Politico vs. the Catholic Bishops [Ramesh Ponnuru]
David Rogers, a reporter for Politico, slams the Catholic bishops repeatedly in this story. He opens: "Thirty-three years ago this fall, a bitter, race-tinged fight over abortion matched Roman Catholic bishops and the House against the nation’s first popularly elected black senator, Republican Ed Brooke of Massachusetts." No, he never comes back to explain what the heck he's talking about. We're just left with the impression that the bishops are hostile to blacks.
Rogers resumes: "Now, with health care reform on the line, the same male-dominated church hierarchy is dictating to the first woman speaker of the House, Democrat Nancy Pelosi. . ." At this point, I assumed I was reading an op-ed by a pro-choice activist—but the piece certainly isn't labeled as such.
Later we hear that "[t]he political reality is the anti-abortion movement has largely succeeded in Washington by applying Hyde restrictions to what are captive populations reliant on the government."
I'm surprised Rogers didn't use "anti-choice" in his copy, or bring up the clerical sex scandals.
He writes that "the perverse message [Holder's] decision will send to terrorists all over this dangerous world is this: If you kill civilians on American soil you will have greater protections than if you attack our military overseas."
I have released two statements on Carrie to the press, none of which has received much coverage. I will be filing a column later today.
Statement One, made at the request of Team Carrie on the day of her book release:
When I was 22 years old, Carrie’s age, I had a child out of wedlock.
When I rushed to defend Carrie I didn’t know anything at all about her, except she was a 21 year old California beauty queen who answered a question truthfully: "No offense to anybody out there. But that's how I was raised, and that's how I believe that [marriage] should be - between a man and a woman."
You shouldn't have to be a perfect person to stand up in public and say, to make a marriage you need a husband and wife. Nobody should be made to feel afraid because they say or believe that.
The ongoing campaign of hatred directed at Carrie is inexplicable, and ugly. Leave her alone. Let her be. Stop this madness. Let her be a model, or a write a book, or be on TV, or help the Special Olympics, or teach disabled kids, or anything else she wants to do.
If the people going after Carrie want to shame, smear and personally destroy someone who openly says marriage is a man and a woman, I say: pick on someone your own size. How about the President of the United States? He’s the leader of the Free World. He can take it.
This is not just about Carrie. Thousands of ordinary decent, honorable, law-abiding Americans have been harassed, intimidated, and threatened because they peacefully participated in the democratic process on behalf of marriage. They don’t have PR teams, or book deals, they are not famous or glamorous. Carrie is standing up for every single one of them in standing tall.
I wish Carrie well in whatever she chooses to do moving forward.
At midnight tonight, God willing, Senator Byrd will become the longest-serving congressman ever. I'd forgotten that he's president pro tempore of the Senate, and thus third in line for the presidency. But considering that he turns 92 on Friday, I wonder: Can the president pro tempore, or the veep or speaker of the House (or secretary of agriculture, if it comes to that) turn down the job if it were to fall to him in the event of a catastrophe? In The Man, James Earl Jones was president pro tempore and only became president because the vice president turned the job down due to illness. The Constitution only spells out how a president can be declared incapacitated by the cabinet; does the law on presidential succession address this?
I’m one of those guys who would rather wander around in a car lost for 45 minutes if it means I don’t have to stop and ask someone for directions. So it doesn’t come easy to ask for your help, but that’s what I’m here to do.
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On the House floor last night, Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R., Fla.) gave a speech. His subject was the persecution of Cuban democrats, and the general ignoring of this persecution by the American press. This has been a longstanding grievance of Cubans and Cuban Americans, and their supporters: Horrible things take place on that island, 90 miles from our shore; and yet we tend to look away (and wear our Che Guevara T-shirts). If a Palestinian kid skins his knee in Ramallah, we hear about it. But what about torture in the Cuban gulag? What about the suppression of a free press? Shouldn’t that arouse our own journalists, make them indignant?
In the course of his remarks, Diaz-Balart said, “Cubans have been stateless non-persons for almost 51 years. Their suffering is systematically ignored. Their unity of purpose is continuously questioned or ridiculed. Even the torture of their heroes, of the heroic political prisoners, is ignored.”
