill or planning to be so in the near future, don't bother looking to embryonic stem cell (ESC) research to help. Instead, you need to consult the adult stem cell (ASC) literature whereupon you'll find these little guys currently treat or cure over 70 diseases and conditions even as they're involved in almost 1,300 human clinical trials.

At this point, all that ESCs hold is promise. They are used in no treatments, cures, or human clinical trials. They are used in raising false hopes and hence money. The University of California, Irvine's Hans Keirstead, who claims to have used ESCs to cure paralyzed rats, said last year he would start human clinical trials this year. Problem is, he's been saying "next year" since 2002. Check your calendar. Moreover -- and this is typical of ESC researcher grandstanding -- his rats weren't even paralyzed. Rather, as opposed to what he tells reporters, including the late Ed Bradley on 60 Minutes, the injuries were "moderate in severity [and] sparing some hind limb motor function," as he reported in a medical journal.

ESC lobbyists sniff that ASC research got a big head start. "Researchers began using adult stem cells from bone marrow back in 1960," claims ReligiousTolerance.org on its website. (Note that the very name furthers the ESC lobby's goal of portraying all their opponents as religious fanatics.) "It was only in 1998 that other researchers were able to isolate and cultivate embryo stem cells. Adult stem cell research thus has an almost four decade head start compared to embryo-derived stem cells."

In fact, ASCs and ESCs were both discovered in rodents in the 1950s. But the ASCs -- from marrow -- were readily adaptable for treating leukemia and other human blood disorders. ESCs, conversely, precisely because of their much-touted flexibility, were so hard to work with that it wasn't until 1998, in the lab of the University of Wisconsin's James Thomson, that the first human line of ESCs was created. They remain a real bear to work with, which is why their domain remains primarily the Petri dish.

VOCABULARY ISN'T SCIENCE:

Carl Linnaeu: The man who named the natural world: His system of scientific names still shapes the way we think about the natural world. And today, 300 years after his birth, Carl Linnaeus matters more than ever (Michael McCarthy, 23 May 2007, Independent)

Happy anniversary: the man who gave us the key to the natural world was born 300 years ago today. Carl Linnaeus, who created the system of scientific names that we still use for all living things, began life in a turf-roofed farmstead in southern Sweden on 23 May, 1707. [...]

Take the emblematic bird of the Tower of London, for instance. The raven: Corvus corax. Unnecessary, you might think, a waste of time. Why not just call it a raven and have done with it? Until you remember that in France, a raven is a grand corbeau. In the Netherlands, it's a raaf. In Germany, it's a kolkrabe, while in Linnaeus's own Sweden it's a korp, never mind what it's called as you travel across Eurasia through Finland and Russia to Japan and Korea and China. Yet a biologist from any one of them can talk about a raven to a biologist from any other, and know they are referring to the same organism, because they both accept that this member of the crow family, for which they each have a different common name, is also universally known, scientifically, as Corvus corax, the name that Carl Linnaeus bestowed upon it two-and-a-half centuries ago.

Just how important this is starts to dawn on you when you realise how great is the variety of life on Earth. There are about 10,000 bird species in the world, and about half that number of mammals. There are more than 400,000 species of plants that have so far been described, and much more than a million species of insects, with perhaps another two to three million still to be discovered.

WHICH IS WHY DEMOCRATS ARE GOVERNING LIKE REPUBLICANS:

The Lay of the Land: A new report is likely to disappoint those who believe the electorate took a sharp left turn in 2006. (Matthew Continetti, 05/16/2007, Weekly Standard)

[Jim Kessler, Anne Kim, and Mark Donnell, who wrote Looking Red, Voting Blue: An Analysis of the 2006 Election] found that between 2004 and 2006 the Democrats gained 4.7 million votes. If you take a look at the demographic profile of these new Democrats, you see that--all things being equal--they ought to be Republicans. Almost all of them are men. All of them are married. Most are white and live in households making more than $100,000 a year. The Third Way researchers also found that close to 3 million new Democratic votes came from people who attend church at least once a week.

In 2006 all things were not equal, however. The study finds that these new Democratic voters had three things on their minds: Iraq, corruption, and Bush. The share of voters who disapproved of the Iraq war went from 46.2 percent in 2004 to a majority 56.6 percent in 2006. All these new antiwar votes went Democratic. Of the 74 percent of voters in 2006 who said corruption was "extremely" or "very" important in deciding for whom to vote, 56.5 percent voted for Democrats and 43.5 voted for Republicans. And Bush's drag on the GOP is no secret. According to the Third Way study, the number of voters who said they disapproved of the president increased by 8 million between 2004 and 2006.

THE CONGRESS THE PORKBUSTERS BROUGHT YOU:

Pelosi Defends Murtha Over Republican Effort to Reprimand Him (AP, May 21, 2007)

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is defending a close Democratic ally whom Republicans want to reprimand for threatening a GOP lawmaker's spending projects.

Pelosi, D-Calif., said she had "no idea what actually happened" during a noisy exchange in the House chamber last week between Reps. John P. Murtha, D-Pa., and Mike Rogers, R-Mich. [...]

During a series of House votes Thursday, Murtha walked to the GOP side to confront Rogers, a former FBI agent. This month, Rogers had tried unsuccessfully to strike from an intelligence spending bill an item that would restore $23 million for the National Drug Intelligence Center, a facility in Murtha's Pennsylvania district.

According to Rogers' account, which Murtha did not dispute, the Democrat angrily told Rogers he should never seek earmarks of his own because "you're not going to get any, now or forever."

"This was clearly designed to try to intimidate me," Rogers told The Associated Press on Friday. "He said it loud enough for other people to hear."

House rules prohibit lawmakers from placing conditions on earmarks or targeted tax benefits that are based on another member's votes.

THE DEMOCRATIC CLOAKROOMS OR, PARIS ON THE POTOMAC:

Democrats pull troop deadline from Iraq bill (Carl Hulse, May 22, 2007, NY Times)

Congressional Democrats relented Tuesday on their insistence that a war spending measure set a date for withdrawing American combat troops from Iraq. Instead, they moved toward a deal with President George W. Bush that would impose new conditions on the Iraqi government.

The decision to back down was a wrenching reversal for leading Democrats, who saw their election triumph in November as a call to force an end to the war. It was the first time since taking power in Congress that the Democrats had publicly agreed to allow a vote on war financing without a timetable for troop withdrawal.

