WHAT IS TIBET TO THE DALAI LAMA?:

Young Tibetans question path of nonviolence: Unrest in Tibet has revealed a generational fault line that is likely to sharpen as Olympics near. (Jason Motlagh, 4/01/08, The Christian Science Monitor)

The unrest in Tibet has revealed a generational fault line within the Tibetan community – one that is likely to sharpen as the Olympics draw closer. While they affirm their respect for the Dalai Lama as a religious figure, many Tibetans say they have lost faith in his "Middle Way" of coexistence to achieve political autonomy. Impatient with the approach that has brought their cause global sympathy – and little change on the ground, young activists say they are willing to consider a much broader array of actions to press their cause.

"The middle way has been in existence for 20 years and nothing has come out of it," Tsewang Rigzin, president of the Tibetan Youth Congress, recently told reporters.

50-0 FILES:

McCain making quiet play for Catholic vote: Quiet courtship part of a broader effort to win religious voters (WAYNE SLATER, March 31, 2008, The Dallas Morning News)

"If he can get Catholics and evangelicals together in a coalition, that would make him very difficult to defeat," said political scientist Mark Rozell of George Mason University.

Mr. McCain's plan to win the White House includes an appeal to Christian conservatives, long a crucial GOP voting bloc, as well as to more moderate independent voters and so-called "Reagan Democrats," many of them Catholic.

It's a formula that has worked in the past. In 2004, nearly 80 percent of white, evangelical Protestants voted for President Bush. He also got a majority of Catholics, which he failed to do four years earlier. [...]

This year, the Arizona senator won the Catholic vote in most GOP primaries, including Texas, according to exit polls. And his campaign has announced the names of 100 prominent Catholics as part of a group headed by former GOP presidential candidate Sen. Sam Brownback.

"Sen. McCain is a natural for Catholics in a lot of ways," said Rob Wasinger, who was Mr. Brownback's campaign manager. "He's pro-life and for traditional marriage. But he goes to a lot of issues that Catholics feel very strongly about, issues that reflect a deeper sense of social justice and human rights."

ORPHANING THE DEFEAT:

Embarrassed U.S. Starts to Disown Basra Operation (Gareth Porter, Mar 31, 2008, IPS)

As it became clear last week that the "Operation Knights Assault" in Basra was in serious trouble, the George W. Bush administration began to claim in off-the-record statements to journalists that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had launched the operation without consulting Washington.

The effort to disclaim U.S. responsibility for the operation is an indication that it was viewed as a major embarrassment just as top commander Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker are about to testify before Congress.

Behind this furious backpedaling is a major Bush administration miscalculation about Moqtada al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army, which the administration believed was no longer capable of a coordinated military operation. It is now apparent that Sadr and the Mahdi Army were holding back because they were still in the process of retraining and reorganisation, not because Sadr had given up the military option or had lost control of the Mahdi Army.

BUT HE WOULD PUNISH HIS GRANDCHILD?:

Barack Obama Would Back Daughters' Abortion, "Don't Punish Them With a Baby" (Steven Ertelt, 3/31/08, LifeNews.com)

Barack Obama is drawing gasps from pro-life advocates today over comments he made during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania over the weekend. The leading Democratic presidential candidate appeared to back a potential decision by his daughters to seek an abortion saying he wouldn't "punish" them with a baby.

OFF THE REZ:

The Big Prize of Basra: Iraq had been enjoying a period of relative peace. But the spate of violence in Basra last week showed that dangerous divisions remain in the war-torn country. And everyone has their eye on the same oil-rich prize. (Bernhard Zand, 3/31/08, Der Spiegel)

On Tuesday, 30,000 Iraqi soldiers and police arrived in Basra to liberate the city from the plague of militias and looters that has kept it in a stranglehold for years. The city was to be cleansed of "evil elements" block after block, as Iraqi National Security Advisor Muwaffaq al-Rubaie announced. "Anyone who gets in our way will be dealt with quickly, decisively and without mercy," he added. But far from achieving its intended effect, the government's military posturing did not appear to intimidate the militias, at least not initially. In Basra, they danced boldly in front of the government forces' destroyed tanks. In other cities, like Hilla, Kut and Amara, they fired on police with rocket launchers, and in Baghdad they resumed their attacks on the Green Zone with rocket-propelled grenades.

“Malaki decided to take on this operation without consulting the Americans,” McCain told reporters traveling with him in Meridian, Miss. “I’m surprised he’d take it on himself to go down and take charge of a military offensive. I had not anticipated that he would do it.”

Iraqi lawmakers traveled to the Iranian holy city of Qom over the weekend to win the support of the commander of Iran's Qods brigades in persuading Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr to order his followers to stop military operations, members of the Iraqi parliament said.

Sadr ordered the halt on Sunday, and his Mahdi Army militia heeded the order in Baghdad, where the Iraqi government announced it would lift a 24-hour curfew starting early Monday in most parts of the capital.

AT LEAST WHEN IT BECOMES ISLAMIC IT WILL BE DISARMED:

A Euro-army is fantasy land. We need our American ally (Martin Kettle, 3/29/08, The Guardian)

For years now, Nato nations have been committed to reach a minimum defence spending target of 2% of GDP. Yet 20 of them, including Canada, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain, have fallen far short. Among the six that have reached the target, the shares of four (including Britain and France) are in decline. Inevitably, that means the US carries ever more of the load and becomes ever more sceptical about taking Europe seriously.

For years also, European nations have talked about the importance of avoiding duplication in equipment and weapons. But the talk has largely remained just that. It is barmy that Europeans have four different models of tank, compared with America's one; 16 different types of armoured vehicles as against America's three; or 11 types of frigate to America's one. Once again, Europe's failure highlights the US predominance.

INSIDE THE BOX:

Six Ways Not to Deal with Hamas: How do you stop a foe whose tolerance for pain exceeds your willingness to inflict it? (Chuck Freilich, March 2008, Foreign Policy)

Let us examine each of the alternatives in turn.

Topple Hamas

For the most part, this has been Israel’s policy. The Israeli government has pinned its hopes on its ability to weaken Hamas through economic sanctions, political isolation, and limited military strikes. So far, it has achieved the opposite. Hamas consolidated its hold on Gaza last June, then temporarily succeeded in lifting the economic siege in February, further increasing its popularity.

Some hope that a major Israeli operation designed to oust Hamas would lead to a power vacuum in which the Palestinian Authority can reestablish its rule, possibly with the assistance of an international force. It is highly unlikely, however, that Hamas can be overthrown and the prospects of the feckless, corrupt Authority restoring and maintaining its rule are minimal. More likely, today’s near-chaos would become tomorrow’s total chaos.

Destroy Hamas Militarily

Israel’s military restraint to date has not been for lack of determination, but simply because an effective, military response, at an acceptable price, has yet to be found. For Hamas, economic and military deprivation are not unacceptable punishments, but a means to fan the flames, rally support, and undermine whatever minimal prospects for peace remain. An enemy that welcomes punishment beyond those that Israel will inflict is fundamentally undeterrable. Only a very large military operation may achieve some lasting benefit against it, but even this is unlikely to produce more than a brief respite. And after disengaging from Gaza, the last thing Israel wants to do is reoccupy it. Nor can the possibility that Hezbollah and even Syria will join the fray be discounted.

Talk to Hamas

Negotiations with an organization that explicitly avows Israel’s destruction at every opportunity are anathema to many Israelis. Political and moral questions aside, what could Israel and Hamas actually talk about? Is there anything short of voluntary national suicide that would satisfy Hamas? Other than a temporary ceasefire, now under discussion, all indications point to the contrary.

The United States, Europe, and even most Arab states, moreover, strongly oppose negotiating with Hamas. To do so would prove that terrorism, not diplomacy, is the way to gain Israeli concessions. It would also gravely undermine whatever residual legitimacy Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas still enjoys.

Hamas’s repeated proposal to negotiate a long-term ceasefire may ultimately be worth exploring. But its present conditions are entirely unacceptable. If Hamas had its way, Israel would have to cease all counterterrorist operations not only in Gaza, but the West Bank, as well— the only thing that has kept Abbas in power and the rockets out of Tel Aviv.

PUTTING ISLAM TO THE TEST:

Why the Pope Has Bin Laden Running Scared (Colleen Carroll Campbell, March 27, 2008, St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

So why does Benedict infuriate bin Laden?

A glimpse of an answer came Saturday, during the Easter vigil Mass that Benedict celebrated in Rome. Among seven converts to the Catholic faith whom he baptized was a former Muslim named Magdi Allam, an Egyptian-born Italian journalist known for his outspoken criticism of Islamist extremism.

Allam has been a leading voice of moderate Islam, a staunch supporter of Israel and a fierce critic of Islamist jihadists who murder in the name of God. Death threats have forced Allam to travel with armed guards, and he expects that his Christian conversion will lead to more calls for his head. But Allam says the risk is worthwhile, and he cites Benedict's message about the compatibility of faith and reason as an inspiration for his conversion.

Predictably, Benedict's decision to personally and publicly baptize Allam was blasted by several Muslim leaders. The Vatican newspaper responded by describing the baptism as Benedict's attempt to affirm "in a gentle and clear way, religious freedom."

The message was clear, indeed. The baptism signaled Benedict's belief that religious tolerance must be a two-way street. As he proclaimed in his Regensburg speech, authentic interfaith dialogue, like authentic religious conversion, can happen only when violence is rejected as a means of persuasion and reason is embraced as a means of finding common ground.

Benedict's penchant for promoting peace with strength and telling the truth in charity has irked some Muslim leaders, but it has allowed him to make remarkable inroads with others. Earlier this month, some 10,000 Catholics attended the opening Mass of the first Catholic church ever built in the Sunni Muslim country of Qatar, where Christians have been forced to worship underground for decades. A few days later, Vatican officials confirmed that they are in talks with Saudi Arabia to open a Catholic church in that country, where Christianity remains officially illegal. And the interfaith dialogue that Benedict began with a rocky start at Regensburg has blossomed into a significant initiative that will bring 48 Muslim and Catholic scholars together at the Vatican this fall to discuss the theme, "Love of God, Love of Neighbor."

ONLY TOOK HIM THREE MONTHS TO ACHIEVE MORE THAN EITHER DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE:

Bobby Jindal -- Change You Can Believe In (Erick Erickson, 03/31/2008, Human Events)

The contrast between Barack Obama and Bobby Jindal could not be more stark. On the campaign trail this year, Obama serves up messages of hope and change. Last year, running for Governor of Louisiana, Jindal did the same. But Obama’s hope and change consists of platitudes. Jindal’s hope and change was premised on detailed plans and policy roadmaps to move people forward, get Louisiana on the road to recovery, and end the boom-bust economic cycles. Entering his fourth month in office, Jindal’s change has already proved to be change we can believe in.

Governor Jindal is a master of new media. To demonstrate the point, I was among a number of bloggers invited to dinner at the Governor’s Mansion last week for a mostly off the record chat. As we sat around the table, Jindal shared some of his ideas and his vision for Louisiana. To hear Jindal talk, you appreciate how rare a breed of politician he is -- a policy wonk who can relate the policies to people’s pocketbooks.

“We did a survey of business leaders before entering office and found that the top three issues for them were ethics, taxes, and workforce. That helped us build our agenda,” the Governor said. Almost immediately after his swearing in, Jindal called a special session of the Louisiana Legislature to push through an ethics reform package. Getting almost everything he wanted from the session, Louisiana went from being one of the bottom 5 states in the nation on government ethics to the top state in the nation, according to several public interest watch dog groups. (As amazing as it sounds, before this year there was no prohibition in Louisiana against state legislators doing business with the state, nor were there significant disclosure requirements for elected officials and lobbyists.)

AUTHENTICITY IS A HUGE POLITICAL PLUS...:

Age as an Asset: McCain's Appeal To Boomers (Suzanne Fields, 3/31/08, Real Clear Politics)

John McCain's biography -- written in the fire of war when the boomers were playing with matches in the safety of an indulgent culture -- is grounded in the virtues of an earlier era when patriotism was not an empty word. He was a child during World War II, when good and evil were everywhere understood; he grew up during the Cold War when it was clear that those who did not share the values of the West could kill us all. His courage and character were formed in a family of military men, and when he graduated from the Naval Academy he went to war without flinching.

Biography, like culture, is not destiny, but it makes a difference. Can we believe the insistence of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton that pulling pell-mell out of Iraq reflects a deep understanding of the chaos and consequences of what they would leave behind? John McCain separated himself from the Democratic candidates in a speech last week emphasizing the importance of paying the wages of war today to avoid paying higher wages tomorrow. "Any president who does not regard this threat as transcending all others does not deserve to sit in the White House," he said, "for he or she does not take seriously enough the first and most basic duty a president has -- to protect the lives of the American people."

One of his strengths is his reputation as a straight shooter; for most of his critics, that reputation trumps another reputation as an unpredictable maverick. Like all pols, he occasionally plays politics; and like all successful pols, he occasionally plays politics well. His scrappiness seems to emanate from authenticity. Having matured in a wizened way, he occasionally seems an exile from a time before euphemism became the politically correct substitute for plain speech.

AT LEAST OPRAH HAS SOME SENSE:

Obama-church newsletter: Israel making 'ethnic bomb': Accuses 'apartheid' state of creating weapon 'that kills blacks and Arabs' (Aaron Klein, 3/25/08, WorldNetDaily)

"The Israelis were given a blank check: they could test whenever they desired and did not even have to ask permission. Both worked on an ethnic bomb that kills Blacks and Arabs."

The June 10, 2007, newsletter, which is still available at Obama's church's website, identifies Baghdadi as an Arab-American activist, writer and columnist who "acted as a Middle East advisor to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the founder of the Nation of Islam, as well as Minister Louis Farrakhan."

The piece is titled "An open letter to Oprah," referring to talk show giant Oprah Winfrey, who last year accepted an invitation to visit Israel offered to her by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. Winfrey had been a member of Obama's church but reportedly departed in 1986.

WON'T QUITE OUTLAST THIS ONE, BUT ALMOST...:

Junta Split May Hasten Civilian Rule (Larry Jagan, 3/31/08, IPS)

By promising to hand over power to a civilian government within two years, Burma’s top general has sparked speculation on the future of the junta that has ruled this country since a military coup in 1962. [...]

[U]nderneath this show of unity is the start of a new battle for Burma's future. This time it is not between the monks and the military, as it was last year, but between two factions in the army.In the past few months a major rift has emerged within Burma's military government over the country's political future.

At the centre of the conflict are concerns over who should control the roadmap -- Burma's plans for political change.The confrontation is now beginning to take shape -- between those who currently control Burma's government administration and the country's economic wealth, and those who now prefer to see themselves as the nation's guardians and wish to protect the country from unscrupulous officials.

The junta is no longer as cohesive and united as it was, as two major camps have clearly emerged. On one side there are the ministers and some members of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) who have major business interests and are associated with Gen Than Shwe's brainchild, the mass community-based Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA).On the other side are the top ranking generals -- loosely grouped around the second in command, Gen. Maung Aye -- who want a professional army and see its main role as protector of the people.They have become increasingly dismayed at the corruption within government and understand that it is undermining the army's future role in the country.

But the 'real' army, as these officers under Gen Maung Aye describe themselves, is going to have to act quickly if it is to remain a force to be reckoned with.The planned referendum for May and the election in two years' time will radically change the country's political landscape.The USDA, which is organising both the referendum and the elections, will significantly increase its power and control over the country's new emerging political process.

Senior members of the army are increasingly resentful of the growing dominance of the USDA and the likely curtailment of the army's authority after the May referendum. ''It will bring an abrupt end to the army's absolute power,'' said Win Min, an Burmese independent government academic based at Chiang Mai University. Key ministers and members of the SPDC have amassed huge personal fortunes from smuggling and kickbacks. Everyone seems powerless to stop them at present, according to Burmese government sources.

''They are known as 'the Nazis' within the top ranks of the army,'' according to a Burmese businessman with close links to the military hierarchy. ''They have the money and they have their own militia.''There are many within the army who view these developments with increasing concern. There is mounting resentment and frustration amongst the junior officers in Nay Pyi Daw.

Many of the junior officers are divisional commanders in the late forties and early fifties. These are the army's ''Young Turks'', who are alarmed at the way in which the USDA is growing in influence at the expense of the army. ''They are watching their unscrupulous colleagues, hiding behind the uniform, building up massive fortunes from corruption in government and they are worried that this tarnishes the image of the army,'' said a source in Nay Pyi Daw.

In the meantime there have been no promotions within the army for nearly a year as Than Shwe has continuously postponed the quarterly SPDC meetings for fear of being ousted by a push from those commanders who oppose the power of the USDA.

STARRING WARREN BEATTY AS DAVID BONIOR:

Saddam’s Useful Idiots: Keeping up a long, ignoble tradition of the American Left. (Daniel J. Flynn, 3/30/08, National Review)

Ideological tourism, in which totalitarian powers engineer the junkets of influential leftists in exchange for positive publicity in the enemy nation, has seduced the likes of such radical heavyweights as Lincoln Steffens, W.E.B Du Bois, John Reed, and Tom Hayden.

Jack Reed is the father of the political pilgrimage. He traveled to witness the Russian Revolution on the dime of an American heiress. He later departed Soviet Russia with “Moscow Gold” — a million rubles (mostly in diamonds, actually) — and tales of utopia beyond the Urals.

“I suddenly realized that the devout Russian people no longer needed priests to pray them into heaven,” Reed, witnessing a Bolshevik funeral, wrote in Ten Days That Shook the World. “On earth they were building a kingdom more bright than any heaven had to offer, and for which it was a glory to die.” Although the author was a paid agent of Soviet Russia’s Bureau of International Revolutionary Propaganda, in 1999 a panel convened by New York University named the book one of the 20th century’s ten best works of journalism.

Reed’s inspiring book, and evangelistic fervor, motivated others to make the Hajj to the Left’s Mecca. Reed’s mentor Lincoln Steffens journeyed to Soviet Russia on his apprentice’s advice. “The revolution in Russia is to establish the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth, now,” wrote Steffens — using “Christian” as his appropriate nom de plume — “in order that Christ may come soon; and, coming, reign forever. Forever and ever, everywhere. Not over Russia alone. The revolution in Russia is not the Russian revolution. It is ‘The Revolution.’ ”

THE BIG EASIEST:

The Dems Look Vulnerable in Louisiana (RUSSELL MCCULLEY, 3/25/08, Washington Times)

However dim their congressional prospects look this election year, Republicans are at least feeling pretty good about the state of play in Louisiana. The G.O.P. swept all but two statewide offices in last fall's elections, including the governors' office, where U.S. Rep. Bobby Jindal replaced one-term Democrat Kathleen Blanco. Now Republicans have their sights set on an even bigger prize: the Senate seat currently held by Democrat Mary Landrieu.

BEFRIENDING THE SHUT-INS:

Blogger outreach boosts McCain (Stephen Dinan, March 31, 2008, Washington Times)

"During the unpleasantness, whenever Senator McCain put himself in front of reporters, the question was always, 'How much did you raise today, when are you dropping out,' " said Patrick Hynes, a conservative blogger who Mr. McCain hired in 2006. "And then we'd put him on the phone with bloggers, and they'd want to talk about Iraq, and pork and chasing down al Qaeda."

For the campaign, it came down to deploying the campaign's best asset — Mr. McCain himself — in a forum where he can excel.

Mr. Hynes said the back-and-forth with bloggers took "a great deal of sting out of the criticisms" over immigration, Mr. McCain's push for campaign-finance changes and other areas where conservatives have registered their discontent with the senator, who has secured enough delegates to win the Republican Party's presidential nomination.

"It gave him a microphone when others had already left the building," said David All, one of the Republicans' Web pioneers who runs Slate Card.com and who said Mr. McCain has benefited from Mr. Hynes' ties to bloggers. "That very much symbolizes the role of bloggers: We don't have editors to report to, and there isn't a big meeting with editors every morning. What that comes down to is personal relationships."

THE CITY ON THE MARCH:

The Priggish View of History (AndreI Cherny, March 31, 2008, NY Sun)

Accepting the Republican nomination for president in 1988, George H.W. Bush decried those who see "America as another pleasant country on the U.N. roll call, somewhere between Albania and Zimbabwe." In doing so, he spoke to an intrinsic belief in the America's national culture that ours is a unique nation with a special role in the world, "a shining city on the hill," a chosen people among the world's states. Yet, during his son's presidency, an opposing view has taken hold among vocal commentators and academics — left, right, and center — who hold America to be just another domineering empire in the roll call of human history.

WHERE MAVERICK SHOULD GO TO PITCH HIS LEAGUE OF DEMOCRACIES:

In California, Indian Americans Show Loyalty to Clinton (JOSH GERSTEIN, March 31, 2008, NY Sun)

Senator Clinton is proud that her ties with the Indian-American community once led to jokes that she could be elected as a senator from the Punjab in India, President Clinton told a fund-raising lunch here yesterday, according to guests.

About 200 people, many of them physicians of Indian origin, noshed on chicken tikka and other Indian specialties as they listened to Mr. Clinton argue for his wife's continued viability in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. [...]

"First, she went there before I did when I was president and we effected a thaw in relations between the U.S. and India for the first time since President Kennedy was in office. It had been almost 40 years since we had really good relations with the Indians," Mr. Clinton told The New York Sun as he shook hands with several dozen of Dr. Dhaliwal's neighbors gathered on a cul de sac of large homes overlooking a sunny golf course. "She represents a lot of Indian Americans in New York. They like her and think she's a good senator."

REASON ENOUGH TO GET THE MLB GAMEDAY PACKAGE:

AN APPRECIATION: A city hangs on Vin Scully's every word (Christine Daniels, March 31, 2008, LA Times)

His voice belongs to then and now, an audio clip that carries us back to a bygone era even as it keeps us up-to-the-minute updated.

It has been there as long as big-league baseball has been in this city, actually pre-dating the Los Angeles Dodgers by several years, which was the biggest advantage the Dodgers had when they first arrived in 1958, certainly more important than any of the fading stars on the playing roster.

When Vin Scully settled in behind his microphone at the Coliseum 50 years ago, Los Angeles had the narrator it needed and the Dodgers had the pitchman they required to break the ice, to melt any pockets of resistance that might have been scattered around the Southland.

He has been at it ever since, his tenure an L.A. story unlike any other, providing a sense of permanence to a city perfectly captured by Steve Martin's line in the movie "L.A. Story": "Some of these buildings are more than 20 years old!"

But as the Dodgers crank up the celebratory machine to mark their 50th anniversary in Los Angeles, a different emotion surfaces when considering Scully's place with the Dodgers. Scully is 80 and in the last year of his contract with the club. He hasn't yet decided on his plans for after this season. For the time being, anyway, every game, every inning Scully's calls carry with them an underlying, undeniable theme for listeners: Let us enjoy them while we can.

Here's his legendary call of Sandy Koufax's perfect game (Audio here):

Three times in his sensational career has Sandy Koufax walked out to the mound to pitch a fateful ninth where he turned in a no-hitter. But tonight, September the 9th, nineteen hundred and 65, he made the toughest walk of his career, I'm sure, because through eight innings he has pitched a perfect game. He has struck out 11, he has retired 24 consecutive batters, and the first man he will look at is catcher Chris Krug, big right-hand hitter, flied to second, grounded to short. Dick Tracewski is now at second base and Koufax ready and delivers: curveball for a strike.

0 and 1 the count to Chris Krug. Out on deck to pinch-hit is one of the men we mentioned earlier as a possible, Joey Amalfitano. Here's the strike 1 pitch to Krug: fastball, swung on and missed, strike 2. And you can almost taste the pressure now. Koufax lifted his cap, ran his fingers through his black hair, then pulled the cap back down, fussing at the bill. Krug must feel it too as he backs out, heaves a sigh, took off his helmet, put it back on and steps back up to the plate.

Tracewski is over to his right to fill up the middle, Kennedy is deep to guard the line. The strike 2 pitch on the way: fastball, outside, ball 1. Krug started to go after it and held up and Torborg held the ball high in the air trying to convince Vargo but Eddie said nossir. One and 2 the count to Chris Krug. It is 9:41 p.m. on September the 9th. The 1-2 pitch on the way: curveball, tapped foul off to the left of the plate.

The Dodgers defensively in this spine-tingling moment: Sandy Koufax and Jeff Torborg. The boys who will try and stop anything hit their way: Wes Parker, Dick Tracewski, Maury Wills and John Kennedy; the outfield of Lou Johnson, Willie Davis and Ron Fairly. And there's 29,000 people in the ballpark and a million butterflies. Twenty nine thousand, one hundred and thirty-nine paid.

Koufax into his windup and the 1-2 pitch: fastball, fouled back out of play. In the Dodger dugout Al Ferrara gets up and walks down near the runway, and it begins to get tough to be a teammate and sit in the dugout and have to watch. Sandy back of the rubber, now toes it. All the boys in the bullpen straining to get a better look as they look through the wire fence in left field. One and 2 the count to Chris Krug. Koufax, feet together, now to his windup and the 1-2 pitch: fastball outside, ball 2. (Crowd boos.)

A lot of people in the ballpark now are starting to see the pitches with their hearts. The pitch was outside, Torborg tried to pull it over the plate but Vargo, an experienced umpire, wouldn't go for it. Two and 2 the count to Chris Krug. Sandy reading signs, into his windup, 2-2 pitch: fastball, got him swingin'!

Sandy Koufax has struck out 12. He is two outs away from a perfect game.

Here is Joe Amalfitano to pinch-hit for Don Kessinger. Amalfitano is from Southern California, from San Pedro. He was an original bonus boy with the Giants. Joey's been around, and as we mentioned earlier, he has helped to beat the Dodgers twice, and on deck is Harvey Kuenn. Kennedy is tight to the bag at third, the fastball, a strike. 0 and 1 with one out in the ninth inning, 1 to nothing, Dodgers. Sandy reading, into his windup and the strike 1 pitch: curveball, tapped foul, 0 and 2. And Amalfitano walks away and shakes himself a little bit, and swings the bat. And Koufax with a new ball, takes a hitch at his belt and walks behind the mound.

I would think that the mound at Dodger Stadium right now is the loneliest place in the world.

Sandy fussing, looks in to get his sign, 0 and 2 to Amalfitano. The strike 2 pitch to Joe: fastball, swung on and missed, strike 3!

He is one out away from the promised land, and Harvey Kuenn is comin' up.

So Harvey Kuenn is batting for Bob Hendley. The time on the scoreboard is 9:44. The date, September the 9th, 1965, and Koufax working on veteran Harvey Kuenn. Sandy into his windup and the pitch, a fastball for a strike! He has struck out, by the way, five consecutive batters, and that's gone unnoticed. Sandy ready and the strike 1 pitch: very high, and he lost his hat. He really forced that one. That's only the second time tonight where I have had the feeling that Sandy threw instead of pitched, trying to get that little extra, and that time he tried so hard his hat fell off -- he took an extremely long stride to the plate -- and Torborg had to go up to get it.

One and 1 to Harvey Kuenn. Now he's ready: fastball, high, ball 2. You can't blame a man for pushing just a little bit now. Sandy backs off, mops his forehead, runs his left index finger along his forehead, dries it off on his left pants leg. All the while Kuenn just waiting. Now Sandy looks in. Into his windup and the 2-1 pitch to Kuenn: swung on and missed, strike 2!

It is 9:46 p.m.

Two and 2 to Harvey Kuenn, one strike away. Sandy into his windup, here's the pitch:

Swung on and missed, a perfect game!

(38 seconds of cheering.)

On the scoreboard in right field it is 9:46 p.m. in the City of the Angels, Los Angeles, California. And a crowd of 29,139 just sitting in to see the only pitcher in baseball history to hurl four no-hit, no-run games. He has done it four straight years, and now he caps it: On his fourth no-hitter he made it a perfect game. And Sandy Koufax, whose name will always remind you of strikeouts, did it with a flurry. He struck out the last six consecutive batters. So when he wrote his name in capital letters in the record books, that "K" stands out even more than the O-U-F-A-X.

LIKE JOHN KERRY WITHOUT A WAR RECORD:

Obama had greater role on liberal survey (KENNETH P. VOGEL, 3/31/08, Politico)

During his first run for elected office, Barack Obama played a greater role than his aides now acknowledge in crafting liberal stands on gun control, the death penalty and abortion– positions that appear at odds with the more moderate image he’s projected during his presidential campaign.

The evidence comes from an amended version of an Illinois voter group’s detailed questionnaire, filed under his name during his 1996 bid for a state Senate seat.

Late last year, in response to a Politico story about Obama’s answers to the original questionnaire, his aides said he “never saw or approved” the questionnaire.

They asserted the responses were filled out by a campaign aide who “unintentionally mischaracterize(d) his position.”

But a Politico examination determined that Obama was actually interviewed about the issues on the questionnaire by the liberal Chicago non-profit group that issued it. And it found that Obama – the day after sitting for the interview – filed an amended version of the questionnaire, which appears to contain Obama’s own handwritten notes adding to one answer.

THE PROBLEM WITH APPEALING TO NATIONALISM...:

Chinese view of Dalai Lama bodes ill for its Tibet policy (Howard W. French , 3/29/08, IHT)

The inflexibility in Beijing's position leaves Western countries with a problem. President George W. Bush and a roster of European and Asian leaders have called for Hu to open a dialogue with the Dalai Lama as a first step toward reducing tensions in Tibet. If Hu declines to do so, those leaders seem likely to face pressure from their own constituents to take stronger diplomatic or political steps against Beijing at the moment it had expected to bask in the international limelight.

Already, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has suggested that he might consider using his presidency of the European Union this summer to organize a boycott of the opening ceremonies of the Games.

The call for some kind of Chinese-Tibetan talks continues to mount. On Friday, the Dalai Lama, speaking in India, made his most extended comments on the Tibetan violence, accusing the Chinese state-run media of trying to "sow the seeds of racial tension" there but calling for "meaningful dialogue" with Beijing about how to reduce tensions.

Speaking of the possibility that Hu might pursue diplomatic talks with Tibetan exiles, Bush said "it's in his country's interest." Standing by Bush's side, Kevin Rudd, Australia's newly elected, Chinese-speaking prime minister, who was visiting Washington, said, "It's absolutely clear that there are human rights abuses in Tibet." [...]

Robert Barnett, director of Modern Tibetan Studies at Columbia University, dismissed the Chinese contention that the protest amounted to little more than criminal riots, calling their spread through several provinces significant. "Nothing like this has happened for the last 40 years, and no Chinese leader is going to miss that," Barnett said. "They have lost the countryside, and they are going to have to work very hard to get win it back."

If the tough tactics have startled the outside world, the Communist Party for now seems more concerned with rallying domestic opinion by using and responding to the deep strains of nationalism in Chinese society. Playing to national pride, and national insecurities, the party has used censorship and propaganda to position itself as defender of the motherland - and block any examination of Tibetan grievances or its own performance in the crisis.

But the heavy emphasis on nationalism is not without risks. With less than five months before the opening of the Beijing Olympics, China's sharp criticism of the foreign media comes precisely when it wants to present a welcoming impression to the outside world. Instead, Chinese citizens, including many overseas, are posting thousands of angry messages on Web sites and making crank calls to some foreign media offices in Beijing.

EVEN THE TORIES ARE SMART ENOUGH TO GAME THIS ONE:

Peers to push for a U-turn on EU referendum (Toby Helm and Andrew Pierce, 31/03/2008, Daily Telegraph)

Two former chancellors are to spearhead a cross-party push to force a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty when it is debated in the House of Lords tomorrow.

Lord Lawson and Lord Lamont, who were chancellors under Margaret Thatcher and John Major respectively, are among a formidable list of peers determined to make Labour honour its election manifesto commitment.

The Bill to ratify the treaty passed through the Commons earlier this month with a Government majority of 63 - but only after a rebellion by 29 Labour MPs.

The Tories, who will table an amendment calling for a referendum, are courting rebel Liberal Democrat and Labour peers, non-aligned crossbenchers and bishops.

A WHOOPIN':

Mugabe apparently faces major defeat in Zimbabwe: The 84-year-old president looks to be bested by the leader of the main opposition -- but critics worry about vote fraud. (Robyn Dixon, 3/30/08, Los Angeles Times)

The main opposition party and independent observers said today that President Robert Mugabe was suffering a resounding defeat as election results were tallied, but no official returns were released and capital was rife with speculation that they were being rigged.

Tension was high in the capital, Harare, with police deployed on most corners as the delay in announcing results from Saturday's balloting wore on. Usually, the first official results are released within hours of the polls' closing.

There were unconfirmed reports that key ministers and Mugabe loyalists lost their seats in parliament.

In a briefing to diplomats, independent election observers said that with 66% of the vote counted, the leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, Morgan Tsvangirai, had 55% of the vote. Mugabe, 84, had 36% and ruling party defector Simba Makoni had 9%, it said.

GEE, THE MEDIA GOT MIDDLE AMERICA WRONG??:

Poll: Young Americans revere monogamy (UPI, March 30, 2008)

"We were completely surprised. There has been a faulty portrayal of millennials by the media -- television, films, news, blogs, everything. These people are not the self-entitled, coddled slackers they're made out to be. Misnomers and myths about them are all over the place," said Ann Mack, who directed the survey and is the official "director of trend-spotting" at J. Walter Thompson, the nation's largest advertising agency.

In addition to indicating 94 percent of millennials respect monogamy and parenthood and 84 percent revere marriage, the survey found 88 percent said they respect the U.S. Constitution, 84 percent respect the military and more than three-quarters believe in the "American dream."

OUTLASTED ANOTHER ONE:

Mugabe warns of attempted coup as Zimbabwe opposition claim victory in crucial election (BARBARA JONES, 30th March 2008, Daily Mail)

Zimbabwe's opposition said today it had won the most crucial election since independence, but President Robert Mugabe's government warned premature victory claims would be seen as an attempted coup.

Tendai Biti, secretary general of the main MDC opposition party, told diplomats and observers overnight that early results showed it was victorious. "We have won this election," he said.

TIME BEGINS...:

There's a mess of baseball stuff up at the Rotisserie Blog. If your paper has a good story, please forward it or write it up yourself and we'll post it.

ONE OF THE LUCKY ONES:

Dith Pran, portrayed in 'Killing Fields,' dies (Associated Press, March 30, 2008)

The journalist whose enslavement and escape from Cambodia's murderous revolutionaries was the subject of the movie "The Killing Fields" has died.

Dith Pran's death from pancreatic cancer was confirmed Sunday by journalist Sydney Schanberg, his former colleague at The New York Times. Pran was 65.

PAINFUL? IT'S HILARIOUS:

The audacity of rhetoric (Thomas Sowell, March 30, 2008, Washington Times)

It is painful to watch defenders of Sen. Barack Obama tying themselves into knots trying to evade the obvious. [...]

Barack Obama's own account of his life shows that he consciously sought out people on the far left fringe. In college, "I chose my friends carefully," he said in his first book, "Dreams From My Father."

These friends included "Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk rock performance poets" — in Mr. Obama's own words — as well as the "more politically active black students." He later visited a former member of the terrorist Weatherman underground, who endorsed him when he ran for state senator.

HE EVEN USES THE CONCEPT OF EVOLUTION CORRECTLY (via Jim Yates):

Another left-handed president? It's looking that way. (Gary Rotstein, 2/25/08, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The big deal here is not just Mr. Obama's orientation. Republican front-runner John McCain comes from the same, left-leaning 10 percent to 15 percent of the population. It's becoming clearer by the day -- unless every right-hander in Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania votes for Mrs. Clinton -- that the next president will be left-handed.

The country has not been faced with such predetermination of presidential handedness since the three-way race of 1992, when George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and H. Ross Perot all favored the same side used by Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci to create great art.

Other than the first Mr. Bush and Mr. Clinton, the left-handed presidents everyone seems to agree on were James Garfield, Harry Truman and Gerald Ford. Some lists include Herbert Hoover, but he's omitted from others created by left-handed advocates, perhaps because they want no part of someone on whose watch the Great Depression began.

And then there's the case of Ronald Reagan. He wrote with his right hand, but discussion has abounded that he was switched from his natural tendencies when he was young by strict schoolteachers. It has been pointed out that he slapped Angie Dickinson with his left hand in the film "The Killers," which is what a lefty would do. (No one thinking right would ever slap Angie Dickinson at all, actually.)

So just as in politics, Mr. Reagan apparently went from left to right as his life evolved.

