The Corner on National Review Online

Civil Rights Division Lawyers Slapped With Sanctions [Hans A. von Spakovsky]

For the last nine months, the Justice Department has been stonewalling requests for more information about its dismissal of the voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther party. The department has denied requests for information about the case from newspapers and members of Congress, and is refusing to comply with subpoenas issued by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

But that’s not the only case where the Justice Department has been reluctant to show its work. This week, a federal district court in Kansas imposed sanctions on the same Civil Rights Division (CRD) officials who spiked the Panthers case, Loretta King and Steve Rosenbaum, for their refusals to provide information in another case. Breaking the president’s promise to have the most transparent administration in history, Rosenbaum and King’s concealment of information will cost the taxpayers thousands of dollars.

I previously wrote about a sanction of $587,000 in attorneys’ fees imposed against the department and King in Johnson v. Miller, a redistricting case that went all the way to the Supreme Court during the Clinton administration. In this latest case, U.S. v. Sturdevant, the Housing Section of the CRD filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas claiming discrimination. The Housing Section is headed by Rosenbaum, and the CRD was headed by King during the relevant time in this case.

The U.S. Magistrate Judge, David Waxse, a former legal counsel for the ACLU in Kansas and western Missouri, is not exactly a conservative in ideology or temperament. Yet he has awarded sanctions against the individual Housing Section attorneys handling the case, because Rosenbaum and his cadre of lawyers would not answer interrogatories from the defendants requesting information.

Keep reading this post . . .

01/06 10:36 PM Share

No, the Bright Orange Vests Don't Make Them Targets [John J. Miller]

This ought to be Rule No. 1 for Metro train drivers in DC: Don't run over the safety inspectors.

01/06 08:51 PM Share

BIG JOURNALISM Launch [Andy McCarthy]

JJM beat me to the punch, but congratulations to the great Michael Walsh and Andrew Breitbart on the launch of Big Journalism. Mike promises:

[L]et me be blunt: we’re not here to compete for Pulitzer Prizes, to sit on committees, to scratch each other’s backs on the weekend television wagfests or to conform to some arbitrary code of ethics cooked up in the days when the mainstream media was the only game in town, and had already begun to cozy up to the government and the establishment, thus abandoning its constitutional mission of keeping a finger on the pulse of America, and an eye on the crooks

And you know what? He means it!

01/06 08:42 PM Share

In The End, We're All Doomed [Jonah Goldberg]

Supernova threatens Earth.

A STAR primed to explode in a blast that could wipe out the Earth was revealed by astronomers yesterday.
It will self-destruct in an explosion called a supernova with the force of 20 billion billion billion megatons of TNT.

New studies show the star, called T Pyxidis, is much closer than previously thought at 3,260 light-years away - a short hop in galactic terms.

Don't worry, there's time to find out how Lost ends.

01/06 08:01 PM Share

The Prospects for Democrats [Ramesh Ponnuru]

I have a brief comment in a New York Times symposium.

01/06 07:17 PM Share

Meanwhile, in Iran . . . [Victor Davis Hanson]

The old line that open and transparent support for the reform movement in Iran is counterproductive and plays into the hands of Ahmadinejad looks increasingly silly.

We don't know the exact probability that Iranian dissidents can bring down such a tyrannical government, but we do know that they represent just about the world's only chance to avoid a violent and catastrophic collision over the theocracy's planned Islamic bomb — and their cause is just, and their objectives are far superior to the status quo.

While it might have been true by 2006 that Bush, due to his unpopularity in the region, was not an effective vocal advocate, this is Obama's own expressed forte — the ability to appeal to those of different races, cultures, and religions abroad and encourage them to embrace a shared sense of human rights and freedom.

So what explains Obama's meek and timid response to the events in Iran? A number of factors, chief among them the adoption of a new "realism" that cloaks itself in nonjudgmental multiculturalism and tends, whether by intent or not, to extend a degree of unwarranted authenticity to any particular thug on the basis of his past anti-Bush, anti-American credentials and the hope that a uniquely qualified Obama can deal with these otherwise unpalatable autocrats.

This is a pity, because right now the bravest enemies of the forces of theocratic autocracy are in the streets of Iranian cities.

01/06 07:16 PM Share

History and Accountability [Matt A. Mayer]

As my Heritage colleague James Carafano points out, Yemen has been an al-Qaeda operational zone for quite some time. Although most news reports dutifully point out that the U.S.S. Cole bombing (which was al-Qaeda’s second attempt at bombing a military ship) took place in Aden, Yemen, on Oct. 12, 2000, what all have failed to add is that one of al-Qaeda's first attributed bombings occurred way back on Dec. 29, 1992, at the Gold Mohur Hotel in Aden. The target of the bombing: U.S. soldiers in transit to Somalia. In Osama bin Laden’s 1996 fatwa, he even referred to the bombing as proof of America’s “weak horse” tendencies, noting: “And where was this courage of yours when two explosions made you to leave Aden in lees [sic] than twenty four hours!”

You can call the war we are in against jihadists whatever you want; but it has been going on for almost 20 years, and the fighting has taken place on at least four continents (Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America) and in 16 countries (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, America, Denmark, the Netherlands, Tanzania, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan, Kenya, Iraq, Iran, and the United Kingdom). President Obama seems to think we are involved in “contingency operations” in two countries today simply because President Bush botched the first location and erred by going to the second. Without those failures, Obama suggests, we wouldn’t be fighting in foreign countries.