IT'S WHAT THE ANGLOSPHERE DOES:

I wouldn't rule out attack on Iran, says Cameron (MATTHEW HICKLEY and JANE MERRICK, 23rd May 2007, Daily Mail)

Britain would be prepared to back military strikes against Iran if David Cameron becomes Prime Minister.

The Conservative leader yesterday accused former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw of diplomatic blundering when he ruled out the use of force against Tehran, and called for much tougher diplomacy to halt Iran's nuclear ambitions.

THE WAGES OF TOLERANCE:

Why this gang of yobs must now be called a 'group' (STEVE DOUGHTY, 22nd May 2007, Daily Mail)

Anyone who has been a victim of their contempt for the law or menacing behaviour might find it a little difficult to swallow.

But on the orders of a government agency, gangs of teenage criminals should no longer be called "gangs" because it might offend them.

Instead they should be referred to as "groups" and their crimes described as "group-related".

The instruction comes from the Youth Justice Board, which organises probation, training and detention for under 18s.

OF COURSE, THAT'S HIS HAIR CARE BUDGET FOR A WEEK:

American presidential hopeful is paid nearly £30,000 - for a lecture on poverty (Daily Mail, 5/23/07)

American presidential hopeful John Edwards has come under fire for charging £27,500 to lecture students - on poverty.

WHO KNEW ADAM EATON HAD IT IN HIM?:

Hamels' changeup separating him from the pack (Jerry Crasnick, May 22, 2007, ESPN)

Cole Hamels was a shy kid growing up in San Diego -- skinny, undersized and content to hang in the background with his buddies. The main exception was the pitcher's mound, where he asserted himself at an early age and embraced the showman within.

"I've always wanted to impress people since I was 9 or 10 years old,'' Hamels said. "When you're in Little League, your mom and dad and grandparents are there and you want to show them what you're all about. Then it's scouts -- or girls. I guess that's the masculine thing, to want to impress people. But I've learned to use it in a good way.''

Hamels is now 23 and in his second season with the Philadelphia Phillies, and the list of admirers keeps growing. It consists of teenage girls, their little brothers and dads, scouts and front-office executives, teammates and local newspaper columnists. Even Howard Eskin at WIP radio has a hard time finding fault with him.

The man upstairs is equally impressed -- and we're not talking about Philadelphia general manager Pat Gillick.

"Every night, when Cole Hamels kneels beside his bed and says his prayers, he's interrupted by God, who breaks in and thanks himself for creating Cole Hamels,'' Phillies starter Adam Eaton said, with only a trace of a smile.

THERE'S A REASON THEY GET PAID:

Cooperstown calling: Redemption proves elusive in Hall of Fame game (Tom Verducci, May 22, 2007, Sports Illustrated)

COOPERSTOWN, NY -- I will tell the story for years to come about how I played the outfield like Willie Mays in the 61st annual Baseball Hall of Fame exhibition game at historic Doubleday Field. I will conveniently forget to mention I did so like the Willie Mays of the 1973 World Series, turning a routine fly ball into a Sir Edmund Hillary-sized adventure.

Baseball, however, is a redemptive game, offering about 250 pitches worth of second chances every nine innings. I saw mine coming clear as day (which is more than I could say of the ball that caused my need to be redeemed.) It was carried on a seventh-inning fly ball headed toward the right-field gap and very possibly to the outfield seats. As a reprise to my 2005 story about playing one week with the Toronto Blue Jays in spring training, I played right field for the Jays against the Baltimore Orioles for five innings in the Monday exhibition. This fly ball would be my moment of glory, the very stuff Abner Doubleday himself might have had in mind when, at least as baseball mythology goes, he helped invent the game and its dreams right on these very grounds.

I ran toward the gap. The flight of the ball took me nearer and nearer to the wall. It wasn't until I felt my spikes first hit the cinder warning track that I knew with some certainty that I was going to catch it. I reached up and across my body for a backhand catch, calculating that the ball would hit my glove and the wall would hit me at just about the same time. The ball was not more than three feet from my glove, and then, suddenly .. nothing. Darkness. Black. The sky gone.

Worse: I got smacked in the nose and mouth by something, followed immediately by my back slamming against the wall. I knew even as I fell to the warning track what had happened. That darkness that blotted out the sky? A leather eclipse. Someone in the stands had reached over the wall and down toward the field to make the catch that should have been mine.

"Man, you had that!" center fielder Wayne Lydon told me, the disappointment clear on his face. "You had it."

THERE'S ACTUALLY AN AMERICA TO ASSIMILATE THEM TO:

Muslims assimilate better in U.S. than Western Europe, poll finds (Brian Knowlton, May 22, 2007, International Herald Tribune)

A new poll of American Muslims reveals a group that is better assimilated, more content and less politically polarized than counterpart Muslim populations in Western Europe - but also smaller in number than some Muslim groups had estimated.

For the survey, the Pew Research Center interviewed nearly 60,000 respondents - in Arabic, Urdu, Farsi or English - to find a representative sample of 1,050 respondents, for what appears to be one of the more rigorously complete looks at a population that is not well understood.

As a whole, the poll found a largely content and hard-working U.S. Muslim population, and one that is fast assimilating. Though 4 in 10 have arrived since 1990, a large proportion say their closest friends are non-Muslims. Their incomes are close to the national average. Even more than the general public, they say they believe that by working hard they can get ahead.

Eight in 10 said they were "very happy" or "pretty happy" with their lives.

MORE:L
How terrorism finds root in the West: Alienation and radical European politics are factors. (John K. Cooley, 5/23/07, CS Monitor)

It's conventional wisdom that Middle Eastern, North African, and South Asian terrorists attack Western societies partly as reactions to conflicts in their own regions, such as the Palestinian-Israeli strife. But there's plenty of evidence that extremist ideologies, even if born abroad, are often nurtured in the West.

New French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his advisers and supporters in the academic world realize this. It's why they recommend that France, Britain, and their European neighbors strengthen integration of their Muslim and other immigrant populations – in the way, for example, that millions of Arab-Americans, Iranian-Americans, and Hispanics have been helped to be successful members of US society.

HARDLY A FAIR MATCH-UP:

The Great Forgotten Debate: Forty years ago, Reagan taught RFK a lesson that ought to be remembered. (Paul Kengor, 5/22/07, National Review)

On May 15, 1967, there was a fascinating debate between California’s new Republican governor, Ronald Reagan, and New York’s new Democratic senator, Robert F. Kennedy. The subject: the Vietnam War. The debate was titled “The Image of America and the Youth of the World,” and was billed by CBS as a “Town Meeting of the World.” It was broadcast from 10:00-11:00 P.M. EDT by CBS TV Network and CBS Radio Network. It was produced by later 60 Minutes brainchild Don Hewitt and hosted by CBS News correspondent Charles Collingwood. The debate was watched by a huge audience: 15 million Americans.