THANKS, MOOK:

Iraqi cleric calls off militias (BBC, 3/30/08)

Iraqi Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr has ordered his fighters off the streets of Basra and other cities in an effort to end clashes with security forces.

He said in a statement that his movement wanted the Iraqi people to stop the bloodshed and maintain the nation's independence and stability.

The government, which had set a deadline to hand over weapons in return for cash, called the move "positive".

ACCOUNTING FOR REALITY:

American Nominalism and Our Need for the Science of Theology (part 1) (Peter Augustine Lawler, 03/28/08, First Principles)

The modern world has been characterized by de-Christianization and de-Hellenization. That doesn’t mean it’s fundamentally anti-Christian or anti-Greek. We speak more of the dignity or autonomy of the human person than ever. And we certainly have more confidence in and are more dependent on the science we’ve inherited from the Greeks than ever.

Modern de-Hellenizaton has been largely animated by the desire to free the willful God and the willful human person made in his image from being distorted or annihilated by the impersonal metaphysical system of Aristotle or some other philosopher or scientist. Modern de-Christianization has been largely animated by the desire to free science from all anthropomorphic or personal distortion, to fuel real progress toward a certain understanding of the genuinely universal structure of reality—the goal of science first articulated, quite imperfectly, by the classical Greek philosophers. De-Christianization has been pursued on behalf of the free person, and de-Hellenization has been pursued on behalf of impersonal science. They have been operating simultaneously and at cross-purposes.

The truth is that our world is in some ways both more personal and more impersonal—more Christian and more Greek—than ever. The distance between our personal experiences and what we think we know through science has never been wider. Without admitting it, we’ve abandoned the true goal of science, which is to give an account of the way all things—including human beings—are. We don’t really believe we can reason about the true situation of the only being in the world—the human person—who is open to the truth about nature. We think we can know everything but the being who can know.

We really don’t deny that such a personal being exists, whatever our scientists may teach. We don’t even begin to try to lose our puny selves in some impersonal system or pantheistic reverie. Such denial is for Buddhists, with their amazing self-discipline. For now, the phrase “Western Buddhist” remains an oxymoron.

It’s particularly easy to see that we Americans see ourselves both more personally and more impersonally than ever. Virtually all sophisticated Americans claim to believe that Darwin teaches the whole truth about who or what we are. For Darwin, the particular human being only exists to serve the human species. Even our super-smart species has no enduring significance in the accidental evolutionary process. It’s true both that I’m nothing but species fodder, and that what I in particular do has less than negligible significance for our species’ future. Natural selection depends on the average, anonymous behavior of a huge number of members of any particular species. The individual and his illusory concerns about his personal significance mean nothing. Even the genes that I so dutifully spread are soon dispersed into insignificance.

The same sophisticated American who prides himself on being a whole-hog Darwinian speaks incessantly about the freedom and dignity of the individual and is proud of his or her freedom to choose. The particularly modern source of pride remains personal freedom from all authority, including the authority of God and nature. Our professed confidence in the reality of that freedom may be stronger than ever today. Even our neo-Darwinian scientists, such as Daniel Dennett, who think there’s no foundation in what we know through science for the idea of human dignity, admit it would be a disaster if they could really convince us to stop taking our dignity seriously. Certainly one piece of evidence that we’re not living in genuinely reasonable times is that most sophisticated Americans seem unable to join Dennett in recognizing the laughable contradiction in their official self-understanding as autonomous chimps.

We Americans, in fact, are so unscientific that we don’t even really try to account for what we can see with our own eyes. Culturally speaking, we’re divided into Darwin affirmers and Darwin deniers, into those who say that his theory of evolutionary natural selection can explain everything and those who say it explains nothing. Anybody should be able to see that the truth lies somewhere in between these two extremes.

The Darwin affirmers provide the best evidence we have that what Darwin teaches couldn’t possibly be completely true. They tend to think of themselves so thoroughly as autonomous individuals that often they don’t seek the natural fulfillment that comes through spreading their genes—or having kids. They’re not doing their duty to their species by generating their replacements. They’re doing everything they can not to have to be replaced, and they’re doing it in the most scientific way. They think that being itself will be extinguished if and when they die. Can Darwin really explain why healthy members of a species enjoying the most favorable environment ever would suddenly and quite consciously just decide to stop reproducing? It seems that the members of any species smart enough and curious enough to have discovered the theory of natural selection will act to make that theory untrue.

Meanwhile, our Evangelical and orthodox believers come much closer to living the way nature intends in order for our species to flourish. They pair-bond or marry, have lots of kids, raise them well, and then step aside for their natural replacements without inordinate resistance. What the Evangelicals and Mormons believe is better for our species’ future than what the neo-Darwinians believe. A neo-Darwinian genuinely concerned for our species’ future might insist that evolution not be taught in our schools. Surely our sociobiologists can’t explain why it is that those Americans who believe that, as persons made in the image of a supernatural God, their true home lies elsewhere are more at home in this world as citizens, friends, neighbors, parents, and children than are those who think their true home lies here, on this earth.

Still, our Evangelicals tend to join both those who speak of their “autonomy” and Darwinians in believing that there’s no support in nature at all for their purpose-driven lives, and that if it weren’t for the absolute truth of the Bible something like aimless or relativistic naturalism would be true. They often present the human choice as between two competing worldviews, and reason has little to say about how to make that choice. Our Evangelicals give themselves far too little credit. Their criticism of our libertarian autonomy-freaks and our Darwinians would retain plenty of force even if they lost faith in the God of the Bible.

Our libertarians, our Darwinians, and our Evangelicals all agree that there is no science of theology. Reason can’t give us any guidance on who or what God is in a way that would provide real guidance for our lives. They don’t believe that we’re hardwired, so to speak, to know the Logos who, or which, is the source of our freedom and openness to the truth about all things. Our libertarians and our Evangelicals both believe that the free person is real, but they don’t believe that there’s any support in nature for his existence. Our Darwinians, quite unrealistically, deny what anyone can see with his own eyes about personal or individual behavior. Because we all refuse to believe in the possibility of a science of theology, we all lack a way of talking reasonably about the real lives of particular human persons.

We don’t live in a particularly reasonable time, because we’re governed by a particular cultural or historical choice to limit the domain of reason over our lives. This modern self-limitation, as I’ll explain, was quite understandable. But we now know from experience that the simultaneous attempts to free faith from science or philosophy and science from faith have produced undignified, self-mutilated lives. Most fundamentally, we seem not to be courageous enough to live well with what we really know. The truth is that the modern view of reason is quite questionable. It is, thank God, far from the last word on what we can really know.

The Science of Theology: Hellenic Christianity vs. Classical Philosophy
To free us from the delusion that we have the last word on reason, we must return to the first words about the relationship between Greek philosophy, or science, and Christianity spoken during the period of Hellenic Christianity. At that time, the Greeks and the Christians agreed that we are hardwired, so to speak, as beings with minds to think about who or what God must be, and we are animated by eros or love to seek the truth about God. The idea that God is Logos is what allowed the Greeks and the Christians to use both arguments and mockery to collaborate against those religions which are obviously unreasonable and man-made. God is neither cruel nor arbitrary, and the truth about God must correspond to what we can know about ourselves and the rest of nature according to our best lights. Both the Greeks and the Christians contributed to genuine enlightenment, to the liberation of human beings from the confines of merely civil or political theology, from a world where the word of God was both used as a weapon and justified the use of weapons.

Aristotle attempted to grasp through reflection God as the object of every human desire or love. He understood God only as the object of love, as a wholly self-sufficient or unerotic or unmovable being, not as a person at all. Aristotle’s God is certainly not a “relational” God, one who cares or even knows about the existence of particular human beings. According to Aristotle, our pursuit of divine knowledge—or what God knows—becomes progressively more impersonal. The pursuit of philosophic or scientific truth requires that the particular philosopher die to himself. The Socratic drama of the pursuit of wisdom is about the particular being losing himself in his apprehension of anonymous or impersonal truth.

From this view, we approach divinity—or what is best in us—through our perception of the logos or rational causality that governs all things. We see through every anthropomorphic claim for personal intervention or personal causation that would disrupt that logos. From this liberated view, the idea of a personal God is an oxymoron. It is, in fact, a repulsive denial of the responsibility of theological science and science generally.

The Christian criticism of Aristotelian theology is that it doesn’t account for what we really know about the human person. For the Greek philosophers, the realm of human freedom, finally, is a mythical idea, one which must be rhetorically supported but for which there’s no scientific evidence. The only real freedom is the freedom of the human mind from anthropomorphic delusions about natural causation. The Christians respond that human longings and human action exhibit real evidence of personal freedom, and the person must have some real foundation in being itself. What we really do know points in the direction of the creative activity of a personal God. The personalities of God and man can’t be wholly or irredeemably unrelated. The possibility of the free and rational being open to the truth depends upon the corresponding possibility of a personal, rational science of theology.

The classical philosophers were, of course, perfectly aware that human beings are “manly,” that they need to feel important. Such self-confidence, of course, is required to make self-conscious life endurable and great human deeds possible. But according to their science, all assertions of human importance are unrealistic exaggerations, and the philosopher gently mocks without obviously undermining the aspirations of particular individuals to self-sufficiency. But for the Christians, even science depends upon the possibility of personal significance, and Christian theology criticizes both the civil theology and the natural theology of the Greeks and Romans for being unable to account for personal freedom—for the being who is not fundamentally merely part of a city or part of some necessitarian natural whole. For the Christians, not only do particular men and women need to feel important, they in fact are important. The Christians add that the unrealistic exaggerations of humans’ magnanimous pretensions need to be chastened by the truthful virtue of humility, the virtue of ineradicably relational and lovingly dependent beings.

That there is a ground for personal freedom in an otherwise seemingly necessitarian cosmos does, in some ways, offend the mind. But to understand all that exists in terms of impersonal causation suggests that Being itself is constituted by an intelligence that is incapable of comprehending itself. The being who can understand Being—the human being—seems to be a chance occurrence in a cosmos that has no particular need for and is seemingly distorted by his existence. The appearance of the human person—even the philosopher with the name Socrates—necessarily offends the human mind in some ways, but as far we know the human mind can only appear or function in a whole person. The real existence of the whole philosopher or physicist can’t be accounted for in any mathematical or necessitarian physics. So in some ways it might offend reason less to affirm an account of the precondition and ground of all being to be creative and truly conscious—or erotic and rational—thinking. The world, in the final analysis, is more love than mathematics, and the particular human person is more significant and wonderful than the stars.

The Greeks focus on the eternity, the Christians on the loving creativity, of God. For the Christians, the God who is the ultimate source of our being is animated, as we are, by logos and eros. The source of our Being is someone who can’t be reduced to mind or will or even some theoretical combination of the two. Made in his image, we personal, erotic, and knowing beings can’t be reduced to mind or will or body or even some abstract combination of the three. One aspect of the reasonableness of faith is its perception of the intrinsic link between God’s love and the whole reality of human life.

The philosophic or scientific understanding of the world in terms of impersonal necessity or eternity alone can’t account for the real existence of persons, of beings open to the truth and defined in this world by time.

IS IT ANY WONDER THAT BLACK CULTURE IS SO DISORDERED...:

Obama pastor's words spring from complex tradition: The Rev. Wright's mix of theology with race relations in America belongs to the 'prophetic' style of black preaching. Is he more outrageous than Frederick Douglass? (Manya A. Brachear, 3/30/08, Chicago Tribune)

Examining the full content of Wright's sermons and delivery style yields a far more complex message, though one that some will still find objectionable. For more than 30 years, Wright walked churchgoers every Sunday along a winding road from rage to reconciliation, employing a style that validated both.

"He's voicing a reality that those people experience six days a week," said the Rev. Dwight Hopkins, a professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School and a Trinity member. "In that sense, he's saying they're not insane."

ALL WE HAD TO DO WAS NOT ATTACK FIRST:

Alley Fighters (JAMES GLANZ, 3/30/08, NY Times)

No one has ever accused Mr. Sadr of being brilliant, charismatic, or even above average in the intellectual realm. But he has one thing few of those leaders have: he never left, even in the worst years of Saddam Hussein. And that does not just give him credibility on the streets. In a country where sheer social, religious, political, historical, geographic and psychological complexities are what seem to defeat all easy solutions, Mr. Sadr is one of the few who have been here continuously, absorbing the shifting lessons of the place. He has done his homework, he has put in his time.

And he has received the kind of props that must make an alley fighter proud. Two weeks ago, when I learned of the impending assault during a trip to Basra, senior Iraqi officials said that the crackdown would be unrelenting. “Whoever gets in the way will be dealt with swiftly, decisively and with no mercy,” one of them said.

But when Iraqi forces made little progress in Mahdi-controlled neighborhoods after the offensive began on Tuesday, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who staked his political credibility on the operation by traveling personally to Basra to direct it, issued a curious 72-hour ultimatum to the fighters to lay down their weapons — or face consequences.

It was hard to imagine, after the start of an assault involving 30,000 troops, what more severe consequences could be. If the emptiness of the ultimatum was not enough to suggest that Mr. Maliki had left himself no way out of the alley except to back down, on Friday he said that he would offer money to anyone in Basra who turned in a weapon over the following ten days.

American forces have also found that they have little choice but to respect Mr. Sadr. After years of referring to him as little more than a thug — including a vicious battle against his fighters in Najaf in 2004 — the American military has begun referring to him as “Sayyid,” the honorific title accorded to a Muslim holy man. This is particularly true when military officials praise a loophole-riddled cease-fire that Mr. Sadr ordered last August, when he said that his militia should stop fighting but could respond in self-defense if attacked first.

THERE REALLY OUGHT TO BE A KEG BY HOMEPLATE:

Coliseum configuration confounding: Dodgers, Red Sox taken aback by stadium's dimensions (Tom Singer, 3/30/08, MLB.com)

As Dodgers and Red Sox made their slow way down the Coliseum tunnel, normally where crimson-and-gold USC Trojans mill before charging on the gridiron, the baseball players felt like they'd just stepped through Alice's looking glass.

They looked at a left-field foul pole 201 feet from home plate, foul territory down the right-field line roughly the width of Pee Wee Herman's belt, and dugouts on either side of the infield -- literally, pits shrouded by blue tents having been dug into the grass.

And no warning track.

"It's wild. I look around, and it's like someone dropped acid in my oatmeal this morning," Theo Epstein, Boston's youthful general manager, said with a smile.

As he walked down the Los Angeles Coliseum tunnel and glanced toward the left-field screen, Boston catcher Jason Varitek smiled and said sarcastically: "Wakie's a fly ball pitcher. That's great."
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Then, in his best broadcast voice, he intoned: "Dodgers 85, Red Sox 81."

Esteban Loaiza, the Dodgers' starter who opposed knuckleballer Tim Wakefield in Saturday night's exhibition game, followed a few minutes later, took a look and shook his head.

"It's short, man. It's like playing a whiffle ball game," he said.

It was 3 1/2 hours before gametime -- long before fans began filling the Coliseum for the first big league baseball game at the facility since September 1961. The Dodgers said 115,300 tickets were sold, including some 25,000 for standing-room only.

THE HAIRY ANU WILL INHERIT THE ISLAND::

No sex, thank you ... we're Japanese (Justin McCurry, 3/20/08, The Observer)

Housewife Miyuki Yanagisawa cannot recall the last time she had sex with her husband. She is certain, though, that their physical estrangement can be measured in years, not months.

While she shares a room with the couple's two young daughters, her husband, a company employee, sleeps alone in another room, grateful for the chance to catch up on his sleep after another tortuously long day at work.

'As long as he is healthy and doing well at work, I can put up with the lack of affection,' Yanagisawa, 44 - who asked that her real name not be used - said of her decade-old marriage. 'Many other women in my age group feel the same. When couples reach a certain age they start calling each other "Mum" and "Dad" - they certainly stop using affectionate nicknames. I think that spells the beginning of the end for sex.'

Yanagisawa is not alone. According to a new report by the World Health Organisation, a quarter of married couples in Japan have not had sex in the past year. The problem worsens with age. While the study found that the 42 per cent of couples in their twenties who had lived together for fewer than five years had sex at least once a week, almost 38 per cent of married couples in their fifties have none.

JUST SPRINKLE DIRT ON THE REGULAR STUFF:

Organic food 'no benefit to health': Eating fruit and veg is more important than whether produce is 'green', says expert (Jo Revill, March 30, 2008, Observer)

[A]ccording to [Lord Krebs, former head of the Food Standards Agency, ] there is still no reliable, peer-reviewed evidence to show that there is any clear health benefit to eating this 'green' produce.

'The organic message can sometimes be a distortion from the more important messages,' said Krebs. 'If a parent is asking, "how can I improve the health of my children?" they may think, "Oh, I can give them organic food". But that is far less important than the decision to feed them more fruit and vegetables, or the decision to give them less salt.' His concerns about the claims made for organic produce were that 'they add to the mix of confusion in people's minds about what it means to eat healthily'.

When Krebs chaired the agency, he came under pressure to validate claims that organic food was better for people - but refused to endorse the produce.

WHY SHOULD HE STOP?:

Nearing 50, Franco Still Going Strong in Mexican League (MURRAY CHASS, 8/30/08, NY Times)

Most people who lie about their age try to make themselves appear younger than they really are. It was suggested to Julio Franco, though, that he might have wanted to make himself appear older. He laughed, understanding the reason for the suggestion.

Franco dreamed of playing in the major leagues when he was 50. A little white lie might have enabled him to achieve his dream last season. But Franco acknowledged that he turned 49 last Aug. 23, which meant he needed to have a major league job this season.

He doesn’t have one, but he does expect to play professional baseball on his 50th birthday. In a Mexican League season that has begun, Franco is playing first base in Cancún for Tigres de Quintana Roo.

“I’m here because I believe I can continue playing ball,” Franco said in a telephone interview.

“Back in ’99,” he continued, referring to a previous season in the Mexican League, “if I had stopped playing, I wouldn’t have had eight more years in the big leagues.”

PRESENT AT THE CREATION:

A New Kind of Right (JAMES BOWMAN, March 25, 2008, NY Sun)

Jazz is the only indigenous American art form, or so we are often told. I would add the animated cartoon, though calling it "art" may create certain problems. But the country has produced another thing at least as remarkable and as unmistakably American and, with "Upstream: The Ascendance of American Conservatism", Alfred Regnery has written a history of its genesis that ought to be on the reading list of every student of American history.

What we have learned to call "conservatism" didn't exist until about 60 years ago. America's history was all liberal in Old World terms. (In fact, what we call conservatism is called "neo-liberalism" in much of the world today.) Conservatism in Europe was royalist or narrowly nationalist and ethnic, of the blood and fatherland tendency that obviously had no place to go in our multi-ethnic nation. Often, it was associated with official or quasi-official religions.

But in the 1950s, some remarkable Americans came together to create a new kind of conservatism, native and individualistic, that was based on the triple pillars of economic liberalism, anti-communism, and respect for traditional values. This politics ever since, and the dominant one over the past 40 years. No one is better placed to write its history than Mr. Regnery. He grew up in the home of one of those founders of American conservatism. His father, Henry Regnery, a textile magnate from Chicago, started a publishing house after World War II that was to release many of the seminal documents of the new conservatism, and he was present at many of its key moments.

WHAT IF THE DOG AND PONY WON'T PLAY ALONG?:

New Protests Erupt in Tibetan Capital (Jill Drew, 3/29/08, Washington Post)

A melee erupted in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa on Saturday afternoon, despite the presence of hundreds of armed police who have been out in force since deadly riots rocked the city two weeks ago.

The incident occurred as a 15-member delegation of international diplomats was leaving the city after a tightly scripted two-day tour arranged by the Chinese government to show that the city was back under control. The diplomats, including officials from the U.S., Japanese and Australian embassies, apparently did not witness the event.

Although details were sketchy, reports indicated that armed police began massing shortly before 2 p.m. to check the identity papers of people in the area where the March 14 riots started, and Tibetans began running away rather than risk arrest. Security forces surrounded residential areas near the Ramoche and Jokhang temples, while several hundred Tibetans staged a rally, Radio Free Asia reported, citing unnamed witnesses in Lhasa.

JUST LIKE IN THE LAST DEPRESSION:

New grads still get jobs in slow economy (Anita Weier, 3/29/2008, Capital Times)

Though the economy looks pretty fragile, job prospects for college graduates are quite strong, two UW-Madison career directors say.

"There definitely are good prospects. We were surprised at the extent companies are still hiring," said Steve Schroeder, director of the undergraduate career center at the University of Wisconsin's School of Business.

"Part of it is that the baby boomers are starting to retire. For the next 15 or 20 years, there will be more people retiring than graduates entering the market."

Even companies that are struggling continue to hire, Schroeder noted.

NOT WHAT THE SECULAR MOMMY PARTY WANTS TO HEAR:

Getting Poverty Wrong: On the presidential campaign trail, it’s almost as if the 1960s never happened. (Steven Malanga, 21 March 2008, City Journal)

[B]oth candidates are largely missing the point. While they insist that strengthening labor unions or protecting homeowners from foreclosures will alleviate the hardships of the poor, the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census remind us that the breakdown of the traditional two-parent, married family is a far greater contributor to poverty in America than many of the supposed shortcomings of our economy. It’s hard to imagine that America will make much more headway on reducing persistent poverty until it halts this long-term trend.

The Census Bureau’s study on the living arrangements of American children appeared in mid-February. The data show that the number of children now living in two-parent families has dipped just below the 70 percent mark for the first time since the Census began collecting data on family formation nearly 130 years ago. After peaking in the 1950s—when about 87 percent of all children lived with two parents—the traditional family went through a rapid decline beginning in the 1970s and has continued to shrink over the last three decades, though the rate of decline has slowed somewhat. As part of this sweeping change, the percentage of children living with married parents has fallen more rapidly, down more than two full percentage points, to 66.6 percent of all kids, in the last 10 years alone. Consistent with these decreases has been a sharp rise in the number of children living with single parents and with unmarried parents.

The economic impact of this breakdown has been profound. Researchers estimate that the entire rise in poverty in America since the late 1970s can be attributed to “changes in family formation,” a euphemism for the decline of families headed by two married parents. The latest Census data illustrate the problem. Only one out of ten American kids living in two-married-parent families is in poverty—and about one-third of these families are recent immigrants whose poverty is temporary. By contrast, 37 percent of children living with single mothers are impoverished.

Marriage seems to be the defining characteristic of economically successful families. With out-of-wedlock birth rates in America soaring, so that many traditional families aren’t so much breaking up as never getting started, the percentage of children living with cohabiting parents is growing. Yet these kids are three times more likely to be in poverty than the children of married parents. The data actually demonstrate that poverty rates for families headed by two unmarried parents more closely resemble the poverty rates of single-parent families than those of two-married-parent ones.

Part of this shocking difference owes to what City Journal contributing editor Kay S. Hymowitz has called the “marriage gap” in America (“Marriage and Caste,” Winter 2006). Hymowitz describes how better-educated, higher-income men and women are now more likely to delay having children until they’re married, while lower-income, less-educated men and women are more likely to cohabit and have children out of wedlock.

But even these demographic facts don’t completely explain the widely varying poverty rate between married and cohabiting parents. Studies that adjust for parents’ educational levels still find that a family headed by two unmarried parents is twice as likely to wind up in poverty as one that married parents head. Something about the marriage certificate—a sense of long-term commitment, family stability, perhaps—makes an economic difference. Research shows that married workers exhibit more job stability and make greater wage gains than cohabiting parents, a sort of “marriage wage premium,” as some economists dub it.

Such factors also help to illuminate economic disparities along racial lines in America. As the latest Census statistics illustrate, family formation differs widely by race. Nearly nine in ten Asian children, for instance, live with two parents, as do 78 percent of white kids. By contrast, 68 percent of Hispanic children and only 38 percent of black children in America reside in two-parent families. A black child living with a single mother is nearly three times more likely to live in poverty than a black child living with two parents, the Census data show, yet 50 percent more black children are living with single mothers than in two-parent married families.

Given that a significant body of research now shows that children raised in two-parent, married families do better in school, are less likely to wind up in jail, and are less likely to end up on welfare, the startling racial divide in marriage tells us that a new generation of children, especially blacks, are growing up destined to struggle academically, in the job market, and in forming their own families. And policy prescriptions like a higher minimum wage or tax credits are unlikely to help many of these kids. What they mostly need is another parent—usually a father.

IT'S A NICE DILEMMA TO HAVE ON YOUR HANDS, HUH?

Left-right combination: Sandy Koufax- Don Drysdale tandem gave the Dodgers of the 1960s a rarity: two future Hall of Fame members in the same rotation (Steve Springer, 3/29/08, Los Angeles Times)

If ever there was a no-brainer for a manager, this appeared to be it.

Faced with a deciding seventh game of the World Series, he had his 23-game winner, a former Cy Young Award recipient, primed and ready with three days' rest.

But the manager, Walter Alston, figured he had a better option. And so too did the 23-game winner himself, Don Drysdale

On the eve of the last game of the 1965 World Series, Drysdale and catcher John Roseboro pulled Alston aside to tell him, "You've got to pitch the left-hander."

That would be Sandy Koufax.

"Drysdale was willing to give up Game 7 for the benefit of the team," recalled Jeff Torborg, the team's backup catcher at the time, from his Florida home. "Don said he would go to the bullpen and be available. That showed me what a team leader he was. These guys normally never asked out of the rotation. You couldn't peel them off the mound."

Drysdale wasn't needed that day. Koufax, on two days' rest with an aching left elbow that ultimately would end his career a year hence at age 30, would pitch a three-hit shutout in a 2-0 victory over the Minnesota Twins, striking out 10.

Koufax and Drysdale, two future Hall of Fame members, were a pair of aces who gave Alston a lot of winning hands.

HOW WAS "WHITEY IS EVIL" GOING TO BE HELPFUL?:

Religious faith not helping Obama (RACHEL ZOLL, 3/28/08, AP)

Religion is supposed to be Barack Obama's strength.

Unlike many Democratic candidates before him, Obama speaks with ease about his faith. He attends Sunday worship and knows his Bible. His supporters believe he can pry some committed churchgoers away from the GOP.

But the furor over comments by his Chicago pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, broadcast again and again on TV and viewed by millions on YouTube, is tempering those hopes.

HOW ABOUT CLINCHING ON SEPTEMBER 16TH THIS YEAR? (via The Other Brother):

Sweet 16 facts about Red Sox: From The Kid to Yaz, the number holds significant value (Marty Noble, 3/28/08, MLB.com)

In accordance with the Sweet 16 weekend, MLB.com presents a Red Sox Sweet 16, including a few entries that are bittersweet.

1. Other than American League MVP Carl Yastrzemski, no player put more "possible" into the Impossible Dream of 1967 than Jim Lonborg, No. 16. With acknowledgement to Ellis Kinder, who won more games than Lonborg for the Red Sox, MLB.com recognizes Lonborg as the foremost No. 16 in the history of the franchise because of his Cy Young exploits -- 22-9 record and league-leading 246 strikeouts -- in that implausibly grand run to the World Series.

2. Kinder wore No. 16 with the Sox for eight seasons, winning 86 games and, in 1949, producing a signature season comparable to Lonborg's '67. He won 23 games that year at age 35. A 24th victory at Yankee Stadium on Oct. 2, the last day of the 1949 regular season, would have put the Sox in the World Series. Kinder allowed two hits and a run in seven innings. The Yankees won, 5-3. (If Oct. 2 seems familiar, understand that the Bucky Dent Game happened on that date 29 years later.) Kinder died on Oct. 16, 1968 -- 25 years to the day before Aaron Boone's home run.

3. The big league record for successive plate appearances reaching base is 16, established by Ted Williams in September 1957 -- two singles, four home runs, nine walks and one hit by pitch.

IT'S NOT AS IF WE HAD GREAT TRANSLATORS TO SPARE:

Robert Fagles, translator of classics, dies (Charles McGrath, March 29, 2008, NY Times)

Robert Fagles, the renowned translator of Latin and Greek whose versions of Homer and Virgil were unlikely best-sellers and became fixtures on classroom reading lists, died Wednesday at his home in Princeton, New Jersey, where he was an emeritus professor at Princeton University. He was 74.

The cause was prostate cancer, said his wife, Lynne, to whom he had been married for 51 years.

Fagles translated Aeschylus and Sophocles, among other authors, but he is most famous for his versions of "The Iliad," published in 1990; "The Odyssey," in 1996; and "The Aeneid," which came out in 2006. All were published by Viking.

He is one of very few translators to have taken on all three of the great classical epics - something that not even Alexander Pope attempted - and all three have sold millions of copies, both in print and in audio versions narrated by Derek Jacobi, Ian McKellen and Simon Callow.

THE COMPANY YOU KEEP:

Four Stumps in the Water for Obama (Charles Lipson, 3/29/08, Real Clear Politics)

Videos have now surfaced of virulent race-baiting by yet another Chicago preacher with ties to Obama, the Rev. James Meeks. Obama was not a member of Meeks's church and their connection may be only a tactical alliance between prominent local figures. That's the question: how close are those ties?

Meeks is no ordinary pastor. He is an important political and religious figure in African-American Chicago. He not only leads a mammoth congregation, he is an Illinois state senator and a key player in Jesse Jackson's powerful local political organization, which is squarely behind Obama's run for the Presidency.

Meeks's sermons have called white mayors "slave masters" and denigrated moderate black politicians with the "n" word. Nor is he backing away from those slimy views. He has reiterated and defended them in recent interviews with Chicago's local news media, which smells blood in the water.

If close ties between Meeks and Obama are discovered, the problems raised by Rev. Wright will come blazing back, and the damage will be severe.

EVEN THE ARABS WON'T MISS HIM:

The Separation Summit (Mshari Al-Zaydi, 3/29/08, Asharq Alawasat)

There is no room for sweet talk – in light of the incumbent Syrian regime's attitude and its wagers. Syria is sailing against the current and in a different direction than the most prominent ships in the Arab fleet; namely, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Moreover, the rhetoric in Damascus is vastly different from that of the aforementioned states.

For this reason, the impending Damascus summit will be the summit of tragic truth. Instead of being an event to unite all Arabs, it will be one in which they will become divided. And once again, we will sweep everything under the carpet as is customary – despite the fact that the putrid smell can longer be ignored.

Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime has placed its bets on the Mullahs of Iran and its Revolutionary Guard regime and no longer speaks the same language as the Arabs or regards his interests and security matters the way in which Arabs do.

REMEMBER THE IMPORTANT STUFF:

America and Baseball (George Will, 3/30/08, Real Clear Politics)

Today, baseball arrives in the nick of time to serve an urgent national need. It gives Americans something to think about other than superdelegates. Think instead about:

1. Who are the four players with 10 or more letters in their last names who hit 40 home runs in a season?

2. Who are the 11 players who have four or fewer letters in their last names and hit 40 home runs in a season?

3. Which two players who hit back-to-back home runs have the most combined letters in their last names?

For you who wasted the winter by not studying such stuff, the answers are below. The rest of you probably are SABRmetricians. Tim Kurkjian of ESPN (do you know that more than 10 American children have been named Espn?) recalls a convention of the Society for American Baseball Research:

"'Who from SABR might know where I can find the all-time list of pinch-hit, extra-inning grand slams?' I asked the very first man I saw at the convention. The man smiled and -- I am not making this up -- pulled the list from his breast pocket. 'I have it right here,' he said."

Would that today's subprime wizards of Wall Street had comparable mastery of the numbers important to their business. What Edmund Burke said of the study of law -- that it sharpens the mind by narrowing it -- might be true of baseball, too, but baseball people at least know what they are supposed to know. Long after he retired, Ted Williams ran into a former pitcher who said he once struck out Williams. "Slider low and away," said Williams. "Old men forget," said Shakespeare's Henry V at Agincourt. Old baseball men don't.

TRY ROOTING FOR THE VICTIMS INSTEAD OF THE OPRESSORS:

Changing the Rules of the Games (ILAN GREENBERG, 3/29/08, NY Times)

“I don’t know about the rest of you,” said Jill Savitt, Dream for Darfur’s executive director, as she scanned the posters, “but these cartoon creatures creep me out.” Scattered on the floor around her were boxes overflowing with Dream for Darfur’s own media salvo: white T-shirts emblazoned with “Genocide Olympics?”

Savitt, a peripatetic, hyperarticulate 40-year-old human rights activist, is the mind behind a long string of organizations conducting campaigns to pressure China to change its policies by threatening to tarnish this summer’s Olympic Games. Dream for Darfur orchestrates a coalition of the believing — N.G.O.’s committed to ending the continuing violence in Sudan, but also groups concerned with government abuses inside China; Olympic athlete associations; organizations concerned about Tibet or China’s influence in Burma; and a spindly archipelago of other China-related causes. “We are happy to walk into space that’s been created by the Darfur people, because they have created something fresh,” says Mary Beth Markey, vice president for advocacy at the International Campaign for Tibet in Washington. “It’s been opportunistic for us.” But while Savitt’s many allies have adopted her strategy, Dream for Darfur still has just one goal: to convince China’s government that the Games are imperiled unless it halts its support for Sudan’s regime.

“China,” Savitt told me proudly, “is looking at the entire world calling its cherished games the ‘Genocide Olympics.’ ” Nonetheless, shaping world opinion is a tall order, especially with a staff of four; and the Olympics is not as easy a target as it might appear. Who isn’t rooting, at some level, for a successful Olympics, a precious two weeks set aside for idealism and newly minted heroes?

"WHO MOVED THE APPLE PIE?":

American caught having sex with picnic table (Ben Hazell, 28/03/2008, Daily Telegraph)

An American man is facing public indecency charges after allegedly being filmed having sex with a picnic table.

YOU WHITE FOLK, WITH YOUR CRAZY IDEAS:

Obama Defends Wright on ABC's 'The View': Democratic Candidate Speaks Out on Controversial Pastor's Remarks (SUNLEN MILLER, March 27, 2008, ABC News)

"View" co-host Elisabeth Hasslebeck expressed concern that Obama's choice of pastor may show a lack of judgment.

The candidate explained, "Part of what my role in my politics is to get people who don't normally listen to each other to talk to each other, who [say] crazy things, who are offended by each other, for me to understand them and to maybe help them understand each other."

THAT EXPERIMENT WAS A PREDICTABLE FAILURE:

Somalia sinks into greater chaos as Islamist insurgents gain ground (Jeffrey Gettleman, March 28, 2008, IHT)

The trouble started when government soldiers went to the market and, at gunpoint, began helping themselves to sacks of grain.

Islamist insurgents poured into the streets to defend the merchants. The government troops got hammered, taking heavy casualties and retreating all the way back to the presidential palace, supposedly the most secure place in the city. It, too, came under fire.

Mohamed Abdirizak, a top government official, crouched on a balcony at the palace, with bullets whizzing over his head. He had just given up a cushy life as a development consultant in Springfield, Virginia. His wife thought he was crazy. Sweat beaded on his forehead.

"I feel this slipping away," he said.

By its own admission, the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia is on life support.

YOU CHOSE TO PLAY THE FREAK:

Traveler says TSA forced her to remove nipple piercings at Texas airport (Associated Press, March 28, 2008)

A Texas woman who said she was forced to remove a nipple ring with pliers in order to board an airplane called Thursday for an apology by federal security agents and a civil rights investigation.

HARVEST OF SORROW:

Planned Parenthood Abortion Business Makes $1 Billion Profit for First Time (Steven Ertelt, March 28, 2008, LifeNews.com)

A new annual report from Planned Parenthood shows the nation's largest abortion business has made over $1 billion in profit for the first time in its history. The non-profit pro-abortion group shows the historical gain in its new annual report covering 2006-2007.

THE BELIEF YOU HAVE SHARED INTERESTS WITH BABY ASSAD SHOULD BE A WAKE-UP CALL:

Israel says It's Talking to Syria (AP, 3/28/08)

A Cabinet minister said Friday that Israel was trying to bring Syria back to the negotiating table eight years after talks between the two countries broke down.

The disclosure of Israeli efforts to engage Syria in negotiations comes at a time when Israeli attempts to reach a peace deal with the Palestinians are making no visible progress despite intense U.S. involvement.

BOOKS FOR BRACKETS:

Congratulations to Mario and Matthew who lead the Brothers Judd NCAA contest after the first weekend. Let me know what books you want and I'll send them.