One of the key problems in failing to understand the nature of the threat is the futility of the whack-a-mole strategy that Obama wants to employ. Al-Qaeda pops up here, whack ’em; there, whack ’em; somewhere else, whack ’em. We whack, they move and reconstitute somewhere else. That is not a recipe for victory; rather, it is a recipe for another 17 years of whacking moles. If we want to win, we will have to go to the source of the problem, which is decades’ worth of Saudi-funded radicalism around the world that allowed bin Laden the platform to attract the disenchanted men who now spend years trying to find vulnerabilities through which to strike at us. Reasonable minds might disagree over our ability to un-ring the jihadist bell absent a fundamental reformation within Islam; but those same minds cannot disagree that until the last jihadist utters his last breath our government has an obligation to put in place measures that will keep us safe by keeping the terrorists and their weapons out of our country. With this most recent botched attack, our government failed. Period.

Finally, a word on accountability in government. Snickering aside, how does anyone expect accountability in government when those who fail suffer no real consequences? Other than Mike “Heckuva Job, Brownie” Brown, I am not aware of one federal employee who was fired due to the failures involved with the 9/11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina. What does a federal bureaucrat need to do to get fired? If we want accountability, then we need to change how federal employees in national-security fields are protected from being fired for failing to do their jobs.

So, yes, Secretary Janet Napolitano should go, but she should go because her tenure as a whole has been a wreck. From her response to the “right-wing” threat report, to the counterproductive reverses made on immigration policy, to the continued pork-barrel feeding frenzy of the homeland-security grants, to the semantic sleight of hand on “man-made disasters,” to her clueless claim that “the system worked,” she does not instill confidence in either the American public or the DHS bureaucracy. Napolitano is just plain ineffective, which is deadly. DHS is hard enough to manage already; an ineffective leader will only ensure further failures. But it shouldn’t just be token political appointees who get fired when failures occur.

We simply cannot afford any more failures — in either preventing attacks or in getting accountability out of our government.

— Matt A. Mayer is a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation and president of the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions in Columbus, Ohio. He has served as counselor to the deputy secretary and acting executive director for the Office of Grants and Training in the Department of Homeland Security. He is author of Homeland Security and Federalism: Protecting America from Outside the Beltway.

01/06 06:45 PM Share

Happy Birthday, Big Hollywood [John J. Miller]

Today, the movie website is one year old.

And it's new sister website, Big Journalism, has just launched.

01/06 06:29 PM Share

Pro-Family Tax Reform [Yuval Levin]

Jim Manzi’s essay “Keeping America’s Edge” in the latest issue of National Affairs has gotten a lot of attention and praise on the web the past few weeks, and a number of commentators have argued that a natural companion to the proposals Jim ends with would be a pro-family tax reform.

I definitely agree, and I’d point out that in the very same issue of National Affairs, Bob Stein offers a detailed outline of precisely such a reform — one that all right-leaning politicians should take note of.

01/06 05:56 PM Share

The Rising Nexus of Big Government and Big Business [Paul Ryan]

Columnist Thomas Frank took issue in today’s Wall Street Journal with a recent piece at Forbes.com. My Forbes piece warns of the threat posed by the rising nexus of big government and big business. With the federal government actively involved in picking economic winners and losers, big businesses continue to use their connections, muscle, and influence to carve out exemptions and favors for themselves. President Obama and the Democratic congressional leadership have accelerated this pernicious form of crony capitalism. It is wreaking havoc on economic recovery and fueling continued resentment among the American people.

Thomas Frank’s column fails to distinguish the protection of large, established corporations with the promotion of free markets. The role of the government is not to help one company vanquish its competition. As I write in the Forbes piece, “The government does not have a stake in the fight between David and Goliath — our only concern is to make certain that it is a fair fight.”

The Republican party got this wrong too, but not, as Frank contends, through a mythical decade of deregulation and its consequential “fireball of freedom.” In an expanded version of the Forbes column, I write:

Neither political party is immune from fostering this pervasive culture of crony capitalism. My own party — the party of Lincoln and Reagan — neglected the principles it passionately championed in decades past. Republicans became more interested in securing political power as an end, rather than a means of limiting the federal government’s power over our lives. The Republican party has recently confused being pro-business with being pro-market. The poisonous earmark culture was emblematic of businesses, large and small, working their connections to carve out political favors for financial gain.

While Republicans were confused as to the meaning and practice of our principles, the Obama administration and the Democratic leadership are perfectly comfortable with the philosophy underpinning crony capitalism. After all, big business and big government find many ways to enjoy a common cause. So while we Republicans need to rededicate ourselves to our principles, the Democrats running Washington would have to repudiate theirs.

Our financial regulatory system needs to be modernized, emphasizing accountability, transparency, and clear and enforceable rules that minimize moral hazard. A slew of regulatory agencies with thousands of employees didn't see the financial crisis coming. Adding new agencies, expanding their missions, and having the government double down on the crony capitalism that precipitated this crisis adds dead weight to the economy and expands, not reduces, the risk of future crises.

The argument extends far beyond the financial sector — as the reach of the federal government continues to encroach on nearly all sectors of our economy and our lives.

I’ve been heartened by the passionate response to the column, and your additional feedback on this issue would be appreciated.

— Paul Ryan (R.) is a United States respresentative from Wisconsin.

01/06 05:54 PM Share

Put Down Hot Beverages Before Reading [Jonah Goldberg]

Rumor: Chris Dodd for Treasury Secretary.