Then he started to name some names — of the ignored:
Martha Beatriz Roque, a respected economist and leading Cuban dissident and former political prisoner (who was only released from prison so she would not die in prison and embarrass Castro), is close to death in Havana due to complications arising from a hunger strike she is engaged in. . . .
I ask the press, the media, to please cease treating Cuba’s pro-democracy activists as though they did not exist. Stop treating Martha Beatriz Roque as a non-person.
Why do you continue to absolutely ignore Cuba’s brave prisoners of conscience? Why don’t you, at least, write about the elderly prisoners of conscience in Cuba, such as Hector Maseda Gutierrez, or Arnaldo Ramos Lauzurique? Or about severely handicapped prisoners of conscience such as Miguel Galván Gutierrez? Or, most especially, about the gravely ill Cuban prisoners of conscience in the gulag such as Ariel Sigler or Normando Hernández? Or Dr. José Luis García Paneque? Or Dr. Alfredo Pulido Lopez, or Pedro Arguelles Morán?
Members of the press, have you no conscience? Do not continue to treat the suffering, oppressed people of Cuba and their heroes as non-persons. Please, do your duty.
A video of the congressman’s speech can be found here. I hesitate to post it, because Diaz-Balart mentions me in it. He says I have done a lot, about human rights. But, as I have said many times, the reality is that I have done fairly little: I have done some, and that is more than our mainstream press wants to do. I have related dribs and drabs about Cuba; but dribs and drabs are hard to find, in our media at large. Very strange.
I once asked Jeane Kirkpatrick about this. I said, “Why are the heroics of Cuban dissidents ignored in this free country, so close?” She answered, “It is both a puzzling and profoundly painful phenomenon of our times.” Yes.
She also said that religiously-affiliated groups like the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which had pushed for the Stupak provision, should be shut out of the process.
"Last I heard, we had separation of church and state in this country," she said. "I've got to say that I think the Catholic bishops and all of the other groups shouldn't have input."
That's from the famous no-input clause of the First Amendment.
The Washington Postjust polled on the question. "Say someone buys private health insurance using government assistance to help pay for it. Do you think insurance sold that way should or should not be allowed to include coverage for abortions?" Results: 35 percent were with DeGette, 61 percent against.
Lynne Stewart Ordered to Jail . . . but for How Long? [Andy McCarthy]
A panel of the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has upheld the convictions of my old adversary, Lynne Stewart, for providing material support to terrorism — i.e., helping the Blind Sheikh run his Egyptian terrorist organization from U.S. prison, where he is serving a life-sentence. The convictions and sentences of the other two defendants were also affirmed. Lynne, who has been out on bail since being convicted eons ago, has been ordered to surrender to begin serving her sentence.
Yes, the sentence — that's the interesting part. The court has sent Stewart's case back to the trial judge for reconsideration of her absurdly short 28-month jail term (after the government asked for 30 years). The sentence has divided the appellate panel. All three judges agree that the sentence needs to be reconsidered. But two judges, Sack and Calabresi, seem to be narrowing the complaint down to whether Stewart committed perjury at her trial, which — if she is found by the sentencing judge to have done so — would call for a modest increase. In dissent, Judge Walker's point is that a 28-month sentence for the terrorism-related offenses Stewart committed is a travesty whether or not she committed perjury.
In any event, she will be resentenced. For those interested in such things, I wrote about my mixed feelings about Lynne, here; and here's the pre and post-mortems regarding the sentence.
By the way, since my topic in today's column is Attorney General Holder's sudden concern over delays in the military commission system, it's worth pointing out that, for conduct that started around 1999, Stewart was indicted in 2002; her trial did not begin until mid-2004 and took about eight months; after that, they dawdled for over a year before finally imposing sentence in October 2006; now, a decade after the conduct, seven years after arrest, four years after trial, and three years after sentence — and mind you, she's been free on bail since 2002 — the appeal has at long last been decided, and it has resulted in . . . a remand for further sentencing proceedings. And, after they someday occur, there will surely be another trip to the Second Circuit, and then an appeal to the Supreme Court. After that, the habeas corpus petitions start . . .
I will be at Ithaca College tomorrow night giving a talk on the state of the media. It's at 7:30 p.m. in Park Hall Auditorium. The event is open to the public, so I hope to see you there.