SEEMS KIND OF TOUGH ON THE POOR LOUISIANNANS...:

McCain's Surprise: Could GOP's Bayou Gov. Get Veepstakes Slot?: Diversity, Conservative Cred May Earn Louisiana Governor Place on Republican Ticket (NITYA VENKATARAMAN, March 28, 2008, ABC News)

Being called the next Ronald Reagan and the future of the Republican Party complete with murmurs of placement on G.O.P.'s vice presidential short list isn't bad conservative buzz to have if you're first-term Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.

For Jindal, gubernatorial assension into the national spotlight came in October following a 53 percent victory in the Louisiana governor's race making the 36-year-old former two-term congressman the nation's first Indian-American governor.

Jindal has marked his first months in office fighting corruption and pushing ethics reform in his home state. Combined with his youth, diversity and conservative cred, ABC News consultant Matthew Dowd, said Jindal would bring a certain je ne sais quoi to the presidential bid of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. [...]

The son of Indian immigrants, some believe Jindal, born and raised in Louisiana, gives face to a modern America. Named "Piyush" by Hindu parents, Jindal started going by "Bobby" at a young age and converted to Catholicism in his late teens. Educated at Brown and Oxford, Jindal, a Rhodes Scholar, chose a career in public service that has been marked by both state and federal government appointments.

Donna Brazile, a Democratic Party strategist whose career started in Louisiana politics, said, "Jindal on the ticket would provide McCain with inspiration, innovation and a touch of jazz. It's like seasoning in a Creole gumbo that blends the old and the new … nicely seasoned but not stale."

WHILE PARKER, CRAIS AND COMPANY WERE DOING THEIR BEST TO RUIN THE P.I. NOVEL...:

Arthur Lyons, 62; detective novelist and founder of Palm Springs Film Noir Festival (Mary Rourke, 3/28/08, Los Angeles Times)

Lyons helped launch the film festival with Craig Prater in 2001, after writing crime novels in the style of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler for more than 25 years. His protagonist, Jacob Asch, was a cynic with a sense of integrity and a genuine concern for others.

Starting with Lyons' first novel, "The Dead Are Discreet" in 1974, he delved into California cults, rebellious youth ("Castles Burning"), pornography ("Hard Trade") and other seedbeds of criminal activity. Critics admired "the pungency of his style, the neat planning and the avoidance of hokum," according to a 1975 article about Lyons' novels in the New York Times.

"Castles Burning," set in Palm Springs, was made into a television movie renamed "Slow Burn," starring Eric Roberts as Asch, in 1986.

As the host of the annual film noir festival, Lyons wore "gangster" suits and fedoras that encouraged audiences to dress up like gun molls and mob hit men.

"I try to make it a happening," Lyons said of the festival in a 2003 interview with the Desert Sun newspaper.

The schedule included three days of movies and interviews with Old Hollywood actors, including Rhonda Fleming, and writers, among them Mickey Spillane.

Photography exhibits, displays of vintage cars and a temporary "noir" bookstore rounded out the program.

The festival was held most years at the Camelot Theatres in Palm Springs, with a screening schedule heavy on lesser-known B crime movies from the '40s and '50s.

FORCE FEED FREEDOM...:

Raul Castro: Cubans can have cell phones (WILL WEISSERT, 3/28/08, Associated Press)

President Raul Castro's government said Friday it is allowing cell phones for ordinary Cubans, a luxury previously reserved for those who worked for foreign firms or held key posts with the communist-run state.

It was the first official announcement of the lifting of a major restriction under the 76-year-old Castro, and marked the kind of small freedom many on the island have been hoping he would embrace since succeeding his older brother Fidel as president last month.

YET ANOTHER HANDY PRETEXT:

Jitters over Syria's Kurdish clashes (Sami Moubayed, 3/29/08, Asia Times)

Clashes took place last week in the Kurdish district of Qamishly, northeastern Syria, between Syrian security and Kurds celebrating their Nawrooz new year. Three Kurds were killed, enraging both Masoud al-Barazani, the president of Iraqi Kurdistan (a former ally of Syria) and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

This might explain why Talabani will not be heading his country's delegation to the upcoming Arab summit in Damascus this weekend. Barazani said, "We strongly condemn the killing of the innocent people in Qamishly. These people were just celebrating the beginning of their new year and had committed no crime," calling on the Syrians to launch an investigation into the event.

Security forces had tried to disperse a gathering of 200 people, who had lit candles and a bonfire, celebrating a holiday that is not recognized by the government. Syria has been governed by martial law since 1963, meaning no such gathering can take place without prior approval. The Kurds knew that, but went ahead with their festival, almost looking for trouble.

Syrian authorities claimed the police initially tried to disperse the demonstrators peacefully. When that failed, they resorted to force. Before that, young demonstrators had burned tires and thrown stones at riot police, enflaming the situation. A similar demonstration took place on the same day in the Turkish city of Diyarbakir, attended by about a million Kurds. They, too, lit bonfires and Turkish planes hovered nearby, but did not disperse the demonstrators. In other parts of Turkey, however, the Nawrooz new year was banned - just as it had been for as long as anybody could remember - by Turkish authorities, in Hakkari, Urfa and Siirt.

PHASE THREE IS JUST AS UGLY:

Who are you, Barack Obama? (Danny Ayalon, Jan. 23, 2008, THE JERUSALEM POST)

In contrast to Obama, the other candidates in the electoral field from both parties are long-time public servants for whom every deed - and misdeed - has been repeatedly explored and dissected for the public eye. Mr. Obama is the only major candidate who has been able to ride out his campaign as the guy who came from almost nowhere, thus unencumbered by the need to defend any old policies or past decisions.

From our perspective, as international spectators for whom Israeli and global security must be of foremost interest, while observing the American elections we should look at the Obama candidacy with some degree of concern as we hope to answer that all-important question, "Who really is this man, and what policies will he impose?" [...]

Since early on in his campaign he has said that he would meet with the President of Iran - but we are left in the dark as to what agenda he would pursue on this issue. With the exception of promoting American divestment from Iran, an idea he adopted during a meeting with Bibi Netanyahu, Obama has largely avoided highlighting what specific demands he would make of Ahmadinijad and any timetables he would establish for the Iranians to dismantle their nuclear program. The threat of Islamic terrorism and the expanding scourge of fanaticism are also concepts which have been addressed by Obama in only the most ambiguous of terms.

As far as Israel is concerned, Obama has yet to suggest specific measures he would enact regarding the Jewish State's Qualitative Military Edge that allows us to defend ourselves against our current and future enemies. Given the increasingly tense security environment Israel is confronting on all sides, now is not the time for American leaders to shy away from such fundamental questions.

The four years ahead are far too critical for global security to place the presidency of the United States in the hands of a leader whose campaign is leaving us with more questions than answers.

SOUTH AFRICAN WAS JUST AS GOOD AN ALLY...:

Palestinians fear two-tier road system (Ethan Bronner, March 28, 2008, NY Times)

Ali Abu Safia, mayor of this Palestinian village, steers his car up one potholed road, then another, finding each exit blocked by huge concrete chunks placed there by the Israeli Army. On a sleek highway 100 yards away, Israeli cars whiz by.

"They took our land to build this road, and now we can't even use it," Abu Safia says bitterly, pointing to the highway with one hand as he drives with the other. "Israel says it is because of security. But it's politics."

The object of Abu Safia's contempt — Highway 443, a major access road to Jerusalem — has taken on special significance in the grinding Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For the first time, the Supreme Court, albeit in an interim decision, has accepted the idea of separate roads for Palestinians in the occupied areas.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel told the Supreme Court that what was happening on the highway could be the onset of legal apartheid in the West Bank — a charge that makes many Israelis recoil.

THOUGH THE LEFT WOULD PREFER THAT GOVERNMENT DO IT BADLY:

In Wal-Mart We Trust: Who did the most to help victims of Hurricane Katrina? According to a new study, it was the company everyone loves to hate (Colby Cosh, March 28, 2008, National Post)

Shortly before Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the U.S. Gulf Coast on the morning of Aug. 29, 2005, the chief executive officer of Wal-Mart, Lee Scott, gathered his subordinates and ordered a memorandum sent to every single regional and store manager in the imperiled area. His words were not especially exalted, but they ought to be mounted and framed on the wall of every chain retailer -- and remembered as American business's answer to the pre-battle oratory of George S. Patton or Henry V.

"A lot of you are going to have to make decisions above your level," was Scott's message to his people. "Make the best decision that you can with the information that's available to you at the time, and above all, do the right thing."

This extraordinary delegation of authority -- essentially promising unlimited support for the decision-making of employees who were earning, in many cases, less than $100,000 a year -- saved countless lives in the ensuing chaos. The results are recounted in a new paper on the disaster written by Steven Horwitz, an Austrian-school economist at St. Lawrence University in New York. [...]

This benevolent improvisation contradicts everything we have been taught about Wal-Mart by labour unions and the "small-is-beautiful" left.

BRIGHT, BUT MISERABLE:

The joys of parenthood : Why conservatives are happier than liberals: a review of Gross National Happiness by Arthur Brooks (Lexington, 3/27/08, The Economist)

It is a subtle and engaging distillation of oceans of data. When researchers ask parents what they enjoy, it turns out that they prefer almost anything to looking after their children. Eating, shopping, exercising, cooking, praying and watching television were all rated more pleasurable than watching the brats, even if they don't bite. As Mr Brooks puts it: “There are many things in a parent's life that bring great joy. For example, spending time away from [one's] children.”

Despite this, American parents are much more likely to be happy than non-parents. This is for two reasons, argues Mr Brooks, an economist at Syracuse University. Even if children are irksome now, they lend meaning to life in the long term. And the kind of people who are happy are also more likely to have children. Which leads on to Mr Brooks's most controversial finding: in America, conservatives are happier than liberals.

Several books have been written about happiness in recent years. Some have tried to discern which nations are the happiest. Many more purport to offer a foolproof guide to self-fulfilment. Others wonder if the obsessive pursuit of happiness is itself making people miserable. Mr Brooks offers something different. He writes only about Americans, thus avoiding the pitfalls of trying to figure out, for example, whether Japanese people mean the same thing as Danes when they say they are happy. And he writes intriguingly about the politics of happiness.

In 2004 Americans who called themselves “conservative” or “very conservative” were nearly twice as likely to tell pollsters they were “very happy” as those who considered themselves “liberal” or “very liberal” (44% versus 25%). One might think this was because liberals were made wretched by George Bush. But the data show that American conservatives have been consistently happier than liberals for at least 35 years.

This is not because they are richer; they are not. Mr Brooks thinks three factors are important. Conservatives are twice as likely as liberals to be married and twice as likely to attend church every week. Married, religious people are more likely than secular singles to be happy. They are also more likely to have children, which makes Mr Brooks confident that the next generation will be at least as happy as the current one.

When religious and political differences are combined, the results are striking. Secular liberals are as likely to say they are “not too happy” as to say they are very happy (22% to 22%). Religious conservatives are ten times more likely to report being very happy than not too happy (50% to 5%). Religious liberals are about as happy as secular conservatives.

Why should this be so? Mr Brooks proposes that whatever their respective merits, the conservative world view is more conducive to happiness than the liberal one (in the American sense of both words). American conservatives tend to believe that if you work hard and play by the rules, you can succeed. This makes them more optimistic than liberals, more likely to feel in control of their lives and therefore happier. American liberals, at their most pessimistic, stress the injustice of the economic system, the crushing impersonal forces that keep the little guy down and what David Mamet, a playwright, recently summed up as the belief that “everything is always wrong”.

YOU SPEND ALL THAT TIME TRYING TO CONVINCE DEMOCRATIC ACTIVISTS YOU'RE THE MOST RELIABLE BABY KILLER...:

When Barack Voted No: There is a new attack on Obama's reproductive choice record. But this time it's coming from the right. (Dana Goldstein, March 27, 2008, American Prospect)

Gobs of ink have been spilled over Barack Obama's "present" votes on choice issues during his time in the Illinois State Senate. Yes, Obama voted "present" instead of "no" on seven bills that would have limited women's reproductive rights. And yes, Planned Parenthood of Illinois has defended Obama, saying he was acting out a rehearsed strategy for preserving pro-choice seats in the legislature. But while the Democratic campaigns and women's organizations quibbled over which 100 percent pro-choice Senator, Obama or Hillary Clinton, would be the better president for reproductive health, many choice advocates missed what was percolating under the radar: The beginnings of a conservative smear campaign against Obama's very real history of support for reproductive freedom.

The anti-choice anti-Obama strategy is based on Obama's clear "no" votes on the "Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act," or BAIPA. Leading anti-choice blogger Jill Stanek, who testified in the Illinois state Senate on behalf of the bill, has played a key role in disseminating this anti-Obama argument in the right-wing blogosphere. Taking the bait, former presidential candidate Sen. Sam Brownback, in a fundraising email to supporters of his political action committee last month, excoriated Obama for opposing BAIPA. And in a Feb. 26 editorial, the National Catholic Register fumed, "Obama wouldn't even protect children born alive by mistake during abortion attempts." [...]

It is to Barack Obama's credit that, as an Illinois state senator, he voted against BAIPA twice, and then, as chairman of the Health and Human Services Committee in 2003, prevented it from advancing to the floor.

AND THIS IS SENATOR OBAMA'S HIGH WATER MARK:

GOP Looks to 'McCain Democrats' (DAVID PAUL KUHN, 3/27/08, Politico)

According to data provided by the Gallup Organization at Politico’s request, in a hypothetical contest between McCain and Obama, McCain wins 17 percent of Democrats and those leaning Democratic, while Obama wins 10 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaners.

In a potential contest with Clinton, McCain wins 14 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaners while Clinton wins 8 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaners.

By way of comparison, exit polls in 2004 reported that George W. Bush won 11 percent of Democrats and John F. Kerry won 6 percent of Republicans.

The new analysis, calculated from a compilation of Gallup’s daily polls between March 7 and 22, seems to indicate that there are more “McCain Democrats” than the much-ballyhooed “Obama Republicans” — or “Obamacans,” as they are sometimes referred to.

MISUNDERESTIMATED:

Riding the tiger: a review of Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq By Patrick Cockburn (The Economist, 3/27/08)

Mr Cockburn argues that the Americans have consistently underestimated the Sadrist phenomenon, sometimes with fateful consequences. Paul Bremer, America's former viceroy in Baghdad, loathed Mr Sadr and managed to prompt a fierce Shia backlash by shutting down one of his newspapers. Mr Cockburn believes there is evidence the Americans later tried to kill him after the second of his two revolts against them in 2004.

Mr Sadr is certainly militantly anti-American. But if he were no more than that—merely the Shia equivalent of the Sunni insurgents of al-Qaeda—he would be a good deal less interesting. The book's plausible central thesis is that the young cleric has learnt from his mistakes. After twice confronting American power in futile rebellion, he decided to enter the very political process he had previously derided. His movement took part in the elections of 2005, winning the biggest block—32 seats—in the 275-member parliament and gaining control of a number of ministries (including health) which greatly enhanced its power of patronage.

Recent events are putting his thesis to the test. The young cleric remains an ambiguous figure: nominally part of the political process, yet frequently at odds with it. Mr Cockburn does not gloss over the brutalities of the Sadrist militia, the Mahdi Army. In February 2006 Sunni extremists blew up the famous golden dome of the Askariya shrine, a revered Shia holy place in Samarra. The Mahdi Army responded with savage reprisal attacks which served to push the country into civil war. The ceasefire Mr Sadr declared last summer helped subdue sectarian violence and earned him unwonted compliments from American generals. But now, as the Shia power struggle turns ugly, this ceasefire is in danger of collapse.

BUT THE MALAISE HIT DURING NERO'S REIGN:

A malaise hits Italian academiaElisabetta Povoledo, March 27, 2008, IHT)

After five years at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, where she is about to receive a PhD in economics, Ines Buono is ready to come home.

She wants to teach and pursue her scholarly interests, which include tracking the possible impact of Turkey's entry into the European Union, but Italy's stagnant academic job market offers meager prospects to the 30-year old researcher.

Run by a select cadre of aging academics, ivory towers in Italy are as well defended as Fort Knox, but without the gold.

ALTHOUGH, IF YOU NEED AN EXCUSE...:

Eight healthy reasons to drink beer (Allison Van Dusen, March 21, 2008, Forbes.com)

Looking for a good excuse to tip back a beer?

A decade's worth of health research shows that regular, moderate beer intake--one to two 12 ounce glasses per day for men and one for women--can be good for you, especially if you're facing some of the most common diseases related to aging.

IMPORTING THE SUPERIOR CULTURE:

Church wins battle over embryo Bill (Andrew Porter, 26/03/2008, Daily Telegraph)

Edward Heath once asked "Who governs Britain?" Some Labour MPs are now asking themselves the same question.

Some are arguing the Catholic Church seems to hold inordinate sway following Gordon Brown's climbdown over granting a free vote over the morally contentious clauses in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.

The Prime Minister has spent weeks telling MPs the Bill will not be granted a free, conscience vote. He warned it was a Government Bill, a key plank of Labour's legislative programme and therefore Labour MPs and ministers would not be allowed to vote against it.

In the face of a fierce Easter onslaught by significant figures in the Catholic Church, Mr Brown has been forced to think again.

Catholic Labour MPs who have concerns on three controversial clauses will now be able to vote against, a major shift and a significant victory for the Catholic lobby.

WEEPING MONKS, SPUTTERING DRAGON:

Crying monks disrupt China's Tibet media tour (Richard Spencer, 27/03/2008, DAILY TELEGRAPH)

In extraordinary scenes, monks from the Jokhang Temple, the spiritual heart of Tibetan Buddhism and among the most controlled places in the country, broke down in tears in front of reporters and government minders.

"Tibet is not free! Tibet is not free!" shouted one, as he beat his chest with his fists.

"We want the Dalai Lama to return to Tibet, we want to be free," said another.

Others gesticulated wildly as they crowded round a camera, talking in both Tibetan and Mandarin.

"They want us to crush the Dalai Lama and that is not right," they said.

The tour was arranged by the Chinese foreign ministry to show its it had restored order following protests across the country and violent rioting in Lhasa.

THE REVEREND WRIGHT KERFUFFLE AMPLY DEMONSTRATED...:

Urban issues get short shrift (CARRIE BUDOFF BROWN, 3/26/08, Politico)

At the outset of the Democratic primary campaign, advocates for urban America had high hopes for a substantive discussion about the issues confronting the cities.

Between Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who represents New York City, and Sen. Barack Obama, a former community organizer who hails from Chicago—not to mention Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a former Cleveland mayor—urban policy experts and mayors expected a vigorous debate about the cities, the kind of conversation that hasn’t occurred in recent presidential elections.

But as the nomination fight shifts to Pennsylvania, home to the sixth-largest city in the country, they are still waiting. [...]

[I]t underscores a broad shift in voting patterns from the 1960s and 70s. Back then, the Democratic and Republican platforms went on at great length about urban issues. Now that more voters live in suburbs and exurbs—and since big cities have become almost monolithically Democratic—the more competitive and vote-rich areas miles outside urban cores reap the lion’s share of attention from candidates.

FUNDING HATE SPEECH:

Obamas Donated Less Than 1% of Their 2000-2004 Income (Ryan J. Donmoyer and Julianna Goldman, 3/25/08, Bloomberg)

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and his wife Michelle gave $10,772 of the $1.2 million they earned from 2000 through 2004 to charities, or less than 1 percent, according to tax returns for those years released today by his campaign.

The Obamas increased the amount they gave to charity when their income rose in 2005 and 2006 after the Illinois senator published a bestselling book. The $137,622 they gave over those two years amounted to more than 5 percent of their $2.6 million income. [...]

In 1998, then-Vice President Al Gore was criticized for donating only $353 to charity in 1997 despite earning $197,729. [...]

The Obamas made their church, Trinity United Church of Christ, one of the biggest beneficiaries of their philanthropy, donating $27,500.

TURNING ON THE ALLIES:

Sadr's Defensive Strategy (John Robb, 3/26/08, Global Guerillas)

The Iraqi government's militias (Army/police) are on the offensive in Basra, in an attempt to regain control of oil exports from the Mahdi army. In contrast to previous engagements with the Mahdi army, this fight is going to more interesting. A leaner and more efficient Mahdi army has learned from Hezbollah's success in southern Lebanon that a carefully planned defensive strategy in combination with a strategic timer (a series of actions that inflict visible strategic damage to the opponent) can rapidly dissolve the political will of a weak adversary (Maliki certainly fits that description). In addition to the defense of Mahdi army neighborhoods and efforts to interdict the supplies of Iraqi army/police forces operating in Basra, here's what will be done on the strategic side...

TOUGH WEEK FOR GREAT CHEFS:

Egg McMuffin inventor Herb Peterson dies at 89 (Associated Press, March 26, 2008)

He began his career with McDonald's as vice president of the company's advertising firm, D'Arcy Advertising, in Chicago. He wrote McDonald's first national advertising slogan, "Where Quality Starts Fresh Every Day."

Peterson eventually became a franchisee and was currently co-owner and operator of six McDonald's restaurants in Santa Barbara and Goleta, Fraker said.

Peterson created the Egg McMuffin as a way to introduce breakfast to McDonald's, Fraker said.

"Peterson was very partial to eggs Benedict," Fraker said, and worked on creating something similar.

The egg sandwich consisted of an egg that had been formed in a Teflon circle with the yolk broken, topped with a slice of cheese and grilled Canadian bacon. It was served open-faced on a toasted and buttered English muffin.,

The Egg McMuffin made its debut at a restaurant in Santa Barbara that Peterson co-owned with his son, David Peterson.

50-0 FILES:

GOP hopeful won't 'abandon' California (Joseph Curl, March 27, 2008, Washington Times)

Sen. John McCain, winding up a three-day fundraising blitz up and down the California coast, has declared he will make a serious run for one of the nation's most liberal states, which hasn't gone for a Republican presidential candidate in 20 years.

"I think we can make a play for California. It seems silly to abandon such a big state," he said last month during a barbecue at his Cornville, Ariz., home. "We're going to campaign in a lot of states the Republicans haven't campaigned in for a while."

SADLY, THERE ARE STILL TOO MANY IN THE WEST...:

West's Tibet 'bias' galls many in China: The coverage, only the latest bad publicity, is making people feel their huge Olympic effort is unappreciated. (Mark Magnier, 3/27/08, Los Angeles Times)

When China seven years ago won the right to hold this summer's Olympics, the nation erupted in joy, confident it would finally receive the accolades it deserved as an emerging global power after a century of isolation and humiliation.

In recent months, however, China has battled criticism of its food and toy safety, been hit with director Steven Spielberg's high-profile withdrawal as Olympic advisor over its Darfur policy, weathered athlete complaints about pollution and faced global criticism over its crackdown against the Tibet uprising.

Add it up and some Chinese are feeling under siege. Few nations have spent more effort to showcase their country than China has in organizing what are shaping up to be the most expensive Olympic Games in history. Spending is estimated at $40 billion, including related infrastructure projects such as a new airport terminal, subway system and even sewage systems.

"Chinese have given so much to the Olympics, but we're criticized so harshly by foreigners," said Hu Xijin, editor in chief of Global Times.

ALONG THE AXIS:

Move to boost Indonesia defence ties: THE Rudd Government will move for even closer defence ties with Indonesia, says Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon. (The Australian, March 27, 2008)

Mr Fitzgibbon said a meeting with his Indonesian counterpart, Dr Juwono Sudarsono, for the first time in Canberra today provided a timely opportunity to advance defence engagement and cooperation.

It followed the recent ratification of the Australia-Indonesia Lombok Treaty on security co-operation.

"Australia and Indonesia have a confident and maturing defence relationship, based on a foundation of mutual respect and trust," Mr Fitzgibbon said in a statement.

"We would like to deepen and expand on matters affecting our common security interests such as terrorism, regional security and piracy."

PALEONEO:

Cool in any Language (Eric Neel, Sports Illustrated)

I expected him to be cool. I'd heard the supremely self-possessed Derek Jeter call him "Mr. Torre," as if kneeling at the feet of an ancient elder, and I'd had Dodgers broadcaster Charlie Steiner tell me, with just the slightest hint of exaggeration, that Torre "is like Neo in 'The Matrix,'" a man capable of moving objects in space with a supernatural flick of the wrist. But what I hadn't quite anticipated is the way Torre's calm confidence seems to radiate, seems available to those around him, like a campfire at which they might warm their hands. Some of that comes from winning four World Series rings; he's quick to say his success buys him time and goodwill with people. But some of it is just this: When you're with Joe Torre, you get the feeling -- though, as a student of postmodern culture and a working writer in the world of sports journalism, I know such things are impossible -- that he might actually be for real.

The Dodgers are taking a team photo against a smog-blue sky at the Badaling section of The Great Wall of China. Tourists, most of them Chinese, pass by on their way up a staircase to a nearby watch tower, rubbernecking the mysterious men wearing crisp white jerseys. A small woman with crab apple cheeks tugs at my sleeve: "Please? These are American basketball men?" After team photographer Jon SooHoo gets a dozen or so shots, the players disperse with their own cameras, posing for each other in the Wall's stone archways.

Torre, hands in his pockets, hunched against a swirling canyon wind, pulls his wool cap snug and stands alone. For an instant. Three young Chinese men in American jeans, one with a white bandana tied around his head, quickly surround him, cell phone cameras poised. "Mr. Joe Torre! Mr. Joe Torre!" Torre smiles as two of them position themselves, one to his left and one to his right, while Mr. Bandana aims his phone. Torre wraps one arm behind each fan, gently pulling them both in closer for a better shot.

I'd seen him make this move before. At Torre's first news conference in Los Angeles, back in November, he stood on an ad hoc stage in center field at Dodger Stadium with team owner Frank McCourt and general manager Ned Colletti. As photographers moved toward the stage for the first shots of the new era in Dodger baseball, the new kid in town looked like the gracious host, easing McCourt and Colletti in tight for their close-up, affectionately squeezing each man at the shoulder. "When you're with Joe, even if you're just getting to know him, even if you're meeting him for the first time," McCourt says, "you feel like you're with an old friend."

A husband-and-wife team from Tennessee, both decked out in Volunteer-orange sweatshirts and hats, swoop in on Torre as he's heading for the stairs down the Great Wall. More smiles and pictures. More familiar embraces. "Joe Torre at the Great Wall of China. Joe Torre. I can't believe it," the woman says afterward, shaking her head. "Forget the rest of the trip. I just had my picture taken with Joe Torre. We can go home right now."

HOIST ON THEIR OWN FORCEPS:

Pro-life outrage as hundreds of children survive after being born within the legal abortion time (GWYNETH REES and DUNCAN ROBERTSON, 27th March 2008, Daily Mail)

Hundreds of children are surviving after being born within the legal abortion time limit, official figures reveal.

Data from the Department of Health shows that 909 children were born between 22 and 24 weeks of pregnancy during 2005.

Of those, 250 survived for at least a year.

LONG, HARD SLOG:

Why Obama Faces an Uphill Battle (Steven Stark, 3/26/08, Real Clear Politics)

There's one other worrisome, though not ironclad, precedent possibly standing in Obama's way. Though the polls are all over the lot at this point, according to the Real Clear Politics average, Obama currently trails John McCain by only a point or two. That's a margin that easily could be eliminated, and, unto itself, would seem to be no great cause for concern. But history suggests otherwise.

At this point in the election cycle -- before any fear of the unknown has set in -- challengers are often running much better against their incumbent-party opponents. In 1988, Michael Dukakis had about a 10-point lead over George Bush (the senior and then-vice-president), only to lose by around eight -- an 18-point swing.

Ditto in 2000. George Bush (the younger) had about a similar 10-point lead over Al Gore at this stage, only to see the lead shrink to nothing by Election Day.

In fact, that's been the usual pattern.

IT'S ALWAYS DISAPPOINTING TO LEARN... (via Joshua Epstein)

Iraq paid for lawmakers' pre-war trip, indictment says (Reuters, March 27, 2008)

An Iraqi American who helped organize a controversial U.S. congressional trip to Baghdad in 2002 was charged Wednesday with working for ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's government, which paid for the visit, the Justice Department said.

The indictment against Muthanna Hanooti said Iraq's foreign intelligence service funneled $34,000 through the Islamic charity Life for Relief and Development to pay delegation expenses.

It said Hanooti had been a lobbyist and public relations coordinator for the charity, based in Southfield, Mich.

The indictment did not name the three lawmakers who took the trip in September-October 2002, less than six months before the U.S.-led invasion.

But during the time in question, Democratic Reps. Mike Thompson of St. Helena, Jim McDermott of Washington and David E. Bonior of Michigan, who all were opposed to war against Iraq, took a highly publicized trip to the country.

SO WHAT TURNS THEM BLUE?:

Blue Chip Chocolate Chip Cookies (CCT Staff, 03/26/2008, Contra Costa Times)

½ cup granulated sugar

½ cup firmly packed light brown sugar

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, cold, cut into ½-inch pieces

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

½ teaspoon baking soda

1¼ cups all-purpose flour

¼ teaspoon salt

1½ cups semisweet chocolate chips

1 cup walnuts or pecans, toasted and chopped

1. Adjust the oven rack to the top third of the oven and preheat to 300 degrees. Line 3 baking sheets with parchment paper.

2. Beat the sugars and butter together until smooth. Mix in the egg, vanilla and baking soda. Stir together the flour and salt, then mix them into the batter. Mix in the chocolate chips and nuts.

3. Scoop the cookie dough into 2-tablespoon balls and place 8 balls, spaced 4 inches apart, on each of the baking sheets. Bake for 18 minutes, or until pale golden brown. Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack. Store at room temperature in an airtight container for up to 3 days.

FAR RIGHT OBAMANIA:

The Right Choice?: The conservative case for Barack Obama (Andrew J. Bacevich, 3/24/08, American Conservative)

So why consider Obama? For one reason only: because this liberal Democrat has promised to end the U.S. combat role in Iraq.

WHAT SPEECH?:

Polls Show Obama Damaged by Reverend Wright (Michael Barone, 3/25/08, US News)

Before the Wright revelations, Rasmussen in its nightly tracking showed Obama ahead of Clinton nationally 48 percent to 41 percent, a statistically significant 7 percentage point lead. On March 18, the day of Obama's Philadelphia speech, that was reduced to a 45 percent to 44 percent lead. The most recent results, reported March 24, showed Clinton ahead 46 percent to 44 percent. In other words, over two weeks, Obama was down 4 percentage points, Clinton up 5 percentage points—major movement, given the usually glacially show movement in Rasmussen numbers.

WHICH SOUNDS JUST LIKE W...:

McCain outlines his foreign policy goals in L.A. speech: If elected president, the Arizona senator says he would push to create a league of democracies. He also maintains his support for the Iraq war, and criticizes Iran and Russia (Maeve Reston, 3/26/08, Los Angeles Times)

In a broad-ranging foreign policy speech, Sen. John McCain pledged today that, if elected, his administration's foreign policy would be based on cooperation with U.S. allies and he called for a league of democracies that could build "an enduring peace."

In remarks to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, McCain cautioned that America's power and influence "does not mean we can do whatever we want whenever we want," and said U.S. leaders should not "assume we have all the wisdom and knowledge necessary to succeed."

"We need to listen to the views and respect the collective will of our democratic allies," McCain said before an audience of several hundred people in the ballroom of the Westin Bonaventure Hotel. "When we believe international action is necessary, whether military, economic or diplomatic, we will try to persuade our friends that we are right. But we, in return, must be willing to be persuaded by them."

IT'S LIKE COMPLAINING THAT YOUR FRIENDS HID THE GOOD SNIPE HUNTING GROUNDS FROM YOU:

Judicial Watch: Obama ‘intended to leave no paper trail’ (Klaus Marre, 03/26/08, The Hill)

In a statement, Fitton noted that his group has sought access to Obama’s records as a state senator and questioned whether the presidential candidate has been forthcoming with regard to what happened to those documents.

He said that “nobody knows where they are, if they exist at all” and claimed that “Obama’s story keeps changing.”

However, the Obama campaign said the senator’s records are available.

“All of Sen. Obama’s correspondence with state agencies and records of requests Obama made to them on behalf of his constituents are available to the public and have been accessed by our opponents and members of the news media,” said Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt. “Illinois State senators have limited staff – Obama did not have a scheduler – and so no detailed record exists of all of his daily activities in Springfield.”

Richard Widmark, 93; actor played both heavies and heroes (Associated Press March 26, 2008)

After a career in radio drama and theater, [Richard] Widmark moved to films as Tommy Udo, who delighted in pushing an old lady in a wheelchair to her death down a flight of stairs in the 1947 thriller "Kiss of Death." The performance won him an Academy Award nomination as supporting actor; it was his only mention for an Oscar.

"That damned laugh of mine!" he told a reporter in 1961. "For two years after that picture, you couldn't get me to smile. I played the part the way I did because the script struck me as funny and the part I played made me laugh. The guy was such a ridiculous beast." [...]

Richard Widmark was born Dec. 26, 1914, in Sunrise, Minn., where his father ran a general store, then became a traveling salesman. The family moved around before settling in Princeton, Ill.

"Like most small-town boys, I had the urge to get to the big city and make a name for myself," he recalled in a 1954 interview. "I was a movie nut from the age of 3, but I don't recall having any interest in acting," he said.

But at Lake Forest College, he became a protege of the drama teacher and met his future wife, drama student Ora Jean Hazlewood.

In later years, Widmark appeared sparingly in films and TV. He explained to Parade magazine in 1987: "I've discovered in my dotage that I now find the whole moviemaking process irritating. I don't have the patience anymore. I've got a few more years to live, and I don't want to spend them sitting around a movie set for 12 hours to do two minutes of film."

When he wasn't working, he and his wife lived on a horse ranch in Hidden Valley, Calif., or on a farm in Connecticut. Their daughter Ann became the wife of baseball immortal Sandy Koufax.

JOEY GATHRIGHT WILL NOT BE DENIED:

THUS THE STATE BORDER RULE:

Jeers and loathing at tribunal: Critics in gallery challenge human rights bureacracy (Joseph Brean, 3/26/08, National Post)

For people who consider the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal a kangaroo court, the supporters of Marc Lemire in his defence against a hate-speech charge were surprisingly respectful of protocol yesterday, as they packed a gallery to see the landmark cross-examination of the investigator behind the case.

Mindful of the police presence, everyone rose when directed and no one heckled, although old men muttered their dissent. A thick-necked young Lemire associate with a buzz-cut kept cracking his neck and gnawing the chapped skin on his thumb, but was otherwise quiet and still as he doodled and took notes. Even the old guy with the knife in his pocket smiled as he removed it for the Tribunal guards at the hearing room door.

All in all, the monitor from the Canadian Jewish Congress had plenty to monitor, from Canada's most famous online racists and the legal team that defended Holocaust-denier Ernst Zundel, down to the conservative Maclean's columnist Mark Steyn, dapper with a red pocket puff, who at the breaks signed autographs for admirers.

LIFE ON MARS THEM ALL:

Hold the Hysteria (For Now) (Robert J. Samuelson, March 26, 2008, Washington Post)

A recession is a noticeable period of declining output. Since World War II, there have been 10. On average, they've lasted 10 months, involved a peak monthly unemployment rate of 7.6 percent and resulted in a decline in economic output (gross domestic product) of 1.8 percent, reports Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com. If the two worst recessions (those of 1981-82 and 1973-75, with peak unemployment of 10.8 percent and 9 percent) are excluded, the average peak jobless rate is about 7 percent.

No one doubts that the economy has slowed. Many economists think a recession has already started. Zandi is one. He forecasts peak unemployment of 6.1 percent (present unemployment: 4.8 percent) and a GDP drop of 0.4 percent. If that happens, the recession of 2008 would actually be milder than the average postwar recession and milder than the past two, those of 1990-91 and 2001.

Broadly speaking, the story is similar for stocks. So far, their weakness is unexceptional. A standard definition of a "bear market" is a drop of 20 percent or more. Last week, the market was at times close to that. Declines would have to get much worse to qualify as momentous. Since 1936, there have been 11 bear markets as measured by the Standard & Poor's index of 500 stocks, says Howard Silverblatt of S&P. On average, they've lasted 20 months and involved a decline of 34 percent. One was 60 percent (1937-42) and two were nearly 50 percent (1973-74 and 2000-02, the last being the "tech bubble").

Some causes of the present hysteria are familiar: media hype; political finger-pointing, which is always given to exaggeration; and whining from Wall Street types. But there's another large cause: disagreement over whether the economy is highly unstable or whether business cycles are mostly self-correcting.