Up next? Kucinich for Sec Def?

01/06 05:45 PM Share

Media Update [Jonah Goldberg]

I'll be on Bill Bennett's show tomorrow morning at 7:05 AM.

01/06 05:35 PM Share

New York Asks Washington for $200 Million to Secure 9/11 Trials [Daniel Foster]

Cash for Qaedas?

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Wednesday said the costs of hosting the federal trials of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other suspected September 11 plotters would top $200 million annually and formally requested that Washington cover the costs.

The trial of accused September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four accomplices, who could each be brought to New York within weeks, will expose New York to an additional risk of attack, some security experts say.

"New York's financial resources are in short supply, and we have been forced to reduce our Police Department's headcount," Bloomberg wrote in a letter to White House Budget Director Peter Orszag dated January 5 and released to media on Wednesday.

"Securing the trial will require us to pull existing personnel from crime prevention efforts around the city and require significant overtime expenses," the mayor wrote.

"As 9/11 was an attack on the entire nation, we need the federal government to shoulder the significant costs we will incur and ease this burden."

Bloomberg estimated the cost for security would be $216 million for the first year and $206 million annually thereafter. Noting the city was not seeking a "blank check," he said policing the 2004 Republican Convention cost New York $50 million. He said that event lasted one week while the trials could last years.

Bloomberg's estimates are the most specific yet of the cost of hosting the trials. U.S. Attorney Eric Holder told lawmakers in November, "New York should not bear the burden alone."

01/06 05:33 PM Share

One in Five [Cliff May]

Reuters reports:

A classified Pentagon assessment shows one in five detainees released from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay has joined or is suspected of joining militant groups like al Qaeda, U.S. officials said on Wednesday. . . .

A previous Pentagon assessment last April showed that 14 percent of former detainees had joined or were suspected of joining militant groups, up from 11 percent in December 2008. . . .

Two officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the new Pentagon assessment showed the percentage had grown to 20 percent. . . .

There are 198 prisoners left at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, which once held 750, Pentagon officials said. Among those still being held there, roughly 91 are Yemeni.

01/06 05:27 PM Share

Double Standards and Religion [Ramesh Ponnuru]

Jonathan Chait writes,

Why should we maintain an informal social etiquette that discourages people from openly disparaging other people's religions and touting their own as superior? Gee, that seems kind of obvious to me. I strongly doubt that Wehner and Shales [I think this is a typo on Chait's part, and he actually means "Ponnuru"—RP] would be happy to see, say, Muslims going on television to blame Mark Sanford's Christianity for his adultery and urge him to convert to Islam. Of course, I can't prove this, because no major television network would ever allow it. But I'd at least like to hear them say that they'd be happy to see their rule applied to all religions. Otherwise, they need to admit that what they favor is not some wild theological free-for-all in our public discourse, with all religions touting their superiority and disparaging others, but rather a privileged place for Christianity.

I would object to Muslims' "going on television to blame Mark Sanford's Christianity for his adultery," as I would object to Brit Hume's going on television to blame Tiger Woods's Buddhism for his adultery—because those comments would be stupid, not because they implied the superiority of one religion to another. But, obviously, I don't think that Hume said anything like that, and thus I don't think that Chait's parallel works. If a Muslim went on tv to say, for example, that Western societies are licentious and a widespread embrace of Islam is the cure, I'd disagree with the argument and say so—but I wouldn't consider it at all improper for a pious Muslim to make it. (That's not to say that I think there should be no rules of religious etiquette at all: If Hume called Buddhism a "gutter religion," for example, I think that would be out of bounds.)

Of course it is true that in America there will be more of an audience for pro-Christian than pro-Muslim sentiments. I have no problem with that, any more than I have a problem with the fact that in other societies a more relaxed etiquette of religious expression will tend to benefit other religions.

01/06 04:49 PM Share

Obama’s Broken Health-Care Promise [Victor Davis Hanson]

The tape circulating in the blogosphere of Obama in 2008 repeatedly and passionately promising to broadcast the upcoming health-care debate and vote on C-Span, combined with C-Span’s polite request to follow through on that promise, combined with the apparent unwillingness of the Obama administration to honor its pledge, combined with Speaker Pelosi’s cynical remark that the vow was just another Obamaism, is all quite damning. I don’t think I can recall in recent political history a serial public vow that was so flagrantly and cynically renounced.

Things like this, in and of themselves, are not fatal, but they bring the president’s approval ratings down another notch or two; and when one adds them all up, these deceits account for Obama’s 20-point drop in the polls, since they are confirming a picture of political expediency, duplicity, and cynicism quite intolerable for a messianic figure who hinged his presidency on a new ethics.

It didn’t help that, almost simultaneously, in response to the Christmas Day attack on an airliner, Obama blamed Bush for Guantanamo in the now Orwellian fashion of “Bush made me keep Guantanamo open, and it is a recruiting tool for al-Qaeda.” (If it really is, and serves no purpose other than to empower the enemy, why not close it immediately? Also: What was the recruiting tool on Sept. 10, 2001? And since when are the endless purported grievances of al-Qaeda or any other fascistic enemy to be believed?)

01/06 04:46 PM Share

Religious Freedom Also Taking a Hit in Iran [Michael Rubin]

Amidst the emboldened opposition in Iran today, and the regime's corresponding attempts to crack down brutally, religious minorities face special peril. In recent years, the regime has singled out Christians, Jews, and Bahai's for special humiliation, and now it does so again.