There was total agreement, including among media sources who revered Bobby Kennedy, from the San Francisco Chronicle to Newsweek, that Reagan overwhelmingly won the debate. “To those unfamiliar with Reagan’s big-league savvy,” reported Newsweek, “the ease with which he fielded questions about Vietnam may have come as a revelation.” Newsweek judged that “political rookie Reagan … left old campaigner Kennedy blinking when the session ended.” Not having a crystal ball into the tragic year ahead for Kennedy, Newsweek pondered whether the debate might be a “dry run” for a future set of “Great Debates” between these two promising presidential aspirants.

The late historian David Halberstam acknowledged that “the general consensus” was that “Reagan … destroyed him.” Lou Cannon, in a 1969 book on Reagan and California assemblyman Jesse Unruh, agreed that “Reagan clearly bested Kennedy.” Another of Reagan’s first biographers, Joseph Lewis, recorded that the “tanned and relaxed” Reagan “talked easily and precisely without a hint of uncertainty or hostility,” and “deflated” the “anguished” Kennedy, who “gulped in restrained agony” when answering questions. Kennedy, said Lewis, “looked as if he had stumbled into a minefield.”

Lewis’s metaphor was a good one, since the hostile questioners treated both Kennedy and Reagan like war criminals. Truthfully, this was not a debate between Ronald Reagan and Bobby Kennedy. Rather, it descended into a venomous America-bashing session by a panel of extremely rude international students, who seemed to bask in their big chance to unleash their torrent of anger on the two available representatives of the country they despised. Newsweek rightly described the leftist students as “interrogators.” Among them, there was one American student, Bill Bradley, the Princeton basketball star, future NBA all-star, and future U.S. senator, who at the time was studying at Oxford, and appeared troubled and overwhelmed by the level of bile directed at his country. Also among them was a beaming Soviet student, clearly thrilled with what he was witnessing from this group of young dupes who had obviously swallowed every dose of Kremlin propaganda hook, line, and sinker.

Reagan and Kennedy ended up debating the group of students, not one another. And it was there that Reagan was so effective, whereas Kennedy was passive, meek, and apologetic. Alarmed viewers looking for a defense of the United States as anything other than history’s greatest purveyor of global misery were frustrated by Kennedy’s lame responses but buoyed by Reagan’s strong retorts.

MOVING FROM WEAKNESS TO WEAKNESS:

Giuliani sends mixed signals about Iowa (MIKE GLOVER, Associated Press)

Some Iowa Republicans are questioning whether presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani intends to largely skip the state's leadoff caucuses.

A sluggish start to campaign organizing and indecision about whether to compete in a high-profile straw poll in August has prompted speculation that Giuliani will pay only cursory attention to Iowa and instead focus on other early election states where his high name recognition would pay off.

EV...:

Democrats drop insistence on Iraq withdrawal timeline: The major concession to the president on the war spending bill comes as leaders in Congress cannot muster veto-proof majorities. (Noam N. Levey, May 22, 2007, LA Times)

Scrambling to send President Bush an emergency war spending bill he will sign, Democratic leaders have decided to drop their insistence on a timeline for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq.

The move — which comes just days after senior Democrats insisted that White House officials should support nonbinding timelines — is a significant concession to the president and his Republican allies on Capitol Hill, who have steadfastly rejected any dates for bringing U.S. troops home.

BUT NOT AS TASTY:

Angler catches world's biggest carp - which weighs almost as much as Kylie (Dail Mail, 22nd May 2007)

British angler Graham Slaughter has scaled new heights by catching the world's biggest carp that weighed a whopping 88.6lbs - almost as much as Kylie Minogue.

ON NOT GOING GENTLY:

Chinese villagers riot over 'one-child' policy (Jonathan Watts, May 21, 2007, Guardian Unlimited)

Thousands of villagers in south-west China have attacked family planning officials, overturned cars and set fire to government buildings in a riot sparked by the state's "one-child" policy.

Riot police have been dispatched to at least four townships in the Guanxi autonomous region after a weekend of disturbances that led to multiple injuries and unconfirmed reports of two fatalities, witnesses and Hong Kong media reported today.

The unrest comes in the wake of a new crackdown by the Bobai county government against families that break birth control regulations. Financial penalties have increased and parents who fail to pay are being punished by having their property confiscated or destroyed.

At the height of the demonstrations on Saturday, a crowd of several thousand stormed the Shapi municipal office, pulled down a wall and chased and beat officials from the family planning department.

NOR DOES THE FISH KNOW IT'S WET (via Kevin Whited )

I'm pro-life, but not religious (Dean Barnett, May 21, 2007, Boston Globe)

I'm proudly Jewish, but not at all religious. Quite frankly, I'm the very picture of the Chinese food-eating secular Jew who drives some of my more devout co-religionists batty. But I'm pro-life, and adamantly so. Unlike the often erroneous stereotype of the pro-life citizen, I didn't arrive at my position as a matter of religious faith. Rather, my conclusions flow strictly from logical inquiry.

The big moral question regarding abortion is, "When does life begin?"

HISTORICAL AMNESIA:

The pure Reagan emerges from diaries: 'The Reagan Diaries' reveals a president who's thoroughly comfortable with himself. (Tim Rutten, May 22, 2007, LA Times)

THERE is a great deal of great interest in "The Reagan Diaries," but what sets the late president's personal recollections of his eight years in the White House apart from the recent spate of tell-all, inside-Washington books is what's absent: You can scour this thick volume from back to front and find not a trace of self-righteousness, self-pity or self-justification — all standard issue accouterments among today's office-holders and political appointees, whether their veins bleed red or blue.

Some of this has to do, of course, with the fact that the former actor and California governor experienced his eight years in office as a turbulent but successful period in his life and that the subsequent reviews of his performance have been good.

EXCEPT THAT TRUE AMERICANIZATION...:

Egyptian dream takes shape in alien suburbs: Idealized housing rises on the sand, an escape from crowded Cairo. (Ashraf Khalil, May 22, 2007, Los Angeles Times)

[H]ere, about 25 miles east of Cairo, the wind, even the light, feels different.

"The air is cleaner, isn't it?" Atia says, stepping out of the unfinished villa in a gated community called Katameya Residence. "It's not mixing with the car fumes and other stuff."