"This argument is as old as economics," says economic historian Barry Eichengreen of the University of California at Berkeley.

THE LIKABLE BOB DOLE:

Another Voice: Reading the speeches of McCain and Obama has made me ashamed of our political class and its craven soundbites (Matthew Parris, 26th March 2008, The Spectator)

[I]t was ponderous, overlong and often dull. Nor did the speech say anything surprising or new. There was nothing there worth remembering for future reference, or quoting to you now, two years later, nor any passage that seemed worth noting down. This was a speech cluttered with heavy furniture.

But it was his. You knew that at once. It had a certain old-fashioned style and respect for language that I admire. And it turned me into a convinced admirer of the Senator that I shall always now be. I finished reading, certain that an honourable and honest man was behind the writing, certain of his strength of mind and will, and certain of his almost abrasive sense of right and wrong.

I suppose the qualities that came through most were an uncompromising nature, and a certain thrilling carelessness whether or not he was keeping his reader with him. There were quaint, somewhat antique turns of speech that any Alastair Campbell would have removed at once; long, convoluted sentences with precarious dependent clauses; and an almost solemnly scholarly tone that reminded me of my dear, self-educated, bookish grandfather. Without being able to say how, I gained from it the strongest sense of a stiff-necked integrity that seemed both refreshing and different, and wholly admirable.

One of the ways that integrity came through, I remember noting, was in a stubborn if subliminal reluctance to overstate his case for the sake of effect; he never picked the easy, vulgar word. And (though I know McCain’s reputation for impatience and sudden anger) an essential intellectual modesty came through: this speaker did not believe and so would not pretend that politics was easy or obvious; that every question had a clear answer; or that his opponents were wicked or stupid. I feel I learnt more about McCain in that quiet 20 minutes with his text in my hotel bedroom than I have since from months of reading news reports and commentaries.

YEAH, BUT IF THE GENERAL ELECTION WERE A DEMOCRATIC CAUCUS HE'D BE A LOCK FOR PRESIDENT:

How Bad is it For Obama in Pennsylvania? (G. Terry Madonna and Michael Young, 3/26/08, Real Clear Politics)

Just how bad is documented by some key findings from a series of polls, including the Franklin and Marshal College Poll, all released recently. Almost none of the results bode well for Obama. Across the board Clinton is winning and winning big. She has decisively stopped Obama's earlier momentum in Pennsylvania--and seems set for a romp.

Statewide among Democrats, Clinton holds a lead that ranges from 16 to 26 points. The Real Clear Politics consensus estimate is roughly 16 points. She is winning every major region of the state except Philadelphia, while Obama has actually slipped slightly with blacks and more substantially with younger voters--two demographics that are critical backstops for him in the contest. He has also lost support with other key constituencies including white males and evangelicals. [...]

Appeal among Key Groups of Likely Voters: Clinton leads among women (57% to 29%), whites (57% to 29%), ages 55 and older (55% to 29%), union member households (67% to 26%), and Born Again Christians (45% to 38%). She also leads among Catholics (26 points) and Protestants (23 points). Obama has the clear edge only among non-whites (76% to 12%). Obama and Clinton are tied or virtually tied (within sampling error) among younger, college-educated, and male voters. (Source: Franklin & Marshall College Poll)

ONE COULD ARGUE...:

Nancy Reagan endorses McCain (AP, 3/26/08)

"I'm very pleased and honored to have the opportunity again to be with Mrs. Reagan and to receive her endorsement for the nomination of my party and for president of the United States," McCain said in a five- minute appearance with the former first lady in the driveway of her gated home. "President Reagan and Mrs. Reagan remain an inspiration to all of us, as an example of honorable and courageous service to the nation."

In turn, she said only, "Ronnie and I always waited until everything was decided and then we endorsed. Well, obviously, this is the nominee of the party."

In a written statement issued earlier in the day, she called McCain a good friend for more than 30 years.

"My husband and I first came to know him as a returning Vietnam War POW, and were impressed by the courage he had shown through his terrible ordeal. I believe John's record and experience have prepared him well to be our next president," she said.

She and McCain met privately in the Reagan home before they emerged, arm in arm, through the front door to meet reporters.

Her eventual support was expected, and she became the latest top Republican to fall in line behind McCain. The two have long been close.

WHILE THE FAR RIGHT SITS IN THE CORNER AT THE BIG DANCE:

If McCain vs. Obama, 28% of Clinton Backers Go for McCain: If McCain vs. Clinton, 19% of Obama backers go for McCain (Frank Newport, 3/26/08, Gallup)

A sizable proportion of Democrats would vote for John McCain next November if he is matched against the candidate they do not support for the Democratic nomination. This is particularly true for Hillary Clinton supporters, more than a quarter of whom currently say they would vote for McCain if Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee. [...]

[O]nly 59% of Democratic voters who support Clinton say they would vote for Obama against McCain, while 28% say they would vote for the Republican McCain. This suggests that some Clinton supporters are so strongly opposed to Obama (or so loyal to Clinton) that they would go so far as to vote for the "other" party's candidate next November if Obama is the Democratic nominee.

MISTAKEN? PLEASE:

U.S.-China relations questioned after mistaken shipment of missile fuses (The Associated Press, March 26, 2008)

The U.S. military's mistaken delivery to Taiwan of electrical fuses for an intercontinental ballistic missile is raising questions over U.S. relations with China and has triggered a broad investigation into the security of Pentagon weapons.

The shipment did not include nuclear materials, but the error is particularly sensitive because China vehemently opposes U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.

DON'T KNOW HOW HE'S DONE AS A SPIRITUAL LEADER...:

The radicalisation of Tibetan youth (B Raman, March 26, 2008, rediff)

The worldwide demonstrations of Tibetans of all ages against China and the uprisings in Greater Tibet since March 10, 2008, have come as the culmination of a long debate in Dharamsala and among Tibetan refugees all over the world, including India, over the wisdom of His Holiness the Dalai Lama's continued adherence to his Middle Path policy.

By Middle Path, he meant autonomy not independence and a non-violent struggle to achieve that objective. By autonomy, he meant on the Hong Kong model of one country, two systems; and not the present Chinese model of total integration and Han colonisation in the name of autonomy.

He was seeking a dialogue with the Chinese leadership in the hope of thereby making his Middle Path a reality. [...]

Many thinking Tibetans, Tibetan supporters and China-watchers have now come to honestly conclude that the Chinese have no intention to conduct negotiations. They are only biding time for the Dalai Lama to pass away and in the meantime evade international pressure and condemnation by indulging in periodical delegation diplomacy. It is vitally important that we Tibetans should not fall prey to their devious ploys. Another important matter to be taken into consideration is the so-called Chinese White Paper of May 2007.

With the finality of the tone and tenor of that document, all our hopes for a negotiated settlement on the lines of the One-Nation-Two-Systems theory of Hong Kong and Macao or a genuine autonomy have been dashed irrevocably. The only choice given to the Tibetans is to accept the arrangement under the Tibet Autonomous Region as the best one and return. This, surely, is not the answer to the Middle Path!

"He would resign as the political leader and head of state, but not as the Dalai Lama. He will always be the Dalai Lama," said Tenzin Taklha, a top aide.

That would suggest breaking from Tibetan Buddhism's centuries-old tradition of church and state as one and, more important, would open the possibility that a Dalai Lama could choose his own successor.

"These institutions are made by people; the rules can change from time to time," said Lee Feigon, author of the book "Demystifying Tibet: Unlocking the Secrets of the Land of the Snows." "If he were to resign in frustration, it will create worldwide sympathy for him. If he could choose his own successor, he would be around to help train him and give him legitimacy. Even the threat of doing it should give the Chinese government pause."

REMEMBER HOW CATASTROPHIC BUSH/BLAIR WAS SUPPOSED TO BE?:

Nicolas Sarkozy calls for 'Franco-British brotherhood' as state visit begins (David Byers, 3/26/08, Times of London)

President Nicolas Sarkozy called for the start of a new "Franco-British brotherhood" today, as he spoke in gushing praise of the UK's accomplishments at the start of his first state visit to Britain.

The French President said it was time to move on the cross-Channel relationship from the strategic cooperation enshrined in the Entente Cordiale to become one of genuine closeness and "hand in glove" warmth.

The French President's moves come after years of gradual decline in Franco-British relations under the leadership of Jacques Chirac, who focused overwhelmingly on building a close relationship with Germany. Relations between France, Britain and the United States reached their lowest point for decades in 2003, when Mr Chirac openly opposed and derided the Iraq War.

However Mr Sarkozy has made no secret of his pro-American leanings and has vowed to realign French foreign policy.

Nicolas Sarkozy wants to move on from 'cordial' relations with Britain

"It has been long enough now that we have not been at war, that we are not wrangling," he said.

"Perhaps we can move from being cordial to being friendly - that's my first message.

"My second message is that this friendship shouldn't simply be a matter of principle. I want (it) fleshed out by concrete projects on the economy, immigration, security, defence."

LET'S GIVE MR. MACGILLIS THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT...:

In Obama's New Message, Some Foes See Old Liberalism (Alec MacGillis, 3/26/08, Washington Post)

[A]s Obama heads into the final presidential primaries, Sen. John McCain and other Republicans have already started to brand him a standard-order left-winger, "a down-the-line liberal," as McCain strategist Charles R. Black Jr. put it, in a long line of Democratic White House hopefuls.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign has also started slapping the L-word on Obama, warning that his appeal among moderate voters will diminish as they become more aware of liberal positions he took in the past, such as calling for single-payer health care and an end to the U.S. embargo against Cuba. "The evidence is that the more [voters] have been learning about him, the more his coalition has been shrinking," Clinton strategist Mark Penn said.

The double-barreled attack has presented Democratic voters with some persistent questions about Obama: Just how liberal is he? And even if he truly is a new kind of candidate, can he avoid being pigeonholed with an old label under sustained assault?

Despite being rated the most liberal senator in 2007 by the National Journal, Obama has sought to confound easy categorization.

THE AMERICA THE FOUNDERS ENVISIONED:

NH again named "Most Livable State" (AP, 3/26/08)

For the fifth year in a row, a national ranking lists New Hampshire as the "Most Livable State" in the country.

The ranking, by CQ Press, is based on 44 factors, including income, crime rates, business taxes, employment, environment and education.

THANK YOU, LORD...:

Taliban Again Threaten Spring Offensive (AP, 26/03/2008)

The Taliban says it will use new techniques and draw on years of fighting experience to again increase attacks in Afghanistan this spring.

SHE DOES WORK WITH THE GUY:

The Long Defeat (DAVID BROOKS, 3/25/08, NY Times)

Let’s take a look at what she’s going to put her party through for the sake of that 5 percent chance: The Democratic Party is probably going to have to endure another three months of daily sniping. For another three months, we’ll have the Carvilles likening the Obamaites to Judas and former generals accusing Clintonites of McCarthyism. For three months, we’ll have the daily round of résumé padding and sulfurous conference calls. We’ll have campaign aides blurting “blue dress” and only-because-he’s-black references as they let slip their private contempt.

For three more months (maybe more!) the campaign will proceed along in its Verdun-like pattern. There will be a steady rifle fire of character assassination from the underlings, interrupted by the occasional firestorm of artillery when the contest touches upon race, gender or patriotism. The policy debates between the two have been long exhausted, so the only way to get the public really engaged is by poking some raw national wound.

For the sake of that 5 percent, this will be the sourest spring. About a fifth of Clinton and Obama supporters now say they wouldn’t vote for the other candidate in the general election. Meanwhile, on the other side, voters get an unobstructed view of the Republican nominee. John McCain’s approval ratings have soared 11 points. He is now viewed positively by 67 percent of Americans. A month ago, McCain was losing to Obama among independents by double digits in a general election matchup. Now McCain has a lead among this group.

For three more months, Clinton is likely to hurt Obama even more against McCain, without hurting him against herself. And all this is happening so she can preserve that 5 percent chance.

When you step back and think about it, she is amazing. She possesses the audacity of hopelessness.

Why does she go on like this? Does Clinton privately believe that Obama is so incompetent that only she can deliver the policies they both support?

THE SHOCK OF A DECENT FRANCE:

French leader considers Olympic boycott (ANGELA DOLAND, 3/25/08, Associated Press)

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Tuesday that he cannot rule out the possibility he might boycott the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics if China continues its crackdown in Tibet.

An official from France's state television company said the broadcaster would likely boycott the games if coverage was censored, and the European Union, United States, Australia and Canada urged China to show restraint as it tries to quell continuing unrest in its Tibetan areas.

HINT, DAVID ORTIZ IS 4-4 LIFETIME AGAINST RICH HARDEN:

Matthew Cohen linked to a very cool contest over at the Roto Blog.

THE BEAUTY OF THE PROTRACTED CONTEST:

Clinton: Wright 'would not have been my pastor' (Mike Wereschagin and David M. Brown, 3/25/08, Pittsburgh TRIBUNE-REVIEW)

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a wide-ranging interview today with Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporters and editors, said she would have left her church if her pastor made the sort of inflammatory remarks Sen. Barack Obama's former pastor made.

"He would not have been my pastor," Clinton said. "You don't choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend."

Obama's lead in national polls has slipped since clips of the retired Rev. Jeremiah Wright began being played on national news programs. The uproar prompted Obama to give a wide-ranging speech on race in America a week ago. The Clinton campaign has refrained from getting involved in the controversy, but Clinton herself, responding to a question, denounced what she said was "hate speech."

"You know, I spoke out against Don Imus (who was fired from his radio and television shows after making racially insensitive remarks), saying that hate speech was unacceptable in any setting, and I believe that," Clinton said. "I just think you have to speak out against that. You certainly have to do that, if not explicitly, then implicitly by getting up and moving."

GOOD NEWS IS NO NEWS (via Bryan Francoeur):

The War Endures, but Where’s the Media? (RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA, 3/24/08, NY Times)

Media attention on Iraq began to wane after the first months of fighting, but as recently as the middle of last year, it was still the most-covered topic. Since then, Iraq coverage by major American news sources has plummeted, to about one-fifth of what it was last summer, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The drop in coverage parallels — and may be explained by — a decline in public interest. Surveys by the Pew Research Center show that more than 50 percent of Americans said they followed events in Iraq “very closely” in the months just before and after the war began, but that slid to an average of 40 percent in 2006, and has been running below 30 percent since last fall.

BEATS THE HECK OUT OF THE USUAL GARBAGE THEY TEACH (via The Mother Judd):

Idaho Turns to Chess as Education Strategy (DYLAN LOEB McCLAIN, 3/20/08, NY Times)

Once a week, Deborah McCoy, a third-grade teacher in Donnelly, Idaho, unpacks chessboards and pieces and spends an hour teaching her 20 students how to play the game.

Mrs. McCoy does not do this because she is passionate about chess; she barely knew how to play before this school year. But she began teaching it as part of an unusual pilot program under way in more than 100 second- and third-grade classrooms across Idaho.

On Thursday, state officials will announce in Boise that the program will be extended in the fall to all second and third graders — making Idaho the first state to offer a statewide chess curriculum.

The state’s $1.5 billion education budget, passed two weeks ago, includes up to $60,000 to finance the instruction. Tom Luna, the state’s superintendent of education, said participation by teachers would be voluntary, but if reaction to the pilot program is any measure, interest will be great.

JERRY VS. ELAINE:

Trading Insults (Howard Kurtz, 3/25/08, Washington Post)

The Democratic campaign, it seems to me, is increasingly about itself.

We hear little about health care, immigration and Iraq (where the 4,000th American has died, generating a round of stories from news organizations that have been playing down the war). Instead, we hear about Samantha Power, Geraldine Ferraro, Jeremiah Wright, Tony McPeak; James Carville calling Bill Richardson a Judas and Obama backer Gordon Fischer, the former Iowa Democratic chairman, saying Bill Clinton was leaving "a stain on his legacy much worse, much deeper, than the one on Monica's blue dress."

Yuck.

THE HUMILIATION THEY'LL FEEL IS A GREAT WEAPON:

Boycott Beijing: The Olympics are the perfect place for a protest. (Anne Applebaum, March 24, 2008, Slate)

Look a bit closer, in fact, and none of those statements holds up.

A boycott doesn't solve anything. Well, doesn't it? Some boycotts do help solve some things. The boycott of South African athletes from international competitions was probably the single most effective weapon the international community ever deployed against the apartheid state. ("They didn't mind about the business sanctions," a South African friend once told me, "but they minded—they really, really minded—about the cricket.") The boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics helped undermine Soviet propaganda about the invasion of Afghanistan and unify the Western world against it. I don't know for certain, but I'm guessing that from the Soviet perspective, the Soviet bloc boycott of the Los Angeles Olympics four years later was successful, too. Presumably, it was intended to solidify Soviet elite opposition to the United States in the Reagan years, and presumably, it helped.

The Olympics are a force for good. Not always! For those who don't remember, let me remind you that the 1936 Olympics, held in Nazi Germany, were an astonishing propaganda coup for Hitler. It's true that the star performance of Jesse Owens, the great black American track-and-field star, did shoot some holes in the Nazi theory of Aryan racial superiority. But Hitler still got what he wanted out of the games. With the help of American newspapers such as the New York Times, which opined that the games put Germany "back in the family of nations again," he convinced many Germans, and many foreigners, to accept Nazism as "normal." The Nuremburg laws were in force, German troops had marched into the Rhineland, Dachau was full of prisoners, but the world cheered athletes in Berlin. As a result, many people, both in and out of Germany, reckoned that everything was just fine, and Hitler could be tolerated a bit longer.

The Olympic Games are not the place for demonstrations. Aren't they? Actually, the Olympics seem an ideal place for demonstrations. Not only is the world's press there with cameras running, the modern Olympics were set up with a political purpose: to promote international peace by encouraging healthy competition between nations. Hence the emphasis on national teams instead of individual competitors; hence the opening and closing ceremonies—since copied by other sporting events—as well as the national flags and national anthems.

THE SPEECH WAS BAD ENOUGH IF HE WROTE IT QUICKLY, UNDER PRESSURE...:

Native son tells Americans to move beyond race: But Obama's unique position makes him vulnerable to becoming a victim (George Packer, 3/24/08, The New Yorker)

The first time that Barack Obama met the Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., at Trinity United Church of Christ, on the South Side of Chicago, in the late nineteen-eighties, the young community organizer tried to make a point about the growing importance of class division in America. As Obama described the exchange in his autobiography, “Dreams from My Father,” Wright wasn’t having any of it: “These miseducated brothers, like that sociologist at the University of Chicago, talking about ‘the declining significance of race.’ Now, what country is he living in?”

The deluded black scholar in question was William Julius Wilson, whose 1978 book of that title analyzed the economic forces affecting black Americans and advocated universal remedies over race-specific ones. Wright, a proponent of black liberation theology, dismissed every remark about class from Obama with a categorical racial answer, and Obama allowed the topic to drop. As we all now know, he also joined Wright’s church.

It's been more than a month since I began warning Sen. Barack Obama that he would become answerable for his revolting choice of a family priest. But never mind that; the astonishing thing is that it's at least 11 months since he himself has known precisely the same thing. "If Barack gets past the primary," said the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to the New York Times in April of last year, "he might have to publicly distance himself from me. I said it to Barack personally, and he said yeah, that might have to happen." Pause just for a moment, if only to admire the sheer calculating self-confidence of this. Sen. Obama has long known perfectly well, in other words, that he'd one day have to put some daylight between himself and a bigmouth Farrakhan fan. But he felt he needed his South Side Chicago "base" in the meantime. So he coldly decided to double-cross that bridge when he came to it. And now we are all supposed to marvel at the silky success of the maneuver.

MEOW:

Conservatives' Hate-Based Campaign Against Obama: The right-wing smear campaign against Barack Obama has already begun. Conservatives intend, as they have so many times before, to appeal to Americans' ugliest prejudices and most craven fears. (Paul Waldman, March 25, 2008, American Prospect)

When the controversy over Obama's former pastor Jeremiah Wright reached critical mass last week, it was the political equivalent of the green flag at a NASCAR race. The conservative strategists and talkers had been slowly circling the track, feet itchy on the accelerator, just waiting for the signal to floor it. But now, as The Politico reported in a story titled "GOP sees Rev. Wright as path to victory," the Republican strategists know exactly what must be done, starting with famed ad man Alex Castellanos:

"All the sudden you've got two dots, and two dots make a line," said Castellanos. "You start getting some sense of who he is, and it's not the Obama you thought. He's not the Tiger Woods of politics."

As Castellanos knows well, these kinds of attacks have their greatest power when they tap into pre-existing archetypes voters already carry with them, and the deeper they reside in our lizard brains the better

STANDARD ISSUE:

Obama's record in Senate light on his campaign issuesMARGARET TALEV AND DAVID LIGHTMAN, 3/25/08, Miami Herald)

Barack Obama says if he were president, he'd take politically courageous stands while forging the consensus needed to enact universal healthcare, immigration revisions, global warming legislation and a withdrawal from Iraq.

His three-year record in the Senate, however, offers little evidence that he can do what he's promising. His party was in the minority for his first two years, and in the third he began campaigning for president and missed lots of time on Capitol Hill. He was absent from or only partly involved in some key bipartisan efforts to head off stalemates on judicial nominations, immigration and Iraq war policy.

''He is asking us to believe he can do something he has yet to do,'' said Michael Fauntroy, an assistant professor of public policy at George Mason University. [...]

National Journal, a respected research publication, rated him the most liberal-voting senator of 2007. Hillary Clinton ranked 16th. The public policy magazine found Obama's votes the 10th most liberal in 2006 and the 16th most liberal in 2005.

THE SANDALISTAS HAVEN'T LOST HOPE:

A FARC Fan's Notes (Wall Street Journal, March 25, 2008)

A hard drive recovered from the computer of a killed Colombian guerrilla has offered more insights into the opposition of House Democrats to the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

A military strike three weeks ago killed Raúl Reyes, No. 2 in command of the FARC, Colombia's most notorious terrorist group. The Reyes hard drive reveals an ardent effort to do business directly with the FARC by Congressman James McGovern (D., Mass.), a leading opponent of the free-trade deal. Mr. McGovern has been working with an American go-between, who has been offering the rebels help in undermining Colombia's elected and popular government.

NOTHING COSTS MORE...:

Come on Down to South Park and Watch the Shows Online (Chris Albrecht, March 24, 2008 , NewTeeVee)

The web just got a whole lot funnier as the guys behind South Park have made every episode of their hit show available for free online. That’s right — every. episode. (Take that Hulu, and your five weeks’ worth of shows window). South Park Digital Studios will house everything South Park including all the episodes (not embeddable — boo!), 3,000 video clips (embeddable — yay!) and spearhead other digital initiatives.

NOTHING LIKE A GOOD PUNCH UP:

My Morning Download 3/24/08 - The Punch Brothers (WXPN, 3/24/08)

WE LEFT OURSELVES WITH A CHOICE OF THESE TWO?:

The Democrats' anti-momentum: The '08 race has revealed the weird science of the Democratic primary system -- and the true problem with the long Obama-Clinton battle. (Walter Shapiro, Mar. 24, 2008, Salon)

Sixteen years ago, the last time the Democrats won back the White House, fewer than half the delegates had been selected by the end of March, with big-state primaries in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and California still on the docket. This campaign year the Democrats are already down to seeds and stems with 82 percent of the delegates having been chosen by March 11. This simple arithmetical fact -- combined with the scheduling of the 2008 Democratic Convention six weeks later than in 1992 -- is what gives such an air of unreality to the final installments of the Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton soap opera.

With the chances to rerun the outlaw Michigan and Florida primaries now at the vanishing point, it may be time to inquire about a do-over for the rest of America. This is not an argument for Clinton, who otherwise probably has too far to go and too few remaining primaries to get there. But after a week punctuated by Obama's right-stuff response to wrong-way Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Clinton's document dump of today-tea-was-served White House schedules, Democrats are being barraged with new information about the candidates long after most of them have made a binding decision on a nominee. It is akin to being given a subscription to Consumer Reports the day after you bought a new car.

WHICH TRUMPS EVEN, "I AM NOT A CROOK":

Obama: Not a Crackpot Church (NewsMax, March 24, 2008)

Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama defended his association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, telling a Philadelphia radio audience Monday that "this is not a crackpot church."

Obama was interviewed by popular Philadelphia WPHT radio host Michael Smerconish last Friday. The taped interview aired on Smerconish's morning show.

NEW KIDS ON THE CHOPPING BLOCK:

Younger leadership for Taliban in Afghanistan (Daily Telegraph, 24/03/2008)

The Taliban leadership in southern Afghanistan is passing into the hands of younger, more extreme insurgents as the relentless targeting of traditional commanders by British forces takes its toll.

In a week spent in Helmand province, The Daily Telegraph has found widespread evidence that special forces operations are degrading the Taliban's leadership and its ability to co-ordinate operations.

MIGHTN'T THE PROBLEM BE...:

Crunch Mythology (Ken Fisher, 03.24.08, Forbes)

If you believe the popular economic myths of the day, you think there's a credit squeeze--less total credit available. This is nonsense. There's indeed less credit available to poor risks, individual and corporate. But that just means there's more for the good borrowers. Blue-chip companies are flush with capital and borrowing power. This is bullish, both for the economy and for stocks, especially stocks of big companies.

Fact: The largest firms have much more credit access in all forms than they did 12 months ago. These are the very firms that can spend it the most and the fastest.

Fact: Total corporate borrowing--that is, total U.S. corporate debt issuance--was higher in 2007 than in 2006. In January 2008 U.S. corporate borrowing was $101 billion, up slightly from the same month a year ago. The majority of this debt was of investment grade, meaning that it was rated BBB or better; within this segment the borrowings were up 12% from a year ago. Some credit crunch!

If there were a squeeze, interest rates would be shooting up. They aren't. [...]

Where do we get all these myths about crises and collapses? From pontificators. The sort of folks who frequent Davos.

MAKNG OLYMPIC PARTICIPANTS COMPLICIT IN REPRESSION:

Analysts expect China security to get tighter: The Tibetan violence was a jolt to officials, and they'll seek to quash the risk of other unrest ahead of the Olympics, experts say (Mark Magnier, 3/25/08, Los Angeles Times)

As it prepares to hold the Olympics in August, China is on edge and isn't likely to take any chances. Two weeks of unrest in its ethnic Tibetan region has further shaken the confidence of a government already nervous about criticism over its human rights record.

Analysts say they expect beefed-up surveillance in coming months of Chinese groups deemed troublemakers, including democracy advocates, religious groups and those who petition the government for justice. They also expect more intense vetting of inbound tourists, more scrutiny of Chinese sports crowds, more ID checks almost everywhere and heightened Internet and media controls as the Games approach.

Tibetan unrest "is going to have a very significant impact," said Tai Ming Cheung, a professor at UC San Diego. "You can see from their reaction, they're already fairly paranoid about security, and they're basically going to cut back further on any type of risk."

WE KNOW WHAT'S RIGHT; WILL WE DO IT?:

Chinese intellectuals condemn Tibet crackdown (Howard W. French, March 24, 2008, IHT)

A group of prominent Chinese intellectuals has circulated a petition urging the government to stop what it calls a "one-sided" propaganda campaign on Tibet and initiate dialogue with the Dalai Lama.

The petition, signed by more than two dozen writers, journalists and scholars, contains 12 recommendations. Taken together, they represent a sharp break from the government's response to the wave of demonstrations that swept Tibetan areas of the country in recent weeks.

Most of the signers are Han Chinese, China's dominant ethnic group.

Their petition accused the government of "fanning racial hatred" in China by blaming ethnic Tibetans for the violence and seeking to inflame passions among the Han to support the crackdown.

The Chinese government’s oppression and suppression of its own people extends to much more than its actions in Tibet. There are more executions carried out in China than every other country combined, with the organs of executed people sometimes used in transplants. The use of torture and forced labour - often after seriously flawed judicial processes - is also well documented. Constraints on freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of belief and freedom of information are severe. Human rights and pro-democracy activists, Uighurs and especially Falun Gong practitioners are subjected to serious persecution.

I fully recognise that boycotting the Beijing Olympics will not stop all the human rights abuses of the Chinese government. I know that a boycott is a blunt and very imperfect instrument and is in many ways extremely unfair on athletes who have often made enormous personal sacrifices. I also recognise the view expressed by the Dalai Lama not supporting a boycott of the Games and suggesting it would unfairly affect ordinary Chinese citizens who do not engage in human rights abuse. But I can’t stop thinking that the Beijing Olympics presents a very rare opportunity for the people of the world to send a message that is so strong that even an enormously powerful government like the Chinese regime will be unable to ignore it or dismiss it. I am sure most Chinese people would choose freedom and human rights over the Olympic Games.

WHAT COULD THE LAMB HAVE DONE...:

Lamb leg thrown at football match (Johnny Caldwell, 3/24/08, BBC News)

An animal welfare charity has condemned an incident in which a lamb's leg was thrown onto the pitch during trouble at a football game at the weekend.

The leg was one of several missiles thrown after a match between Ballymena United and Distillery on Saturday.

A USPCA spokesman said it "demonstrated general disregard for animal welfare".

LAND THAT WE LOVE:

The Politically Incorrect Deer Hunter, Thirty Years Later: excerpted from God, Man & Hollywood: Politically Incorrect Cinema from The Birth of a Nation to The Passion of the Christ (Mark Royden Winchell, 03/24/08, First Principles)

When Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter was released in 1978, critics didn’t know what to make of it. This was an undeniably powerful film by an aesthetically ambitious director. (His only previous directorial credit, for the Clint Eastwood vehicle Thunderbolt and Lightfoot four years earlier, had prepared no one for this emotionally overpowering movie.) Amid the praise—five Academy Awards, including the ones for best picture and best director—were reservations about certain narrative implausibilities and a suspicion that the film dissented from the view of the Vietnam War widely held in Hollywood. Some of the more discerning reviewers realized from the start that questions about the literal probability of the plot were beside the point because The Deer Hunter was not meant to be a conventionally realistic movie but should actually be viewed in symbolic terms.

The more virulent attacks on the film’s political orthodoxy stemmed from its failure to depict the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong as morally superior to America’s fighting men. (Jane Fonda denounced the picture as racist, even though she admitted to not having seen it.) Accepting the Academy Award for his blatantly procommunist documentary Hearts and Minds in 1974, the producer Bert Schneider had said, “It is ironic that we’re here at a time just before Vietnam is about to be liberated,” and then proceeded to read a statement by the Viet Cong. Cimino’s position seemed to be considerably more nuanced.

It may well be that The Deer Hunter is not staking out a position on the Vietnam War so much as using the war as a means for developing an older and broader theme in American culture.Like so many Westerns, Cimino’s film is about the conflict between the heroism of the individual and the demands of the community. With the frontier effectively settled by the end of the nineteenth century, this conflict has had to manifest itself in places other than the cow towns and prairies of a bygone era. In a sense, Vietnam can be seen as a new Wild West, where men test their courage. The real home for an American, however, is not over there but right here. For many Vietnam veterans, coming home involved a particularly difficult reintegration into society. Thus, Cimino has found a contemporary way of telling an old story.

LUCK IS THE RESIDUE OF HISTORY:

Luckiest Man in the Race (Fred Barnes, 3/24/08, The Weekly Standard)

For McCain, the best may be yet to come. If Clinton manages a come-from-behind victory over Obama, that could produce the dream election for McCain, one in which the Democratic party fails to unify behind its presidential candidate. Given the eagerness of Democrats to capture the White House after eight Bush years, that may seem farfetched. It's not. It's a real possibility.

What if Obama prevails? He'll have been weakened by having had the "kitchen sink" thrown at him by the Clinton forces. With no significant ideological differences between Clinton and Obama, they've focused on his personal shortcomings: inexperience, habit of saying one thing while believing the opposite, unimpressive Senate record, lack of appeal to white working class and Hispanic voters.

The Clinton attacks have begun to transform the popular image of Obama from that of an inspirational leader above the grubby fray of party politics to that of a normal politician. This should largely spare McCain from criticizing Obama on personal grounds and free him to concentrate on Obama's leftwing political views.

Three scenarios are possible in the Democratic race.

WHEN YOU HAVE NO PROMOTION BUDGET, REMEMBER RULE ONE...:

Expelled Expels Darwinist (Josh Hurst, 03/24/08, Christianity Today)

Expelled—the Ben Stein-hosted documentary about Intelligent Design, coming to theaters in April—continues to cause a commotion and make headlines, including late last week when a biology professor was barred from a Minneapolis screening, even though he plays a big role in the film.

PZ Myers, an associate professor of biology at the University of Minnesota-Morris and a prominent atheist, told the St. Paul Pioneer Press that he was asked to leave the building even though he had legitimately signed up for the event.

Myers was one of several big names—including noted Darwinism proponent Richard Dawkins—in town for an atheist convention who tried to attend the screening. Myers was apparently the only one barred from the theater; Dawkins attended, and even got involved in the Q&A with one of the film's producers after the screening.

Mark Mathis, a producer of the film who attended the screening, told The New York Times that he allowed Dawkins to attend because "he has handled himself fairly honorably, he is a guest in our country and I had to presume he had flown a long way to see the film."

BECAUSE EVOLUTION MEANS NEVER CHANGING:

Sluggish Reptile Breaks Speedy Evolution Record (Jennifer Viegas, 3/24/08, Discovery News)

One of the world's most laid-back animals, the tuatara, may be the fastest evolving creature on Earth, according to a paper in this month's Trends in Genetics.

The lizard-like reptile's DNA changes naturally at a rate faster than has been observed in any other animal: 1.56 changes per nucleotide (DNA subunit) every million years.

The finding is particularly surprising in light of the fact that the tuatara, endemic to New Zealand, hasn't changed much physically since its ancestors hung out with dinosaurs 225 million years ago.

BOILING THE CONTEST DOWN TO ITS BASICS:

A Vote of Allegiance?: In the Obama-Clinton Battle, Race & Gender Pose Two Great Divides for Black Women (DeNeen L. Brown, 3/24/08, Washington Post)

The "isms" have once again been pitted against each other. Sexism or racism -- which ism is deepest? All things being equal, should a woman or a black man be lifted to the presidency? Which "first" is the imperative first?

SO WISE YOU COULD WISH IT WERE INTENTIONAL:

Israel Strengthens Hamas Some More (Peter Hirschberg, 3/24/08, IPS)

If Israeli leaders had hoped that their blockade of Gaza and the military's early March incursion into the coastal strip might undermine support for the leadership of the Islamic Hamas movement in power there, then they will have been disappointed with the findings of a recent opinion poll.

The survey results will also have bolstered the view in Israel, already being expressed by some politicians, that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is not the man with whom Israel should be negotiating.

If new Palestinian presidential elections were held now, the poll indicated, Gaza-based Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh would get 47 percent of the vote, while Abbas, who heads the rival and more moderate Fatah movement, would get 46 percent.

The swing toward Haniyeh has been dramatic: the last poll by the West Bank-based Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research, which was conducted in December, gave Haniyeh 37 percent and Abbas 56 percent.

WHO KNEW QUAINT WAS A NEGATIVE?:

Truly No. 1: Why the Ladies' Detective agency has renewed my faith in television (MAX HASTINGS, 25th March 2008, Daily Mail)

One of the most delightful offerings to appear on our television screens over Easter, indeed for many a long day, was Anthony Minghella's BBC1 film of Alexander McCall Smith's bestseller, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency.

It concerns one of the more unexpected heroines of modern fiction, a wildly overweight African woman named Precious Ramotswe.

And at every turn of Sunday night's story - as she confronted wrongdoers amid the glorious landscape of Botswana - one braced oneself for TV's usual climaxes of torture, mayhem or mere commonplace massacre.

But nothing like that happened. The baddies were put to flight or sent to jail, harmony was restored and everybody celebrated with a sing-song.

The critics hated it. One called it "twee, quaint, shallow, possibly patronising . . . saccharine gloop . . . set in an African country where smiley, happy people, cardboard cut-out characters, go about their business with good humour, hard work, morality and diligence. . . It has no passion, no depth, no edge, no nothing".

But this, it seems to me, says much more about our ghastly current cinematic expectations than about the Ladies' Detective Agency.