On January 12, the trial of the seven Bahai's about which I have blogged before will reconvene. The charges include "espionage for Israel, insulting religious sanctities, and propaganda against the Islamic Republic." The government later added the charge of "spreading corruption on earth," punishable by death.

In recent days, anti-Bahai rhetoric and activities has increased. Over the past weekend, security forces arrested 13 young Baha'i in Tehran, ten of whom remain in prison. The daily Kayhan pretty much serves as the voice of the Supreme Leader, who appoints its editor. On Jan. 5, 2010, the newspaper's headline read, "The So-Called God-Loving Mousavi's Men Turned Out to be Baha'is and Terrorists." So now, it appears, the government with the highest sanction will use religious hatred to justify its own repression of political opposition. The Baha'i International Community has issued a statement, here.

Keep reading this post . . .

01/06 04:45 PM Share

Trenches and Foxholes [Fred Schwarz]

In Goodbye to All That (1929), which is mostly a memoir of World War I, Robert Graves wrote:

Hardly one soldier in a hundred was inspired by religious feeling of even the crudest kind. It would have been difficult to remain religious in the trenches even if one survived the irreligion of the training battalion at home.

Even taking into account Graves’s strong anti-religious bias, this statement, if true, would seem to contradict the saying “there are no atheists in foxholes,” which became current during World War II. Yet there’s really no conflict.

A foxhole is a temporary shelter dug hastily to provide some protection during an active battle. A trench is a large-scale fortification where, in World War I, soldiers lived for long stretches, surrounded by mud and rats and corpses and desolation. In the former situation, when the hole’s occupant is under direct fire, it’s natural to scrape together whatever faith one can muster and beg for divine assistance to get through the next few hours. In the latter situation, as month succeeds dismal month, it’s natural to feel abandoned.

A poignant example of religion interacting with war can be found in The Economist’s year-end issue, which contains an article about the deaths of Britain’s last two WWI veterans. One of them, Harry Patch, recalled not long before his passing how his beliefs had evolved on the battlefield:

Mr Patch, in the thick of battle, automatically recalled the lessons heard on Sundays: Moses on Mount Sinai, the Good Samaritan. But surrounded as he was by "devils coming up from the ground" and "hell upon this earth", he soon lost all his faith in the Church of England. What he clung to in the end was his memory of a young Cornishman, torn open by shrapnel from shoulder to waist "and with his stomach on the ground beside him". He asked Mr Patch to shoot him, but died first, murmuring "Mother!" It was not a cry of despair, but of surprise and joy. He had seen her; she was there. Death, of which Mr Patch was scared "all the time", was apparently not the end.

So perhaps coming face to face with death every day makes one less likely to embrace the rituals of religion, but more likely, like Mr. Patch, to embrace its fundamental truths (for divine or evolutionary reasons, take your pick). Faith takes different forms under different circumstances, but it always seems to fulfill a deeply felt need.

01/06 04:25 PM Share

Abdul Mutallab Indictment [Jonah Goldberg]

PDF is here.

01/06 04:18 PM Share

Maybe It Was a Mistake to Let Him Play 'Grand Theft Passenger Jet'? [Cliff May]

ABC News is reporting that:

The leader of the al Qaeda group that claimed responsibility for trying to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day was released from the Guantanamo Bay prison for terrorists on the condition that he be sent to a terrorist rehab center in Saudi Arabia. . . .

The rehabilitation program is intended to deprogram radicalized militants who have been convicted of terror-related offenses by offering psychological counseling, classes in more moderate forms of Islam, and alternative ways to vent their energy, including art therapy, swimming, and playing sports and video games.

Memo to Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Sullivan: I know — Not funny! No joking matter! Cliff May is proposing to bomb video games!

01/06 04:03 PM Share

More than Pamphlets [Andrew Stuttaford]

Kathryn, at the risk of needling you overmuch (reader joke, not mine!), I think that it's worth saying that the needle-exchange programs you criticized yesterday are a pretty sensible idea. Taking heroin is illegal (and the penalties for possession are tough), the conditions in which it is taken are generally squalid and the medical consequences of use are, as is very well known amongst all age groups, frequently disastrous. It's pretty difficult to argue that (with the exception of the strong financial incentives given to pushers by prohibition) much encouragement is being given to those who want — despite everything — to shoot up. Provision of clean needles by the government doesn't change the fact that the drugs are illegal, and nor does it somehow transform heroin into either a safe or salubrious product. What it does do, however, is substantially reduce the chance of spreading HIV, Hepatitis, or other infection from shared needle use (remember that hypodermic needles are relatively difficult to obtain without a prescription). As such, needle exchanges are not only humane, but save the taxpayer money — a twofer, if you ask me. They also help protect those who may (perhaps quite unknowingly) be in a relationship with someone who is using (or has used) heroin, and thus make excellent epidemiological sense.

01/06 03:52 PM Share

Memorable Sentence from That Crist-Rubio Piece [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

Crist told me that two of the senators he most admires are John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who have reputations for forging bipartisan alliances — and who have drawn their share of hellfire from conservative purists.

01/06 03:52 PM Share

More Proof that Spending Doesn’t Stimulate the Economy [Brian Riedl]

Spending stimulus bills predictably fail for a simple reason: Congress cannot inject money into the economy until it has first borrowed that money out of the economy. No one argues that raising a pool’s water level can be done by removing water from one side and pouring it in the other side. Yet many serious people believe government can expand the economy simply by borrowing dollars out of one part of the economy, and transferring them to another part.