Atia is one of the pioneers of a new suburbia cropping up on the edges of Egypt's gridlocked and deteriorating capital. Their dream: a little peace, fresh air and a yard to call their own.

With luxury developments sporting names like Golden Heights, Swan Lake and Royal Meadows, Cairo's new suburbs promise an idealized vision of an appealingly alien lifestyle.

"It has to have a Western feel," says architect Hisham Bahgat, who helped design several of the developments, including Katameya Residence.

"They're selling an image of a life."

They're also, at times, pushing the boundaries of aesthetics, and provoking a debate over whether these ersatz and elite fringe cities will destroy Cairo's appeal.

Homes in some of the new communities combine red Mediterranean tile roofs, splashes of pastel colors, Roman columns and sheets of shimmering glass, like grafts taken from random pages of Architectural Digest.

Future University, one of dozens of new private schools dotting the suburbs, looks like a spaceship meshed with a half-scale model of Rome's Colosseum.

Bahgat's architectural firm partner, Ahmed Fahim, describes the aesthetic using an Egyptian colloquialism: "Fish, milk and tamarind." A huge mess.

After a fitful start, suburban construction is progressing nonstop, as is the debate over whether these new communities will help Cairo or finish it off. Critics argue that the building boom sets the stage for unprecedented social divisions.

"You can live in these areas and be totally detached from Egypt," said Manar Shorbagy, former director of the American Studies Center at American University in Cairo. "It's going to work like it did in the U.S. — wealthy suburbs and deprived and abandoned inner cities."

But even American University, which educates the children of Egypt's richest and most powerful, is about to move to the suburbs.

Egypt has always been a place of rigid class divisions, but until now the wealthy often lived in or near the same neighborhoods where they grew up, sometimes turning modest apartments of their youth into lavish palaces.

"We have never seen this kind of division," Shorbagy said.

"It's the Americanization of Egypt."

AND EVERY AMERICAN HAS THE SAME REACTION... (via John Resnick):

McCain's temper back on campaign's front-burner: His shouting match with a Senate colleague raises new questions about an old issue. (Ralph Vartabedian and Michael Finnegan, May 22, 2007, LA Times)

An angry, profane exchange between Sen. John McCain and another Republican senator last week prompted a new round of questions Monday about whether McCain's legendary temper is becoming a liability to his campaign for the presidency.

In a private meeting just off the Senate floor, McCain (R-Ariz.) got into a shouting match Thursday with Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) over details of a compromise on immigration legislation. Cornyn accused McCain of being too busy with his campaign to take part in the negotiations, prompting McCain to utter "F… you."

McCain spokesman Danny Diaz acknowledged Monday that a "spirited exchange" had taken place, but said news reports had exaggerated its intensity.

YUAN? YAWN:

Yuan Worries (Matthew J. Slaughter, 5/21/07, Wall Street Journal)

Fact 1: China runs a large and growing trade surplus with the United States. In 2006, the goods-trade surplus exceeded $232 billion. This was an increase from 2005 of $31 billion, an amount larger than the entire deficit just 12 years ago.

Fact 2: China focuses its monetary policy on fixing the exchange value of its currency, the yuan, relative to the U.S. dollar.

Many policymakers and pundits connect these two facts by asserting that an unfairly low value of the dollar-yuan peg is causing the massive bilateral trade imbalance. The 109th Congress introduced 27 pieces of anti-China trade legislation. The current Congress already has over a dozen such bills, many aiming to force an overhaul of China's exchange-rate regime. And late last week dozens of House members were poised to file a Section 301 petition, asking the U.S. Trade Representative to investigate undervaluation of the Chinese yuan.

These misgivings about the dollar-yuan peg are misplaced. Economic theory and data are very clear here on two critical points. Controlling a nominal exchange rate is a form of sovereign monetary policy. And monetary policy, in turn, has no long-run effect on real economic outcomes such as output and trade flows.

WHERE'S THE BULLDOZER WHEN YOU NEED HIM:

Denial is not a strategy (Caroline B. Glick, 5/22/07, JewishWorldReview.com)

As was the case last summer towards Hizbullah, today the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government has not set for itself the goal of defeating Hamas. Rather the goal of the current operations in Gaza is to send Hamas a message. Like last summer, today the government hopes that by killing a sufficient number of Hamas terrorists, it will induce the organization to stop attacking Israel.

But of course, by limiting its goal in such a way, the message that Israel is sending is not that Hamas should stop attacking Israel. By refusing to fight to victory, Israel is telling Hamas that it cannot lose, which is to say, it can go on fighting forever.

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the government's refusal to understand the lessons of the last war and to apply them in the current battle is that Israel has far more options for defeating its enemies in Gaza than it had in Lebanon.

Gaza is a small territory and in contrast to Lebanon, Israel has the ability to take control of ingress and egress from the area. So too, Israel's intelligence capabilities are far greater in Gaza than in Lebanon. Then too, in Gaza, the enemy Israel confronts is not as well-armed or well-trained as Hizbullah.

Aside from all that, Israel controls Gaza's economy. Israel sells Gaza its water and electricity. Were Israel to decide to stop selling water or electricity to Gaza, its enemies would be hard-pressed to function.

All of these relative advantages that Israel can bring to bear in Gaza would enable Israel to cause long lasting damage to all of its enemies operating in the area while minimizing losses to its forces and civilians. But to take proper advantage of any of its strategic and operational assets, the government must first learn the proper lessons of the last war. Its refusal to do so bodes ill for the future.

...AND ONE ECONOMY TO RULE THEM ALL:

US markets buoyant as S&P 500 sets new high (Stephen Foley, 22 May 2007, Independent)

The dot.com bust, the post-Millennium economic downturn and the financial fears awoken by the attacks of 11 September 2001 - the stock market scars of all of them were finally erased yesterday as US shares passed their peak of more than seven years ago.

The S&P 500, the broadest measure of the US stock market and the one most closely followed by the professionals on Wall Street, passed its closing record level of 1,527.46, which it set on 24 March 2000.

In so doing, it has more than doubled in value since the nadir of 2003, when the US was planning its war in Iraq and the global economy was yet to emerge from the doldrums.

JRR JR?:

Lloyd Alexander: Author of 'The Chronicles of Prydain' (Independent, 22 May 2007)

Lloyd Chudley Alexander, writer: born Philadelphia 30 January 1924; married 1946 Janine Denni (died 2007; one daughter deceased); died Philadelphia 17 May 2007.