APPARENTLY, THIS ISN'T A PARODY:

The Obama Doctrine: Barack Obama is offering the most sweeping liberal foreign-policy critique we've heard from a serious presidential contender in decades. But will voters buy it? (Spencer Ackerman, March 24, 2008, American Prospect)

[O]bama's advisers argue, national security depends in large part on dignity promotion. Without it, the U.S. will never be able to destroy al-Qaeda. Extremists will forever be able to demagogue conditions of misery, making continued U.S. involvement in asymmetric warfare an increasingly counterproductive exercise -- because killing one terrorist creates five more in his place. "It's about attacking pools of potential terrorism around the globe," Gration says. "Look at Africa, with 900 million people, half of whom are under 18. I'm concerned that unless you start creating jobs and livelihoods we will have real big problems on our hands in ten to fifteen years."

Obama sees this as more than a global charity program; it is the anvil against which he can bring down the hammer on al-Qaeda. "He took many of the [counterinsurgency] principles -- the paradoxes, like how sometimes you're less secure the more force is used -- and looked at it from a more strategic perspective," Sewall says. "His policies deal with root causes but do not misconstrue root causes as a simple fix. He recognizes that you need to pursue a parallel anti-terrorism [course] in its traditional form along with this transformed approach to foreign policy." Not for nothing has Obama received private advice or public support from experts like former Clinton and Bush counterterrorism advisers Richard Clarke and Rand Beers, and John Brennan, the first chief of the National Counterterrorism Center. [...]

In his focus on the importance of dignity in our policy toward the developing world, Obama sounds quite a bit like John F. Kennedy, who knitted together an argument for engagement with the "non-aligned" world and began the tradition of development assistance as a foreign-policy goal. However, Kennedy's basic foreign policy continued along the Cold War lines that had been laid down during the Truman administration.

Democratic presidential candidates since Kennedy have either downplayed foreign policy or simply argued for more competence in its execution, with two major exceptions: George McGovern in 1972 and Jimmy Carter in 1976. In the popular imagination, based on the "Come home, America" line from his nomination acceptance speech, McGovern pivoted from a striking critique of the immorality of the Vietnam War to an indictment of U.S. involvement abroad. But McGovern purposefully left this broad criticism out of most of his campaign. "I concentrated on Vietnam," McGovern says in a phone interview, "because I thought it would be difficult to sell a comprehensive rewriting of American foreign policy." Carter is a more ambiguous case. In the wake of Watergate, he made a full-spectrum argument against the Washington establishment. Rethinking foreign policy was a part of that, and his aide Hamilton Jordan remarked, "If, after the inauguration, you find Cy Vance as secretary of state and Zbigniew Brzezinski as head of national security, then I would say we failed." Both men, of course, received precisely those posts.

Obama is doing something braver with foreign policy than McGovern or Carter. Much, of course, could go wrong.

PEOPLE PAY SO LITTLE ATTENTION TO DEMOGRAPHICS AND UNDERSTAND THE IMPLICATIONS SO POORLY...:

Speech row rocks multi-ethnic Canada (Henri Astier, 3/24/08, BBC News)

The Canadian equivalent of Denmark's cartoonists, or the Netherlands' Ayaan Hirsi Ali, is the outspoken conservative columnist Mark Steyn.

In a 2006 article he used demographics to suggest that the West would succumb to Muslim domination.

The piece, entitled "The future belongs to Islam" and published by the Toronto magazine Maclean's, argued that Europe was "too enfeebled to resist its remorseless transformation into Eurabia".

Mr Steyn summarised the presumed global advantage of militant Islam with a stark equation: "Youth + Will = Disaster for whoever gets in your way."

To some, he had crossed the line between vigorous polemic and Islamophia.

The notion that Muslims should be feared by virtue of their numbers and purported militancy is "quite inflammatory", says Toronto law student Khurrum Awan.

[T]he salient feature of Europe, Canada, Japan and Russia is that they're running out of babies. What's happening in the developed world is one of the fastest demographic evolutions in history: most of us have seen a gazillion heartwarming ethnic comedies -- My Big Fat Greek Wedding and its ilk -- in which some uptight WASPy type starts dating a gal from a vast loving fecund Mediterranean family, so abundantly endowed with sisters and cousins and uncles that you can barely get in the room. It is, in fact, the inversion of the truth. Greece has a fertility rate hovering just below 1.3 births per couple, which is what demographers call the point of "lowest-low" fertility from which no human society has ever recovered. And Greece's fertility is the healthiest in Mediterranean Europe: Italy has a fertility rate of 1.2, Spain 1.1. Insofar as any citizens of the developed world have "big" families these days, it's the anglo democracies: America's fertility rate is 2.1, New Zealand a little below. Hollywood should be making My Big Fat Uptight Protestant Wedding in which some sad Greek only child marries into a big heartwarming New Zealand family where the spouse actually has a sibling.

As I say, this isn't a projection: it's happening now. There's no need to extrapolate, and if you do it gets a little freaky, but, just for fun, here goes: by 2050, 60 per cent of Italians will have no brothers, no sisters, no cousins, no aunts, no uncles. The big Italian family, with papa pouring the vino and mama spooning out the pasta down an endless table of grandparents and nieces and nephews, will be gone, no more, dead as the dinosaurs. As Noel Coward once remarked in another context, "Funiculi, funicula, funic yourself." By mid-century, Italians will have no choice in the matter.

Experts talk about root causes. But demography is the most basic root of all. A people that won't multiply can't go forth or go anywhere. Those who do will shape the age we live in.

Demographic decline and the unsustainability of the social democratic state are closely related. In America, politicians upset about the federal deficit like to complain that we're piling up debts our children and grandchildren will have to pay off. But in Europe the unaffordable entitlements are in even worse shape: there are no kids or grandkids to stick it to.

You might formulate it like this:

Age + Welfare = Disaster for you;

Youth + Will = Disaster for whoever gets in your way.

By "will," I mean the metaphorical spine of a culture.

THINGS TO DO IN DENVER...:

Slouching Toward Denver: The Democratic death march. (Noam Scheiber, 4/09/08, The New Republic)

If McCain winds up facing Obama, he'll enjoy yet another advantage: a nominee weakened by attacks from a fellow Democrat. "Clinton hit a raw nerve several weeks ago when she said she had thirty-something years of experience, McCain had twenty- to thirty-something years, and Barack Obama had a speech," says Representative Artur Davis, an Obama supporter. The suggestion that Obama isn't ready to be commander-in-chief is "unusually corrosive," Davis complains. Indeed, when I asked various Republican and neutral Democratic operatives to name the most damaging twist in the primaries, most cited this same critique. "It's very good messaging--that he's not fit to be commander-in-chief," crowed one Republican strategist. "When you get the Democrats saying it, that's kind of the nuke in the whole thing." One of his Democratic counterparts was even more blunt: "It's one thing for John McCain to say [Obama's] not as muscular. It's another thing to have a girl saying it. It has some influence on swing voters."

Of course, if Obama's the nominee, he's unlikely to win a national security debate against McCain, with or without Hillary's broadsides. Obama's best bet is to focus the discussion specifically on Iraq. On the other hand, debating national security credentials during the primaries invariably alters the general-election landscape. You can now count on seeing another "3 a.m." ad sometime this fall--not to mention a "3 a.m." debate question from Tim Russert, and a shadowy, "3 a.m."-obsessed 527 group. ("Insomniac Prank-Callers For Truth"?) "I do believe the winner of the 3 a.m. ad is John McCain," says Kevin Madden, a former aide to Mitt Romney. "It's like an NCAA bracket. She may get the play-in game [against Obama], but she'd lose that in the championship game."

And there will surely be more body blows to come. Ad hominem attacks are an almost necessary feature of an unusually long campaign in which policy differences are minimal. At a certain point, there's just no other way to get traction against your opponent. That's one reason Pelosi has informally spoken with colleagues about stepping in if the tone abruptly deteriorates. But there's a catch-22 involved here: Party elders won't forcefully intervene unless an attack does serious damage. But, by then, the damage will have already been done.

Worse, any missile that hits its target would also destroy the person who launched it. Given the delegate math, Hillary's only path to the nomination, barring a meltdown by Obama, is to destroy his electability. But harsh attacks on Obama will inevitably discourage African Americans from voting in the fall, and Hillary can't beat McCain without strong black turnout in places like Cleveland, Detroit, and Philadelphia. Conversely, any attack on Hillary that alienated moderate Republican women could cripple Obama's chances.

Opinion journalists have a time-honored technique for dealing with news they don't like: Keep making phone calls. In my case, this yielded a depressingly meager haul. The most optimistic scenario I could plausibly construct didn't end the campaign until the second week in May. To make it happen, Obama would have to overtake Hillary among superdelegates--a key psychological barrier. He'd have to limit his margin of defeat in Pennsylvania to ten points, then hold serve two weeks later in North Carolina and Indiana, a pair of states he's slightly favored to win. At that point, Hillary would face nearly impossible odds of overtaking him in the delegate race.

Unfortunately for anyone who wants the race to end soon, there are several problems with this scenario. For one thing, even if all this comes to pass, Hillary would still have to bow out voluntarily--an unlikely twist in any event, but highly implausible if the limbo states of Florida and Michigan still offer her hope. Meanwhile, any one of the aforementioned steps could easily fall through. Polls currently show Obama trailing by double digits in Pennsylvania; the good Reverend Wright could make that tough to change. And, though Obama now leads in North Carolina and Indiana, his advantage is either small or, in the latter case, based on a single, flimsy poll. As for superdelegates, as of this writing, the last two out of the closet opted for Hillary.

LOST TRIBE:

Dozens of Jewish Super-Delegates May Hold Key to Democratic Race (Jennifer Siegel, Mar 20, 2008, The Forward)

According to a new survey conducted by the Forward, a disproportionately large share of the Democratic party’s super-delegates are Jewish. Many of them have declared their support for Hillary Clinton, accounting for more than 15% of her current backers. [...]

In the current presidential primary, the support of Jewish party insiders is particularly critical for Clinton, who won contests in New York, New Jersey and California and has pledged support from a preponderance of Jewish super-delegates in the Golden State and the Northeast — including nearly a dozen in her home state of New York.

BOOK TO FILM:

Top-Five Movies Adapted From Books (Libertas, 3/24/08)

Reader Jerry came up with this top-five idea. And it’s a good one. However, I’m going to add the qualifier that you must have also read the book.

Fever Pitch (Nick Hornsby)

Breaker Morant (The Breaker by Kit Denton)

Spartacus (Howard Fast)

The Godfather (Mario Puzo)

The Bourne Books (Robert Ludlum)

The Mighty Quinn (Finding Maubee by Albert H. Z. Carr)

Meanwhile, the two most disappointing adaptations of all time would have to be The Power of One and Tai-Pan.

A COLLAPSE WOULD JUST BE A STATION OF HIS CROSS:

Obama collapse in final contests may be Clinton's best hope (Adam Nagourney, March 24, 2008, NY Times)

Clinton's best hope now is that Obama, as a candidate, suffers a political collapse akin to what has happened to the subprime mortgage market, a view shared by aides in both campaigns.

How could that happen? First of all, Clinton not only has to win Pennsylvania on April 22; she has to swamp Obama there.

And she has to go on and post a convincing win against Obama in Indiana, a state where the two appear evenly matched. Results like that would serve to underscore concerns among some Democrats that came after Clinton beat Obama in Ohio, suggesting he was having trouble getting blue-collar white voters into his column. That is one constituency that aides to McCain see very much in play this fall.

Along the same lines, Clinton would get some wind if she trounces Obama in the June 3 contest in Puerto Rico. Obama has had trouble with Clinton in competing for Latino voters. And that has been duly noted by McCain's aides who said they are beginning to see a general election upside - among Hispanic voters in a contest against Obama - to the problems that McCain's support of immigration legislation caused him in the primaries.

BUT IS $40 STILL THE FLOOR?:

Oil price drops again (Bloomberg News, March 24, 2008)

Oil is likely to slide further this spring as slowing economic growth encourages traders to exit commodity markets, Goldman Sachs said in a report Thursday. A government report on Wednesday showed that U.S. fuel demand in the four previous weeks was down 3.2 percent from a year earlier.

"We can look forward to a continuation of the commodity downtrend we saw last week," said Eric Wittenauer, an energy analyst at Wachovia Securities in St. Louis, Missouri. "The economic slowdown and concern about demand are pushing prices lower."

Crude oil for May delivery fell 31 cents to $101.53 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Futures prices rose to $111.80 a barrel on March 17, the highest since trading began in 1983. Oil is up 63 percent from a year ago.

AND HE WONDERS WHY JEWS ARE SCARED OF HIM?:

McPeak on Display (Robert M. Goldberg, 3/24/2008, AMERICAN SPECTATOR)

In recent years McPeak has echoed the Mearsheimer-Walt view that American Middle East policy is being controlled by Jews at the expense of America's interests in the region. In a 2003 interview with the Oregonian, McPeak complained of that the "lack of playbook for getting Israelis and Palestinians together at...something other than a peace process....We need to get it fixed and only we have the authority with both sides to move them towards that. Everybody knows that."

The interviewer asked McPeak: "So where's the problem? State? White House?"

McPeak replied: "New York City. Miami. We have a large vote -- vote, here in favor of Israel. And no politician wants to run against it."

Translation (as if it's needed): Jews -- who put Israel over every American interest -- control America's policy on the Middle East. And McPeak has the audacity to accuse Bill Clinton of McCarthyism.

McPeak also claims that a combination of Jews and Christian Zionists are manipulating U.S. policy in Iraq in dangerous and radical ways: "Let's say that one of your abiding concerns is the security of Israel as opposed to a purely American self-interest, then it would make sense to build a dozen or so bases in Iraq. Let's say you are a born-again Christian and you think that Armageddon and the rapture are about to happen any minute and what you want to do is retrace steps you think are laid out in Revelations, then it makes sense. So there are a number of scenarios here that could lead you in this direction. This is radical...."

McPeak also noted: "The secret of the neoconservative movement is that it's not conservative, it's radical. Guys like me, who are conservatives, are upset about these neocons calling themselves conservative when they're so radical."

Guys like McPeak are upset because they think Jews have too much influence.

FOLKS GOTTA LIVE SOMEWHERE:

Home sales rose, prices fell in February (MARTIN CRUTSINGER, 3/24/08, AP)

After falling for six straight months, sales of existing homes posted an unexpected increase in February which may have reflected more aggressive price cutting by sellers in some parts of the country, a real estate trade group reported.

The National Association of Realtors said that sales of existing homes rose by 2.9 percent in February to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.03 million units. It was the biggest increase in a year and caught economists by surprise. They had been expecting a small decline.

AS IF WE NEED, OR WOULD WAIT FOR, PERMISSION:

Mush allows US to strike Qaeda targets in Pak: Report (PTI, March 24, 2008)

The Musharraf regime has given tacit approval to attacks by pilot-less United States planes on Al Qaeda targets along Pakistan's restive border area. The strikes have been stepped up as officials fear that the new civilian government will be hostile to such an offensive.

Since January, missiles reportedly fired from Central Investigative Agency operated Predator drones have hit at least three suspected hideouts of Islamic militants, including a strike on March 16 in Toog village in South Waziristan that left 20 dead.

The Newsweek, quoting US officials and Pakistani sources, said the recent wave of Predator attacks are at least partly the result of understandings the US officials reached with Musharraf and other top Pakistanis, giving Washington virtually unrestricted authority to hit targets in the border areas.

WELL, HE HAS TO BE ABLE TO PRETEND TO HAVE DONE AT LEAST ONE THING IN HIS CAREER...:

Both Obama And Clinton Embellish Their Roles (Shailagh Murray and Jonathan Weisman, 3/24/08, Washington Post)

After weeks of arduous negotiations, on April 6, 2006, a bipartisan group of senators burst out of the "President's Room," just off the Senate chamber, with a deal on new immigration policy.

As the half-dozen senators -- including John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) -- headed to announce their plan, they met Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who made a request common when Capitol Hill news conferences are in the offing: "Hey, guys, can I come along?" And when Obama went before the microphones, he was generous with his list of senators to congratulate -- a list that included himself.

"I want to cite Lindsey Graham, Sam Brownback, Mel Martinez, Ken Salazar, myself, Dick Durbin, Joe Lieberman . . . who've actually had to wake up early to try to hammer this stuff out," he said.

To Senate staff members, who had been arriving for 7 a.m. negotiating sessions for weeks, it was a galling moment.

REBUILDING THE BENCH:

An alliance that helps McCain -- and her: The presumptive GOP nominee stands to benefit from EBay CEO Meg Whitman's fundraising skills and ties to Silicon Valley. She is sizing up a run for California governor in 2010 (Maeve Reston, 3/24/08, Los Angeles Times)

As John McCain begins a three-day swing today through California -- one of the newest members of his campaign team, outgoing EBay Chief Executive Meg Whitman, may draw much of the attention.

Whitman, a 51-year-old billionaire, according to Forbes magazine, is said to be considering a run for California governor in 2010 after getting her first taste of politics on the finance team of ex-presidential candidate Mitt Romney, a former colleague at the consulting firm Bain & Co.

Whitman was coy about her own political aspirations in an interview Friday about her new role as national co-chairwoman of McCain's presidential campaign.

The initial speculation began after she met some "very influential and senior Republicans" and big donors while raising money for Romney, and some of those Republican heavyweights said, " 'You should think about this,' " she recalled.

ALL ABOUT WHO'S FURTHER RIGHT:

If Cameron isn't careful, Brown will outflank him on education reform (Fraser Nelson, 3/23/08, The Spectator)

The Spectator recently ran a letter from Lord Adonis saying the Swedish schools revolution which I said David Cameron would bring to Britain was in fact being delivered under Labour. Huh, I thought, keep telling yourself that - if it makes this whole Brown thing better for you. But today I picked up my local newspaper to find a striking splash: two City Academies run by Kunskapsskolan, the Swedish company I interviewed for my cover piece, are coming to my borough.

Things move quickly. Just last month Per Ledin, the head of Kunskapsskolan, was in his office asking me: “City Academies? What kind of a beast are those?” Now he’s saying “I’ll take two, please”. Under the new Brown system, the “sponsor” doesn’t have to stump up the £2m cash so it’s an easily-arranged, basic management contract. Weirdly, Labour doesn’t mind companies making a profit from managing schools – just as long as someone else is making a loss from owning them. Kunskapsskolan is putting its toe in the market.

So if Cameron ever gets around to selling what I regard as the best policy he has (he remains unconvinced there is much political capital in it), then Labour has a ready response. Swedish schools, mate? Catch up. We’re already there. It wouldn’t surprise me if as Cameron umms and aahs, Labour starts to use this schools policy as an election weapon.

NOW IT'S UP TO CAMERON TO SAVE THE COUNTRY:

It's the end of Britain as we know it: The Lisbon Treaty spells the end of a sovereign Britain. (Stephen Webbe, March 24, 2008, CS Monitor)

This winter, 27 nations of the European Union (EU) signed the Treaty of Lisbon. You may think, "Innocuous enough," as Portuguese-inspired visions of the Tagus River and chicken piri-piri swirl before your eyes.

But for England (Britain, actually) the Treaty of Lisbon isn't that appetizing. That's because, if ratified, it will become the decisive act in this creation of a federal European superstate with its capital in Brussels. Britain would become a province and its "Mother of Parliaments," a regional assembly. And that's no small humiliation for a country that gave the world English and saved Western civilization in the Battle of Britain in 1940.

THE TRIBESMAN:

Lieberman is McCain's bipartisan wingman (JONATHAN MARTIN | 3/23/08, Politico)

Wherever John McCain goes these days, it seems, Joseph I. Lieberman is there.

When McCain needed a quick reminder in Jordan last week on how to characterize Islamic radicals in Iraq receiving aid from Iran, Lieberman was there to whisper into his colleague’s ear. A day later in Israel, the Connecticut senator proved equally helpful, stepping in to help McCain clarify the meaning of the Jewish holiday of Purim.

Whether wearing yarmulkes together amid the throngs at Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall, meeting reporters outside 10 Downing Street in London or sporting matching suit-and-sweater combos at a snowy New Hampshire town hall meeting, the two have been nearly inseparable since Lieberman endorsed McCain last December.

As McCain hopes to wage a campaign that appeals to an independent-minded electorate exasperated by the Bush administration and the political status quo, Lieberman, a former Democratic vice presidential nominee, has become something of a symbolic character witness meant to testify to the Arizonan’s bipartisan approach.

UNIFY YOUR OWN HOUSE, PAL:

Obama's promise of a new majority, and the question it prompts (Robin Toner, March 23, 2008, NY Times)

It is a promise that convinced 67 percent of all registered voters in the last New York Times/CBS News Poll, in late February, that Obama "would be the kind of president who would be able to unify the country" - far more than those who identified his Democratic rival, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, or the presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain, that way.

But this promise leads, inevitably, to a question: Can such a majority be built and led by Obama, whose voting record was, by one ranking, the most liberal in the Senate last year?

Also, and more immediately, if Obama wins the Democratic nomination, how will his promise of a new and less polarized type of politics fare against the Republican attacks that since the 1980s have portrayed Democrats as far out of step with the country's values? [...]

Obama's rise has been built in part on the idea that he represents a break with the established identities that have defined many of the nation's divisions. To many, he embodies a promise to bridge black and white, old and young, rich and poor - and Democrats, Republicans and independents.

Even so, Obama does not come to the campaign with a reputation as one of the accommodating bridge-builders in the Senate. His voting record, albeit short, is to the left; the National Journal declared it the most liberal of 2007. Congressional Quarterly said he voted with his party 97 percent of the time on party-line votes that year.

Obama has been endorsed by advocacy groups like MoveOn.org that are anathema to Republicans on Capitol Hill. And some of his strongest supporters are activists at the "net-roots" who have clamored for less accommodation across party lines. [...]

"Nobody's yet taken him on as a liberal," said Andrew Kohut, who leads the Pew Research Center. "But McCain will."

So far, Republicans give every indication of planning to portray Obama as a big-government liberal out of touch with American values and unprepared to be commander in chief.

"When you're rated by National Journal as to the left of Ted Kennedy and Bernie Sanders, that's going to be difficult to explain," said Danny Diaz , a spokesman for the Republican National Committee.

MORE:
Democrats' bickering boosts McCain (Donald Lambro, March 23, 2008, Washington Times)

The increasingly nasty campaign between Democratic Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton is hurting them among independent and swing voters in key battleground states, and in the process is making Sen. John McCain the more appealing candidate, according to election pollsters. [...]

"It's been a bad couple of weeks for the Democrats, with Obama and Hillary continuing to snipe at each other, beginning the process of a thousand cuts," said independent election pollster John Zogby.

"For Obama, it's his problems with the white vote, which we saw in Ohio, and problems with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright story, and that's reflected in the national polls, when a month ago, Obama was leading McCain by 6 or 7 points and this month is down by six. That's a big swing," Mr. Zogby told The Washington Times on Friday.

"At the same time, Clinton was down by five or six points last month, and by my polls, she's still down about the same," he said.

"Both Democrats are experiencing a problem, at least for the moment, among independents, moderates and swing voters. It's pretty safe to say they can't win in November unless they get those groups back," the pollster said.

[W]ill the address reach beyond Obama's base? Considering how few people were likely to take the time to hear or read Obama's speech, I was reminded of the famous story about another Illinoisian, two-time Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson. When a woman exclaimed to the former Illinois governor that "Every thinking American is voting for you," he responded, "That's not enough, madam, I need a majority."

So does Obama. That majority became harder for him to achieve after Wright's roar hit the airwaves and the web.

A Fox News poll released two days after Obama's Big Speech indicated that most Americans do not believe Obama shares the controversial views of his spiritual mentor, but 35 percent said their relationship raised doubts about the senator.

Among Democrats surveyed, 26 percent said the relationship raised doubts about Obama, while 66 percent said it did not.

And when polls ask whether Obama should leave the church even now, the answers come back with a racial divide that eerily resembles reactions to the "not guilty" verdict O. J. Simpson's murder trial. Most whites think Obama should leave, while most blacks think he should stay loyal to the minister who Obama says led him to Jesus and presided at his wedding.

That will depend on the reaction of white America, especially so-called Reagan Democrats. These are the white, largely ethnic, middle-class families, once reliable Democrats, who on cultural and values grounds switched to the Republican candidate Ronald Reagan in 1980 and have been swing voters ever since.

When these folks hear that a candidate's own minister has spewed anti-American, racial diatribes, it deeply disturbs them. Even before the Wright story broke, Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, a Hillary Clinton supporter, suggested that race would cost Obama about 5 percentage points in that state's primary next month.

For Obama to reassure these people that his values and his experiences aren't different from theirs will take more than one great speech.

The irony here is that whatever Wright's failings, there is nothing - nothing - in Obama's adult life to even remotely link him to racially divisive sentiments.

THE REASON GOD GAVE US MUNCHIES:

Al Copeland, flamboyant founder of Popeyes fried chicken chain, dies at 64 (The Associated Press, March 23, 2008)

After growing up in New Orleans, Copeland sold his car at age 18 for enough money to open his own one-man doughnut shop. He went on to spend 10 modestly successful years in the doughnut business.

The opening of a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in New Orleans in 1966, however, caught Copeland's eye. Inspired by KFC's success, Copeland in 1971 used his doughnut profits to open a restaurant, Chicken on the Run. ("So fast you get your chicken before you get your change.")

After six months, Chicken on the Run was still losing money. In a last-ditch effort, Copeland chose a spicier Louisiana Cajun-style recipe and reopened the restaurant under the name Popeyes Mighty Good Fried Chicken, after Popeye Doyle, Gene Hackman's character in the film "The French Connection." The chain that grew from the one restaurant became Popeyes Famous Fried Chicken.

BUBBA'S CONSERVATIVE LEGACY:

Supreme Court Inc. (JEFFREY ROSEN, 3/16/08, NY Times Magazine)

After the election of Bill Clinton, for example, the chamber endorsed Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who in addition to her pioneering achievements as the head of the women’s rights project at the A.C.L.U. had specialized, as a law professor, in the procedural rules in complex civil cases and was comfortable with the finer points of business litigation. The chamber was especially enthusiastic about Clinton’s second nominee, Stephen Breyer, who made his name building a bipartisan consensus for airline deregulation as a special counsel on the judiciary committee; and who, as a Harvard Law professor, advocated an influential and moderate view on antitrust enforcement.

During Breyer’s confirmation hearings his sharpest critic was Ralph Nader, who testified that his pro-business rulings were “extraordinarily one-sided.” Another critic, Senator Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio, said that the fact that the chamber was the first organization to endorse Breyer indicated that “large corporations are very pleased with this nomination” and “the fact that Ralph Nader is opposed to it indicated that the average American has a reason to have some concern.” The chamber’s imprimatur helped reassure Republicans about Breyer, and he was confirmed with a vote of 87 to 9. “Frankly, we didn’t feel like we had anyone on the court since Justice Powell who truly understood business issues,” Conrad told me. “Justice Breyer came close to that.”

The Breyer and Ginsburg nominations also came at a time when liberal as well as conservative judges and academics were gravitating in increasing numbers to an economic approach to the law, originally developed at the University of Chicago. The law-and-economics movement sought to evaluate the efficiency of legal rules based on their costs and benefits for society as a whole. Although originally conservative in its orientation, the movement also attracted prominent moderate and liberal scholars and judges like Breyer, who before his nomination wrote two books on regulation, arguing that government health-and-safety spending is distorted by sensational media reports of disasters that affect relatively few citizens.

Since joining the Supreme Court, Breyer has also been an intellectual leader in antitrust and patent disputes, which often pit business against business, rather than business against consumers. In those cases, many liberal scholars sympathetic to economic analysis have applauded the court for favoring competition rather than existing competitors, innovation rather than particular innovators. “The court deserves credit for trying to rationalize a totally irrational patent system, benefiting smaller new competitors rather than existing big ones,” says Lawrence Lessig, an intellectual-property scholar at Stanford.

Clinton’s nominations of Ginsburg and Breyer may have been welcomed by the chamber, but with the election of George W. Bush, the chamber faced a dilemma. Ever since the Reagan administration, there had been a divide on the right wing of the court between pragmatic free-market conservatives, who tended to favor business interests, and ideological states-rights conservatives. In some business cases, these two strands of conservatism diverged, leading the most staunch states-rights conservatives on the court, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, to rule against business interests. Scalia and Thomas were reluctant to second-guess large punitive-damage verdicts by state juries, for example, or to hold that federally regulated cigarette manufacturers could not be sued in state court. As a result, under Conrad’s leadership, the chamber began a vigorous campaign to urge the Bush administration to appoint pro-business conservatives.

When it came time to replace Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the candidate most enthusiastically supported by states-rights conservatives, Judge Michael Luttig, had a record on the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit that some corporate interests feared might make him unpredictable in business cases. (“One of my constant refrains is that being conservative doesn’t necessarily mean being pro-business,” Conrad told me.) The chamber and other business groups enthusiastically supported John Roberts, who had been hired by the chamber to write briefs in two Supreme Court cases in 2001 and 2002. At the time of Roberts’s nomination, Thomas Goldstein, a prominent Supreme Court litigator, described him as “the go-to lawyer for the business community,” adding “of all the candidates, he is the one they knew best.” When Roberts was nominated, business groups lobbied senators as part of the campaign for his confirmation.

The business community was also enthusiastic about Samuel Alito, whose 15-year record as an appellate judge showed a consistent skepticism of claims against large corporations. Ted Frank of the American Enterprise Institute predicted at the time of the nomination that if Alito replaced O’Connor, he and Roberts would bring about a rise in business cases before the Supreme Court. Frank’s prediction was soon vindicated.

“There wasn’t a great deal of interest in classic business cases in the last few years of the Rehnquist Court,” Carter Phillips, a partner at Sidley Austin and a leading Supreme Court business advocate, told me. In 2004, Judge Richard Posner, a founder of the law-and-economics movement, argued that the Rehnquist Court’s emphasis on headline-grabbing constitutional cases had politicized it, and called on the court to hear more business cases. The Roberts court has unambiguously answered the call. As Phillips told me, Roberts “is more interested in those issues and understands them better than his predecessor did.”

FROM THE ARCHIVES: WHAT THE FOX KNOWS:

A Healthy Easter With Pear Gingerbread (JIM ROMANOFF, 3/09/07, The Associated Press)

UPSIDE-DOWN PEAR GINGERBREAD

For the gingerbread:

1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted

3/4 cup whole-wheat pastry flour

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons ground ginger

1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 large egg

1/3 cup sugar

1/3 cup molasses

1/3 cup unsweetened applesauce

1/4 cup canola oil

1/3 cup plain low-fat yogurt

1/4 cup packed light brown sugar

1/4 cup chopped walnuts

3 pears, peeled, cored and thinly sliced lengthwise

Preheat oven to 350 F. Brush a 10-inch cast-iron skillet or 8-by-8-inch glass baking dish with the melted butter.

In a medium bowl whisk together both flours, the ginger, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, use an electric mixer to beat the egg, sugar and molasses for 3 minutes. Add applesauce and oil, and beat until blended. Fold in flour mixture and yogurt. Set aside.

Press the brown sugar evenly over the bottom of the prepared skillet. Sprinkle with nuts. Arrange pear slices in circles over nuts. Pour the batter over the pears.

Bake 35 to 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Loosen edges of the cake with knife, then invert it onto platter.

(Recipe from the March issue of Vegetarian Times magazine)

[originally posted: 3/14/07]

EVERY TIME HE STRASYS FROM THE THIRD WAY HE GETS HIS HEAD HANDED TO HIM:

Public anger warning over embryo Bill (Melissa Kite, 23/03/2008, Daily Telegraph)

Gordon Brown was warned by a former senior cabinet minister last night that he risks public scorn if he does not offer Labour MPs a free vote on controversial new embryo research laws.

Stephen Byers, a leading Blairite, said the public would “look on in disbelief” if the Prime Minister persisted with his current strategy of forcing MPs to vote in favour of the creation of human-animal hybrids.

Mr Byers’ intervention comes after two Roman Catholic cabinet ministers, believed to be Ruth Kelly, the Transport Secretary, and Paul Murphy, the Welsh Secretary, privately threatened to resign if a free vote is not given on parts of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, due before MPs next month.
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The Government is braced for further criticism today when the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor signals that Catholic MPs should vote against the legislation.

Senior Labour sources claim the Prime Minister faces a catastrophic rebellion over the Government-backed bill, which would allow the creation of part-human, part-animal embryos for research.

A U-turn by Brown would represent the biggest humiliation to his leadership since he came to power as Labour leader and PM in June last year.

OF DICTATORSHIPS AND DOUBLE STANDARDS:

Musharraf Praises Dawn of Democracy for Pakistan: Pakistan's president says his country, is ushering in a new era of democracy following years of his autocratic rule. VOA Correspondent Steve Herman reports from Islamabad that Pervez Musharraf, in his Pakistan Day address, also credited his regime with paving the way for the return to civilian government. (Steve Herman
23 March 2008, VOA News)

In his address at the national stadium in the capital Sunday, Mr. Musharraf hailed a "new real era of democracy" for Pakistan.

While making reference to the incoming civilian government resulting from democratic elections he permitted this year, the president also defended his nine years of strong-armed rule as a journey "toward democracy and development."

FROM THE ARCHIVES:

The Cross (Prince)

Black day, stormy night
No love, no hope in sight
Don't cry, he is coming
Don't die without knowing the cross
Ghettos 2 the left of us
Flowers 2 the right
There'll be bread 4 all of us
If we can just bear the cross

Sweet song of salvation
A pregnant mother sings
She lives in starvation
Her children need all that she brings

We all have our problems
Some BIG, some are small
Soon all of our problems
Will be taken by the cross

Black day, stormy night
No love, no hope in sight
Don't cry 4 he is coming
Don't die without knowing the cross

Ghettos 2 the left of us
Flowers 2 the right
There'll be bread 4 all, y'all
If we can just, just bear the cross, yeah

We all have our problems
Some are BIG, some are small
Soon all of our problems, y'all
Will be taken by the cross

The cross

The cross

[originally posted: 3/25/05]

BUT IF HUMANS AREN'T WARMING THE GLOBE... (via Jim Yates):

Climate facts to warm to (Christopher Pearson, March 22, 2008, The Australian)

It was a remarkable interview involving the co-host of Counterpoint, Michael Duffy and Jennifer Marohasy, a biologist and senior fellow of Melbourne-based think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. Anyone in public life who takes a position on the greenhouse gas hypothesis will ignore it at their peril.

Duffy asked Marohasy: "Is the Earth stillwarming?"

She replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."

Duffy: "Is this a matter of any controversy?"

Marohasy: "Actually, no. The head of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has actually acknowledged it. He talks about the apparent plateau in temperatures so far this century. So he recognises that in this century, over the past eight years, temperatures have plateaued ... This is not what you'd expect, as I said, because if carbon dioxide is driving temperature then you'd expect that, given carbon dioxide levels have been continuing to increase, temperatures should be going up ... So (it's) very unexpected, not something that's being discussed. It should be being discussed, though, because it's very significant."

Duffy: "It's not only that it's not discussed. We never hear it, do we? Whenever there's any sort of weather event that can be linked into the global warming orthodoxy, it's put on the front page. But a fact like that, which is that global warming stopped a decade ago, is virtually never reported, which is extraordinary."

FROM THE ARCHIVES: NOT THE BANDAGE BUT THE WOUND:

The word "religion" originally meant something positive as "that which binds". If it still means this, that bind seems now increasingly to be read as a negative.

Sixty years ago a European theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose whole intellectual life was spent wrestling with the ambiguities of religion, wrote from his Nazi prison cell how in Western societies the time of religion was coming to an end. What did he mean?

Well, he meant by religion those fundamentally human activities attempting to reach the beyond: the postulate of a deity, in order to get help and protection if so wanted. Bonhoeffer identified four characteristics of this religious activity.

First, religion as inwardness. This could take the form of ascetism, or it could be an abandoning of the world for the inward journey.

Second, metaphysics. The transcendence that is sought for the completion necessary for this world - God as the superstructure for being, which inescapably leads into thinking in two realms and the understanding that "reality" - the natural - must be completed by the supernatural.

Third, that thinking which regards religion as a province of life, a sector of the whole, that is interesting and socially and psychologically valuable. God as a problem solver, a gap filler, a fulfiller of human needs. Is this the Christian God, dwelling in a dark and ever-smaller province, driven out from one department after another in dreadful secularisation?

Fourth, the concept of the god of the machine at the end of the Greek tragedies. Wheeled in to provide answers, solutions, protection and help, religion might be likened to a spiritual chemist shop.

So much for the analysis, what of the alternative?