While the Heritage Foundation and others have been criticizing the stimulus myth for a while, critics keep coming back: What about dollars transferred from savers to spenders? What about dollars borrowed from China? What about the multiplier effect of government spending? What about replenishing falling consumption spending?

Well, my new paper “Why Government Spending Does Not Stimulate Economic Growth: Answering the Critics” addresses each of these (and other) fallacies used to defend government spending as stimulus.

Or, one can use simple math. Economist Mark Zandi sold many lawmakers on stimulus spending with his estimate that each dollar of additional deficit spending increases the GDP by approximately $1.50. But if that were true, then last year’s $1 trillion increase in the budget deficit would have created an enormous $1.5 trillion in new wealth (in a $14 trillion economy, this would have not only ended the recession, it would have caused massive overheating). Instead, the economy shrank by about $300 billion. Unless stimulus advocates assert that the economy would have shrank by $1.8 trillion (a historic 13 percent contraction) without this new deficit spending — an argument no credible economist has dared to make — then these Keynesian economic models have proven spectacularly wrong.

— Brian Riedl is Grover M. Hermann fellow in federal budgetary affairs at the Heritage Foundation.

01/06 03:48 PM Share

The Six Stages of a Project [Rick Brookhiser]

Timeless, and universal (hat tip: Michael Pack, my director).

1. Enthusiasm

2. Disillusionment

3. Panic

4. The Search for the Guilty

5. The Punishment of the Innocent

6. Praise and Honor to Non-Participants

01/06 03:37 PM Share

'Exit Dodd' [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

From today's editorial:

Senator Dodd’s career should provide a cautionary tale about the dark side of the seniority system and senatorial longevity. Though he was knee-deep in dubious doings, his influence was at its peak: As chairman of the banking committee, Senator Dodd was a key player in the bailouts and in shaping the major pieces of financial-reform legislation currently working their way through Congress. If Congress ends up reshaping the banking and credit-card industries, it will very likely to do so along lines drawn up by Senator Dodd. He was a key legislative architect of the impotent stimulus bill and an important influence on the Senate health-care legislation. The breadth and depth of his influence has been exceeded only by its destructiveness. No doubt a lucrative post-Senate lobbying career, performing essentially the same misdeeds for better money, awaits Senator Dodd, who embodies much of what is wrong with Washington. We’ll miss him on Election Day, but not a minute afterward.

01/06 03:36 PM Share

Re: Defending Brit Hume [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

Pete Wehner does it here.

01/06 03:31 PM Share

One Question Only [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

An e-mailer responds to the tea-party elections talk:

There is a simple litmus test: did you support or oppose the Obama stimulus plan? If you did, then you are a RINO. Not just a Tea Party issue. The second Crist supported the president's stimulus plan, he was done.

01/06 03:19 PM Share

Get the Hottest Conservative Titles from NRBS [NRO Staff]

The new National Review Book Service offers hundreds of conservative titles, DVDs, and unique gift ideas. Click here.

01/06 03:13 PM Share

Who Needs Terrorists? [Mark Steyn]

. . . when the government puts bombs on your plane:

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (AP) - A failed airport security test ended up with a Slovak man unwittingly carrying hidden explosives in his luggage on a flight to Dublin, Slovak officials admitted Wednesday—a mistake that enraged Irish authorities and shocked aviation experts worldwide.

While the Slovaks blamed the incident on "a silly and unprofessional mistake," Irish officials and security experts said it was foolish for the Slovaks to hide actual bomb parts in the luggage of innocent passengers under any circumstances.

Hey, at least they didn't put 'em in his underwear. And it didn't delay the flight, either:

The Irish were also angry that it took the Slovaks three days to tell them about the Saturday mistake and that the pilot of the airplane decided to fly to Dublin anyway even after being told that an explosive was in his aircraft's checked luggage.

That's the spirit! It's not like it's a pair of tweezers or a snowglobe or anything dangerous.

01/06 03:10 PM Share

An E-mail from Massachusetts [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

FWIW:

After reading many positive posts about Scott Brown on The Corner, I thought I'd stop by one of his regional campaign offices and pick up a lawn sign. Wow, was I blown away by how packed the place was with volunteers and activity. In fact, there were a number of folks there who had also stopped by and we had to wait in line just to get a lawn sign. This is at 2pm on a weekday when most of Brown's supporters are likely at work. This weekend will be nuts, I'm sure.

01/06 03:02 PM Share

Chris Dodd as a Tea-Party Success Story [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

That's what Peter Wolfgang, executive director of the Family Institute of Connecticut, argues. He tells me: "Dodd was forced out by the Left because he was a sure loser. But he was a sure loser because the people of Connecticut finally held a high-ranking member of the majority party responsible for his misdeeds. And that was only because of the work of grassroots activists who relentlessly shined a light on Dodd's failures. The conservative movement in general and the Tea Party movement in particular should take a bow. Regardless of whatever may happen next in the race for Connecticut's Senate seat, today they slew a giant."

01/06 03:00 PM Share

'The First Senator From the Tea Party?' [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

Marco Rubio gets good coverage in The New York Times Magazine this weekend.

01/06 02:58 PM Share

In Which I Defend [Ramesh Ponnuru]

Brit Hume.

01/06 02:38 PM Share

Arnold: 'He Got the Corn; We Got the Husk' [Daniel Foster]

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is pulling back his support for Obamacare. From his final State of the State address:

Congress is about to pile billions more onto California with the new health care bill.