Lloyd Alexander was an author of outstanding distinction, his fantasy novels setting new standards in meticulous craftsmanship powered by an individual imagination. Frequently cited by more junior American writers as one of their main literary influences when young, he was often seen as J.R.R. Tolkien's overseas successor for younger readers, in all but the sky-high sales. [...]

In Time Cat (1963), he describes how a cat - always a favourite character in his fiction - helps a young boy named Jason to travel through time to nine different countries. While writing it, he came across Welsh mythology and in particularly the Mabinogion, an epic that has inspired many writers. Casting his mind back to war-time Wales, he wrote The Book of Three (1964), the first of a five-part work entitled The Chronicles of Prydain.

This series features an assistant pig-keeper named Taran living in an imaginary kingdom something like an enchanted Wales, although Prydain is in fact the Welsh name for Britain. Accompanied by Princess Elilonwy, very much a liberated female before her time, faithful half-man half-beast Gurgi and Fflewddur Fflam, a bardic harpist whose strings break if he is telling a lie, Taran slowly grows to maturity during his long duel with Arawn, Death-Lord of the underworld.

Part two, The Black Cauldron (1965), was made into an animated Disney film in 1985 and part five, The High King (1968), won the 1969 Newbery Medal for the outstanding children's novel of its year. Filled with exciting action mixed with quiet wisdom as well as humour and as much interested in character as in plot, this was fantasy writing at its best.

More than 40 other books followed, some of which were translated into up to 13 different languages. These included The Marvelous Misadventures of Sebastian (1970), about a 19th-century violinist who helps a princess escape a plot to marry her to a villainous aristocrat. This won the 1971 National Book Award.

Westmark (1981) was the first of three novels in a trilogy starring Theo, an orphan printer's apprentice dangerously involved in political intrigue around the time of the French Revolution. Set in an imaginary country, this too sees the eventual triumph of good over evil, with the lowly born hero finally defeating adversity in his quest for justice, freedom and democracy. Drawing on the author's first-hand experience of warfare, these books still come over as freshly imagined as well as beautifully written.

Another six-part series was named after his principal heroine Vesper Holly, starting with The Illyrian Adventure (1986). Lighter-hearted in tone, these stories describe how Vesper, a young orphan from turn-of-the-century Philadelphia, sets out with her guardian Brinnie to pursue scientific interests in different parts of the globe.

Now living a few blocks away from where he was born, Alexander continued writing, producing one of his most charming books at the age of 77. This was The Fantastical Adventures of the Invisible Boy (2001), an affectionate portrait of David, an 11-year-old growing up in depressed Philadelphia at the time Alexander had been a child himself. This story cleverly contrasts everyday reality with the increasingly surreal tales that David tells himself in order to make his life more interesting. Witty, elegiac and delightfully written, here was proof that Alexander still remained a captivating children's author.

CONTRAS IN THEIR CRAW:

Pelosi, Dems threaten a Vital U.S. Ally (Robert J. Caldwell, 5/21/07, Human Events)

Congressional Democrats are taking aim at the decade-old alliance between the United States and Colombia, Washington's staunchest ally in Latin America. For sheer strategic myopia, it would be hard to beat this act of folly.

Even as much of Latin America moves left, Colombia's commendably democratic government continues to share the core U.S. values in the region - fighting terrorism, combating drug trafficking and liberalizing trade. Compare that agenda with the yanqui-bashing alliance pursued by Colombia's neighbor and rival, Venezuela, under leftist demagogue Hugo Chavez. While Chavez makes common cause with the Castro brothers in Cuba and courts Iran's radically anti-American regime, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe remains a committed democrat and firm friend of the United States.

You might assume, then, that Uribe would get a warm reception and a fair hearing on Capitol Hill when he visited Washington recently to lobby for ratification of the U.S.-Colombia free-trade pact and request continued economic and military assistance. What he got, instead, from the Democrats' congressional leadership was the equivalent of a diplomatic mugging.

YOU ALWAYS UNDERESTIMATE THE ENEMY YOU DEHUMANIZE:

How Israel Bungled the Second Lebanon War (Efraim Inbar, Summer 2007, Middle East Quarterly)

Unrealistic goals compounded poor preparation. Israeli political and military leaders erred in their belief that Israeli pressure on Hezbollah and the weak Lebanese government could generate a political process in which the Lebanese army could achieve a monopoly over the use of force in Lebanon.[41] From the earliest stages of the war, Israeli leaders insisted that they could encourage Lebanon to become a regular state and that the Israeli army could crush Hezbollah's Lebanese state-within-a-state. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert saw force as instrumental to implementing UNSCR 1559, which called for strengthening the central government in Lebanon by both removing foreign forces and disbanding militias.[42] He stated that the military operation constituted "an almost unique opportunity to change the rules in Lebanon."[43] Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni declared that the goal of the campaign was "to promote a process that will bring about a long-term and fundamental change in the political reality" and to create a regime in Lebanon that would be responsible for its entire territory.[44] She argued that the harder the IDF hit Hezbollah, the easier it would be for the Lebanese government and the world to implement UNSCR 1559.[45] Peretz's statement that Israel would not end its campaign until reality changed in Lebanon reflected the broad view of the Israeli political leadership.[46]

The military from at least the time of Yaalon's tenure as chief-of-staff accepted the same logic. Both Maj. Gen. Gadi Eizencott, chief of operations in the general staff, and Brig. Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, former director of research at the IDF intelligence branch, believed that Israel's use of force could change the political equation in Lebanon.[47]

From the first day of the campaign, Halutz advocated attacking infrastructure beyond southern Lebanon to pressure the Lebanese government to counter Hezbollah.[48] This logic of transformation through force was reminiscent of the earlier attempt to transform Lebanese society through force. In 1982, Israeli officials sought not only to expel the Palestinian Liberation Organization but also to normalize relations with Beirut and its newly-empowered government.

In the contemporary Middle East, though, force seldom creates a new political environment.[49] For years after signing the Oslo accords, Israeli politicians turned a blind eye to Palestinian Authority actions rather than acknowledge that Yasir Arafat's administration did not live up to its agreements. In Lebanon, Israeli leaders might have adopted more modest goals. Rather than seek to change Lebanon's reality, they might have instead sought only to eviscerate Hezbollah's ability to harm Israel.

Fear of escalation clouded Olmert's strategic judgment. On the first day of the conflict, Mossad chief Maj. Gen. Meir Dagan recommended that the Israeli air force target Syrian sites.[50] Instead, Olmert sought to placate. Israeli leaders repeatedly said that Israel had no intention of expanding its military activities to target Syria.[51] Peretz even called for a renewal of peace negotiations with Syria.[52] Even when Hezbollah was launching Syrian missiles at Israeli cities, Israeli military officials announced that retaliating against Syria was not under consideration.[53] Rather than pressure Damascus to stop its resupply of missiles to Hezbollah, such statements, in effect, blessed the Syrian government's proxy warfare.