Bonhoeffer's response was a call to non-religious interpretation of the Bible, which fundamentally meant a call to follow Jesus in his way of discipleship, whereby the four distinguishing marks of religion become anachronistic.

In place of the lonely individual, intent on the inward journey, Jesus is revealed as the man for others. Gregarious from the start, the only time he is alone is in his death, the awfulness of which is an enforced loneliness and forsakenness without any way of a transcendent escape. Thus for Jesus, if we might adopt the marvellous imagery of Dennis Potter, God is not the bandage, God is the wound. But remember, the hand that inflicts the wound also holds the cure. So the meaning of the resurrection of Jesus is the establishing, now not of a localised but of a universal presence which opens up the whole of life as the sphere of human worship of God.

CHRISTIANS AND UNBELIEVERS

Men go to God when they are sore bestead,
Pray to him for succour, for his peace, for bread,
For mercy for them sick, sinning or dead:
All men do so, Christian and unbelieving.
Men go to God when he is sore bestead,
Find him poor and scorned, without shelter or bread,
Whelmed under weight of the wicked, the weak, the dead:
Christians stand by God in his hour of grieving.
God goeth to every man when sore bestead,
Feedeth body and spirit with his bread,
For Christians, heathens alike he hangeth dead:
And both alike forgiving.

The poem about Christians and Unbelievers embodies an idea you will recognize: 'Christians range themselves with God in his suffering; that is what distinguishes them from the heathen.' As Jesus asked in Gethsemane, 'Could ye not watch with me one hour?' That is the exact opposite of what the religious man expects from God. Man is challenged to participate in the sufferings of God at the hands of a godless world.

He must therefore plunge himself into the life of a godless world, without attempting to gloss over its ungodliness with a veneer of religion or trying to transfigure it. He must live a 'worldly' life and so participate in the suffering of God. He may live a worldly life as one emancipated from all false religions and obligations. To be a Christian does not mean to be religious in a particular way, to cultivate some particular form of asceticism (as a sinner, a penitent or a saint), but to be a man. It is not some religious act which makes a Christian what he is, but participation in the suffering of God in the life of the world.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: GUESS WHO BLEW IT AGAIN

Pick Seen as Sign of Contradiction (Ian Fisher, Not-the New-York-Times)

CAESAREA PHILIPPI (20 Kislev). Yesterday's surprise announcement that doctrinal hardliner Jesus of Nazareth had been anointed "messiah" provoked mixed reactions in the diverse and sometimes fractious Israelite community, ranging from cautious disappointment to frank despair.

"I see it as a missed opportunity," said Herodias Schneidkopf, a Galilean incest-rights activist. "Many of us were hoping for someone more open to leadership roles for women and more appreciative of our experience. I don't feel valued."

Respected archpriest Caiaphas Bar Nun agreed. "Above all, the messiah should be a good listener. How can we as a faith community keep credibility among the youth of today if we cling to every jot and tittle of an outmoded social code while thousands die of leprosy and hunger? Today's highly educated Judahite community isn't satisfied with the old answers. I'm afraid it's a missed opportunity."

Even some members of the Messiah''s personal entourage expressed misgivings. The Rev. J.E. "Dimples" Iscariot, S.J., a media consultant, did not hide his regret. "A missed opportunity, I'm afraid. We in the Society of Judas traditionally enjoy a special relationship to the messiah, but we'll find this choice very hard to explain to gays and lesbians--I mean, of course, to gomorrhaists and sodomitesses--as well as to the divorced and the marginalized. Why just the other day I saw 300 denarii, which might have been used to help find a cure for leprosy, squandered on wholly unnecessary ritual excesses."

Fighting the spread of leprosy is a vexed issue among contemporary Palestinians. Most polls show Israelites widely ignore official teachings on ethical matters, preferring to follow their own conscience. Some see Jesus' moral conservatism as a rigidity that leads to disfigurement and death in at-risk populations--and that may ultimately doom his movement to irrelevance.

"Yesterday's unction was an opportunity missed," insisted real-estate broker Sapphira Glass. "Today's young professionals don't find their own experience reflected in a one-size-fits-all morality that limits options and encodes patriarchal bias. I mean, sacrificing one's newborns to Moloch is a tragic but often necessary choice, and many of us find the language of apostasy alienating and judgmental." [NYT copyeditor''s note: Need some quote from supporter----J.L.]

"It all comes down to power," countered maverick theologian Fr. Richard Maccabeus, retired professor of applied autology, who pointed out that the successful candidate had almost no pastoral experience. "What we''re seeing is a right-wing restorationist fantasy in its death throes. Intelligent Israelites aren't buying. We want to be heard. We want someone who speaks not with authority but like us academics--I mean, of course, like the scribes and the pharisees. One can only call it a missed opportunity."

The Procurator of Judea was unavailable for comment.

[Originally posted: September 21, 2005]

FROM THE ARCHIVES: PER SE:

Deicide and The Passion (Jeff Snyder, September 22, 2003, Enter Stage Right)

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and various religious scholars have expressed grave concern that Mel Gibson's new film, The Passion, a portrayal of the final 12 hours of Christ's life based on the Gospels will, if released in its present form, increase anti-Semitism
throughout the world because of the manner in which it portrays Jews. The controversy has generated lots of news coverage and articles, despite the fact that almost no one who is criticizing the film has actually seen it. When fundamentalist Christian groups criticized The Last Temptation of Christ years ago without having seen the film, this was taken as a sign of their intolerance, narrow-mindedness and overall nuttiness. So far, however, the news reports of criticisms of Mr. Gibson's film by people who have not seen the movie are reported, and seemingly supposed to be taken, with utmost seriousness. [...]

Although Mr. Gibson has from the beginning insisted that he is endeavoring to make a movie that is faithful to the Gospels, Mr. Boyer's New Yorker article makes it clear that that is precisely what the group finds troubling. He quotes a group of Catholic ecumenical scholars as stating that "One cannot assume that by simply conforming to the New Testament, that antisemitism will not be promoted. . . . After all, for centuries sermons and passion plays based on the New Testament have incited Christian animosity and violence toward Jews." This is actually a horrifying statement. One would hope that Catholics and all Christians would be shocked by the suggestion that anti- Semitism springs forth as a near automatic and somehow "natural" response from a literal reading and telling of the Gospels. Mr. Boyer also cites an example of one of the recommended changes -- that the two thieves crucified with Christ be referred to as "insurgents," despite the fact that the original Greek does not support that interpretation. Evidently such efforts are thought necessary to subtly direct people's minds away from thoughts about Jewish culpability to Roman political concerns over a potential revolt in the province. However, at bottom such revisionism betrays a profound lack of trust in the Gospels and a cynical, distressing lack of faith in the ability of the Church to bring Christ's message to its members.

NB: If you've got a link that we don't have iincluded in our list, please send it along.

MORE:
Passion Play: The controversy over Mel Gibson's forthcoming movie on the death of Jesus Christ. (Michael Novak, 08/25/2003, Weekly Standard)

[O]n July 21, [Mel Gibson] brought a rough cut of the film (with English subtitles) to Washington for a few commentators and interested writers to see.

It is the most powerful movie I have ever seen. In the days since watching that rough cut, I have not been able to get the film out of my mind. [...]

There are, in a sense, only five historical accounts of the Passion: in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and, in bare but vivid outline, in the letters of St. Paul. Paul's accounts are by some thirty years the earliest and represent in large strokes the settled beliefs of the first generation of Christians. Down the centuries, the narrative of Christ's death and its meaning have remained much the same.

The fuller accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John supplement each other, often overlapping and sometimes contradicting one another on the sort of contingent details that eyewitnesses (or their note-takers) often report differently. But all the Christian accounts agree that Jesus Christ suffered and died for the sins of all human beings of all time, under the command of the Roman consul in Jerusalem, Pontius Pilate.

Jewish accounts concur that Jesus was a Jew who suffered and died under the Roman authorities. His claims for himself seemed to Jewish authorities then (and since) to be blasphemous--for Christ clearly announced that he owned an authority higher than the high priests and the rabbis', said forthrightly that he was greater than Solomon, and put himself on a higher plane than Moses. He went even further, daring to call God his father.

The claims Christ made for himself seemed at the time divisive and dangerous. Many people, the Jewish authorities told Pilate, were following this man's lead. His history, they said, showed that he worked magic, performed miracles, and consorted with demons. He had been sent by God, he as much as said, to "fulfill the Scriptures." His continued preaching might lead to riot and rebellion. But only the Romans had the power to do to Jesus what was actually done, and so it was under the authority of Pontius Pilate, and at the hands of the Roman Empire, that Jesus "was crucified, died, and was buried."

AT THE TIME of Christ's death, Christianity was still internal to Judaism. The Christian Church itself began not at the Passion, but fifty-three days later on Pentecost, when the apostles left an "upper room" in Jerusalem speaking in tongues. With his preaching Jesus had clearly put a challenge to Judaism, expressly announcing a "new" covenant, whose mandate was to "complete" and "fulfill" the "old" covenant. And there is no doubt that Jesus' death meant a parting of the ways between Christians and Jews. Nonetheless, from a Christian point of view, the life and teachings of Jesus and his new covenant do not remove or destroy the old covenant. God cannot be unfaithful to his promises. Besides, if the Creator is not faithful to his first covenant with the Jews, how can Christians expect Him to be faithful to His new covenant with them?

Thus, Christians hold that Christianity fulfills the hopes launched into the world by Judaism. They also hold that those Jews who reject Christianity remain vessels of God's first love.

[Originally posted: October 5, 2003]

FROM THE ARCHIVES: DID YOU CLEAR THAT DOCTRINE WITH US?:

THE DISPUTATION: A Passion for Censorship (David Klinghoffer, 8/01/03, The Forward)

[T]he second reason we Jews need to learn some deep-breathing and other relaxation techniques is the one that always gets lost when others less meticulous than Fredriksen publicly humiliate a Christian for espousing his beliefs. If we are empowered to edit their doctrine, then why are they not empowered to edit ours?

In the past, Christians felt justified in telling Jews what we were entitled to write and read if it touched upon their savior. The Talmud was censored with their denunciations, and worse, in mind.

There seems little danger "The Passion" will incite violence. However, if it were to arouse Christians to demand that Jews similarly submit our faith for their approval - well, then, the attempt to cow Mel Gibson will have been most helpful to would-be Christian censors in making their case.

If Gibson someday says he would like to have a look at the Talmud with a view to fixing it up with some additional corrections, we should let Paula Fredriksen have a go at explaining to him why this would be inappropriate.

MORE:
-Passion Play: The controversy over Mel Gibson's forthcoming movie on the death of Jesus Christ. (Michael Novak, 08/25/2003, Weekly Standard)

The claims Christ made for himself seemed at the time divisive and dangerous. Many people, the Jewish authorities told Pilate, were following this man's lead. His history, they said, showed that he worked magic, performed miracles, and consorted with demons. He had been sent by God, he as much as said, to "fulfill the Scriptures." His continued preaching might lead to riot and rebellion. But only the Romans had the power to do to Jesus what was actually done, and so it was under the authority of Pontius Pilate, and at the hands of the Roman Empire, that Jesus "was crucified, died, and was buried."

AT THE TIME of Christ's death, Christianity was still internal to Judaism. The Christian Church itself began not at the Passion, but fifty-three days later on Pentecost, when the apostles left an "upper room" in Jerusalem speaking in tongues. With his preaching Jesus had clearly put a challenge to Judaism, expressly announcing a "new" covenant, whose mandate was to "complete" and "fulfill" the "old" covenant. And there is no doubt that Jesus' death meant a parting of the ways between Christians and Jews. Nonetheless, from a Christian point of view, the life and teachings of Jesus and his new covenant do not remove or destroy the old covenant. God cannot be unfaithful to his promises. Besides, if the Creator is not faithful to his first covenant with the Jews, how can Christians expect Him to be faithful to His new covenant with them?

Thus, Christians hold that Christianity fulfills the hopes launched into the world by Judaism. They also hold that those Jews who reject Christianity remain vessels of God's first love. In God's mysterious plan, the continuation of Judaism in time is a grace to be respected, on the same principle on which the faith of Christians rests--the fidelity of God to his everlasting promises.

The Jewish leaders of the generation that knew him did in fact reject Jesus and his claims, and they did accuse him of blasphemy. "Nevertheless," as the Second Vatican Council said in its statement on Judaism, "the Jews still remain very dear to God, for the sake of the patriarchs, since God does not take back the gifts he bestowed or the choice he made." The Council strictly forbids Catholics to hold Jews to be "repudiated or cursed by God, as if such views followed from the Holy Scriptures." And it deplores "all hatreds, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism leveled at any time and from any source against the Jews." This condemnation includes the Church's own sins. The Council stressed the two covenants' common spiritual heritage and foresaw a future in which both communities would serve God "shoulder to shoulder."

Gibson's film is wholly consistent with the Second Vatican Council's presentation of the relations of Judaism and the Christian Church. But "The Passion" will not be easy for Jews to watch. One reason is simply that its entire subject is the death of one who, for many Jews, is a
figure of division, Jesus Christ. And a second reason is that it is never easy to relive a moment in which the leaders of one's community, however justified they might have been by their own lights and their own sense of responsibility, do not appear to viewers to be acting in a noble way. As a Catholic, I cringe every time I go to the theater when a pope, cardinal, archbishop, or even priest is portrayed in an unflattering light. Even when they deserve it, I do not enjoy the spectacle.

In the first part of the gospels' account of the Passion, the high priests of Jerusalem standing before Pilate are, painfully no doubt to contemporary Jews, the voice for the prosecution. During the early scenes of the movie, which I tried to watch as if I were Jewish or seated alongside a Jewish colleague, I thought: This is too painful. Having sat through many analogous moments as a Catholic, I did not like the experience.

VERY SOON, though, the action in the film belongs to the Romans. Roman soldiers inflict systematic pain on Jesus with gusto, lighthearted bantering, and the practiced sadism of those who know how to keep subdued populations subdued. The overwhelming drama consists in Christ's willing endurance of unbearable suffering, for the purpose of inaugurating an entirely new order in human life. The movie, like the gospels, is unmistakable in setting this meaning before our eyes. It is, somehow, our sins for which Jesus is dying.

The Passion of Jesus Christ is not a drama about ethnicity. It is about our humanity. The hero of this movie is Jewish, his mother is Jewish, his apostles and followers are Jewish. But one misses the whole point of the Passion of Jesus unless one sees that he submitted to his suffering for all of us.

Countless Jews of faith work closely with, are neighbors of, or are friends with, non-Jews. And while the Torah clearly identifies the Jews as God's "chosen nation," and imposes upon them special obligations befitting that status, at the same time Jewish tradition clearly regards non-Jews as created as well "in God's image" and as full partners in humanity, as per the Talmudic assertion that meaningful lives and the World-to-Come are the potential provinces of all people.

What is more, while Judaism neither demands nor seeks converts, any non-Jew who is truly willing and ready to undertake observance of the Torah's laws can, according to the Torah itself, join the Jewish people. How objectionable, in the end, can an "exclusive club" be if anyone at all can join it by sheer force of will?

There may well be prejudiced people within the religious Jewish world, as there are among all communities, but they are not representative of that world. In fact, the Jewish religious imperative of "darkei shalom -- the ways of peace" mandates exemplary behavior toward all humankind.

And yet, all the same, it is certainly true: observant Jews do not choose non-Jews as spouses and want all Jews to marry other Jews.

How can that be understood?

Well, for starters, it needn't be. Judaism is a religion of laws, some of which are understandable and others puzzling. Like eating pork or creating fire on the Sabbath, intermarriage is prohibited by the Torah, period.

Leaving aside, though, the religious component, is Jewish support for Jewish in-marriage really beyond comprehension?

[Originally posted: October 30, 2003]

SENSE ISN'T RATIONAL:

The search for God within reason (Michael Gerson, March 21, 2008, Minneapolis Star-Tribune)

In a flood of bestsellers by skeptics and atheists charging a nonexistent God with crimes against humanity, Timothy Keller stands out as an effective counterpoint and as a defender of the faith. His new book, "The Reason for God," makes a tight, accessible case for reasoned religious belief. [...]

A centerpiece argument of Keller's response might be called the myth of secular neutrality. "Skeptics argue that they have the intellectual high ground," he says, "but they are really making assumptions as well." An absolute doubt -- claiming that all truth is culturally conditioned -- can work only if it exempts itself from doubt and assumes the cultural superiority of rationalism. Raging against evil and suffering in the world assumes a moral standard of good and evil that naturalism cannot provide. Keller argues that the main criticisms of religion require "blind faith" of their own, and he urges people to begin by doubting their doubts.

But while Keller argues that all worldviews contain assumptions of faith, reason is not futile. It may not provide proof, but it does provide clues. The fundamental regularities of the universe that improbably favor life; the artistic beauty that reaches beyond materialism; the sense of love and duty that seems so much more than evolutionary instinct -- Keller argues that only theism explains our lived experience and deepest desires: "God is the only thing that makes sense of what we love."

At the center of his book is an interesting case study: human rights. Some skeptics argue that the universe is an empty, impersonal void -- that life has no meaning or value beyond its material makeup -- and yet they try to maintain the importance of human dignity as if still living in a world of meaning and justice. "If morality is relative," Keller asks, "why isn't social justice as well?" Why isn't the rule of the strong -- the clear teaching of nature -- just as valid as a belief in the rights of the weak? A materialist, Keller argues, can only respond with sentiment.

WHILE MAVERICK FOLLOWS THE SANE UNCLE:

McCain's pastor a sharp contrast to Obama's (Ed Stoddard, 3/22/08, Reuters)

John McCain's Phoenix pastor, Dan Yeary, is a folksy patriotic Southern Baptist who opposes abortion and believes homosexuality to be a biblical sin, but says Christians have an obligation to love such sinners.

That puts Yeary, who heads the church attended for the past 15 years by the Republican presidential candidate firmly in the U.S. Southern Baptist mainstream, and in line with the Republican Party.

He offers a sharp contrast to Democratic contender Barack Obama's former preacher Jeremiah Wright, who has stirred controversy with his fiery comments on race and America. [...]

Yeary, pastor for the 7,000-member North Phoenix Baptist Church, professes little interest in politics and prefers to focus on preaching and spiritual guidance. But McCain's affiliation with Yeary will do him no harm in wooing support from the key Republican base of evangelical Christians.

THERE IS NO CHINA:

Kosovo, Taiwan, Tibet rattle China (Wen Liao, Mar 23, 2008, Taipei Times)

Why is China behaving as it is in Tibet? What makes Tibet so important to the government in Beijing? At the heart of the matter is the fact that nothing worries China's rulers more than when the country's unity is called into question. And nothing makes them more anxious than their fear that a regional dispute might, if not brought to an end quickly, steamroll into national disintegration.

Kosovo's recent declaration of independence sharpened the Chinese government's anxieties over the protests in Tibet. Although supporters of Kosovo's independence argue that it sets no international precedent, China's rulers fear otherwise. Moreover, Taiwan's presidential election has further ratcheted up the tension for China's government.

It may sound strange to the outside world that China, which has known nothing but economic success for three decades, should feel its unity to be so fragile. But China's history, both ancient and modern, suggests that there is nothing permanent or stable about the country's current unity.

WHICH IS WHY HE WON'T PICK A WHACKO FOR VP:

McCain Gains from Clinton-Obama Feud: Campaign Sniping Has More Democrats Saying They'll Vote McCain If Their Candidate Loses (JOHN COCHRAN, March 22, 2008, ABC News)

Polls now show words from both camps are causing serious damage. An increasing number of Clinton supporters say they would not vote for Obama in November and vice versa.

According to a new Franklin & Marshall College poll of Pennsylvania voters, only 53 percent of Clinton backers say they'll vote for Obama should he become the nominee. Nineteen percent say they'll vote for McCain and 13 percent say they won't vote, the poll found.

The poll said that 60 percent of Obama backers said they would go for Clinton should she win the nomination, with 20 percent opting for McCain, and 3 percent saying they wouldn't vote at all.

That's what ABC News found in talking to voters on the street.

"I think I'd have to vote for McCain," Laura Courson, New York woman who supports Clinton told ABC News, when asked what she would do if her candidate were not the Democrats' nominee.

"I'd have a hard time voting for Hillary Clinton in this election ... I might go for a third party candidate," said Kevin Mills, a Los Angeles man who supports Obama.

NOTHING COSTS MORE THAN IT USED TO...:

Even at Megastores, Hagglers Find No Price Is Set in Stone (MATT RICHTEL, 3/23/08, NY Times)

Shoppers are discovering an upside to the down economy. They are getting price breaks by reviving an age-old retail strategy: haggling.

A bargaining culture once confined largely to car showrooms and jewelry stores is taking root in major stores like Best Buy, Circuit City and Home Depot, as well as mom-and-pop operations.

Savvy consumers, empowered by the Internet and encouraged by a slowing economy, are finding that they can dicker on prices, not just on clearance items or big-ticket products like televisions but also on lower-cost goods like cameras, audio speakers, couches, rugs and even clothing.

HE'S OPENED QUITE A FARRAKHAN OF WORMS:

Barack Obama--Mentored by an anti-American, anti-Zionist Black Separatist (Edwin Black, March 17th 2008, The Cutting Edge)

In the end it was not the lies about his religion, but the truth about his religion that may have irrevocably splattered the image of Barack Obama. [...]

It is pivotal to understand that Obama’s potentially insurmountable problem is not about his mere membership in Pastor Wright’s Trinity Church, an affiliate of the nationally diverse United Church of Christ. Obama’s problem is the deep-vein mentoring with Pastor Wright himself. Obama was not just sitting in the pews for twenty years. The two men were and are tight--very tight.

It was Wright’s charismatic "in your face" African-American activism that first brought unaffiliated, young twenty-something Chicago neighborhood organizer Obama into the Trinity Church as a practicing Christian in the eighties. Obama became a regular attendee and took Wright’s inspiration with him when away. While at Harvard studying law, Obama morally tutored himself with tapes of Wright’s fiery lectures.

Wright was a moving force in Obama’s family as well. Pastor Wright married Obama to his wife, Michelle, and baptized their two children. The Pastor’s provocative sermon, "The Audacity of Hope," gave Obama the title for his bestselling book of the same name. Obama even huddled with his Pastor for spiritual guidance just before announcing his presidential bid. Wright was given a prominent advisory role in the campaign. Wright is more than an arms-length acquaintance. The Pastor is precisely the mentor and close personal advisor Obama has long declared him to be.

Wright explains, "When the Black radical liberals want support, they come to the Black church because they know we have the numbers. We pack the buses. Fifty buses with 50 people. For example, the Black church sent hundreds of men to the Million Man March."

It seems too late for Obama to distance himself or condemn the recently broadcast bigotry of Wright. The real question is how a man described by many as a leading anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-white agitator became Obama’s closest mentor for two decades?

THE BALD OBAMA:

NIXONLAND: AN UNPOPULAR WAR, AN ECONOMY IN THE DUMPS, A PRESIDENT WITH LOW APPROVAL RATINGS, HIS OPPONENT REVITALIZING HIS BASE: HOW DID THE DEMOCRATS LOSE IN 1972, AND BY A HISTORIC MARGIN? (RICK PERLSTEIN, BookForum)

The next day, the business was voting on platform resolutions. McGovern operatives begged the women’s and gay liberationists to drop their demand for floor votes on their planks to moderate the Democrats’ image for TV. These operatives ruefully discovered that political purists could also act like ward bosses, extracting their own pounds of flesh. The gays reminded them of how McGovern would not have won the coveted spot at the top of the California primary ballot if it weren’t for a last-minute signature drive in the gay bars of the Castro by the Alice B. Toklas Memorial Democratic Club. “We do not come to you pleading for your understanding or pleading for your tolerance,” San Francisco delegate Jim Foster pronounced during his ten minutes. “We come to you affirming our pride in our lifestyle, affirming validity to seek and maintain meaningful emotional relationships, and affirming our right to participate in the life of this country on an equal basis with every citizen.”

The TV lights made his light-colored linen jacket with its patchwork of thick lines look particularly garish. Then delegate Kathleen Wilch of Ohio went to the podium on behalf of McGovern. She asked delegates to vote against the gay rights plank: It would “commit the Democratic Party to seek repeal of all laws involving the protection of children from sexual approaches by adults” and force “repeal of all laws relating to prostitution, pandering, pimping”—and “commit this party to repeal many laws designed to protect the young, the innocent, and the weak.”

McGovern’s convention rejected gay rights in a landslide. Be that as it may, one week later, George Meany officially announced the AFL-CIO wouldn’t be endorsing a presidential candidate that year. At a steelworkers’ convention in September, he explained why: The “Democratic Party has been taken over by people named Jack who look like Jills and smell like johns.”

Then, the acrimonious battle over the abortion plank: “In matters relating to human reproduction each person’s right to privacy, freedom of choice, and individual conscience should be fully respected, consistent with relevant Supreme Court decisions.”

A “pro-choice” woman took the podium: “The freedom of all people to control their own fertility must be an essential human health right. . . . For the first time, 57 percent of all Americans believe abortion should be a decision between a woman and her physician.”

Then a “right-to-life” man spoke on “the slaughter of the most innocent whose right to live is not mentioned in the minority report.”

Then Shirley MacLaine spoke her piece in favor of her candidate’s position: equivocation. The subject should be “kept out of the political process,” she said, though delegates should “vote their conscience.” Some 250 McGovern floor whips raced once more up and down the aisles to defeat the plank, insisting Humphrey and Wallace supporters were conspiring to saddle McGovern with the “extremism” label to deny him the nomination. The plank lost by 472 votes. “Sisters vs. Sisters,” headlined the Washington Post the next morning: “Gloria Steinem’s usually controlled monotone quivered as she wept in rage, verbally attacked Gary Hart, and called McGovern strategists ‘bastards.’” The paper also quoted a pro-choice Humphrey supporter: “I resent the McGovern people who say he is so pure. One of the reasons so many women supported him six months ago was because they thought he was liberal on abortion.”

The New Politics reformers had fantasized a pure politics, a politics of unyielding principle—an antipolitics. But in the real world, politics without equivocation or compromise is impossible. Thus an unintended consequence for the would-be antipolitician. Announcing one’s inflexibility sabotages him in advance. Every time he makes a political decision, he looks like a sellout. The reformers fantasized an open politics, in which all points of view had time to be heard. That meant that the Tuesday session adjourned eleven hours after it began, at 6:15 am—a fortunate thing, coolheaded Democratic strategists decided, terrified over what this all looked like on TV.

• • • • •

On nomination day, Humphrey officially announced his withdrawal. George McGovern, whose campaign had once been such a long shot the network camera crews called his campaign bus the “morgue patrol,” would be the Democrats’ nominee for president.

Just as in 1968, McGovern was nominated by Connecticut senator Abe Ribicoff. During lulls in the roll call, the band played the theme from the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar. He was put over the top by one of Dick Daley’s friends, who even announced that his delegation was endorsing the latest liberal crusade: boycotting lettuce in solidarity with Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers. McGovern’s tally was 1,864.95 to slightly over 1,000 for everyone else combined. The regulars fell into line. That was what regulars did. “There are two reasons that we are going to win this election,” boomed Oklahoma’s Carl Albert, the man who had done Mayor Daley’s bidding at the podium in 1968 in Chicago. “One is—George McGovern! The other is—Richard Nixon!”

The contenders dutifully stood hands raised together as the balloons dropped: Muskie, Chisholm, Scoop Jackson, Humphrey, who was flashing peace signs. But the 250 McGovern floor managers weren’t able to whip up the traditional resolution to make the nomination unanimous—something even Barry Goldwater had been able to manage. Too much water under the bridge for that. One hippie’s sign during the celebratory demonstration read simply mcgovern sucks! Another, a black man’s, said don’t vote ’72!

George McGovern was learning what a mess of pottage a presidential nomination could be when your defining trait was supposed to be your purity.

HMMMM, MUSTARD...:

Pope to baptize one of Italy's most prominent Muslims at Easter vigil service (The Associated Press, March 22, 2008)

The Vatican says Italy's most prominent Muslim commentator is converting to Catholicism by being baptized by the pope at an Easter vigil.

Magdi Allam is the deputy editor of the Corriere della Sera newspaper and writes often on Muslim and Arab affairs. He was born in Egypt and has long spoken out against extremism and in favor of tolerance.

IN FAIRNESS...:

Post ‘Post-Racial Candidate’: Things get out-of-his-tree flown-the-coop nuts on the campaign trail. (Mark Steyn, 3/22/08, National Review)

Unlike Bill Clinton, whose legions of “spiritual advisers” at the height of his Monica troubles outnumbered the U.S. diplomatic corps, Senator Obama has had just one spiritual adviser his entire adult life: the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, two-decade pastor to the president presumptive. The Reverend Wright believes that AIDs was created by the government of the United States — and not as a cure for the common cold that went tragically awry and had to be covered up by Karl Rove, but for the explicit purpose of killing millions of its own citizens. The government has never come clean about this, but the Reverend Wright knows the truth. “The government lied,” he told his flock, “about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government lied.”

Does he really believe this? If so, he’s crazy, and no sane person would sit through his gibberish, certainly not for 20 years.

Or is he just saying it? In which case, he’s profoundly wicked. If you understand that AIDs is spread by sexual promiscuity and drug use, you’ll know that it’s within your power to protect yourself from the disease. If you’re told that it’s just whitey’s latest cunning plot to stick it to you, well, hey, it’s out of your hands, nothing to do with you or your behavior.

WHO DO THEY THINK THEY ARE, THE IRISH?:

Upscale Latinos find a home: Once known for its Quaker past and links to Richard Nixon, Whittier is coming to symbolize a new set of aspirations. (Hector Becerra, 3/22/08, Los Angeles Times)

Decades before the couple bought the 12,500-square-foot home, back when it was still the old Reilly estate, Whittier's most famous resident, Richard Nixon, attended social events in some of these rooms. When it was built in 1927, the mansion represented everything Whittier aspired to. John B. Reilly was a powerful local Republican, an oilman who years later helped Nixon make his first run for political office. When he became president, Nixon provided one of Reilly's daughters with a Cabinet position.

Now the Reilly estate has become the Zapanta estate, and it stands as a monument to a new set of aspirations.

The Zapantas are fourth-generation Mexican Americans from East Los Angeles, part of a wave of doctors and lawyers, small-business owners and school administrators who are remaking Whittier into a center of upper-middle- class and upper-class Latino life in Southern California.

Like Reilly years before, the Zapantas host political events at the spacious mansion. But their preferred candidates are Latino Democrats. They have held two fundraisers for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and one for former presidential candidate Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico. Once a year, they offer tours of their vast collection of Mexican art.

The last U.S. census counted Whittier's population at 83,838. Latinos constituted 23% of Whittier residents in 1980; they were 56% as of 2000 and that number is presumed to be more than 60% by now.

The city's neighborhoods reflect a range of economic levels, with working-class and middle-class residents tending to live in the flatlands and the affluent higher in the hills.

WINNING THE WoT:

Colombia's Rebels Face Possibility of Implosion: Chief Threat Not Deaths, but Desertion (Juan Forero, 3/22/08, Washington Post)

The slaying this month of Manuel Jesús Muñoz, a member of the ruling directorate of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, was a dramatic signal that a rebel group known for its resilience is engulfed in an internal crisis that could lead to its implosion after four decades of armed struggle.

In a country where most people cannot remember a time of peace, Colombians are for the first time raising the possibility that a guerrilla group once thought invincible could be forced into peace negotiations or even defeated militarily.

Weakened by infiltrators and facing constant combat and aerial bombardment, the insurgency is losing members in record numbers. The FARC, as the group is known, lost 1,583 fighters in combat last year, its columns are plagued by command-and-control problems, and popular support is evaporating, the government of President Álvaro Uribe says.

Since 2000, the Uribe administration has received $5 billion in U.S. aid, mostly for military and anti-drug programs -- more than any other government outside the Middle East.

DOES ANYONE THINK...:

When "a Custodian of Freedom" is the Perpetrator of Ethnic Cleansing (Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban, 3/22/08, Asharq Alawasat)

Only few weeks after the apology of Kevin Rudd, the newly elected Prime Minister of Australia, to the Aborigines, the indigenous inhabitants of Australia, he was party to a motion in Parliament describing Israel as a "robust democracy" and a "custodian of freedom" in a region abounding in autocracies and theocracies!

Opposition Liberal party leader Brendan Nelson said that in a region "characterized more by theocracies and autocracies, Israel is the custodian of the most powerful of human emotions – that is hopeful belief in the freedom of man, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of assembly ".

All this was expressed in the aftermath of Israeli Killing of over 130 Palestinians in Gaza, 39 of them were children, and 12 women and the rest were young men in their twenties aspiring to live in peace and dignity on their own land. The question that came to mind upon reading the disappointing news of the motion in the Australian Parliament was whether Kevin Rudd and his colleagues want to wait for 200 years to apologize from the Palestinians as they apologized from the aborigines, but only when it becomes too late and almost of no value to a people and culture who have been almost completely destroyed.

HOW CAN HE BE TRANSCENDANT...:

Will Wright Damage Obama's Millennial Support? (Michael Barone, 3/22/08, Real Clear Politics)

In a brilliantly well-timed new book, "Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube and the Future of American Politics," Democratic Party veteran Morley Winograd and media researcher Michael Hais explain how this generation, with the highest percentages of blacks, Latinos and Asians in American history, doesn't care much for racial divisions and relies for news and advice on networks of friends and peers.

A newspaper story on Obama's pastor is not going to affect their view of him -- they don't read newspapers except when a friend emails a link to a newspaper Website. A YouTube video is another thing. The Wright videos -- angry when Obama is soothing, racially divisive when Obama is inclusive, anti-American when Obama proclaims a new generation's version of patriotism -- are something else.

You can see in the national polls over the week before Obama's March 18 speech a decline in his favorable ratings, and a decline in his showing against John McCain and Hillary Clinton. The hypothesis forms that he has been losing to some extent the support and to a more important extent the enthusiasm of Millennial voters. [...]

Readers of Obama's gracefully written autobiography, "Dreams of My Father," have been surprised to find that it is the story of a young man who wants to embrace rather than transcend his blackness. Joining Wright's church was part of that embrace.

And observers of Obama's political career will note that joining that church gave Obama political connections in the all-black South Side that he lacked as guy who arrived in Chicago from Columbia and Harvard Law, and gravitated to the mostly white university community in Hyde Park. The 76 percent black state Senate seat he won in 1996 (after getting his opponents' names removed from the ballot) included Hyde Park, but most of its voters were on the all-black South Side.

So is Obama a transcendent leader or just another politician? Millennials who have fervently believed he is the first may, after watching Wright on YouTube, wonder whether they have been wrong.

50-0 FILES:

Who'd be McCain's vice president?: Everyone's watching as the Republican decides -- a conservative, or someone with broader appeal? (Maeve Reston, 3/22/08, Los Angeles Times)

Several charismatic governors with close ties to McCain are getting attention as well: Charlie Crist of Florida, Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and South Carolina's Sanford.

Reed predicted Crist is likely to be "on McCain's short list of three or four." With approval ratings topping 70%, he "would about put a nail in it for the general election" by helping McCain win Florida, Reed said.

Crist, 51, styled himself as "the people's governor" after winning a tough-on-crime reputation in the Florida Legislature and serving as the state's attorney general and education commissioner. His last-minute endorsement is widely credited with helping McCain win the Florida primary.

"He's got the credentials in a lot of key policy areas," said Susan MacManus, a political science professor at the University of South Florida. Crist, she said, is a fiscal conservative who is "very populist, people-oriented, kind of a sunny personality -- it's probably a nice complement to McCain."

But, MacManus noted, he is viewed with suspicion in some conservative circles in Florida because of his views on abortion and his support for civil unions and for the expansion of stem cell research. Crist ran campaign ads in 2006 casting himself as "pro-life"; several Florida newspapers have reported that he does not support overturning Roe vs. Wade. His spokeswoman did not return e-mails seeking clarification on this position.

Pawlenty, 47, is an early McCain supporter who won the Minnesota governorship in 2002, after saying that the Republican Party should represent "Sam's Club, not just the country club." His unassuming demeanor -- he likes to play in pickup hockey games as he travels around the state -- and commitment to fiscal restraint have led to strong approval ratings.

University of Minnesota political science professor Lawrence Jacobs said Pawlenty was "one of the most capable politicians for presenting himself as reasonable and likable." He won accolades in his party by taking a no-tax pledge when he ran in 2002 (though he did not repeat the pledge last cycle) and has vetoed a number of popular bills, including a recent transportation bill because of his opposition to tax hikes, Jacobs said.