While I enthusiastically support health care reform, it is not reform to push more costs onto states that are already struggling while other states get sweetheart deals.

Health care reform, which started as noble and needed legislation, has become a trough of bribes, deals and loopholes.

You’ve heard of the bridge to nowhere. This is health care to nowhere.

California's congressional delegation should either vote against this bill that is a disaster for California or get in there and fight for the same sweetheart deal Senator Nelson of Nebraska got for the Cornhusker State. He got the corn; we got the husk.

01/06 02:21 PM Share

As Gitmo Empties, Recidivism Rises [Daniel Foster]

One in five ex-Guantanamo Bay detainees return to terror, according to a new Pentagon report. That is up from an estimated 14 percent last April.

01/06 02:14 PM Share

Re: Allahu Ax-bah! [Andy McCarthy]

Mark, that seems awfully narrow-minded on Fatima's part. Some things are just easier to do with an axe than a gun.

Say you decided to smite someone at the neck (see Koran Sura 47:4: "Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers in fight, smite at their necks; at length, when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind the captives firmly: therefore is the time for either generosity or ransom until the war lays down its burdens"). Or maybe, along with the neck, a fingertip or two is your style (see Sura 8:12: "Remember thy Lord inspired the angels with the message: 'I am with you: give firmness to the Believers: I will instill terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers: Smite ye above their necks and smite all their fingertips off them"). Or perhaps you're not neckly inclined at all, but you do have an urge to chop off a couple of hands or feet — from opposite sides, of course (see Sura 5:33: "The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief throughout the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land"). Sometimes it's not just about knowing what to do — you've got to have the right tool.

I'm certain though, that Fatima's brother was probably motivated by poverty, Guantanamo Bay, Israel, Abu Ghraib, or even poor cartoon aesthetics. We can take comfort that his religious beliefs had absolutely nothing to do with it.

01/06 02:12 PM Share

Harry Reid [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

is having a health-care event in Las Vegas tomorrow, hosted by Jennifer Lopez. Folks in the area might want to drop by and respectfully let the Majority Leader know the majority view.

01/06 01:57 PM Share

Lucky Me [Jonah Goldberg]

I've gotten a lot of e-mail along these lines in response this post:

Hey Jonah:

Why am I unsurprised that you married into a family that owns a liquor store?

Wise man, wise man.

—Just kidding

Ah yes, I really lucked out. My brother-in-law actually owns several liquor stores. Alas, they're four time zones away and just south of the Arctic Circle, but beyond that small inconvenience, I'm stoked.

I'm lucky for my in-laws in many ways, but easy access to firewater isn't at the top of the list.

01/06 01:55 PM Share

Welfare & Islamic Extremism [Andrew Stuttaford]

Anjem Choudary is the Islamic cleric who heads up a group called Islam4UK (its name speaks for itself). His group is planning to march through a town in England that has become well-known for the way it honors British servicemen killed overseas. The Islam4UK march is supposedly intended to honor Muslims killed by British troops in Afghanistan.

The idea that the growth in Islamic extremism in Europe has been helped along by that continent's generous welfare system is usually a topic for Brother Steyn, but this chart from blogger Guido Fawkes comparing Choudary's income with that of a British soldier makes the same point very well.

01/06 01:52 PM Share

Alien Criminals: Jail or Deport? [Mark Krikorian]

An illegal-alien cop-killer was arrested this morning in Utah. He faces the death penalty, and I'm all for that. But this part of the story raises a question for policymakers:

Roman, apparent in the country illegally, has a significant criminal history, beginning in 1992 with a misdemeanor drug distribution charge to which he pleaded guilty in Fillmore.

Then in 1996 and 1997, Roman was charged in Millard County with a handful of felonies in two different cases, including drug charges, receiving stolen property and a weapons count.

He pleaded guilty to one count of third-degree felony drug possession and one count of second-degree felony drug possession with intent to distribute.

On Sept. 15, 1998, Roman was released into the custody of immigration authorities and deported.

Of course, he should have been deported in 1992 after his first brush with the law. But after his felony convictions he served a year or so of his prison sentence and was then deported. The question is, how to best keep scum like this off America's streets — keep them in prison for their full sentences (which in this case was 15 years, according to a Utah law-enforcement source), at a high costs to our taxpayers, or save money by deporting them quickly, raising the possibility of their re-entry. Handing alien criminals over to immigration before the conclusion of their sentences is becoming more common as states look for ways to cut costs; Marketplace did a radio story on this just a couple days ago regarding Arizona.

Keep reading this post . . .

01/06 01:48 PM Share

What Do You Do? [Jay Nordlinger]

In Impromptus today, I have occasion to tell a story I’ve long loved. In return, a reader sent in an analogous story. Okay, here’s mine (and ’tis true): Marion Barry and Greg Norman meet at a party. Barry is the mayor of Washington, D.C.; Norman is the No. 1 golfer in the world, and one of its most recognizable athletes. Barry says, “What do you do?” Norman says, “I play golf.” Barry answers, “Oh, that’s great, I play tennis.”

And the reader’s story? Chaliapin (the great Russian bass) is in a cab. The driver says, “And what do you do, sir?” Chaliapin replies, “I sing.” The cabbie: “Well, we all sing, especially when drunk, but I mean, what do you do for a living?”

Do you know the one about the soprano captured in the Far Pacific by cannibals? She says, “You can’t kill me and eat me, I’m a soprano.” The chief says, “Oh, yeah? Prove it. If you are, we’ll let you go. Sing something.” The soprano says, “What? Sing something? Without my jewels, without my gown, without my fee?”