Such rhetoric contrasted sharply with past practice when the threat of escalation coerced Israel's adversaries into accepting its conditions. The Syrian government was susceptible to such pressure. After the February 14, 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, apparently at the Syrian leadership's behest, joint condemnation by Washington, Paris, and Riyadh reverberated through Damascus.

Israeli officials enjoyed similar sympathy after Hezbollah initiated the summer 2006 conflict. At the Group of Eight (G8) heads of states meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, on July 17, 2006, an open microphone caught U.S. president George W. Bush saying that they needed "Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit."[54]

But, the Israeli military's restraint cost it an opportunity to eliminate Syria's long-range missile capability. The risks of regional escalation were minimal. Iran was in no position to intervene directly. Tehran, rushing to complete its nuclear program, did not want to create a pretext for international action against it.

A successful campaign against Syria could have weakened Hezbollah and might even have strengthened the Lebanese government more than destroying Lebanese infrastructure did. An Israeli strike against Syrian targets would have signaled Israel's determination to deal with terrorist and proxy threats, enhancing Israeli deterrence. It would have also diminished both Iranian influence in the region and Tehran's ability to retaliate through Hezbollah in the event that its nuclear installations were attacked.

A Maverick Mitchslapping

THE DUMB OXONIAN:

Why a Famous Counterfactual Historian Loves Making History With Games (Clive Thompson, 05.21.07, Wired)

What if the great events in history had turned out differently? How would the world today be changed?

Niall Ferguson wonders about this a lot. He's a well-known economic historian at Harvard, and a champion of "counterfactual thinking," or the re-imagining of major historical events, with the variables slightly tweaked. [...]

Ferguson was approached by Muzzy Lane, a game company that had created Making History -- a game where players run World War II scenarios based on exhaustively researched economic realities of the period.

As he played it, he realized the game was good -- so good, in fact, that it forced him to rethink some of his long-cherished theories. For example, he'd often argued that World War II could have been prevented if Britain had confronted Germany over its invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938. France would have joined with Britain, he figured, pinching Germany between their combined might and that of the Russian army. "Germany wasn't ready for war, and they would have been defeated," he figured. "War in 1938 would have been better than war in 1942."

But when he ran the simulation in Making History, everything fell to pieces. The French defected, leaving Britain's expeditionary force to fly solo -- and get crushed by Germany. His theory, as it turns out, didn't hold water. He hadn't realized that a 1938 attack would not leave Britain enough time to build the diplomatic case with France.

The game, in essence, helped him think more clearly about history. "I found that my scenarios weren't as robust as I thought. And that's really exciting, because normally counterfactuals happen in my head," he says. "Now they can happen on the screen."

SADDEST THROUGH THEIR TRACHE TUBES:

ODD HOW EASILY FOLKS DIFFERENTIATE A REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT FROM A DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS...:

Those pesky puppies of war (Spengler, 5/22/07, Asia Times)

Thanks in part to reporting by Sami Moubayed (The two 'kings' of Iran, May 19) and Kaveh L Afrasiabi (Iran courts the US at Russia's expense, May 16), we know that Iran is steering away from confrontation with the United States.

With a newly elected pro-American president in Paris and an Atlanticist chancellor in Berlin, the Iranian leadership cannot count on discord in the West. Russia also seems less willing to play the spoiler where Iran's nuclear ambitions are concerned, not surprising given the fact that Russia and its Muslim minority are in the first line of any potential conflict. Moubayed reported on May 18 that Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wants to "rein in" the country's bumptious President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, especially after the ill-fated seizure of British sailors and marines turned against Iran's advantage.

Tehran signaled its shift in a number of ways; one is the fact that Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Ahmadinejad's rival in the 2005 presidential elections, gave the important Friday sermon two weeks in a row. Rafsanjani has close links to the Europeans, particularly the Germans, and German diplomats have been working hard behind the scenes to promote Rafsanjani as the prospective arbiter of a compromise solution to the nuclear issue. Another signal was an Iranian gesture toward Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, on whom Washington has placed much of its hope for stabilizing Iraq. That is the background to Washington's new willingness to speak officially with Iran about Iraqi stability; high-level talks are scheduled for June 28.

So much for the silly thesis that messianic visions of the imminent return of the Twelfth Imam motivated Iran's aggressive stance of the past year. Whether Ahmadinejad actually believes that the Mahdi will arrive shortly is a moot point; if he is mad, there are others in Tehran who are not.

WHICH JUST SHOWS HOW MUCH REVENUE WE CAN RAISE:

Not Enough Pain from $3 Gas: Gas prices still aren't high enough to spur the needed transformation of the U.S. auto fleet to much higher average fuel economy (David Kiley , 5/21/07, Business Week)

Gasoline prices have surged more than 20 cents in recent weeks to a record nationwide average of $3.10 per gallon, surpassing the previous record of $3.07 per gallon set in September, 2005, according to the Energy Information Administration. As gas prices rise, owner loyalty in the large pickup and midsize and large utility vehicle segments drops, according to data gathered between February and April of this year by Power Information Network (PIN), an affiliate of J.D. Power & Associates.

Owner loyalty is measured by the percentage of owners in any given segment who trade for another vehicle in the same segment. [J.D. Power is a division of McGraw Hill (MHP), as is BusinessWeek.]

"We're seeing a broad, long-term—but gradual—movement to smaller vehicles," says Tom Libby, senior director of industry analysis at PIN. "For example, during periods of high gas prices over the past two years, we've seen movement from larger to smaller SUVs. However, the total SUV pie remains largely intact." Total SUV sales are still strong in large part because of the influx of car-based "crossover" SUVs that get better gas mileage and drive more like cars.

Additionally, sales of small vehicles, including cars and light trucks, as a percentage of total new vehicle retail sales, have risen from 26.3% in the first quarter of 2004 to 31.8% in the first quarter of 2007. That trend is due to consumer demand, which has prompted some automakers to enliven their small car offerings.

That's a start. But most consumers won't trade in their Ford Expeditions, Toyota Sequoias, and Chevy Tahoes until gasoline moves permanently north of $4 per gallon.

DON'T BE SILLY:

After Aiding Bill on Immigration, Employers Balk (ROBERT PEAR, 5/21/07, NY Times)

Employers, who helped shape a major immigration bill over the last three months, said on Sunday that they were unhappy with the result because it would not cure the severe labor shortages they foresee in the coming decade.