"He's battling the Legislature and yet his approval ratings are pretty strong," Jacobs said.

Pawlenty will host the Republican convention in the Twin Cities later this year, but Jacobs and others have questioned whether the governor would be able to deliver Minnesota for McCain in November.

WASN'T HE GOING TO BRING US A WORLD WITHOUT HATE?:

Obama aide: Bill Clinton like McCarthy (MATT APUZZO, 3/21/08, Associated Press)

"I think it would be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country," Clinton said. "And people could actually ask themselves who is right on these issues, instead of all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics."

[Merrill "Tony" McPeak, a former chief of staff of the Air Force and currently a co-chair of Obama's presidential campaign] learned of the remarks while at an Obama rally in Salem, Ore. Afterward, he called Clinton's statement horrible and compared it to McCarthy, the Republican senator from Wisconsin who held hearings on suspected Communist sympathizers in the 1950s.

"It sounds more like McCarthy," McPeak said. "I grew up, I was going to college when Joe McCarthy was accusing good Americans of being traitors, so I've had enough of it."

The Obama campaign used the recently released Clinton White House schedules to argue that the New York senator has not been forthcoming about her role in the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, while the former first lady’s camp accused Obama of hypocrisy on the NAFTA issue.

Phil Singer, a Clinton spokesman, countered that Obama displayed “a lot of chutzpah” by saying that Clinton was not honest about her role in NAFTA in the mid-1990s after accounts surfaced earlier this month that a senior Obama adviser had told Canadian officials that the Illinois senator’s tough talk on the controversial trade agreement was just political posturing.

At the same time, Bill Burton, an Obama spokesman, cited polling data in a morning memo, suggesting that voters do not view Clinton as an honest politician but that they do view presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) as relatively trustworthy.

“Honesty is a crucial metric in this race because the Democratic nominee is going to be running against John McCain, who is viewed by voters as one of the most trustworthy politicians in America,” Burton wrote.

FLAMBOYANT JUNK:

WOULD YOU LET THIS MAN INTERVIEW YOU?: If the answer is yes, you might wind up feeling like the defendant at a murder trial. The man is Howard Cosell, a nasal-voiced ex-lawyer who is quick to let you know he is the best sportscaster around (Myron Cope, 3/13/67, Sports Illustrated)

"You've got to treat Howard the way he treats you," says Columnist Dick Young of the New York Daily News. "You've got to throw his flamboyant junk back in his face. He asks better questions than the other radio and TV interviewers, but he hokes up his questions so that actually they sound better than they are. 'Now, truthfully'—it's always 'truthfully,' as if it's a question the guy on the other end has been ducking—'people insist that you'—people don't say it, they insist it—'that you cannot take a punch, Muhammad Ali. Now, truthfully, can you take a punch?' " The Cosell manner, observes Larry Merchant of the New York Post, manages "to make the world of fun and games sound like the Nuremberg trials."

Meanwhile, brimming with editorial comment, Cosell has gone after Casey Stengel and George Weiss, the New York Giants and NCAA football, Floyd Patterson and the sporting press, and all varieties of commissioners and leagues. Though ABC's New York radio outlet carries the Jets' games, he campaigned vigorously last fall against Jet Coach Weeb Ewbank, whom he dismisses as "passé." In short, Cosell has traveled a course hardly calculated to take him to the goal that practically all sportscasters covet: a play-by-play assignment. He could not care less. "I'm a personality," he specifies. "With rare exceptions, they don't make them that way in the sports business anymore."

THE HAUNTING:

Unseen Hands on My Game (Rick Reilly, 8/17/87, Sports Illustrated)

How shall I put this? right in front of me, right in front of my disbelieving eyes, on a dark staircase, in an ancient castle, maybe half a dozen fire snorts from the Loch Ness Monster itself, in the remote reaches of Scotland, there was—and I can just tell you're not going to go for this—an apparition...a ghost...a person of the undead persuasion...a ceased-to-be individual AWOL from the grave...a poltergeist on the wrong side of the television set...a soul with a serious case of unrest. I swear on my first communion medal that this is true.

And, right away, do you know what went through my head? What went through my head was, Well, they told me Royal Dornoch is a haunting place, but this is ridiculous.

I suppose this needs some explaining. I mean that the people who told me to come to Dornoch had called it haunting, as in unforgettably beautiful, which it was—and is. But I didn't know they also meant haunting, as in a certain real estate listing in Amityville haunting. Haunting, as in Kathy, the maid on the fourth floor at the Dornoch Castle Hotel, where I was staying and where I was now, once feeling somebody tugging on the back of her sweater and then turning around to find nobody there. Haunting, as in a certain Andrew MacCormack unexpectedly checking in at the hotel one night, which was a mite strange, considering that Andy had been hanged for stealing sheep 150 years before. Not only that, but while playing one day at the Royal Dornoch Golf Club—which was the reason I had gone there in the first place—I five-putted the 4th green, and I'm quite sure mine weren't the only hands on the putter, if you get my drift.

Then again—and this tells you a lot about Dornoch—I thought, for the privilege of playing legendary Dornoch, perhaps some things have to be endured, and sharing my lodgings with a few frequent fliers from the 19th century was one of them.

NICE TO SEE YA':

BLUE-COLLAR COACH IN A BUTTON-DOWN LEAGUE: Pete Carril looks dumpy, smokes stogies and hangs around a seedy bar, but with a 190-81 basketball record at Princeton, he does not need an Ivy image (Kent Hannon, 1/02/78, Sports Illustrated)

Billy Omeltchenko tells the story best, although any of his teammates seated around a table at The Pub, Princeton's on-campus watering hole, could relate a similar encounter. This one took place several years ago when Omeltchenko, now a starting guard on the Princeton basketball team, was a senior at Great Neck (N.Y.) North High School and was being recruited by a few colleges in the East.

"One night I was told that Pete Carril, the Princeton coach, would be in the stands to watch me play," Omeltchenko recalls. "During the game I noticed this bald little man lying down on the bleachers with his head propped up on one elbow. He looked like a bum. He was wearing gray corduroys with suspenders and Hush Puppies with white socks, and he was sucking on a cigar butt that was maybe an inch long. After the game, my coach came by my locker and said, 'Billy, I want you to meet Coach Carril.' And it was him, the guy in the bleachers! I mean, he looked like Columbo. I didn't see how he could be from Princeton. He said, 'Nice to see ya, nice to see ya,' and then spent the next 20 minutes tearing my game apart. I couldn't get over him. He was wonderful. So here I am at Princeton, paying $6,500 a year to play basketball for him."

Omeltchenko's recruiting tale describes the predicament that Pete Carril finds himself in while trying to foster winning basketball at a rich man's school. It also hints at how he has gone about assembling such successful teams as his present group, which is attempting to make the Tigers the stingiest defensive team in the nation for the third season in a row and which will be aiming for Princeton's third straight Ivy League championship when conference play begins this week.

WHY SHOULD WE LET THAT GET IN THE WAY OF OUR FUN?:

The Clinton myth (Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen, March 21, 2008, Politico)

One big fact has largely been lost in the recent coverage of the Democratic presidential race: Hillary Rodham Clinton has virtually no chance of winning.

Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates. That means the only way she wins is if Democratic superdelegates are ready to risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party’s most reliable constituency.

Unless Clinton is able to at least win the primary popular vote — which also would take nothing less than an electoral miracle — and use that achievement to pressure superdelegates, she has only one scenario for victory. An African-American opponent and his backers would be told that, even though he won the contest with voters, the prize is going to someone else.

People who think that scenario is even remotely likely are living on another planet.

YEAH, BUT...:

Obama's church pushes controversial doctrines (Margaret Talev, 3/20/08 McClatchy Newspapers)

Jesus is black. Merging Marxism with Christian Gospel may show the way to a better tomorrow. The white church in America is the Antichrist because it supported slavery and segregation.

Those are some of the more provocative doctrines that animate the theology at the core of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Barack Obama's church. [...]

Wright, who hasn't been giving interviews since the controversy broke, told conservative TV talk-show host Sean Hannity last year that Trinity's black value system also had parallels to the liberation theology of laypeople in Nicaragua three decades ago. There, liberation theology became associated with Marxist revolution and the Sandinistas, and split the Roman Catholic Church. [...]

[James Cone, who founded the modern black liberation theology movement] stands by his message, and sometimes Obama echoes it.

Consider this passage: "Hope is the expectation of that which is not. It is the belief that the impossible is possible, the 'not yet' is coming in history."

Those words sound as if they were pulled from Obama's latest campaign speech. Instead, they're from a memoir Cone wrote in the 1980s. In it, Cone said blacks shouldn't limit their hope to what the Republican and Democratic parties stand for. Then he posited a thought that voters are unlikely to hear from Obama:

"Together, black religion and Marxist philosophy may show us the way to build a completely new society."

A SENSE OF WHERE WE WERE:

A WHOLE TEAM TOUCHED BY STARDUST: Led by marvelous Bill Bradley, Princeton routed the East's best and swept on to the finals of the national basketball championship in Portland where, still the underdog, it faces Michigan and then, hopefully, UCLA (Frank Deford, March 22, 1965, Sports Illustrated)

Never has a group of poor little rich boys been so popular as the Princeton basketball team that won the Eastern Regional title of the NCAA tournament last Saturday. Princeton has not been such a national threat since Aaron Burr, class of 1772, very nearly set up his own empire in the Middle West. But there the Tigers were in College Park, Md., beating North Carolina State 66-48 and absolutely ruining Providence, the fourth-ranked team in the nation, 109-69.

Bill Bradley was magnificent. He made 14 of 20 shots, all 13 of his free throws—41 points—and he had nine assists and 10 rebounds. "I'll just tell them that he's the greatest that ever lived," said Tom Jorgenson, who was scouting for Michigan, "because they won't believe anything else I tell them." (Michigan won its regional title and will meet Princeton on Friday in Portland for the eastern championship. It is the first time in 21 years that an Ivy League team has gone so far in the NCAAs, and no Ivy team has ever won. Defending champion UCLA and Wichita will also meet Friday for the western title. The grand final is Saturday.)

Suddenly the adoration of Bradley has spread to embrace the whole Princeton team, and the Tigers are the darlings of college basketball. In New York even Notre Dame's famous subway alumni were, temporarily, diverting their allegiance to Princeton. The normally blasé Princeton student body showed up 1,000 strong to welcome the team back to the campus.

And it was the whole team that everyone was cheering. It was the whole Princeton team that shot 68.3% against Providence (while Bradley shot 70%) and 72.7% in the second half. In one stretch the Tigers went 12 minutes without missing a shot—14 straight from the floor and the free-throw line. They outrebounded the Friars, they outdefensed them, outran them when that was the game and patiently destroyed the strong Providence combination defense when things slowed down. By his presence Bradley makes all of this possible, because the opposition must concentrate on him, but never before had his teammates been so skillful at capitalizing on this advantage.

SO, INSTEAD OF COMPLIMENTING THEM ALL THE TIME...:

Depressed women crave 'sexual intimacy' (Bonnie Malkin, 21/03/2008, Daily Telegraph)

Depressed women have more sex than those who are happier because intercourse makes them feel secure, a study claims.

Women suffering from mild to moderate depression have a third more sex, regardless of whether they are in a relationship or not, according to the survey of more than 100 Australians.

They also have more sexually liberated attitudes, a bigger variety of sexual experiences and, if single, are more likely to partake in casual sex.

THEY'RE GOVERNMENT BUREAUCRATS...

All three presidential candidates had passport files breached (SacBee, March 21, 2008)

State Department employees inappropriately examined the passport files of Democratic Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republican candidate Sen. John McCain, a security breach that forced Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to apologize to Obama.

"CONSTITUENT SERVICES"?:

Paterson: Campaign 'Might Have' Paid for Hotel Tryst (Robin Shulman, 3/21/08, Washington Post)

In the latest revelation of a series of gubernatorial sex scandals, Gov. David A. Paterson has admitted he might have billed a hotel tryst with his lover to his campaign, listing the expenditure as "constituent services."

The New York Daily News reported today that Paterson occasionally used campaign funds to cover personal expenses and misreported the purpose of that spending. The newspaper said he generally reimbursed the campaign for those charges.

But Paterson acknowledged in an interview with the Daily News that he might not have reimbursed at least one payment.

The Daily News also found that in 2002, Paterson's campaign paid $500 for "professional services" to Lila Kirton, 49, a high-ranking state employee with whom Paterson had an extramarital affair.

YOUTUBE IS STILL JUST A NICHE:

Reverend Who?: With Obama in West Virginia. (Byron York, 3/21/08, National Review)

“We need change, that’s what I believe in,” a young woman named Melissa tells me.

“What about all the stuff with his pastor?” I ask.

“The what?”

“You know — the news about the controversial things his pastor said.”

“I haven’t heard much about it,” Melissa says. “That’s not a good question for me.”

“I don’t know much about it,” says a young man named Nick. “I’ve just been hearing about it from people who aren’t supporters, so I don’t have any idea.”

Others seem to have stronger opinions. “I don’t think everybody who goes to one church has the exact same views as everyone else who goes to that church,” a young man named Paul tells me. “He doesn’t have any control over what his former pastor said.”

By the way, I ask, what was your reaction when you saw those video clips of Rev. Wright’s sermons?

“I didn’t see what he said,” Paul answers. “What did he say?”

It might seem farfetched to the media types who are consumed by Wright-gate, but perhaps Obama’s hope in West Virginia, which has its primary on May 13 and will award 39 Democratic delegates, lies in the possibility that a lot of voters simply haven’t heard of all the fuss about Rev. Wright.

YOU EVER TRY KEEPING UP WITH CURRENT EVENTS WHEN YOU'RE A CORPSE IN A CAVE?:

'Stale' bin Laden Tape Have Some Experts Questioning Strategy Behind the Message (AP, March 20, 2008)

A newly released Usama bin Laden audiotape labeled 'stale' by some terror experts has raised questions about whether his seemingly outdated message is really a strategy.

On the tape, released late Wednesday, bin Laden accuses Pope Benedict XVI of helping wage a "new Crusade" against Islam and warns of a "severe" reaction from Muslims to the publication of cartoons in Europe depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

Some analysts on Thursday were focusing less on what was said in the message than what wasn't. They said the apparent lack of references to events after 2006, such as the reprinting of controversial cartoons, which caused widespread rioting when they were first published by a Danish newspaper in 2005, and the absence of talk about the Iraq war indicate that bin Laden's message could have been recorded months, even years, ago. Bin Laden also made no mention of a soon-to-be released anti-Islam film, "Fitna," by Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders.

"The tape seems to be very generic," Neil Livingstone, a terrorism analyst, told FOX News. "It's rambling, it doesn't really have focus and it refers to this old issue that is rather stale right now — of the cartoons that were first published by a Danish newspaper and then published in other European cities.

MAY A MIGHTY OAK GROW:

U.S. congressional leader condemns crackdown in Tibet (The Associated Press, March 21, 2008)

House speaker Nancy Pelosi called on the world Friday to denounce China's crackdown of anti-government protests in Tibet, calling the crisis "a challenge to the conscience of the world."

Pelosi, one of the fiercest Congressional critics of China, was greeted by cheering Tibetans as she arrived to meet the Dalai Lama. She is the first major official to visit the leader of Tibet's exile community since peaceful protests turned violent last week in the Chinese-ruled region.

"If freedom loving people throughout the world do not speak out against China's oppression in China and Tibet, we have lost all moral authority to speak on behalf of human rights anywhere in the world," Pelosi said before a crowd of thousands of Tibetans, including monks and schoolchildren.

"The situation in Tibet is a challenge to the conscience of the world," she said.

ANOTHER PRIZE JUST CAME IN FOR THE NCAA CONTEST:

1858 by Bruce Chadwick (Source Books)

Highly recommended–a gripping narrative of the critical year of 1858 and the nation's slide toward disunion and war. Chadwick is especially adept at retelling the intense emotions of this critical time, particularly especially in recounting abolitionist opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act and Jefferson Davis's passionate defense of this institution. For readers seeking to understand how individuals are agents of historical change will find Chadwick's account of the failed leadership of President James Buchanan, especially compelling."

-G. Kurt Piehler, author of “Remembering War the American Way” and Associate Professor of History, The University of Tennessee

1858 explores the events and personalities of the year that would send the America’s North and South on a collision course culminating in the slaughter of 630,000 of the nation’s young men, a greater number than died in any other American conflict. The record of that year is told in seven separate stories, each participant, though unaware, is linked to the oncoming tragedy by the central, though ineffective, figure of that time, the man in the White House, President James Buchanan.

The seven figures who suddenly leap onto history’s stage and shape the great moments to come are: Jefferson Davis, who lived a life out of a Romantic novel, and who almost died from herpes simplex of the eye; the disgruntled Col. Robert E. Lee, who had to decide whether he would stay in the military or return to Virginia to run his family’s plantation; William Tecumseh Sherman, one of the great Union generals, who had been reduced to running a roadside food stand in Kansas; the uprising of eight abolitionists in Oberlin, Ohio, who freed a slave apprehended by slave catchers, and set off a fiery debate across America; a dramatic speech by New York Senator William Seward in Rochester, which foreshadowed the civil war and which seemed to solidify his hold on the 1860 Republican Presidential nomination; John Brown’s raid on a plantation in Missouri, where he freed several slaves, and marched them eleven hundred miles to Canada, to be followed a year later by his catastrophic attack on Harper’s Ferry; and finally, Illinois Senator Steven Douglas’ seven historic debates with little-known Abraham Lincoln in the Illinois Senate race, that would help bring the ambitious and determined Lincoln to the Presidency of the United States.

As these stories unfold, the reader learns how the country reluctantly stumbled towards that moment in April 1861 when the Southern army opened fire on Fort Sumter.

IN FAIRNESS TO MR. OBAMA...:

Two Questions for Senator Obama (Lanny Davis, 3/20/08, Real Clear Politics)

These two questions are:

1. If a white minister preached sermons to his congregation and had used the "N" word and used rhetoric and words similar to members of the KKK, would you support a Democratic presidential candidate who decided to continue to be a member of that congregation?

2. Would you support that candidate if, after knowing of or hearing those sermons, he or she still appointed that minister to serve on his or her "Religious Advisory Committee" of his or her presidential campaign?

OUTLASTING ANOTHER ONE:

Robert Mugabe grip on power rocked by surging opposition (Jan Raath, 3/21/08, Times of London)

With elections only eight days away, President Mugabe looks like being overwhelmed by a wave of support for the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai as the 84-year-old leader's grip on power falters.

Mr Tsvangirai's formidable backing in Zimbabwe's urban areas has been consolidated since the election campaign began five weeks ago and now, after a series of forays into the poverty-stricken rural areas where the ruling Zanu (PF) party has hitherto held control, it is clear that Mr Mugabe has a fight on his hands there, too.

On Wednesday Mr Tsvangirai pushed into Mashonaland West, Mr Mugabe's home province, to draw mostly large crowds of exultant peasants responding to his chant of chinja! - Shona for change - in a region where until very recently it would have been almost impossible for his faction of the Movement for Democratic Change to campaign.

ARE THEY TRYING TO PROVE THAT ABU GHRAIB WAS A NON SEQUITIR?:

Chain of Command: The Abu Ghraib scandal's leadership lattice (Mother Jones, March 20, 2008)

The accompanying chart and text argues against the very notion that commands were given or that there was leadership. They demonstrate pretty convincingly that it was just a case of abusive behavior by insufficiently supervised underlings.

NOTHING COSTS MORE...:

Retailers slash prices to boost Easter sales (Daily Telegraph, 21/03/2008)

Retailers are slashing prices in an attempt to beat the credit crunch, offering "unprecedented" Easter bargains.

Clothes, furniture and household and electrical goods will be cut by as much as 50 per cent.

Marks & Spencer is offering 30 per cent off furniture, while Matalan is offering 50 per cent off a range of clothes and household goods.
advertisement

An estimated £8 billion worth of sales are at stake in the week up to Easter Monday, according to the British Retail Consortium.

WHICH WAS THE POINT:

Sunni militia strike could derail US strategy against al-Qaida (Maggie O'Kane and Ian Black, March 21 2008, Guardian)

The success of the US "surge" strategy in Iraq may be under threat as Sunni militia employed by the US to fight al-Qaida are warning of a national strike because they are not being paid regularly.

Leading members of the 80,000-strong Sahwa, or awakening, councils have said they will stop fighting unless payment of their $10 a day (£5) wage is resumed. The fighters are accusing the US military of using them to clear al-Qaida militants from dangerous areas and then abandoning them.

50-0 FILES:

New Polls Show A Shifting US Presidential Race (Jim Malone, 20 March 2008, VOA News)

Some good news for Hillary Clinton in her battle with Barack Obama for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.

The latest Gallup poll has Clinton pulling ahead of Obama by a margin of 49 to 42 percent.

But there was also good news for the presumed Republican presidential nominee, Senator John McCain. The latest Reuters-Zogby poll shows McCain beating Obama by a margin of 46 to 40 percent, and defeating Clinton by a margin of 48 to 40 percent.

THE FOUNDERS DIDN'T FIGHT FOR OUR RIGHT TO CARRY ON BIG SHAMPOO BOTTLES:

Do Americans Care About Big Brother? (MASSIMO CALABRESI, 3/14/08, TIME)

Pity America's poor civil libertarians. In recent weeks, the papers have been full of stories about the warehousing of information on Americans by the National Security Agency, the interception of financial information by the CIA, the stripping of authority from a civilian intelligence oversight board by the White House, and the compilation of suspicious activity reports from banks by the Treasury Department. On Thursday, Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine released a report documenting continuing misuse of Patriot Act powers by the FBI. And to judge from the reaction in the country, nobody cares.

A quick tally of the record of civil liberties erosion in the United States since 9/11 suggests that the majority of Americans are ready to trade diminished privacy, and protection from search and seizure, in exchange for the promise of increased protection of their physical security. Polling consistently supports that conclusion, and Congress has largely behaved accordingly, granting increased leeway to law enforcement and the intelligence community to spy and collect data on Americans. Even when the White House, the FBI or the intelligence agencies have acted outside of laws protecting those rights — such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — the public has by and large shrugged and, through their elected representatives, suggested changing the laws to accommodate activities that may be in breach of them.

Civil libertarians are in a state of despair.

GET THAT MAN AN UMBRELLA:

Gordon Brown turns into Neville Chamberlain (Andrew Gimson, 18/03/2008, Daily Telegraph)

The mantle of Neville Chamberlain has descended with alarming speed on Gordon Brown.

The clinching detail was provided by Mr Brown himself, during his report on the European summit in Brussels, when he observed that "not to support the treaty will leave the Czechoslovakian people isolated".

Since Czechoslovakia ceased to exist 15 years ago, one imagines its people have been feeling isolated for quite some time.

Robert Goodwill (C, Scarborough and Whitby) reminded the House of Chamberlain's hapless reference to "that faraway country of which we know little", which appears also to be the present Prime Minister's conception of Czechoslovakia, indignantly though he insisted he had made "absolutely clear I was talking about the Czech Republic".

The slip means nothing in itself, but opens a train of thought which will be deeply unwelcome to Mr Brown.

For it suggests that like Chamberlain, he is a Treasury technocrat who has reached 10 Downing Street with little knowledge of foreign affairs, and with no gift for reading the intentions of the foreigners with whom he feels compelled to remain on friendly terms.

As with Chamberlain, Mr Brown's foreign policy consists of doing what the Establishment tells him.

IF THEY WERE WELL-ADJUSTED THEY WOULDN'T HATE GOD TO BEGIN WITH:

'Believers are happier than atheists' (Jonathan Petre, 18/03/2008, Daily Telegraph)

People who believe in God are happier than agnostics or atheists, researchers claimed yesterday.

A report found that religious people were better able to cope with disappointments such as unemployment or divorce than non-believers.

Moreover, they become even happier the more they pray and go to church, claims the study by Prof Andrew Clark and Dr Orsolya Lelkes.

NO ONE QUESTIONS WINSTON PARADING AROUND THE WHITE HOUSE NAKED:

Richard I slept with French king 'but not gay' (Nicole Martin, 18/03/2008, Daily Telegraph)

For 60 years academics have puzzled over the sexual orientation of Richard the Lionheart.

Theories that the English king was homosexual were first suggested in 1948, stemming from a night he spent in the same bed as Philip II, king of France.

But Prof John Gillingham, a former history professor at the London School of Economics, told the Radio Times: "The idea wasn't even mooted until 1948 and it stems from an official record announcing that, as a symbol of unity between the two countries, the kings of France and England had slept the night in the same bed.

"It was an accepted political act, nothing sexual about it; just two politicians literally getting into bed together, a bit like a modern-day photo opportunity."

IF YOU SPEND TOO MUCH TIME LISTENING TO THE CRAZIES...:

The forgotten war: Five years on, the impact of the Iraq war on Britain has been remarkably slight (Bagehot, Mar 19th 2008, The Economist)

A MILLION people marched in London. A million dinner parties were wrecked by violent rows. It was the most divisive issue Britain had known in decades, infinitely more controversial than it was at the time in America. Five years ago 46,000 British servicemen helped to overthrow Saddam Hussein; 4,100 soldiers are still in Iraq. Considering how schismatic the war felt then, and how badly it has gone since, it has made eerily little difference to Britain.

MORE:
War-ravaged Iraq city 'alive again': Fallouja has been rebuilt since the 2004 battles. Stores again are doing a brisk business, and the population is nearly back up to 300,000. (Tony Perry, March 21, 2008, LA Times)

The one-lane bridge over the Euphrates River where a mob hung the charred bodies of slain Americans four years ago is now a focal point in the revitalization of this war-ravaged city.

The Iraqi government and the U.S. plan to widen the pedestrian pathways on either side of the bridge so shoppers can stream into Fallouja's western neighborhood and buy food, clothing and other goods from stores that again line the streets of a city once given up for dead.

The comeback of Fallouja, the site of two major battles between Marines and insurgents in 2004, surprises even the most optimistic U.S. planners.

"It continues to outpace all expectations," said Navy Capt. John Dal Sant, part of a State Department-funded effort called the Provincial Reconstruction Team for Fallouja.

City Council leader Sheik Hamed Ahmed said that he was pleased with the city's progress but that he needed more generators for his neighborhood. Ahmed's three predecessors were assassinated by insurgents, but he has refused to back down.

"Fallouja is alive again," he said.

Restaurants, bakeries, photo shops, tire stores, Internet cafes, a body-building studio and other businesses line the avenues and side streets. BMWs share lanes with donkey carts on congested thoroughfares.

IT WOULD BE BIZARRE INDEED...:

Whitewashing the Second Amendment: As the Supreme Court reviews a historic gun-rights case, lost is the Second Amendment's controversial history—when it wasn't a bulwark against tyranny but a way of enforcing it." (Stephanie Mencimer, 3/20/08, Mother Jones)

Last week at an American Constitution Society briefing on the Heller case, NAACP Legal Defense Fund president John Payton explained the ugly history behind the gun lobby's favorite amendment. "That the Second Amendment was the last bulwark against the tyranny of the federal government is false," he said. Instead, the "well-regulated militias" cited in the Constitution almost certainly referred to state militias that were used to suppress slave insurrections. Payton explained that the founders added the Second Amendment in part to reassure southern states, such as Virginia, that the federal government wouldn’t use its new power to disarm state militias as a backdoor way of abolishing slavery.

This is pretty well-documented history, thanks to the work of Roger Williams School of Law professor Carl T. Bogus. In a 1998 law-review article based on a close analysis of James Madison’s original writings, Bogus explained the South’s obsession with militias during the ratification fights over the Constitution. “The militia remained the principal means of protecting the social order and preserving white control over an enormous black population,” Bogus writes. “Anything that might weaken this system presented the gravest of threats.” He goes on to document how anti-Federalists Patrick Henry and George Mason used the fear of slave rebellions as a way of drumming up opposition to the Constitution and how Madison eventually deployed the promise of the Second Amendment to placate Virginians and win their support for ratification.

Why guarantee a right to keep and bear arms within the government-regulated militia? The Constitution placed the militia under joint control of the federal and state governments. Previously, militia had been exclusively under state control. Southern anti-Federalists complained that the Constitution gave Congress the sole authority to arm the militia. Suppose, they asked, Congress did not do so, whether deliberately or from neglect? This raised two fears. One was that Congress would increasingly rely on a standing army, which made some nervous. The other was that without armed militia, the South would be vulnerable to slave revolts. Collective rights advocates believe the Second Amendment was written to ensure that the militia could always be armed, if not by Congress then by the states or the people themselves. [...]

To traditional conservatives, the idea that people should be armed to go to war with their own government is anathema. The father of traditional conservatism, Edmund Burke, railed against the French Revolution, in which the people took up arms against the government. Burke knew that once the rule of law was overthrown, tyranny writ large would be the people themselves. Long before the guillotine had chopped off a single head, Burke foresaw the chaos and blood, and nearly a decade before Napoleon's coup d'etat, he predicted that a charismatic military despot would rise to power. Traditional conservatives (and most liberals) believe the bulwarks against tyranny are constitutional democracy, separation of powers, an independent judiciary, freedom of speech and press — in short, not guns but the Constitution.

To understand what’s at stake, it helps to consider the differences between the American and French revolutions. Notwithstanding the oxymoronic sound of it, America’s break with England was a conservative revolution. Americans did not seek to radically alter their society. They were not fundamentally suspicious of government; they believed government was necessary to secure liberty. Nor were they even opposed to the British form of government, though they devised ways to improve upon it. They believed England’s government failed them because they were unrepresented in Parliament.

Americans undertook a revolution to preserve more than to destroy. Even though they went to war to secure independence, Americans never lost faith in ordered liberty. By contrast, as historian William Doyle puts it: “The initial impulse of the French Revolution was destructive. The revolutionaries wanted to abolish . . . the old or former order, the ancien rÉgime.” French revolutionaries sought liberty through violence — and came to romanticize violence. Some 16,000 were guillotined or otherwise executed during the Terror; another 150,000 died in factional fighting. [...]

In 1786, Shays Rebellion broke out in western Massachusetts. Complaining that the government had become tyrannical because courts were permitting creditors to seize their property to satisfy delinquent debts, a thousand small farmers and shop owners — armed with muskets — closed the courts and began to threaten the state government. Thomas Jefferson, then ambassador to France on the eve of the French Revolution, was momentarily swept away. In a letter to Madison, Jefferson remarked that “a little rebellion now and then is a good thing.”

Madison would have none of it. In his reply, Madison called Shays Rebellion “treason.” Massachusetts Gov. John Hancock raised an army to crush the rebellion. His action was endorsed not only by Madison but by Samuel Adams, John Jay, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and John Marshall.

In the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, backcountry farmers in Pennsylvania and Kentucky threatened tax collectors and otherwise used intimidation to obstruct collection of a federal tax on whiskey. They carried muskets and marched as militia under banners proclaiming “Liberty and Equality” and other slogans of the French Revolution. Washington said allowing such conduct would bring an “end to our Constitution & laws,” and he personally led 12,000 troops to extinguish the rebellion.

The Constitution is more than a legal document; it is the scripture of American political theology. The interpretation of the Second Amendment is about more than the government’s authority to regulate guns. It involves whether we choose to place our ultimate faith in constitutional structure or in guns.

MORE:
-The Most Mysterious Right: a review of Out of Range by Mark V. Tushnet (Cass R. Sunstein, November 12, 2007, New Republic)

Suppose that we are "textualists," in the sense that we believe that the Constitution must be construed in accordance with the natural meaning of its words. Honest textualists will have to agree that the Second Amendment is ambiguous, and that it could plausibly be interpreted in different ways. Stare at the words all you like, and you will hardly be able to be certain about which interpretation to choose. The legal scholar William Van Alstyne got it exactly right: "no provision in the Constitution causes one to stumble quite so much on a first reading, or second, or third reading."

Many textualists are also originalists, in the sense that they believe that the meaning of the text is settled by the original understanding of those who ratified it. Originalists would want to ascertain what the meaning of the Second Amendment was in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Was it understood to create individual rights or not? If it was understood to create individual rights, what are the permissible limits on those rights? Originalists would find the central interpretive issue easy if, at the time of ratification, everyone understood the Second Amendment to create an individual right to have guns. The issue would be equally easy if the words "well regulated militia" were understood as a qualification of the right, and if the Second Amendment were universally understood, in its context, to be an effort not to protect private gun owners but to immunize state militias from federal abolition. Originalists would also be interested in seeing if some other interpretation not immediately obvious to modern readers turned out to be the dominant one at the time. [...]

But to explore the original understanding of the Second Amendment is to enter an altogether different nation, whose central preoccupations were not at all like our own. In the founding era, many people were fearful of a standing army, and that fear was closely entangled with their support for the right to keep and bear arms. Indeed, it was the anti-Federalists-- skeptics about the proposed Constitution-- who were most insistent on the importance of the right to bear arms as a way of protecting state militias and thus checking the national government.

Some of those who wrote and endorsed the Constitution were highly ambivalent about those militias, and favored instead a national force, even a standing army. Charles Pinckney of South Carolina went so far as to say that he had little "faith in the militia." The Constitution itself represented a compromise between national and state control, and the document's advocates argued that the anti-Federalists were needlessly worried. In an important passage in The Federalist Papers, Madison argued that the fear of a standing army was baseless, on the ground that any such army would be badly outnumbered by "a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence." This passage is difficult to understand today. It is extremely hard to think our way back into a world in which standing armies seem a major threat to liberty and in which state militias are an indispensable safeguard.

Of course we have a National Guard, and states continue to authorize militias. About half of the states even maintain militias. But contemporary state militias are marginal institutions. (Do you know anyone who is in one? Do you know if your state has one?) No one thinks of them as important safeguards against the United States Army. In his impressive and illuminating book A Well- Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America, the historian Saul Cornell urges that if we really want to be faithful to the original understanding, we would have to recreate "the world of the minuteman," a "nightmare" in which states would require all Americans "to receive firearms training" and "to purchase their own military-style assault weapons."

To appreciate the centrality of state militias to the Second Amendment, consider an early draft of the amendment written by Madison: "A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; but no person religiously scrupulous shall be compelled to bear arms." And to see just how radically the nation has changed, pause over this question: if contemporary Americans were writing a new constitution, would any sane person suggest this language? Sure, we could imagine a proposed "right to keep and bear arms," but what are the rest of the words doing? Madison's draft is unmistakably focused on the military; without that focus, it would be senseless to follow the "right to keep and bear arms" with an exemption for those with religious scruples. If the ratified Second Amendment is substantively identical to Madison's draft, its core function might be (as suggested by Jack Rakove) merely to affirm "the essential proposition--or commonplace--that liberty fared better when republican polities relied upon a militia of citizen-soldiers for their defense, rather than risk the dire consequences of sustaining a permanent military establishment." Thus in the debate in the House of Representatives over what became the Second Amendment, Elbridge Gerry asked, "What, sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty."

Saul Cornell concludes that the "original understanding of the Second Amendment was neither an individual right of self-defense nor a collective right of the states, but rather a civic right that guaranteed that citizens would be able to keep and bear those arms needed to meet their obligation to participate in a well-regulated militia." And indeed, the very distinction between an "individual right" and a "collective right" seems foreign to the goals of those who ratified the Second Amendment. One of their central purposes was to declare a civic right that would also be part of a civic responsibility, founded in republican goals and connecting the role of citizen with the role of soldier. The anti-Federalists lost the key arguments, but they did think that the Second Amendment ensured that states could resist the national government, and this checking function did play a role in the founding debates.

REFORMATION FROM ABOVE:

Saudis to retrain 40,000 clerics (Magdi Abdlehadi, 3/21/08, BBC)

Saudi Arabia is to retrain its 40,000 prayer leaders - also known as imams - in an effort to counter militant Islam.

Details of the plan were revealed in the influential Saudi newspaper Al- Sharq al-Awsat.

The plan is part of a wider programme launched by the Saudi monarch a few years ago to encourage moderation and tolerance in Saudi society.

CHANNELING XTC?:

CAN'T LET NJ GOVERNORS GET ALL THE HEADLINES:

PATERSON GAL'S TAPE SHOCKER: OLYMPICS BABE BARES RECORDING & JOB 'HE GOT ME' (FREDRIC U. DICKER, 3/19/08, NY Post)

An attractive Olympic gold-medalist says she had a close personal relationship with Gov. Paterson earlier this year - during which time she recorded a series of secret telephone conversations with him.