The chief, acknowledging her sopranohood, lets her go.

01/06 01:48 PM Share

Great News: The Reason Why Obama's Agenda May Fail Is That Liberals are Fat Capitalists [Veronique de Rugy]

This morning Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post laments that president Obama's agenda may fail if the Left doesn't manage to create some sort of "autonomous, vibrant mass movements, usually led by activists who stand at or beyond liberalism's left fringe." Without such mass movements, he explains, there won't be another major liberal reform.

As evidence, he explains how Roosevelt was successful at putting in place his "progressive" agenda because of how many people were unemployed and unhappy. Same with LBJ, whose success in implementing reforms was the result of the true misery of a portion of the American people that led to the civil-rights movement and much street heat.

Today, things are different, he laments, and no such movements exist. And as he says: "Congress isn't feeling much pressure from the left to move Obama's agenda." But while he claims that this lack of street action is the product of Obama's unwillingness to call upon the activists, I suspect that it has more to due with the fact that no matter how much they claim they want to reform the country and regulate the market, liberals aren't that eager to get out of their houses and rock the streets. Instead, they would rather stay home and enjoy the comfort that a capitalist life does provide.

01/06 01:15 PM Share

Re: After Dodd [Jack Fowler]

Larry, I hope you have a great dinner with Linda McMahon. If Chief Jay Strongbow is there please try to grab an autograph for me, and make sure no one is hiding behind the curtains with a camera — you don’t want to find yourself part of some WWE soap opera. If there is a turnbuckle in the dining room, leave!

Now, elections are about tomorrow. But as a voter vetting candidates, you have to ask — what about yesterday? What is Linda McMahon’s political past? Well, according to the public record, she was BFF with Rahm Emanuel, and a healthy donor to Democrat causes and candidates. F’regsample:

* 2008 gave $2,300 to Mark Warner
* 2008 gave $2,300 to Rahm Emanuel
* 2007 gave $5,000 to the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee
* 2007 gave $2,500 to the Dem “Our Common Values” PAC
* 2006 gave $5,000 to the Dem “Forward Together” PAC (husband Vince also game the $5k)
* 2005 and 2004 gave Emanuel a grand each year
* 2006 gave $10,000 to the DCCC

FYI, the McMahons’ 2006 PAC contributions were used to fund the campaigns of Conn. Democrats who knocked off incumbent Republican Congressmen Nancy Johnson and Rob Simmons. Thanks Linda!

01/06 01:04 PM Share

Ellen Goodman Retires [Ramesh Ponnuru]

Kathleen Parker is sorry to see her go. It's a sweet column, but I can't say I share the sentiment.

Life is not a matter of left and right, but of something in between, and this is where Ellen has spent most of her time. Instead of drawing lines in the sand, she crafted sand castles of wit and charm. Her gift was proffering poignancy without pique in a snark-free zone.

Even if one disagreed with her conclusions, Ellen offered reasoned arguments that often pierced the armor of our own defenses.

My own recollection from reading her over many years is that Goodman was predictably liberal on just about everything, and rarely offered any arguments at all. I'm afraid Joseph Sobran had it right when he reviewed one of Goodman's books for NR back in 1986:

Among columnists, Ellen Goodman covers a unique beat: Ellen Goodman. Ostensibly, the pieces in Keeping in Touch are about topics as diverse as Raisa Gorbachev, Vanessa Williams, Liz Taylor, Doris Lessing, Sally Ride, Phyllis Schlafly, Baby Fae, Nancy Reagan, Maureen Reagan, and Johnny Carson's divorce. But they all seem to come back home to Ellen Goodman.

A piece on computers tells you little about computers, but much (which you might have guessed) about how Ellen Goodman feels about computers. When Sir Philip Sidney said, "Fool, look in thy heart and write," she was listening: "I confess . . . I suspect . . . Frankly, I . . . I am not surprised . . . I guess . . . I wonder . . . I hope . . . I feel, momentarily, relieved . . . I wish . . . I never expected . . . I long for the old days . . . I didn't always feel this way . . . I have no illusions . . . I have today a sense of some universal pulsation. . ."

Far be it from me to disparage the personal touch, but just try watching someone get in touch with her feelings for 313 pages. We all have to begin with what we know, but even Descartes got out of the starting blocks after a while.

01/06 12:31 PM Share

Allahu Ax-bah! [Mark Steyn]

That "27-year old Somali man" who tried to kill Motoon artist Kurt Westergaard? His sister Fatima says he was set up by the Danish police. If I follow her argument correctly:

Only an insane man would try to kill a Danish cartoonist with an axe.

Whereas, when a sane man wants to kill a Danish cartoonist over a drawing he doesn't like, he uses something that'll do the job properly like a handgun.

Therefore, the brother was so "stressed" by the Danish coppers he was forced into it, presumably to make these entirely rational don't-say-Islam-is-violent-or-we'll-kill-you types look like a bunch of fruitcakes.

This "27-year old Somali man" and the 23-year old Nigerian Pantybomber are part of the same story, as this fine column by Margaret Wente notes.

01/06 12:24 PM Share

One Size Doesn't Fit All (ctd) [Andrew Stuttaford]

The latest problems in Iceland are bad (and in terms of their political implications, they may be a warning bell), but, however theoretically, the country (which is not in the EU) does still have some freedom of maneuver as it tries to extricate itself from the mess in which it finds itself. Those trapped in the eurozone periphery are not so lucky. With Greece in the news, the FT's Martin Wolf takes up the story here. The entire article is a must-read, but the key points are as follows:

What would have happened during the financial crisis if the euro had not existed? The short answer is that there would have been currency crises among its members. The currencies of Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain would surely have fallen sharply against the old D-Mark. That is the outcome the creators of the eurozone wished to avoid. They have been successful. But, if the exchange rate cannot adjust, something else must instead. That “something else” is the economies of peripheral eurozone member countries. They are locked into competitive disinflation against Germany, the world’s foremost exporter of very high-quality manufactures. I wish them luck. . . .

In its first decade of existence, the imbalances inside the eurozone (and associated bubbles) finished up by doing massive damage to the credit of the private sectors of the booming economies. But now it is damaging the credit of their public sectors. While risk spreads have fallen in financial markets, those on sovereign debt in the eurozone are an important exception. Spreads over German 10-year bunds have soared from what used to be negligible levels: in the case of Greece, spreads recently reached 274 basis points...

This leaves peripheral countries in a trap: they cannot readily generate an external surplus; they cannot easily restart private sector borrowing; and they cannot easily sustain present fiscal deficits. Mass emigration would be a possibility, but surely not a recommendation. Mass immigration of wealthy foreigners, to live in now-cheap properties, would be far better. Yet, at worst, a lengthy slump might be needed to grind out a reduction in nominal prices and wages. Ireland seems to have accepted such a future. Spain and Greece have not. Moreover, the affected country would also suffer debt deflation: with falling nominal prices and wages, the real burden of debt denominated in euros will rise. A wave of defaults – private and even public – threaten.

The crisis in the eurozone’s periphery is not an accident: it is inherent in the system. The weaker members have to find an escape from the trap they are in. They will receive little help: the zone has no willing spender of last resort; and the euro itself is also very strong. But they must succeed. When the eurozone was created, a huge literature emerged on whether it was an optimal currency union. We know now it was not. We are about to find out whether this matters.

Wolf's analysis is spot on. Note, however, that he's focused on the economics. There will be political consequences, too. They are unlikely to be pretty . . .

01/06 12:10 PM Share

More Reactions to 'Keeping America’s Edge' [Jim Manzi]

Ross Douthat very generously devoted the bulk of his New York Times column to the article and its key themes. He adds two items to the agenda that I proposed: entitlement reform and tax reform. I agree with both of these concepts, and expect to go into much more detail on both in the book, likely with some preliminary ideas hashed out here on these blogs. Michael Barone was also very generous, and also proposed adding pro-family tax reform to the agenda.

Chrystia Freeland devoted her New Year’s Day column in the Financial Times to some of they key themes in the article, and emphasized some of its sociological aspects. In the article I said of the old Wasp ascendancy that they “developed a social matrix that offered broadly shared prosperity to generations of Americans.” Ms. Freeland’s wording of this idea makes me wish she were there for the rewrites:

The genius of that elite was its ability to bring the American dream within reach of nearly everyone. If it hopes to emulate the longevity of America’s Wasps, and, more importantly, the political system they created, today’s global plutocracy must figure out how to do the same.

Jonathan Chait at TNR wrote that the piece does “have some interesting observations and decent proposals,” which is gratifying, as I saw a lot of the agenda I was proposing as being capable of gathering broad support. He also criticized the presentation of some of the data. Here are the relevant sentences from my article:

From 1980 through today, America’s share of global output has been constant at about 21%. Europe’s share, meanwhile, has been collapsing in the face of global competition — going from a little less than 40% of global production in the 1970s to about 25% today. Opting for social democracy instead of innovative capitalism, Europe has ceded this share to China (predominantly), India, and the rest of the developing world.

Mr. Chait has two basic criticisms of these sentences, as I see it.

Keep reading this post . . .

01/06 12:04 PM Share

Re: The System Is Still Working [Mark Krikorian]

Andy: We've been issuing "diversity visas" for immigration through the Visa Lottery for 20 years now. The top countries for the current lottery are here, including Nigeria, Bangladesh, Egypt, Morocco, Turkey, and Iran. Ukraine is the only one of the top countries that's not either majority-Muslim or home to a large Muslim minority. In my House testimony a few years back, I'd calculated that about one-third of visa lottery winners came from Muslim-majority countries and that the lottery was a disproportionately important immigration vehicle for Muslims. While in 2008, visa lottery winners accounted for less than 4 percent of total legal immigration, they accounted for 46 percent of Algerians, 38 percent of Moroccans and Egyptians, 25 percent of Bangladeshis, 19 percent of Turkey Turks, 12 percent of Azeri Turks. Actually, the lottery isn't that important a vehicle for immigrants from Sudan and Yemen; of 2008's green-card recipients from those countries, the lottery accounted for only 7 percent and 1 percent, respectively. Most Yemenis came here through family-chain migration (in 2008 1,631 out of 1,872), and most Sudanese as refugees (2,683 out of 3,598). So while getting rid of the lottery would be a security improvement, the rest of our immigration system is also a problem.

But, as usual, abolishing even a stupid program like the Visa Lottery isn't easy. Its first iteration came in the 1980s as an affirmative-action program for Irish immigrants, who were supposedly underrepresented in the immigrant flow. Now, it's a major source of African immigration and the Black Caucus has adopted it and declared that attempts to abolish it would be racist.

01/06 11:51 AM Share