Jack, if you look at the figures for North Dakota's 99th Congressional District and New Hampshire's 00th Congressional District, it seems to be far more cost-effective for Obama to create jobs in entirely make-believe fairyland congressional districts than in the real world. A reader in Natchitoches, Louisiana 71457 points out that in his town the Stimulus has created one job at a cost of $8,103,523.
No doubt it's a critical job — Head of Stimulus Disbursement Promotion or some such. But it's unsustainable. By comparison, the jobs Obama's created in fictional congressional districts are a bargain. Clearly, he's better at community-organizing in non-existent communities.
Re ‘Would the Right Love Reagan Today? Yawn.’ [Jay Nordlinger]
I’d like to add just one point about Reagan — a familiar one, but one worth remaking now and then. It is frequently cited that Reagan liked to talk about an “Eleventh Commandment”: “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.” It should be cited at least half as frequently that the guy did what is rarely done: challenge an incumbent president of his own party, for the presidential nomination. So . . .
I am a National Review subscriber and would like to give gift subscriptions. As part of the webathon, you should have an associated online section that provides for giving NR gift subscriptions. It would be a double gift — donate to NRO and provide a wonderful Christmas gift.
You can donate to NROhere. You can order a gift subscription or two or more here.
Fans of Derb's We're All Doomed will be delighted depressed by Martin Hutchinson's latest column at the Prudent Bear website. Martin was business editor of UPI while John O'Sullivan was in charge, and was one of the few financial journalists to see the crash coming well in advance. The signals Martin is picking up from the price of gold are worrying, to say the least:
The rise in the gold price above $1,100 per ounce last week is a pretty good indicator that something has changed. For 18 months, the gold price had been in a trading range topping out around $1,000. It has now broken out decisively from that range. The opportunity for the world's central banks to change policy and affect the economic outcome has been lost. The world economy is now locked on to an undeviating track towards another train wreck...
As was demonstrated by the housing bubble of 2004-06, modest rises in interest rates are not sufficient to stop a bubble once it is well under way. Given the Fed's recent track record, it is most unlikely that we will get any more than modest and very reluctant interest-rate rises. Even if inflation is moving at a brisk pace by the latter part of next year, the price rises will be explained away, or possibly massaged out of the figures as happened in the early part of 2008. Hence the bubble will inexorably move to its denouement, at which point gold will probably be north of $3,000 an ounce and oil well north of $150 per barrel. Even though there will be no supply/demand reason why oil should get to those levels, and gold has almost no genuine demand at all, the weight of money behind those commodities in a speculative situation will push their prices inexorably upwards, beyond all reason until something intervenes to stop it.
At some point, probably before the end of 2010, the bubble will burst. The deflationary effect on the U.S. economy of $150 plus oil will overwhelm the modest forces of genuine economic expansion. The Treasury bond market will collapse, overwhelmed by the weight of deficit financing. Once again, the banking system will be in deep trouble. The industrial sector, beyond the largest and most liquid companies and the extractive industries, will in any case have remained in recession – it is notable that, in spite of the Fed's frenzy of activity, bank lending has fallen $600 billion in the last year. Unemployment, which will probably enter the second downturn at around current levels, will spike further upwards. The dollar will probably not collapse, but only because it will have been declining inexorably in the intervening year, to give a euro value of $2 and a yen value of 60 to 65 yen to the dollar...
The danger in those years will be that Ben Bernanke will attempt yet again to refloat the U.S. economy through inflation, buying government debt to fund the deficit and forcing short term rates well below the inflation rate. This danger is exacerbated by the Obama administration's insouciance about deficits. Ben Bernanke on his own (and his predecessor Alan Greenspan) bears a large share of responsibility for the 2008 crash, but the Bernanke/Obama combination is potentially even more dangerous. If expansionary monetary and fiscal policies are pursued regardless of market signals, the U.S. will head towards Weimar-style trillion-percent inflation. That would make the government's position easier as its mountain of Treasury debt became worthless, but devastate everybody else's savings and impoverish the American people as Weimar impoverished 1920s Germany.
As I said, a train wreck. Probability of arrival: close to 100%. Time of arrival: around the end of 2010, or possibly a bit earlier. And at this stage, there's very little anyone can do about it; the definitive rise of gold above $1,000 marked the point of no return.
Those are just the edited highlights but, if Martin is right, we are, indeed, all doomed.