In addition, employers expressed alarm as they learned that the Senate bill would require them to check a government database to verify that all current and former employees — aliens and citizens alike — were eligible to work in the United States.

MEATLESS IS MURDER:

Death by Veganism (NINA PLANCK, 5/21/07, NY Times)

WHEN Crown Shakur died of starvation, he was 6 weeks old and weighed 3.5 pounds. His vegan parents, who fed him mainly soy milk and apple juice, were convicted in Atlanta recently of murder, involuntary manslaughter and cruelty.

This particular calamity — at least the third such conviction of vegan parents in four years — may be largely due to ignorance. But it should prompt frank discussion about nutrition.

I was once a vegan. But well before I became pregnant, I concluded that a vegan pregnancy was irresponsible. You cannot create and nourish a robust baby merely on foods from plants.

WHAT ABOUT THE MULE?:

Support Voiced for a Giveaway of Public Apartments (ELIOT BROWN, May 21, 2007, NY Sun)

A Nobel-prize-winning economist, three former officials of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, the head of one of the city's largest social-service agencies, and the chairman of the tenants council of a Harlem public housing project are among those offering at least guarded support for the idea of turning apartments in the city's public housing projects over to the tenants to own or sell.

The concept, floated on May 15 in a New York Sun editorial, "Paupers to Millionaires," envisions giving about 200,000 residents of the city's low-income public housing units ownership of their apartments, which often sit on high-priced land. The tenants, who average a 17.7-year stay, could then decide whether to keep or to sell their apartments, some of which could fetch as much as $1 million.

"I don't like public housing — I think I should be privately held, and I think this is a good way to get it into the hands of the private sector," a Nobel Prize-winning economist at the University of Chicago, Gary Becker, said in a telephone interview. "These houses deteriorate quickly and badly over time, so giving them away would certainly be better than most other proposals."

WHO DO THEY THINK GREEN-LIGHTED THE SURGE?:

Edging Their Way Into Sadr City: U.S. Officers Try Negotiating Before Buildup in Baghdad Slum (Ann Scott Tyson, 5/21/07, Washington Post)

The U.S. military is engaged in delicate negotiations inside Sadr City to clear the way for a gradual push in coming weeks by more American and Iraqi forces into the volatile Shiite enclave of more than 2 million people, one of the most daunting challenges of the campaign to stabilize Baghdad.

So sensitive is the problem of the sprawling slum -- heavily controlled by militiamen loyal to anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr -- that Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, personally approves all targets for raids inside the Baghdad district, military officers said.

The movement of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has embarked on one of its most dramatic tactical shifts since the beginning of the war.

The 33-year-old populist is reaching out to a broad array of Sunni leaders, from politicians to insurgents, and purging extremist members of his Mahdi Army militia who target Sunnis.

Al-Sadr's political followers are distancing themselves from the fragile Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, which is widely criticized as corrupt, inefficient and biased in favor of Iraq's majority Shiites.

And moderates are taking up key roles in al-Sadr's movement, professing to be less anti-American and more nationalist as they seek to position him in the middle of Iraq's ideological spectrum.

INCREMENTAL PROHIBTION:

Drugged on the job? Today's tests make it easy to figure out (DALIA FAHMY, 5/21/07, THE NEW YORK TIMES)

"The drug and alcohol issue is a concern for America," said Mary Wheeler, co-owner of Wheeler Landscaping in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. She began screening job applicants five years ago and now randomly tests her 76 employees. "Until you have a drug-free workplace, you don't realize how prevalent it is."

Companies lose $82 billion in productivity each year because of substance abuse, the federal government estimates. Now, a growing number of employers are fighting back with workplace drug programs. They say better technology has made drug screening more reliable, while insurance discounts and government grants have made it cheaper.

The math is simple. More than three-quarters of America's 14.8 million drug users have jobs. Drug users are almost four times as likely to be involved in a workplace accident as sober workers and five times as likely to file a workers' compensation claim, according to government data. Drug users miss more days of work, show up late and change jobs more often. The cost of a drug test, meanwhile, is usually less than $50.

THERE IS NO LEBANON:

Lebanese soldiers battle militants: 39 are killed near Syria in clashes with Islamists (Hassan M. Fattah and Nada Bakri, 5/21/07, New York Times )

While anxious not to seem weak in the face of the militant challenge, military specialists say, the government and the military also want to avoid scenes that might draw comparisons to the Israeli attacks on Palestinian camps in the West Bank and Gaza.

"We cannot afford to have that here," said Elias Hanna, a retired army general, who warned against a direct assault. "This is not a question of the army's capabilities or its professionalism; you simply can't send the army into the camps to arrest 200 people without paying a heavy price in civilian casualties."

Tensions rose further last night when a car bomb exploded in a nearly empty parking lot in a Christian section of east Beirut, killing one person and wounding 10 others. Last month, Lebanese authorities charged four members of Fatah al-Islam with bombing two commuter buses carrying Lebanese Christians in the same district of Beirut, Achrafie.

Fatah al-Islam has been a growing concern for security authorities in Lebanon and much of the region. Intelligence officials say it counts about 150 fighters in its ranks and subscribes to the fundamentalist precepts of Al Qaeda.

The group's leader, Shakir al-Abssi, is a fugitive Palestinian and former associate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia who was killed last year in Iraq. Both men were sentenced to death in absentia for the 2002 murder of an American diplomat, Laurence M. Foley, in Jordan.

In the six months since he arrived from Syria, Abssi has established a base at the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp on the northern outskirts of this city, and the scene of yesterday's fighting.

What began as a raid on several homes in Tripoli in pursuit of suspected bank robbers connected to the militant group Fatah al-Islam quickly escalated into an open confrontation with the group at their stronghold in the camp.

Three soldiers and four militants were killed in the early morning confrontation, said a Lebanese security official . Hours later, the official said, militants tied to the group attacked an army patrol in the Koura region north of Tripoli, killing four more soldiers.

Under an agreement with the Palestinian leadership and Arab countries, the army is not allowed to enter the refugee camps.