Track-and-field athlete Diane Dixon, of Brooklyn, also told The Post that she had received a private message yesterday morning from Paterson, asking if she was speaking with the media.

Dixon, 43, said Paterson, 53, was "mostly responsible" for getting her a badly needed job earlier this month with the city Department of Education in Crown Heights' District 17.

SEE THE SIMILARITY?:

Obama Talks More About 'Typical White Person' Grandmother (Jake Tapper, March 20, 2008, ABC News: Political Punch)

In an interview with sports radio 610 WIP in Philly early this morning, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, said "the point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn't. But she is a typical white person, who, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know, well there's a reaction that's in our experiences that won't go away and can sometimes come out in the wrong way."

THE WAY:

Milkie Way Malt (Bon Appetit magazine)

2 1/2 cups vanilla bean ice cream

1/3 cup whole milk

1 tablespoon malted milk powder

1 tablespoon milk chocolate chips

1 tablespoon caramel sauce

Chocolate syrup

Malted milk balls, coarsely crushed

Put two 8-ounce glasses in freezer to chill. Combine first four ingredients and caramel sauce in blender; process on high until smooth, about 30 seconds. Squirt chocolate syrup and caramel sauce into both glasses; split milk mixture between glasses. Top with malted milk balls.

DIVISION OF LABOR:

Whatever Happened to Moqtada? (DAN SENOR and ROMAN MARTINEZ, March 20, 2008, Wall Street Journal)

The principal reason for Sadr's ability to augment his power during these years was the absence of security in Baghdad. This vacuum left the Shiite community completely vulnerable to an unrelenting wave of terror attacks from the Sunni insurgency and al Qaeda. With the U.S. Government's failure to engage in serious counterinsurgency and make it a priority to provide basic safety for Iraqi civilians, Sadr and his Mahdi militia moved quickly to fill the void.

As one Sadrist militant told the International Crisis Group last year: "The Mahdi Army's effort to conquer neighborhoods is highly sophisticated. It presents itself as protector of Shiites and recruits local residents to assist in this task. In so doing, it gains support from people who possess considerable information -- on where the Sunnis and Shiites are, on who backs and who opposes the Sadrists and so forth." By the end of 2006, U.S. military officials had concluded that sectarian violence by Shiite militants had surpassed al Qaeda and the insurgency as the principal threat to Iraqi stability.

In retrospect, that assessment marked the high point of Sadr's influence. While his empire had expanded, it had generated its own resentments. Ordinary citizens chafed at the harsh version of Islamic law imposed by Sadr's lieutenants, not to mention the corruption and brutality of functionaries manning checkpoints and patrolling the streets. Sadr's hold on the broader Shiite community was actually quite tenuous, cemented chiefly by fear of the insurgency and al Qaeda.

In 2007, the U.S. military shifted approach, putting in place for the first time a comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy backed by a surge of troops to support it. The new strategy paid large dividends against al Qaeda and Sunni insurgents, as attacks dropped to 2005 levels and Iraqi deaths due to ethno-sectarian violence declined 90% from June 2007 to March 2008. As Sunni attacks against Shiite civilians declined, so did the rationale for Sadr's authority.

As the International Crisis Group concluded, one "net effect" of the surge "was to leave the Sadrist movement increasingly exposed, more and more criticized and divided, and subject to arrest."

Other factors also contributed to Sadr's marginalization. But the increased security provided by more U.S. forces was essential in removing an underlying rationale for the Sadrist movement. Newsweek's 2006 profile had predicted that "the longer the American occupation lasts, the less popular America gets -- and the more popular Sadr and his ilk become." But as a recent ABC News poll of Iraqis makes clear, Shiite support for local militias has plummeted over the past year. The full implementation of the surge helped weaken Sadr, not make him more popular.

YOU DON'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THE JUDGMENT OF HISTORY...:

No Surrender (FOUAD AJAMI, March 19, 2008, Wall Street Journal)

In Iraq, America was surrounded by enemies who were sure from the start that the great foreign power was destined to fail. They could not be given the satisfaction of a hasty American retreat. The stakes had grown: We were under the gaze of populations with a keen eye for the weakness of strangers. It was apt and proper that the leader who launched this war did not give up on it.

Speaking in Nashville, Tenn., to the convention of National Religious Broadcasters on March 11, President Bush defended, yet again, the war in Iraq: "The decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision early in my presidency; it is the right decision at this point in my presidency; and it will forever be the right decision."

Mr. Bush made freedom in Arab-Islamic lands his cause. He rejected laments that Arabs do not possess a freedom gene, and that they are fated to tyranny. "The liberty we value is not ours alone," he told this Nashville convention. "Freedom is not America's gift to the world; it is God's gift to all humanity."

This has been Mr. Bush's wager ever since the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq ran aground, and the war and its sacrifices had to be defended and fortified. Grant Mr. Bush his due: He upheld his belief that liberty can stick on Iraqi and Arab soil, in the face of great doubts and misgivings.

SCAB PICKING:

Obama blew it: What the candidate should have said about race (Michael Meyers, March 20, 2008, LA Times)

[I]'d say that considering the nation's undivided attention to this all-important speech, which gave him an unrivaled opportunity to lift us out of racial and racist thinking, Obama blew it.

I waited in vain for our hybrid presidential candidate to speak the simple truth that there is no such thing as "race," that we all belong to the same race -- the human race. I waited for him to mesmerize us with a singular and focused appeal to hold all candidates to the same standards no matter their race or their sex or their age. But instead Obama gave us a full measure of racial rhetoric about how some of us with an "untrained ear" -- meaning whites and Asians and Latinos -- don't understand and can't relate to the so-called black experience.

Well, I am black, and I can't relate to a "black experience" that shields and explains old-style black ministers who rant and rave about supposed racial differences and about how America ought to be damned. [...]

I expected Obama, who up to now had been steering a perfect course away from the racial boxes of the past, to challenge racial labels and so-called black experiences. We're all mixed up, and if we haven't yet been by the process of miscegenation, trans-racial adoptions and interracial marriage, we sure ought to get used to how things will be in short order.

That would have been the forward-looking message of a visionary candidate. But Obama erred by looking backward -- as far back as slavery. What does slavery have to do with the price of milk at the grocery store?

TRY AS HE MIGHT...:

Geraldine Ferraro resents being lumped in with the Rev. Wright in Obama speech (Gene Maddaus, 03/19/2008, Daily Breeze)

Former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro said today that she objected to the comparison Sen. Barack Obama drew between her and his former pastor in his speech on race relations Tuesday. [...]

"To equate what I said with what this racist bigot has said from the pulpit is unbelievable," Ferraro said today.

WE DON'T COUNT THE DEMONSTRABLY TRUE GENOCIDAL ACTS:

A Nagging Wright Question (Michael Crowley, March 20, 2008, New Republic: The Stump)

There's one thing about the Jeremiah Wright controversy that keeps nagging at me: This crazy shibboleth promoted by Wright that the US government "lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color."

Of all the outrageous statements we've heard from Wright, this one is in a special category. Some of Wright's other outbursts are simply offensive name calling ("US of KKK-A," "God Damn America"). Others may shock middle America but are common on the left, and at least arguable, (US foreign policy invited the 9/11 attacks, rich racist whites run America, Hiroshima was a moral abomination).

But this AIDS thing is something different. First of all, it is not an opinion: It is a demonstrable falsehood. Not only that, it promotes a wildly conspiratorial wordview, one extremely corrosive to black America. It instills African-Americans with a belief that whites aren't just prejudiced, but trying to eliminate them. I can understand blacks grievances about, say, the war on drugs. But how could any black kid who thinks the white establishment is propagating genocide want to succeed in (white) American society? How could he ever trust any white person he meets? And what are the consequences of that for both races?

AND THERE IS NO FLOOR:

Gold and oil lure rattled investors, despite risks (Diana B. Henriques, 3/20/08, IHT)

Oil and metals prices fell sharply Thursday during Asian market hours on concern that a U.S. recession would reduce demand for raw materials. Oil fell below $100 a barrel to $99.59, well below a record $111.80 earlier in the week. Gold fell to $904.65 a troy ounce, down from a recent record of more than $1,000. Copper also lost ground.

THAT'S WHO YOU WANT US TO COZY UP TO?:

Race tightening in Taiwan (Keith Bradsher, March 20, 2008, IHT)

China's suppression of protests in Tibet and missteps by the opposition Nationalist Party have created a close race in Taiwan's presidential election on Saturday, as a seemingly insuperable lead for the Nationalist candidate, Ma Ying-jeou, has narrowed considerably, politicians and political analysts said.

A narrow victory for Ma would give him a weaker mandate for his goal of pursuing closer economic relations with mainland China. An actual defeat for Ma, now a possibility although not yet the most likely outcome, would be a serious setback for Beijing officials, who have cultivated relations with the Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang, over the past four years.

Mainland Chinese officials loathe Taiwan's current president, Chen Shui-bian, and his party, the Democratic Progressive Party, for pursuing greater political separation from the mainland.

KNEW BETTER, BUT PRETENDED ANYWAY:

Will the Answer Outlive Questions?: Obama's Speech Driven by Necessity (Dan Balz, 3/20/08, Washington Post)

Obama said that the politically easy thing would be to hope that the firestorm triggered by video excerpts from Wright's sermons would somehow fade away. Instead, he said, the Wright controversy provided the pretext for -- even demanded! -- a more honest confrontation of the racial divisions that persist and a more open-minded understanding by whites and blacks of why bitterness and anger exist on each side of that divide.

Obama obviously knew better than to pretend that the ugly controversy would somehow disappear. Wright, in fact, had created the most serious crisis Obama has faced in this campaign, and no amount of wishing would change that fact. The candidate rightly understood the threat to his candidacy and immediately told his advisers that he wanted to deliver a major speech on the subject. By enlarging the discussion, he hoped to defuse what was most dangerous to his political aspirations: his long association with a prominent figure who has said things that many Americans -- white and black -- find repulsive.

Democratic strategists see the dangers ahead for Obama. While not lethal to his hopes of winning the Democratic nomination or the presidency, they say, the damage could be lasting. "This has tarnished Obama's image, though certainly not in a fatal way, and we will see it used by the GOP repeatedly if he is the nominee," one strategist said in an e-mail on Wednesday. "At the end of the day, I believe whoever the Democratic nominee is will win, but those who think that, if Obama is the nominee, he won't have Clinton-like negatives by Election Day are naive. This whole episode underlines that point." [...]

What cannot be known at this point is how the episode is resonating around the country among independents or those who were once called Reagan Democrats. Has Obama reached them in a way that inspires their confidence that he is perhaps uniquely equipped not just to start a conversation but to lead the country to a new, if still imperfect, place in racial relations? Or has he simply raised doubts among them about who he is?

[T]hese resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition.

AND SO IT COMES TO RESEMBLE YET ANOTHER RACE...:

Clinton Facing Narrower Path to Nomination (ADAM NAGOURNEY, 3/20/08, NY Times)

Despite Mrs. Clinton’s last-minute trip to Michigan on Wednesday, Democrats there signaled that they are unlikely to hold a new primary. That apparently dashed Mrs. Clinton’s hopes of a new showdown in a state she feels she could win, and it left the state’s delegates in limbo.

The inaction in Michigan followed a similar collapse of her effort to seek another matchup with Mr. Obama in Florida, where, as in Michigan, she won an earlier primary held in violation of party rules.

Without new votes in Florida and Michigan, it will be that much more difficult for Mrs. Clinton to achieve a majority in the total popular vote in the primary season, narrow Mr. Obama’s lead among pledged delegates or build a new wave of momentum.

THIS MUCH HE LEARNED FROM W...:

Sarkozy rebuked: The French president is treating his local-election setback as a call for more and faster reform. Not all voters see it that way (The Economist, 3/19/08)

Mr Fillon insisted this week that the government would step up its reforms in response to the election. The message, he told voters, was that “you have invited us to put even more force into our policy of change.” There are plans for two new laws in the coming months: one to make it easier to shed workers and loosen the labour market, another to stiffen competition and cut red tape for entrepreneurs. In addition, the government is due to review its structure of social charges, as well as its public-pension rules.

Mr Fillon may be right that many voters are impatient for more and deeper reforms. Certainly, this is the case for the professionals who voted for the centre-right last year and now feel disappointed. In the long run, such changes should boost economic growth as well.

But it is less clear that the French in general want change. If anything, they are looking for more protection and higher pay, not for easier firing rules or more competition. Already interest-groups from taxi-drivers to retailers are fighting deregulation. The test in the months ahead will be whether Mr Sarkozy can resist making crowd-pleasing gestures in hopes of propping up his short-term popularity and instead recover the reformist reflexes that marked his early months in office.

OH, BUMMER:

Clinton doubles lead in Pennsylvania (DAVID PAUL KUHN, 3/20/08, Politico)

Clinton now leads Barack Obama 51 to 35 percent among likely Democratic primary voters, according to the Franklin and Marshall College Poll. In February, the same poll found that Clinton was ahead by half that margin, 44 to 37 percent.

The Franklin and Marshall survey comes on the heels of a poll by Quinnipiac University released Tuesday. It also showed Clinton doubling her lead, with 53 to 41 percent over Obama this week, up from 49 to 43 percent in late February. [...]

Another survey of likely Democratic primary voters on March 15 and 16, by Public Policy Polling, showed Clinton with a 56 to 30 percent lead over Obama.

MISTER SCOFIELD:

British actor Paul Scofield dies at 86 (he Associated Press, March 20, 2008)

Scofield made few films even after the Oscar for his 1966 portrayal of Tudor statesman Sir Thomas More. He was a stage actor by inclination and by his gifts -- a dramatic, craggy face and an unforgettable voice that was likened to a Rolls Royce starting up or the rumbling sound of low organ pipes.

Even his greatest screen role was a follow up to a play -- the London stage production of "A Man for All Seasons," in which he starred for nine months. Scofield also turned in a performance in the 1961 New York production that won him extraordinary reviews and a Tony Award.

"With a kind of weary magnificence, Scofield sinks himself into the part, studiously underplays it, and somehow displays the inner mind of a man destined for sainthood," Time magazine's said.

Actor Richard Burton, once regarded as the natural heir to Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud at the summit of British theater, said it was Scofield who deserved that place. "Of the 10 greatest moments in the theater, eight are Scofield's," he said.

Scofield was an unusual star -- a family man who lived almost his entire life within a few miles of his birthplace in southern England and hurried home after work to his wife and children. He didn't seek the spotlight, gave interviews sparingly, and at times seemed to need coaxing to venture out, even onto the stage he loved.

MORE:
-OBIT: Paul Scofield, Oscar-winning actor, dies (Nigel Reynolds, 20/03/2008, Daily Telegraph)

In 2004, a poll of actors of the Royal Shakespeare Company, including Ian McKellen, Donald Sinden, Janet Suzman and Anthony Sher, acclaimed his performance as King Lear as the greatest Shakespearean performance ever.

On at least two occasions occasions he refused a knighthood, though he finally agreed to become a Companion of Honour in 2001.

He died peacefully yesterday in a hospital near his home in Sussex, his agent Rosalind Chatto said.

He had been suffering from leukemia.

He married the actress Joy Parker in 1943 and the couple had two children, Martin, who became a lecturer in 19th century English literature at kent University, and Sarah.

The highlights of his theatrical career included the stage version of A Man for All Seasons, the title role in Ben Jonson’s Volpone at the National Theatre in 1977, and playing Antonio Salieri in the original production in 1979 of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus.

REQUIRED READING:

Politics and you … (Joe Posnanski, March 20th, 2008, Curiously long posts)

A few years ago — well, I can tell you, it was 12 years ago — I read a story in Esquire or GQ or one of those magazines by one of my writing heroes Richard Ben Cramer about Bob Dole. This was before I read RBC’s brilliant “What it Takes,” his book about the 1988 Presidential Candidates and what it takes to become president — more, what it takes to even WANT to become president.

Anyway, at the time I didn’t know much about Bob Dole — this was before I moved to Kansas City — and I was not especially open to knowing more. I always kind of just felt like he was a grumpy old guy who would stop you on the street and lecture you about wearing your baseball cap backward. I’m sure I only read the story because I was on a plane, and perhaps because I was intrigued by Richard Ben, who had written a very interesting and offbeat piece in Sports Illustrated about Baltimore.

Anyway, I started reading it, and I found something odd. I found that I really liked Bob Dole. This had nothing to do with the presidential race or his political history or anything else. I liked HIM. I liked his life story. I liked the way he dedicated his life to this country. I liked that he had (has) convictions, and while he wasn’t perfect, while he had made his mistakes, that didn’t make me like him less. It actually made me like him MORE. Because he kept coming back. He survived German machine gun fire. He survived the turbulent 60s, when he was at various times despised by the conservatives and moderates alike. He referred to himself in the third person, but didn’t seem to mean anything by it. I really liked the guy. I admired him in a way that goes beyond politics.

PATTERNS MATTER:

Obama's Speech Applauded -- By Republican Foes (JAKE TAPPER, March 19, 2008, ABC News)

"He didn't explain why he continued to attend a church whose minister has a long history of divisive and hate-filled rhetoric, when the fundamental message of Obama's campaign is unity and bring us together," said Republican pollster Whit Ayres.

Republicans say they will combine Wright's anti-American rhetoric with other moments such as Obama's removal of his American flag pin because he felt it had become a substitute for true patriotism, or his not covering his heart during the national anthem last summer.

Other incidents, such as Obama's accepting money from a member of the Weathermen Underground or Michelle Obama's statement about feeling proud of the United States "for the first time in her adult life" because of her husband's campaign, may also be revisited.

'TIL WE HAVE FACEBOOK:

Facebook throws down online chat challenge (Kevin Allison, March 20, 2008, Financial Times)

Facebook plans to launch a new service that will enable the social network website's 60m users to chat with each other online.

The service, which is expected to roll out sometime in the next few weeks, represents Facebook's latest challege to AOL, Microsoft and other makers of popular instant messaging programmes.

TRY AND MAKE ME:

Parents should learn maths with their children (Graeme Paton, 20/03/2008, Daily Telegraph)

Parents should join in children's mathematics lessons to improve their own numeracy skills, a Government-backed report says.

They should learn the same methods as their sons and daughters so they can help them with homework, it claims.

ARE YOU IN THE NCAA POOL YET?

Only a couple hours left and we've got stacks of books just waiting to be given away....

How To Avoid Embarrassment in Bracket Pool (JOHN HOLLINGER, March 19, 2008, NY Sun)

Let me guess … you walked into work this week innocently enough, and then, out of the blue, Bob from finance asked you to join the NCAA tournament pool and promised it would be loads of fun.

Now you're staring at this 64-team grid, and you don't want to embarrass yourself and look like a buffoon in front of your co-workers.

Don't worry, I'm here to help. Today we'll review some of the basic rules that lead to a good tournament bracket.

By a "good" bracket, I don't necessarily mean "successful" — because of the tournament's single-elimination format, random flukes can and do mess things up, which is why the person who knows the least about basketball often ends up winning the office pool. The idea, instead, is to give yourself a chance to win. Remember, if 50 people enter the pool, you only have a 2% chance of winning. Even if my genius quintuples your odds, you'll still only win once a decade. Don't say you weren't warned.

And our friends at FSB just donated another book, a sci-fi -- for the libertarians -- Jeanette Winterson's Stone Gods, filled with steamin' hot robot sex :

CONTRARY TO THE LEFT'S OBSESSION...:

Obama Lied About My Dad (Michael Reagan, 3/20/08, FrontPageMagazine.com)

What was not expected was Barack H. Obama’s use of a litany of America’s past racist offenses to justify not only Wright’s blatant hatred of white America but his suggestion that it was a sentiment shared by most African Americans. And that is simply not true.

Nor was it true, as Obama charged, that the Reagan coalition was created out of white resentment for affirmative action or forced busing.

He charged that “anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime… talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.”

Poppycock! These are not only outright falsehoods, but echoes of what Obama learned at the feet of Jeremiah Wright and now preaches as his own beliefs. He learned his lessons well.

When he suggested that my father’s coalition was based on anger over affirmative action and welfare he was peddling a blatant falsehood as egregious in its falsity as Wright’s charge that whites created AIDS to wipe out the black population.

Everything Obama said was directed at suggesting that while Rev. Wright should not have used such inflammatory language, he was somehow justified because of America’s white racism.

EASY THERE FELLA...:

Sarkozy hopes talks with Brown will cement Anglo-French alliance to steer EU policy (Julian Borger, March 20 2008, Guardian)

The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, hopes to cement an Anglo-French axis to generate a new "critical mass" driving EU foreign and security policy when he makes a state visit to Britain next week, officials said yesterday. Sarkozy, who has frosty relations with Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel, believes France now has more in common with Britain and the US. He is keen to use the two-day visit to hasten an EU realignment before Paris begins its six-month presidency in July.

"He sees the US, the UK and France as the three centres of freedom in the world," one French official said. "There is not the same kind of feeling about Germany ... in Europe now it is France and Britain that can provide the critical mass."

Until Sarkozy's election postwar French policy had been built on the assumption that the Franco-German relationship was at the heart of the European project.

IF YOU'VE NOT BEEN WATCHING IT:

The first four episodes of fine new show New Amsterdam are available at Fancast and at Fox. The protagonist was a Dutch soldier on Manhattan Island who stopped a massacre of natives. They saved his life...forever. Or at least until he meets "the one," the great love of his life. There are a lot of nice touches--he's been to just about every college at some point, calls his dog "38," knows the punchline to every joke, and so on. But there are serious themes too, among them the centrality of dying to being human.

LIKE CAFFEINE-FREE DIET COKE:

They don't get much cooler: Why Obama is the perfect McLuhan proxy (Robert Fulford, 3/18/08, National Post)

[Marshall McLuhan] divided players in the public arena into two categories, hot and cool. Hot personalities are single-minded, obsessive, devoted to their policies. They have hard-edged, sharply defined public styles. Those characteristics, McLuhan argued, make them wrong for TV, which favours the cool.

TV flatters a personal style that's open-ended, loose, unpredictable, perhaps slightly inscrutable -- like Obama. Television makes people want to participate, so the wise politician avoids excessive detail and leaves blank spaces for viewers to fill in. Pierre Trudeau, who always retained a certain mystery and was elected by a country that had no idea what he believed, was the ideal McLuhanesque politician, though he might have occasionally gone too far.

McLuhan freely offered advice to his friend Trudeau. The last time was in 1979, when he was briefly opposition leader. After he appeared in Parliament wearing a beard, McLuhan wrote to say it "cooled your image many degrees!" It made Trudeau more mysterious and surprising. But McLuhan suggested that this might not be what Trudeau needed at that particular moment. For whatever reason, Trudeau shaved off the beard.

In the current American campaign there's no doubt where McLuhan would put Hillary Clinton: In his terms she's hot, much too hot. She puts people off by her certainty and her insistence on experience. Her body language screams stiffness, defensiveness, emotional coldness. She fills all the space with data and shuts out the audience. Even her language ("traditional Democratic value") seems old-fashioned. When she appears with Obama, she looks out of place. (She's better on the political blogs because bloggers are usually wonks who love policy details. Obama doesn't do as well among them as he does on TV.)

McLuhan said, "Politics offers yesterday's answers to today's questions." That's more or less the basis of Obama's campaign. He knows politicians bore and exasperate voters and that he needs to separate himself from standard politicians and their irksome bickering. Clinton seems to think voters are unreasonable if they react with annoyance to her intelligent, well-intentioned platform. Perhaps they are unfair but that's not Obama's problem.

His self-chosen job is to project a public persona that people can enthusiastically embrace -- as opposed to the grudging, limited acceptance Clinton's supporters give her.

BURN, BABY, BURN:

Obama Web Site Still Carries New Black Panther Party Endorsement (FOXNews.com, March 19, 2008)

The New Black Panthers, who inherited their name from the Black Panther Party of the 1960s, has a page on the Obama campaign’s public forums that says it is backing Obama because he “represents ‘positive change’ for all of America. Obama will stir the ‘Melting Pot’ into a better ‘Molten America,’” the group says.

IT NEEDS THE VIDEO FROM ADDICTED TO LOVE THOUGH:

IN THE LONG RUN, HISTORY HAS NO HINGES:

A Convergence Of Civilizations: (ADAM KIRSCH, March 19, 2008, NY Sun)

"It seems unlikely that the long struggle between East and West is going to end very soon," he writes on the book's last page. "The battle lines drawn during the Persian Wars more than twenty-three centuries ago are still, in the selfsame corner of the world, very much where they were then." It is the kind of call to arms we might expect from a politician or a polemicist. Coming from a historian, it is surprising, because it seems to negate the first principles of history, which are contingency and change. If Americans are Athenians and Muslims are Persians, then nothing that has happened since the Battle of Marathon really matters; history is not a process, still less a progress, but an eternal deadlock.

The odd thing is that Mr. Pagden's book, simply because it traverses so much time and space, effectively undermines its own thesis. Take the Persian Wars, the first act in the clash of civilizations, in which a grand Eastern despotism, ruled by the Achaemenid monarchs Darius and Xerxes, tried to snuff out the small but resilient democracy of Athens. It is certainly true that, had the Greeks lost the battles of Marathon and Salamis, the course of European history would have been different. Mr. Pagden quotes J.S. Mill's verdict that Marathon was "a more important event in English history" than the Battle of Hastings, when the Normans conquered England itself.

Yet the closer one looks at this history, the more ambiguous it becomes. Athens may have been a democracy in the early fifth century B.C.E., but it had not been one a hundred years before, and it wouldn't be one a hundred years later. The foundational works of Greek political thought, Plato's "Republic" and Aristotle's "Politics," were antidemocratic in tendency. On the other hand, the culture of the Ionian Greek cities that were under Persian rule was hardly stifled by Eastern despotism: The origins of philosophy lay with Ionian Greeks like Heraclitus and Anaximander. All this suggests that, had Persia extended its overlordship to the west coast of the Aegean, much that we prize in Greek culture would still have existed, though in different form. Certainly the fate of democracy as a political system could not have been permanently decided by just two battles.

If even today we remember Persia as an effeminate despotism, the first incarnation of an eternally menacing East, it is largely because of the way this image was perpetuated by later writers. It is thanks to Herodotus, Mr. Pagden shows, that the Persian Wars became a morality play about the superiority of Greek isonomia, or equality before the law, to Persian absolutism. Yet conveniently, two centuries later on, when Alexander the Great reversed Xerxes's campaign — leading a Greek empire on an aggressive campaign into Asia — the stigma of despotism did not attach to him. On the contrary, as Mr. Pagden writes, what looked like monolithic imperialism in the Persians was, in Alexander, an enlightened vision of a world state: "[H]e introduced into Greece, and subsequently into the whole of Europe, an ambition for universalism that would determine the future of the continent." According to one 20th century historian Mr. Pagden quotes, the League of Nations itself could be traced back to Alexander's example.

GENOCIDE DEPENDS ON THE QUIET:

'I see fire in the eyes of the Tibetans' (Vicky Nanjappa, March 19, 2008, Rediff)

Nawang Sithar left his motherland, Tibet, and came to India as a refugee in 1960, a year after the March 10, 1959 apprising. The 70-year-old has witnessed three major protests by Tibetans -- first in 1959, then 1987 and the present day uprising in Lhasa. According to him, the ongoing protest could be the most effective and the toughest.

Sithar, who spoke with the help of a translator, told rediff.com: [...]

The current battle is going to be the toughest and I see fire in the eyes of the Tibetans, as they are determined to make their point. I know China is more prepared this time and from what I hear and read, I also realise that they are more stubborn than before.

I personally feel that China cannot afford any embarrassment this time, considering the fact that the Olympics is round the corner. The more they subdue us, the more embarrassed they are going to be.

Since the Olympics is round the corner, I personally feel that China may give in a bit if not fully. However, it all depends on the youth of Tibet and also the manner in which men in power handle the issue. We have only hope and determination left and cannot rely on man power as we have become a minority in Tibet also.

Although there are indications that protests will go on till the Olympics, I feel that the heat should be on. We have gone quiet in the past and this has worked well for the Chinese.

WE ALWAYS HAD THE ARTIST...:

Welcome to the right, Mr. Mamet: The dramatist's conversion to conservatism is good for him and for the right. (Andrew Klavan, March 19, 2008, LA Times)

So now Mamet has grasped the nettle. He will come to find out just how small-minded, exclusionary and intellectually corrupt many on the left can be. Colleagues may abandon him; theater critics will contrive to ignore and attack him; his dependable audience may turn away.

But he will also discover a right wing he never knew. He will discover thinkers who seek historical and moral truth as if it really mattered, and writers who defend liberty as if it were what in fact it is: the prerequisite of full humanity. Rather than the low and tiresome obsession of the left with the color of people's skins, he will find people who embrace a philosophical colorblindness. He will meet women of intelligence and competence who -- mirabile dictu -- don't despise men and manliness but openly admire them. Yes, he will find that a gathering of right-wingers is less welcoming to gay people than the left is, but he will also watch something astounding unfold. Unlike liberals, rightists, after a period of open discussion and thought, will actually admit when they're wrong and change their minds. This anti-gay prejudice will fall -- it's falling now.

The big question is whether the good men and women of the right will realize what a gift they have been given in Mamet. Will they turn out for his plays and embrace their excellence? His is a hard language of four-letter words and scorching insights. Will rightists, despite their commitment to good behavior and values, remember that art is an examination of the world as it is, not as we would have it be?

The right has gained an artist.

MEAT UP:

'I was seen as an object, not a person': Lap-dancing clubs are advertised as exclusive, glamorous entertainment for 'gentlemen'. As a former dancer tells Rachel Bell, the reality for the women who work in them is both degrading and dangerous (Rachel Bell, March 19, 2008, Guardian)

Lap-dancing reinforced all Elena's negative beliefs about herself and about men. "The men just see you as an object, not a person, and whether you are equally engaged in their desire is irrelevant. Increasingly, you learn to despise the men because of the way they perceive you. Lap-dancing is about creating a situation whereby the men feel they are doing you a favour - that's the way the game is set up, so all the power is with the customer."

GIVEN THAT HE'S SUCH A CIPHER, WHAT IS THE BASIS FOR GIVING HIM THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT?:

Obama’s Evasions (The Editors, 3/19/08, Nationalk Review)

[N]ot many of us have heard our religious leaders ask the congregation to pray for God to “damn America.” So Obama then tried to draw a distinction between Wright’s videotaped rants and his typical preaching (which could merely “be considered controversial”). Those rants, he said, “expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country — a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.”

But that distorted view of the country is at the heart of Wright’s “black-liberation theology”; it is one of the foundations of his ministry. For Obama to pretend his videotaped statements were an aberration is a dishonest evasion.

That was not the only slippery portion of the speech. Obama repeatedly compared Rev. Wright to Geraldine Ferraro, who recently made an essentially true but poorly formulated remark about how Obama’s race has helped his candidacy. For that, she is the moral equivalent of a man who preached that the 9/11 attacks were “chickens coming home to roost”? We would have thought Obama was above this.

MY GRANDMA, WHAT BIG PARANOID DELUSIONS YOU HAVE...:

A Speech That Fell Short (Michael Gerson, March 19, 2008, Washington Post)

Barack Obama has run a campaign based on a simple premise: that words of unity and hope matter to America. Now he has been forced by his charismatic, angry pastor to argue that words of hatred and division don't really matter as much as we thought. [...]

Take an issue that Obama did not specifically confront yesterday. In a 2003 sermon, Wright claimed, "The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color."

This accusation does not make Wright, as Obama would have it, an "occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy." It makes Wright a dangerous man. He has casually accused America of one of the most monstrous crimes in history, perpetrated by a conspiracy of medical Mengeles. If Wright believes what he said, he should urge the overthrow of the U.S. government, which he views as guilty of unspeakable evil. If I believed Wright were correct, I would join him in that cause.

But Wright's accusation is batty, reflecting a sputtering, incoherent hatred for America. And his pastoral teaching may put lives at risk because the virus that causes AIDS spreads more readily in an atmosphere of denial, quack science and conspiracy theories.

Obama's speech implied that these toxic views are somehow parallel to the stereotyping of black men by Obama's grandmother, which Obama said made him "cringe" -- both are the foibles of family. But while Grandma may have had some issues to work through, Wright is accusing the American government of trying to kill every member of a race. There is a difference.

BIOLOGY AS THANATOLOGY:

Birth Control a review of Fatal Misconception by Matthew Connelly (REIHAN SALAM, March 19, 2008, NY Sun)

Outside of India, few remember Sanjay Gandhi, Indira Gandhi's ne'er-do-well son. Yet as Matthew Connelly recounts in "Fatal Misconception" (Belknap Press, 544 pages, $34.95), his global history of the population control movement, Sanjay played a crucial role in one of the vilest episodes in the history of independent India, namely the sterilization of millions of Indians. In 1976, he initiated a campaign to cleanse Delhi of slums, bulldozing entire neighborhoods, most of them old and densely populated, and then had his cronies tell the displaced that they'd only be given new homes if they agreed to have vasectomies or tubectomies. The campaign spread to the countryside, where zealous officials engaged in coordinated attacks that resembled pogroms — but rather than target the members of a single ethnic group, they sterilized every poor man they could. Sterilization camps were filled to the brim with members of India's most despised groups, namely Muslims and Hindus drawn from so-called low castes. It's impossible to disentangle how much sterilization was straightforwardly coercive — i.e., forced at gunpoint — and how much was "incentivized" through slightly subtler threats — i.e., we will deny you the means to your livelihood.

This is the kind of behavior one would expect from a con man or a gangster, but this particular gangster had an army of civil servants and police at his beck and call. And not only Indian support: For all Sanjay's nationalist bluster, this was a crime the country could not commit alone — a campaign this sophisticated and sweeping required expertise and investment from abroad. Sanjay's effort to cleanse India of what one Indian official called "people pollution" was backed by powerful international nonprofits dedicated to the cause of "family planning." The World Bank, appallingly enough, pressed India to sharply increase its sterilization efforts; after an exhaustive look at India's comprehensive program to curb population growth, Robert McNamara, then president of the organization, essentially cheered Sanjay on.

But Mr. McNamara was not alone, or even particularly unusual in his support of forced sterilization; he was just one in a long line of Western mandarins who embraced the cause of population control. Gunnar and Alva Myrdal, the celebrated Swedish sociologists, embraced in the 1930s a supposedly benign version that aimed to improve the eugenic quality of the Swedish volk, and which promoted compulsory sterilization. American birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger, a central figure in "Fatal Misconception," also called for sterilization aimed at combating "dysgenic qualities of body and mind" years after the Nazi death camps. To be sure, there were also figures such as UN population bureaucrat Frank Notestein, who championed modernization and female literacy as a more effective means of reducing population growth in the developing world. But the overall impression is of a population control movement defined by arrogance, and by a firm belief that the best of humanity risked being drowned out by the dregs.

Like those Darwinian textbooks (courtesy of Brother Cohen) teach: "Biology not only tells us about animals and plants, but also shows us the laws we must follow in our lives, and steels our wills to live and fight according to these laws."

SUPPOSE, FOR A MOMENT, THAT MARKETS WERE RATIONAL...:

Even experts can't grasp this crisis (David Leonhardt, March 19, 2008, NY Times)

Raise your hand if you don't quite understand this whole financial crisis.

It has been going on for seven months now, and many people probably feel as if they should understand it. But they don't, not really. The part about the housing crash seems simple enough. With banks whispering sweet encouragement, people bought homes they couldn't afford, and now they are falling behind on their mortgages.

But the overwhelming majority of homeowners are still doing just fine. So how is it that a mess concentrated in one part of the mortgage business — subprime loans — has frozen the credit markets, sent stock markets gyrating, caused the collapse of Bear Stearns, left the economy on the brink of the worst recession in a generation and forced the Federal Reserve to take its boldest action since the Depression?

I'm here to urge you not to feel sheepish. This may not be entirely comforting, but your confusion is shared by many people who are in the middle of the crisis.

It would be perfectly reasonable, under such circumstances, to keep your extra money in low risk savings accounts until matters shake out a little. You've still got your house. You're still buying stocks in your 401k or IRA or whatever. But you're being cautious with your own cash and the business you work for is being cautious with its cash. All that caution may be decelerating the velocity of money enough to create some genuine problems. In effect, folks could be having a fairly rational res