I wrote about the Palin book and the ensuing controversy today. I was one of those saying after the '08 campaign that she needed to bear down on developing a substantive policy portfolio and concentrate on governing Alaska. Well, we know how that advice turned out! My take is a little different now. I think she obviously has significant obstacles in presidential politics, and she's cut herself off from what would have been the most natural means of tamping down public concerns about her competence and lack of experience — elective office. But whether she finds a way around that or not (I wouldn't dismiss her — especially in Iowa), she's going to be a significant leader within conservatism for years. Her grass-roots supporters are an essential part of the GOP coalition, and party leaders should be glad there's someone who can speak to them so powerfully. More on all this here.
As for the book, I've read a lot of it and almost all of the post-VP selection second half. It's definitely not a policy book and it's not going to change minds about her. But it's a fun, breezy read and political junkies will love the insidery campaign sniping. That aspect of the book isn't always terribly seemly, but it's invariably entertaining. I had a few laugh-out-loud moments. At least she's taking a swipe at people under her own name, which anonymous McCain aides still can't bring themselves to do.
Petition Against Green Protectionism [Iain Murray]
Freedomtotrade.org has a new petition up against green protectionism. It reads:
We call upon the World’s leaders to resist calls for green protectionism. Trade enables specialisation, which results in the development of new technologies and leads to the creation of wealth. In the past two decades, trade has enabled over a billion people to escape poverty. Trade is the most powerful weapon in humanity’s armoury to fight poverty and environmental ills, including climate change. Trade restrictions are not desirable, nor are they an effective means of addressing climate change.
If you agree with this in whole or in part, go ahead and sign it here. As any number of green NGOs have shown, this sort of thing weighs heavily with the international bureaucrats who increasingly control treaty-making.
Well, that was definitely a world-class bow in Tokyo. [Obama's] apologists will say it was protocol or politeness, but I have looked at pictures of other presidents, vice presidents, and others, and they haven't gone halfway to the emperor's toes on a bow.
I have seen pictures of MacArthur with Hirohito and he never bowed — and MacArthur wasn't even a president, although at times he thought he was.
But there was a second incident that I found interesting, when the president declared himself the First Pacific President. That's because, presumably, he grew up and spent some of his childhood in Hawaii, and in Indonesia, and his mom took him on a visit to Japan, although all he remembers of that, as he says, was the ice cream.
The First Pacific President?
Well, Teddy Roosevelt — he built the Panama Canal in order to make the United States a Pacific power and he did. William Howard Taft, his successor, was the governor of the Philippines. And John Kennedy and George Bush Sr. were in the Pacific [theater] in the Second World War and spent some time in the Pacific Ocean itself — Bush, after having been shot down from his airplane; and Kennedy, after having his ship cut in half by a Japanese patrol boat.
So these people actually spend time in the Pacific, but in Obama's mind, it doesn't in any way match the experience of the baby Jesus — excuse me, the baby Obama — growing up on some Pacific island.
… The narcissism of the man is rather unbounded.
On the decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a New York civilian court:
What is so hard to understand is Holder's argument, the logic of his argument.
Now, I want to look only at a single aspect of it. … If [Holder] opposed the military commissions on principle, you could say his decision on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was wrong, but at least it was logical.
But he doesn't. On the day he sent KSM to a civilian trial in New York, he announced he would send five of the miscreants who attacked the Cole, a warship, to a military trial in Guantanamo or perhaps elsewhere.
Now, what is the logic here? Holder was asked about this, and to the extent that he was coherent, which is only to a small extent, he said: Well, if you attack a civilian target, as in 9/11, then you go to a civilian court; a military target like the Cole, to a military [court].
First of all, the Pentagon was hit on 9/11, so it wasn't exclusively a civilian attack. But perhaps Holder forgot about that.
But secondly, even if [9/11] were exclusively an attack on civilians — which is a worse act of war criminality, attacking defenseless civilians or attacking a military target, like a warship? We have attacked warships in our history, Japan and Germany in the Second World War and elsewhere. That is an accepted act of war.
Why does a person [like] Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who attacked civilians — the more obvious and egregious war crime — get the extra protections, the extra constitutional niceties that you get in a civilian courtroom, as opposed to someone who attacks a military target? The logic here is perverse.
And the incentive is [perverse]: If you are a terrorist overseas thinking — am I going to attack a well-protected military installation? [No,] I will hit a civilian [target]. I will be in a cozy cell with a lawyer, Miranda rights and perhaps even a blog. Why wouldn't I attack innocent civilians?
On whether, if by technicality or hung jury, one of these cases went the other way, they would be let free:
They will be rearrested in the courtroom. A second charge will be filed, and it will be endless. And in the end, if they are acquitted on all charges endlessly, they will end up in indefinite detention.
We will not let them out. Everyone knows that. That's what makes it such a farce.
On Jonah's point, I would just add that Obama has been playing this game from the first, and he gave the game away by overruling Holder when the blowback got bad over DOJ's effort to disclose classified photos of prisoner abuse. (See here and here.)
On that, note that Holder plays the same game — he (and Obama) claimed that they were simply complying with court orders. As I've explained a few times, Obama and Holder have the power under the Freedom of Information Act to order disclosure, but (a) they want disclosure and (b) such an order would make their base go nuts. So, Obama passes the buck to Holder, and Holder passes the buck to the courts — but it shouldn't obscure that the decision is Obama's. He's now playing out the string on the photos: he reversed Holder and had DOJ appeal the disclosure order to the Supreme Court; he's figuring the Supremes will uphold the disclosure order and then he can have DOJ publicize the photos under the fig-leaf that the Court has spoken. But it's a game — the justices are in this position only because Obama is trying to be unaccountable.
Secondly, as I recount in Willful Blindness (about to be released in paperback), the decision to indict Omar Abdel Rahman (the Blind Sheikh) was a controversial one, involving not only DOJ but State, the National Security Council, the Intelligence Community, etc. Attorney General Reno was forcefully in favor of indictment, others were either neutral or opposed but not strongly so. (Not indicting the Sheikh would have created a separate set of serious issues.) But it was not the AG's decision alone. Whenever a decision like this implicates the interests of multiple executive branch agencies, they are all consulted. But if there is strong disagreement, the president resolves the disagreement; and if it's a national security matter, the AG does not pull the trigger and indict if the president does not want that to happen — AG Reno would never have given us the green-light to go ahead unless President Clinton was on board.
In my mind, it is really foolish cowardice on President Obama's part to pretend AG Holder made this call alone. Obama owns the decision whether he owns up to it or not, so he might as well get out there and own it.
They’re the perfect Christmas gifts: NR’s acclaimed “Classic Bedtime Stories” Treasuries. Only $39.95 for the hardcover set, which includes shipping. We’ll even send them as a gift for with a nice personalized note included. Read all about them and order here.
During this fundraising drive I am sitting in Pakistan. Last year at this time I was in Madagascar. I travel a lot and am so happy to have NRO along with me to counter the endless Obamathon of CNN International.
As usual, Andy McCarthy hits it out of the park with his column today on NRO, "Justice Delayed."
I would add only one point: Part of the delay in trying KSM was in fact by choice, and it was a wise choice. Unlike the Obama administration, our first priority in the Bush administration was not putting KSM on trial — it was getting intelligence from KSM so we could stop follow-on attacks and save lives.
Remember what KSM said after his capture: He would tell us everything when he got to New York for his trial. We told him: You’re not going to New York. First, you’re going to spend a little time talking to the CIA. And under CIA questioning, KSM — together with other CIA detainees — gave us vital intelligence that helped stop a number of attacks, including a plot to fly an airplane into the Library Tower in Los Angeles; a plot to fly airplanes in the Heathrow Airport and buildings in downtown London; a plot to blow up our consulate in Karachi; a plot to blow up our Marine camp in Djibouti; and many others. His interrogation produced thousands of intelligence reports, and helped us wrap up the two main terrorist networks still at large at the time of his capture: the remaining members of the KSM network that had planned the 9/11 attacks, and the key members of the Hambali network that was working with al-Qaeda on follow-on attacks.
Once we had exhausted KSM as an intelligence source, President Bush transferred him and 13 other detainees from CIA custody to Guantanamo Bay so that they could face justice. If it had not been for the legal obstacles Andy cites, their trials would have begun soon thereafter.
And had it not been for the Obama administration, KSM and his partners would now be sitting on death row. KSM and his co-conspirators offered to plead guilty once their military commissions got underway and proceed straight to execution — until the Obama administration suspended the proceedings. This means that, with his decision to give KSM a civilian trial, Eric Holder effectively rejected KSM’s guilty plea, and told him, “No, Mr. Mohammed, first let us give you that stage you wanted in New York to rally jihadists to kill Americans and incite new attacks.”
That decision is what will lead to years of delay — and could lead to new terrorist attacks.
It is telling that Eric Holder considers the three years KSM spent being questioned by the CIA as a “years of delay.” To the contrary, the delay in KSM’s prosecution saved lives.
If we had followed the Obama/Holder model, and sent KSM to New York to see his lawyer, there would likely be craters in the ground in Los Angeles, London, and where our consulate in Karachi and our Marine camp in Dijbouti once stood.
Would the Right Love Reagan Today? Yawn. [Jonah Goldberg]
For several years now, liberals as well as some would-be reformers on the Right, have made a huge deal about the fact that a candidate holding Reagan's views today would be on the outs with many GOP voters. It seems it's all new the folks at First Read:
*** Would Reagan Have Passed Today’s Conservative Litmus Test? Evan Thomas’ piece on Palin in the latest issue of Newsweek raises this provocative question, especially for conservatives who are targeting Charlie Crist in Florida, Bob Bennett in Utah, and even Lindsey Graham in South Carolina: Would Ronald Reagan — just looking at his record as president — be a target for conservatives today? After all, he raised taxes; his policies increased the size of the deficit; he reached out, through diplomatic channels, to Russia to end the Cold War; he had a pragmatist like James Baker serve as his chief of staff; and he picked the moderate George H.W. Bush as his running mate.
This has been chewed on a lot over the years (including by yours truly), so the notion that it's a "provocative question" only makes sense to those who are coming very late to the party. Still, it's a subject worth discussing.
But can I deflate the question's significance just a bit? At least when liberals raise this argument, the intent seems to be to demonstrate how the Right has been hijacked by crazy wingnuts. There's a special glee that comes with pointing out that Reagan wasn't the stalwart some on the Right claim he was.
But isn't this just a bit of a parlor game? JFK is worshipped by liberals arguably more than Reagan is by conservatives. But he was a hawkish, tax-cutting, anti-Communist, American exceptionalist who didn't care all that much about civil rights. Someone holding Kennedy's views in a Democratic primary would be running to Joe Lieberman's right. The Democrats look awfully wingnutty against the JFK standard.
The Jimmy Carter in 1976, what with all his God-talk and odes to "ethnic purity" wouldn't do so hot either. Someone holding Truman's views would do even worse. Someone holding FDR's views, at least on domestic issues, would do pretty well. Heck, that candidate won in 2008. But someone holding Woodrow Wilson's views would probably become a target of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Presidents are important landmarks on history's road and they tell us a great deal. Pundits use them to show how far we've traveled, and that's fine. But the landmarks also illuminate how much the terrain has changed. Ronald Reagan was a product of his times, and he dealt with the challenges that presented themselves then. If Reagan were running for office today, he wouldn't be talking about the Soviet menace, now would he? He'd be focusing on our problems today and learning from the lessons of yesterday, just like any good politician.
Obama to Taxpayers: I Hope You Enjoyed the Gift, Because Now I Want It Back [Veronique de Rugy]
A report published by the Treasury Department's inspector general for tax administration yesterday concluded that over 15 million Americans may owe the IRS for the tax credit they received as part of the recovery (that wasn't) plan. According to Yahoo News:
More than 15 million taxpayers may owe the government $250 or more because of how the IRS last spring set up President Barack Obama's tax break that was designed to help consumers spend the U.S. economy out of recession. Individuals with more than one job and married couples in which both spouses work may have to repay the government $400, either through a smaller tax refund or a larger tax bill.
On top of that, roughly "65,000 taxpayers could technically face penalties for underpaying their taxes in 2009."
I am sure that these taxpayers will be grateful to Mr. Obama for his super-sloppy implementation of his tax credit (which was a bad idea to begin with).
Sorting through the mail on “upstate New York,” I thought I’d offer you this, plopped in the middle of a very learned little essay on New York geography: Buffalo is “the home of chicken wings. Note, not Buffalo wings, chicken wings. Buffalo wings do not exist. If you’re from Buffalo, you don’t call them that. If you’re not, you don’t know how to make them.”
Okay!
Also, a reader has written to object to my describing New York as “a very big state.” He wrote from Dyess AFB, Texas.
Okay, I made my $50 donation to NRO, because if we get 20 new members this hour — oops, wrong begathon. But we need premiums, and I don't mean t-shirts. Hey, Kathryn, how about the new Star Trek DVD for a donation of $100? I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more Star Trek!
K-Lo is too kind, as usual. But I'm not. I actually had a few choice words about my GOP lawyer-friends' astounding letter endorsing Holder at the time, here. I'm glad to hear there are regrets, but it doesn't do the rest of us much good, and it's not like the handwriting wasn't on the wall.
What I'm wondering, having laid out the case against Holder at great length prior to his Judiciary Committee hearing and eventual lop-sided confirmation (75–21, 3 not voting), is when we're going to hear something from the Republicans who voted in favor of making him Attorney General. Besides the since-switched Arlen Specter, here's that list:
In recent weeks, I’ve been writing about this term “teabagger” and what to do about it. In fact, it is the subject of my piece in the next National Review (which will be available in digital form on Friday). Today, a reader wrote to highlight this article, which tells us that “unfriend” is the Word of the Year. Says who? Says the New Oxford Dictionary. But my reader wanted us to know: “Teabagger” was a finalist. Kind of glad it didn’t win.
There is no proper language item in today’s Impromptus, but I do reflect a bit on this word “upstate,” as in New York. To many people — City dwellers — “upstate” means even a foot or two beyond urban limits. Wherever you see non-City: There is upstate. This has occasioned a fair amount of mail, including, “Jay, when I was a child growing up in Plattsburgh, N.Y., our family would drive 250 miles due south to visit relatives in Newburgh, in a mysteriously named region called ‘upstate New York.’ This of course confused me.” I would imagine.
P.S. Thanks to all who are giving to NRO in this webathon — how gratifying, and encouraging. Thanks again.
Perhaps I've missed it, but doesn't David McCollough deserve a mention as an important - and prolific - writer of American history? I've thoroughly enjoyed several of his books without sensing a political bias of any kind.
Yep. Again, I don't think McCullough is conservative in any NR sense. But he's also responsible for the popular revival of two semi-forgotten presidents, Harry Truman and John Adams. Truman was a true anti-Communist cold warrior, also a Democrat who would not have meshed well with today's liberals; Adams was arguably our most conservative founding father. Whatever his own politics, McCullough has had a kind of conservative influence on our country's understanding of itself.
A new book co-authored by my buddy Nick Schulz (editor of The American) and Arnold Kling is out today. Pick it up with Going Rogue. I'm getting my copy today.
It may not constitute history from a conservative point of view but I have tried for many years to inspire children to read Churchill's "History of the English Speaking Peoples" as a good overview of an aspect of western civilization.
Also, another e-mailer says that Stephen Ambrose belongs in our discussion. Agreed. I wouldn't call him a conservative in the movement sense of the term; he's more of an Ike Republican. I recall his support of Colin Powell for president. More important than these distinctions, he's a high-quality historian of America.
Sarah Palin? Yes, I have my doubts. Doubts, I mean, that she'd be able to resist the temptation to "go native" once installed in D.C. Her main appeal for me in the '08 campaign was as evidence that the GOP still had a few functioning brain cells. They gave us G. H. W. Bush and Dan Quayle; they gave us Bob Dole and Jack Kemp; they gave us G. W. Bush and Cheney; then, for anyone who had not yet put his GOP registration card into the waste disposal unit, they gave us John McCain.
Then, after that dismal parade of world-savers, cock-eyed optimists, WASP ethnomasochists, and Senate seat-warmers, here came Calamity Jane from out West, six-shooters a-poppin'. Who wouldn't be bowled over? I still am. Good luck to her; and if she goes native in D.C., well, at least she'll have to go native. From being something else.
Re: Where Troubles Melt Like Lemon Drops [Jack Fowler]
Mark, the stimulating of non-existent Congressional Districts isn’t limited to New Hampshire and its infamous 00th — there’s also the North Dakota 99th, and plenty more where that came from. There’s a great piece by Bill McMorris over at Watchdog.org that reports $6.4 billion in stimulus funds going to 440 phantom districts:
Just how big is the stimulus package? Well for one, it has doubled the size of the House of Representatives, according to recovery.gov, which says that funds were distributed to 440 congressional districts that do not exist.
According to data retrieved from recovery.gov, nearly $6.4 billion was used to “create or save” just under 30,000 jobs in these phantom congressional districts–almost $225,000 per job. The web site operates on an $84 million budget and is tasked with monitoring the distribution of the $787 billion stimulus package passed by Congress–which, for the record, counts 435 members–in early 2009.
The site’s monitors, however, are not too savvy about America’s political or geographic landscape. More than $2 million was given to the 99th District of North Dakota, a state which has only one congressional district. In order to qualify for 99 districts, North Dakota would have to have a population of about 60 million people, almost 24 million more people than California.
My column on all this will be up tomorrow on NRO. But there's at least one point I make in it that I think isn't getting enough attention. It is ludicrous for the president to claim this was solely Holder's decision. First, I don't think it's true that Obama handed it off to Holder without any input on the matter.
But even if it were true, it's still Obama's decision. When the commander-in-chief gives law enforcement the final authority over what to do with enemy combatants, he can't then claim that he's not responsible for the decision. This isn't just a "buck stops here" point, though that's part of it. The moment he made this the Justice Department's call rather than the Defense Department's he made it clear where he comes down on the question. It's good politics to claim that he's just letting the rule of law and the justice system work through the issues, but that's all it is, politics. And, as president, it's if he thought Holder was wrong, he would have both the power and the responsibility to overrule him. He doesn't want to overrule Holder because the two of them see eye-to-eye on these questions.
I almost didn't donate this year. Two kids applying to med school, a third a freshman in college, retirement not that far away. Then I thought: It's worth it; give anyway.
Sometimes I Just Want to Turn Off the Light and Close My Eyes [Rick Brookhiser]
I am on the road, which is when I watch television. Last night I caught George Lopez, a comic who is new to me. He was amusing: refried Jay Leno. But he opened his monologue with Sarah Palin and Going Rogue. He called her a piece of s***, and told gross sexual jokes about her daughter.
Last January, several Republican legal stars wrote a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee supporting Eric Holder's nomination to be attorney general. Now, in light of Holder's decision to grant 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed full American constitutional rights and try him in federal court in New York, some of those veteran lawyers are having second thoughts.
The January letter called Holder an "extraordinary lawyer" of "unfailing integrity" who is "superbly qualified" to lead the Justice Department and whose appointment as the first African-American attorney general "should be hailed as a milestone." "From his experience Eric fully understands and appreciates the constant threat posed by al Qaeda and Islamic extremists," the GOP lawyers wrote. "[He] is the right man at the right time to protect our citizens in the critical years ahead."
The Khalid Sheikh Mohammed decision, in which Holder abandoned the carefully-constructed military tribunal system in favor of a risky prosecution in civilian court, troubles some of the Republicans who once supported Holder. "If the decision was his, and he made the decision and told the president, then I have some real qualms about my support for him," says Makan Delrahim, a former Justice Department official and former staff director of the Judiciary Committee. "I personally have a tough time knowing the rationale for this. We spent so much time making the military tribunals conform to constitutional standards to deal with exactly this type of situation."
Holder says the decision was indeed his.
Andy won't say it, but I will: Andy McCarthy was right. Andy McCarthy warned us. Andy McCarthy isn't blind.
I disagree with the guy on many things, and I've written some very pointed things about him in the past. But when my book came out I went on his radio show, expecting that we'd butt heads. Instead, he had some fun reading some of the stuff I've written about him and then we had a very civil, very mannerly conversation. I still disagree with him on many things, but I enjoy being on his radio show which I do from time to time. He's always very courtly, charming, and respectful. I don't know what he's going to do next, but I wish him well.
In the battle of the foreign nations portion of our 2009 Fall Fundraising Drive, Sweden is in the lead; we just received a $100 donation from a reader there.
At noon today, I'll participate in the Heritage Foundation's weekly Bloggers Briefing. Also on the schedule: Sen. Jim DeMint and Mike Franc. My subject is this. It's possible to phone in and listen online.