ONE IS REMINDED OF ATLANTA'S OLD MOTTO...:

Can’t We All Just Get Along?: A HISTORY OF RELIGIOUS COEXISTENCE (Zachary Karabell , 5/18/07, Commonweal)

The history of coexistence-sometimes warm and fruitful, often cold and indifferent (coexistence is the absence of lethal conflict, not the presence of amicable concord)-has survived in history classrooms, but it has had remarkably little traction in the popular imagination. College students can take courses about Muslim Spain, where Christian, Jewish, and Muslim scholars and mystics worked together to unlock the mysteries of the universe. They can study the Ottoman Empire, which for centuries was a patchwork collection of Balkan Christians, Turkish tribes, Arab clans, and hundreds of languages and ethnicities. The Ottoman sultan was largely indifferent to what his subjects believed, as long they as obeyed. The ruling classes were capable of great brutality, especially when challenged, yet their reprisals against Christian peasants in the Balkans were not notably harsher than the punishments meted out to Arabs or Persians who attempted to defy their will. And many cities of the empire were multicultural melting pots. At the end of the fifteenth century, the sultan welcomed the Jews evicted from Spain in 1492 to help revitalize Istanbul and Salonika. The Ottomans tolerated a range of religious sects, though non-Muslims were forced to pay an annual tax.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as the temporal power of organized religion receded in both Europe and the Muslim world, rulers and businessmen worked together to create a future that they naively but sincerely believed would be free of want and war. The building of the Suez Canal, orchestrated by a French diplomat allied with the ruler of Egypt, was one extraordinary example of that cooperation (though in time it became an albatross for the Egyptians and an excuse for British occupation), and there were countless others. The creation of the Suez Canal is a reminder that commerce and trade can help bring about peace and coexistence, a fact supported by the recent celebration of the European Union’s fiftieth anniversary on a continent that had been all but destroyed by nationalistic rivalries in the last century.

Yet, in the United States and even Europe today, there is precious little memory of peaceful interreligious coexistence. Instead, there is a prevailing sense that Islam and war go hand in hand and that war, conflict, and terror will be the norm until Muslims become less Muslim and push Islam into the nooks and crannies of private life. On the other side, in the Arab world, not only does the legacy of the Crusades still resonate, but it is routinely linked to the twentieth-century “Zionist invasion” that led to the establishment of Israel. Whether one is an American watching the body count rise in Iraq or an Egyptian watching the plight of the Palestinians on Al-Jazeera television, one knows only what one sees and hears, and rarely is that enough.

The relentless association of religion and conflict compresses the complexity of human lives into one narrow band. Anyone who travels and speaks with Americans or Arabs or Turks or Iranians quickly recognizes that religion is only one part of their identity and of their lives. How Johnny or Ahmed or Hannah or Leila are doing at school, whether he or she likes me, and how much money will I take home today-such concerns fill the days of people everywhere, even in war-torn Iraq. Praying at a mosque in the morning in Cairo does not preclude playing cards and drinking in the evening, however “un-Islamic” such behavior may be in theory. Like Christianity, Islam is practiced in a variety of ways, and the hypothetical ideal Islamic life is complicated by many nonreligious concerns.

Over the past few years, many religious groups have made Herculean efforts to bridge divisions through educational initiatives as well as gatherings of religious leaders. Seeds for Peace and Search for Common Ground, for example, have brought Arabs and Israelis together to air grievances and develop bonds. Such efforts are vital, but they continue to be overwhelmed by the larger culture of mistrust and animosity.

Part of the problem may be the tendency to view both the current conflicts and their solutions in strictly religious terms. The result is to reinforce the notion that all interaction among people of different faiths is “religious” in nature. That has never been the case. Indeed, when Muslims and Christians have fought, they have often done so for reasons that have little to do with Islam and Christianity. The dynastic ambitions of the Ottomans on the one hand and those of the Austro-Hungarians or Russians on the other were reason enough for those empires to go to war repeatedly between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries, and when they were not fighting one another, they were fighting their coreligionists. Religion was sometimes an adjunct to imperial expansion, but rarely the cause of it.

Even today, interaction among people of different faiths-both peaceful and antagonistic-is not necessarily driven by creed. Baghdad is a tragic mess, but five hundred miles to the south, the Gulf emirates are flush with hundreds of billions of petro-dollars and the rulers of Dubai are primarily interested in erecting the world’s tallest buildings and doing real-estate deals with Donald Trump, Boston Properties (run by the very pro-Israel Mortimer Zuckerman), and Kerzner International (a company controlled by South African Jews). Dubai would be difficult to emulate as an economic model. It is a small city-state with a tiny population, but Dubai does offer a different cultural paradigm, one where the benefits of economic growth appear to ameliorate religious conflict. Similarly, in Morocco, the imperative is to bring French tourists to Marrakesh and Fez, and hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets of Casablanca in the summer of 2004 to protest bombings in that city committed by a fringe sect. In Jordan, King Abdullah strives to build a free-market meeting ground between the Arab world and the West.

IT HAS TO BE THE DEFAULT SETTING:

UAW should take a tip from Bucyrus workers (John Torinus, May 19, 2007, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

Ron Gettelfinger, president of the United Auto Workers, could make the spun-off Chrysler Corp. successful, at no disadvantage to his members. [...]

He could see the transparency system installed by Humana and the Business Health Care Group in Milwaukee, which shows net prices on three dozen hospital and clinic procedures.

He could take the temperature of employees in consumer-driven plans, and he would find out that they are satisfied - even happy - to be back in control of their health care decisions. They also have to be happy to be working at companies where profits are possible, and jobs relatively secure, because health costs are not dragging companies into the hands of buyout firms or oblivion.

The learning in the private sector over the last five years is that it's the economic structure of health care that's the problem - and that it can be fixed.

The stampede to creating a marketplace is on. By January 2007, there were 4.2 million health savings accounts in place, up 40% from 2006.

That introduction of incentives and consumerism, coupled with the bright spotlight of transparency, bring about the wonderful self-correcting disciplines of a marketplace.

In health care, there are only two possible solutions: government regulation with its price controls or the marketplace.

Health Savings Accounts aren't quite as popular among employers -- and employees -- as anticipated, but many are optimistic that the tax-free savings vehicle for medical expenses will soon catch on.

President Bush approved the creation of the much-touted HSA in his Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act effective Jan. 1, 2004.

But today, only an estimated 8 million employees are enrolled in HSAs -- roughly 3 percent of America's insured.

HSAs were part of an answer to rising health care costs, thought to widely appeal to employers because of their inherent cost savings and to employees by creating a savings account they own that can travel from job to job and, among other tax advantages, be passed on to heirs.

Tied to a high-deductible health plan, HSAs were hoped to be a bridge to consumer-driven health care, giving unprecedented control to employees over how they spends their health care dollars, thus bringing awareness of the cost of medical care into the public consciousness.

THE SCIENCE OF STRIPES: