Did my matzos come?

Eliot Spitzer will probably be our next governor.
 

And earns little reward. Charles Krauthammer:

Had Israel wanted to destroy Lebanese civilian infrastructure, it would have turned out the lights in Beirut in the first hour of the war, destroying the billion-dollar power grid and setting back Lebanon 20 years. It did not do that. Instead, it attacked dual-use infrastructure -- bridges, roads, airport runways -- and blockaded Lebanon's ports to prevent the reinforcement and resupply of Hezbollah. . . .

Israel knows that these leaflets and warnings give the Hezbollah fighters time to escape and regroup. The advance notification as to where the next attack is coming has allowed Hezbollah to set up elaborate ambushes. The result? Unexpectedly high Israeli infantry casualties. Moral scrupulousness paid in blood. Israeli soldiers die so that Lebanese civilians will not, and who does the international community condemn for disregarding civilian life?
 

Denis Boyles:

Who said the Germans aren’t on our side? At a sidewalk café in Paris earlier this week, I sat close to a table filled with tourists having a great time and talking very loudly over each other in English. Next to me, a big, drunk German who grew darker and darker and finally could stand it no more. He leapt to his feet, turned and shouted, “Will you shut your bloody mouths?! You can drop your bombs on Baghdad but you can’t shut up in a café?!” A moment of silence as he gulped the rest of his beer and, amid applause, made an obscene gesture toward the stunned table of tourists and staggered off into the night. “Jeez, eh?” said one of the shell-shocked tourists. “We’re not Americans. We’re Canadian.”

Thomas Sowell:

Every gesture that the Senate has made toward controlling the border is one that they have backed into under pressure from an outraged public. The Senators' whole focus has been on what they could do for the illegal aliens, in order to win Hispanic votes -- and how they could camouflage it in order not to lose other votes.

Businesses that want cheap labor are also in favor of amnesty, under whatever name. So are citizen-of-the-world intellectuals, for whom national borders are just unfortunate relics of the past and illegal aliens are just like everyone else except for not having legal documents.

Nobody is just like everyone else, individually or collectively. Second-generation immigrants are not even just like their parents. Their crime rates are far higher than those of their parents who came here to work and who can appreciate the difference between what they had in Mexico and what they have here.

The second generation does not compare their lives here with how people live in Mexico. They compare their lives with the lives of other Americans -- and there are all sorts of people around to tell them that the difference is due to injustices that they suffer.

Worth reading in full.

David Frum envisions the consequences should American and Iraqi forces fail to "take back the capital from the militias that now terrorize it":

Uncontrolled militias (some of them working tacitly with the pro-Iranian Islamists at the Ministry of the Interior) will wage intensifying war against each other.

The Sunnis will use random terror: car bombings, suicide bombings, kidnappings and massacres.

The Shiite militias - supported by their friends in the Ministry of the Interior and in the police forces - will respond with increasingly coordinated terror, such as that which killed dozens of Sunnis in the al-Jihad neighborhood on July 9. It is hard to imagine that a few hundred American advisers can put a stop to such atrocities.

As the tide of urban warfare turns in the Shiites' favor, those Sunnis who can flee the city will do so.

Gradually, Baghdad will come to look like Basra, Iraq's Shiite-dominated second city, now effectively ruled by Iranian-backed Shiites with the tacit acquiescence of the British military authorities.

Baghdad - and therefore central Iraq - will in such a case slide after Basra and the south into the unofficial new Iranian empire.

Or would foreign Sunnis try to take Iraq from the Shiites, as Hugh Fitzgerald predicts? We may find out.
 

Caroline Glick:

In his address to the Knesset last week, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert framed Israel's war in Lebanon as a war for "our right to be normal." His emphasis on our right to drink coffee led many to wonder if he understands the immensity of the threat we face as he curries favor with Israel's aging baby boomers.

. . . The government's stubborn refusal to commit a sufficient number of forces to Lebanon to enable the IDF to achieve victory is inexcusable.

The government's plan for prosecuting the war aimed at Hizbullah's dismantlement places the IAF as the main component of the campaign. . . . Although this plan's logic fell apart a week ago when it became clear that the IAF bombings had not done enough to damage Hizbullah's war waging capabilities and its ability to rain down 100 rockets and missiles a day on northern Israel, the government maintains its devotion to the plan because it is unwilling to admit that its entire political vision for the country is based on lies.

The Olmert government insists that Israel can separate itself from terror and jihad and live a "normal life" by building a big fence and hiding behind it. The government knows that nothing will prove to the public the emptiness of its political rhetoric better than a serious ground invasion of southern Lebanon. And so, rather than shed its hallucinatory agenda, it clings to it with all the fervor of a Communist true-believer in Stalin's gulag.

. . . A nation that sends its best sons into battle to defend its liberty and its very survival has the right and the duty to require its government to act responsibly and to discard hallucinatory ideological agendas before they lead us to yet another disaster.
 

Courtesy of this post. (TEWT, I gather, stands for "Tactical Exercise Without Troops.")
 

Mark Steyn:

The jihad is everything the multiculti left's flopped at. The left talked up sappy Benetton-ad one-worldism, while the pan-Islamists got on with their own particular strain of one-worldism, fierce, implacable and slipping across borders with ease. . . . The contemporary mosque or madrasah is not the place to go for spiritual contemplation so much as political motivation. The Muslim identity of those gold-toothed Punjabi yobs in northern England or Berber pseudo-rappers in French suburbs may seem spiritually vestigial but it's politically potent. Pre-modern Islam beats postmodern Christianity--and, for young men in search of an identity, transnational jihad beats multicultural nullity.
 

Support from B. Raman, a former Cabinet Secretary of India:

Israel is a very small country with a very small population. It has no military depth. It has to follow a policy of instant and forceful retaliation against terrorists and States such as Iran and Syria using terrorism as a weapon to make its population bleed. Israel has to retaliate instantly or perish. This has to be kept in mind while judging Israel's action in taking its fight against terrorism to the Lebanese territory. Israel had no other option, but to do what it has done.

* * * *

4. Israel cannot be accused of using disproportionate force against the sanctuaries and rocket bases of the Hezbollah in the Lebanese territory. When the terrorists operate in one's own territory as the Maoists have been doing in our territory, one can use carefully calibrated force so that the force used is not more than necessary.

5. When the terrorists operate against you from sanctuaries in the territory of another state, it is not possible to calibrate the use of force so carefully. There could be occasions when after a specific incident, the force used may seem more than what was required by the circumstances of the incident. This cannot be called intentional use of disproportionate force.

* * * *

12. This is not the time to criticise Israel. This is the time to help Israel to get over its ordeal----once and for all. At a time when we grieve over the deaths of hundreds of our nationals at the hands of Pakistan-sponsored jihadi terrorists, let us share the grief of Israel too over the deaths of its nationals at the hands of the Hezbollah and other jihadi terrorists sponsored by Iran and Syria. If our anger against Pakistan and its surrogates is justified, so is Israel's anger against Iran, Syria and their surrogates.
 

(Via Melanie Phillips.)

A summer-vacation itinerary:

You'll start by driving to:

Marshall County, Ind. -- Here you'll visit the historic town of Bremen.

According to the Marshall County Convention and Tourism Commission brochure, sent to me by alert reader Chris Straight, Bremen's claim to fame is that ''the world's heaviest man died here.'' The brochure offers no details, except to say that while in Bremen, you can ''ask about the casket preparation for the world's heaviest man.'' It doesn't say whom, specifically, you should ask. Your best bet is to just drive into Bremen, honk at the first person you see, roll down your window and shout, ''WHAT ABOUT THE CASKET PREPARATION FOR THE WORLD'S HEAVIEST MAN?'' Then you should drum your fingers impatiently on the steering wheel to indicate you need a quick answer, because you're in a hurry to get to your next vacation destination:

Macklin, Saskatchewan. -- This is located in Canada, which is legally a foreign country, but it's well worth the trip, because Macklin is the proud home of the world's largest fiberglass replica of the ankle bone of a horse.
 

There's lots more.

Julia Gorin calls the rise of Wahhabism in Kosovo a "shockingly predictable consequence of our 1990s misadventures in the Balkans." And odds are it won't stop there:

Like clockwork — and as The New York Times laid out in the 1980s but later ignored in its zeal for war against European Christians — thanks to our handiwork, other Balkan states with large Albanian and other Muslim minorities, including Montenegro, Macedonia, southern Serbia and even Greece have become ripe targets for Islamic takeover.
 

Robert Spencer:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has frustrated Western officials by refusing to reply to their offer of various incentives in exchange for Iran’s discarding its nuclear program until August 22. . . .

Farid Ghadry, the president of the Reform Party of Syria, has offered a provocative explanation for this delay. . . . ["]August 21, 2006 (Rajab 27, 1427) is known in the Islamic calendar as the Night of the Sira’a and Miira’aj, the night Prophet Mohammed (saas) ascended to heaven from the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem on a Bourak (Half animal, half man), while a great light lit-up the night sky, and visited Heaven and Hell also Beit al-Saada and Beit al-Shaqaa (House of Happiness and House of Misery) and then descended back to Mecca.…"

And now, according to Ghadry, Ahmadinejad is planning an illumination of the night sky over Jerusalem to rival the one that greeted the Prophet of Islam on his journey. . . . Will he attempt to make good on these threats this year on the anniversary of the Miraj, illuminating the night sky over Jerusalem? Will Western powers heed Farid Ghadry’s words and move to stop Iran before it is too late?
 

Hugh Fitzgerald answers a soldier's wife who asks that question:

Iraq War #1, which was rational and justified, ended in early 2004. That war, to destroy the regime, and to search for and destroy all major weaponry, made sense. It also made sense, though no one has argued anywhere, but as has been argued here several hundred times since early 2004, that the removal of Saddam Hussein made a Sunni-Shi’a clash inevitable, and that there was nothing to be done to keep it from happening though it might be delayed or temporarily suppressed by American forces, and that it was to be welcomed as one of the best ways to divide and demoralize and therefore weaken, the camp of Islamic jihad – a camp to which Iraq will always belong, with or without this “Iraq the Light-Unto-the-Muslim-Nations” Project that the Bush administration so obstinately clings to despite all the evidence that shows how impossible, and how undesirable from our point of view, are these attempts to make Iraq into something it cannot be are.

The reason their father is in Iraq now is because, since the beginning of April 2004, the American government, not comprehending what it set in motion by removing Saddam Hussein, has insisted on remaining for what might be called Iraq War #2. Because the enemy was never properly recognized, Iraq was not seen as the ideal place to exploit sectarian and ethnic divisions. The American government was bent not on a war of self-defense against the Jihad, but rather, a messianic campaign to transplant the Liberty Tree of democracy in the sandy or rocky soil of Iraq and of Afghanistan. For all the talk about a “tough” reaction, there was nothing “tough” about it. It was sentimentality, Rodney-King sentimentality, all the way – and on top of it, a shallow understanding both of Western democracy and of the Framers, as Bush and Rice ever more crazily made analogies between the crude Iraqis and the highly intelligent products of Western civilization who gathered in Philadelphia for the Constitutional Convention.

The inability to identify the enemy, and to substitute instead this ridiculous and dangerous phrase “war on terror,” has had consequences both for perception, and for policy. Even now it is unclear if Bush, or for that matter such Congressional loyalists as Lieberman and McCain, have at long last begun to see how wrongheaded, what a squandering of resources, the continued American presence in Iraq is. They do not even now seem to realize how messianic are the goals of America in Iraq, or how those goals are merely one more evasion, one more way to avoid seeing Islam plain and taking the kind of measures, and employing the various instruments, that were used aside from combat during World War II and the Cold War, including economic warfare, and of course propaganda to demoralize the enemy. . . .

You asked what to tell your children. I’m not sure what, of the above, you can tell them. Perhaps you should just say: mistakes are being made, and soon they will have to be corrected, and then their father will come home. Not exactly a satisfactory answer, for them, for you, for him, for any of us.
 

A long, powerful post worth reading in full.
 

Ralph Peters:

For three years, the violence was about political power in post-Saddam Iraq. Sunni Arab insurgents and Shia militias may have been on opposite sides, but the conflict was only a religious war for the foreign terrorists. And the fighting wasn't between the masses of Sunnis and Shias - who were the victims of all sides.

Now it's different. The unwillingness of the Iraqi government to take on the sectarian death squads slaughtering civilians is polarizing Iraq (while the Kurds build up their own peaceful slice of the country as fast as they can).

Political violence with a religious undertone is becoming outright religious violence. The difference is crucial. The earlier fighting was over who should govern. Increasingly, it's about who should define Allah's will on earth. Nothing could be more ominous.

. . . Iraq could still succeed. It's too early to walk away.

But the Iraqis have to get their act together. We can't keep the training wheels on the bicycle forever. If they won't unite to fight for their own country, we'll have to accept that our noble effort failed.
 

We should always remember that it was noble, and refuse to let anyone convince us otherwise. Not purely altruistic—a free Iraq would benefit us hugely—but still an act of national benevolence unlike any other in history. No matter how it turns out, we spent thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars to give an oppressed nation a chance at liberty. Never forget that.
 

Melanie Phillips on Britain:

The reason our society once revered marriage was because everyone knew it was the fundamental institution that kept the national show on the road. Take an axe to marriage and society itself cracks wide open. . . . The reason for focusing upon marriage . . . is precisely because that is the best way of focusing upon the welfare of the child and the quality of its upbringing.

Yes, the stigma that was once attached to unmarried mothers and children from broken homes was often cruel. But what Mr Johnson decries as prejudice was, in fact, society’s way of protecting the most vulnerable and enforcing rules of behaviour that upheld the sense of commitment and duty to others that binds us together as a civilised society. . . .

The family, because it promotes self-reliance, is the bulwark of individual liberty against the incursions of an oppressive state.
 

And what we think of ourselves. James Bowman:

[I]t is another peculiarity of the liberal mind to be contemptuous of “mere” appearance. I remember a year or so ago a remark by Charles Peña of the Cato Institute to the effect that the war in Iraq “isn’t about national security anymore; it’s about pride and credibility.” As if pride and credibility weren’t the most fundamental assets in the war-chest of national security!
 

Andrew C. McCarthy:

The Bush administration’s reluctance to identify the enemy in the “war on terror” — to deal with the Islamic in Islamic militancy — has been maddening. Up until now, though, it’s always been refreshing that the administration got the war part right. . . .

On July 19, Israel, alone, was engulfed in all-out hostilities with Hezbollah, Islamic terror’s A-Team, a committed enemy of the United States, and the forward militia of Iran’s Islamic Republic, the epicenter of smoldering jihadism. Tony Snow, the administration’s spokesman, was asked, point-blank: “Does the president … believe that this is as much the United States’ war as it is Israel’s war?”

Answer: “No.”

. . . [S]o hell-bent was the administration to avoid acknowledging the war — our war — that its spokesman could not bring himself to admit that our ally, Israel, was fighting for its life. After all, if it’s a war, we might actually have to fight it like one. We might not be able to leave it to Israel. We might actually have to allow as how we may not be able to democratize Hezbollah, and Iran, into submission. . . .

The critics roll their eyes at the “hawks.” They point toward the disintegration in Iraq and snicker, “So, now you want another war?” But it’s not “another” war; it’s the same war.

Try this lovely Mark Steyn piece about an entertainer named Bert Williams, of whom I hadn't heard. I also like these two quotes from Wikipedia's page on Williams:

"He has done more for our race than I have. He has smiled his way into people's hearts; I have been obliged to fight my way."
          Booker T. Washington

"Funniest man I ever saw, saddest man I ever knew."
          W. C. Fields
 

For lexicographical accuracy, consult Tim Blair. Examples:

Oil, n. Highly prized fossil-derived fuel resource behind all current US policies, from closeness to oil-rich Israel to the notorious invasion of oil-rich Canada.
 
Australian Film Industry, n. Body that ensures the funding, making and distribution of Australian films. But not the viewing.

Quagmire, n. Any military undertaking by western powers that does not result in an immediate paradise on Earth, such as has not been seen since humankind’s original fall and expulsion from Eden.

Abu Ghraib, n. Post-2003: the worst place on Earth; a roiling, satanic hate-mill of torture and oppression. Pre-2003: never heard of the place. Maybe it was a bubblegum factory run by elves.
 

Melanie Phillips:

The responses in Britain and Europe to the current crisis in the Middle East more than ever confirm my view that much of the west is in the grip of a profound moral breakdown. The outward manifestation of the sickness is a hatred of Israel, an irrationality and a willingness to turn objective truths on their heads to a degree which is simply unprecedented. Indeed, the British pathology now runs so deep that the hostility towards Israel’s activities in Lebanon is currently far more pronounced than in much of the Arab world, which unlike Britain has grasped what is actually going on in Lebanon and what the stakes are — compared to which, hatred of the traditional Israeli foe takes a very firm second place. This is another first for our upside-down times.

A hysteria towards Israel is rising within the media and so-called educated classes of Britain which increasingly mimics and even rivals, in its intensity, irrationality and bigotry, the prejudices and libels coursing through the Arab world which are the recruiting sergeants for global terror. Through the distorting prism of this world view — the dominant view of the media and the intelligentsia — Israel is being presented as the aggressor in this dispute, inflicting upon the hapless Lebanese a wholly disproportionate level of punishment. . . .

The BBC has now become one of the most potent weapons of the enemies of civilisation. . . . But the moral crisis in Britain extends far wider and deeper than the wretched BBC and other media. The surreally distorted response by so many to Israel’s attempt to destroy the would-be purveyors of genocide raises the question of whether Britain will ever again support a just war — because it no longer knows what a just war is, and no longer has the intellectual capacity to know.
 

And this hurts, because it's true:

For years America has looked the other way from Iran and Hezbollah, despite the attacks carried out by Hezbollah against American interests over recent years. Now we read that President Bush sees a wider opportunity in Israel’s desperate war of self-defence. According to Secretary of State Condi Rice, the war in Lebanon is an opportunity to create a new Middle East (again) by eradicating terrorism. What that means is that Israel is to be used to eradicate it. Israel is to do America’s dirty work for it — the work from which America has flinched in the past and continues to flinch, in failing to address the real terrorist godfathers of Syria and above all Iran. So Israel’s sons are being sent to die so that America can restructure the Middle East by remote control, without committing any of its own to this terrible fight. And Israel is now sweating on America’s permission for more of its sons to be sent to die on the Lebanese killing fields, because the alternative for Israel is so much worse.
 

Strongly recommended.
 

A fascinating report from David Bellavia, Owen West and Wade Zirkle, "infantry veterans of the Iraq war and cofounders of Vets for Freedom (vetsforfreedom.org)," in the Weekly Standard. Some typically insightful passages:

Their infantry skills aren't perfect. Iraqis carry their weapons every which way, and they enter buildings like horses out of the gate, often bumping into one another. American units drill urban movement to exhaustion; Iraqi squads may discuss it over sweet chai tea. Yet, when they search a building, they confidently rip detonation cords from under rugs and blasting caps from corners and belt-fed ammunition from hidden cupboards. Iraqis find in minutes all kinds of suspicious or incriminating items that even a polished American unit would have missed.

* * * * *

The mosque is entered and cleared by Iraqis who do not fire a single round. They're soon scrubbing floors, repairing broken windows, and filling two-week-old and two-year-old bullet scars with putty. They scrawl a message on a sign near the entrance: "This is a house of prayer and will be used to worship."

A reporter asks one of the soldiers, "You guys know there is a war going on, right?"

"Some things are more important than war," he says.

* * * * *

As one American Army officer stated, "If the Iraqis want to enter a mosque that they believe is harboring the enemy, they can just do it. A U.S. soldier would need the approval of a three-star general to do the same thing."

* * * * *

Iraqi soldiers, while brave, patrol with an underlying belief that life is predetermined. Divine intervention has its place, but fatalism on the battlefield often inflates casualties.

Worth reading in full.
 

Deroy Murdock:

Like chanting Buddhist monks, the president’s critics repeat 100 times daily: “Bush Lied — People Died.” The “lie,” of course, is that Saddam Hussein possessed Weapons of Mass Death. “There were none,” Senator Jack Reed (D., R.I.) told his colleagues June 21. “They were not there.” Absent such munitions, the argument goes, U.S. involvement in Iraq is nothing but a blood-soaked misadventure unfolding on a collapsed façade of falsehoods.

Nevertheless, while the liberal press gently sleeps, evidence continues to mount that Hussein had WMDs, though perhaps not in quantities that would bulge warehouses.
 

Michael Rubin argues that "diplomacy for diplomacy's sake can sometimes make matters worse." For instance:

Many adversaries factor the West's preference for engagement into their strategies. In 1990, Saddam Hussein offered to negotiate a withdrawal from Kuwait, all the while consolidating his occupation. Had President George H.W. Bush heeded the advice of Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to accept Saddam's offer, Kuwait might still be Iraq's 19th province. As secretary of state, Powell was willing to entertain a second U.N. resolution on Iraq, which gave Baghdad, Damascus, and Tehran time to organize resistance.

Another example:

Poorly timed dialogue is often worse than no talk at all. Lebanon once looked like a potential Bush administration success story. On April 18, Bush welcomed Lebanese prime minister Fouad Siniora to the White House. "We took great joy in seeing the Cedar Revolution. We understand that the hundreds of thousands of people who took to the street to express their desire to be free required courage, and we support the desire of the people to [be] . . . truly free," Bush said.

How unfortunate, then, that during her first trip to Lebanon as secretary of state three months later, Condoleezza Rice chose to meet the pro-Syrian president Emile Lahoud, against whom the pro-democracy forces had rallied. Her aides may have counseled talk, but the timing and symbolism deflated the Cedar Revolution.

Infuriating, and worth reading in full.
 

Lee Smith, 7/18:

We are sitting at Abu Elie, one of the few bars open Monday night. It's a communist bar with photos papered over the walls. . . . The entire back wall is dedicated to Che, and it occurs to me that the head of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah's "charisma" trades on precisely the same iconography: the beard and interesting headgear. They were both warriors by "conviction," and not vocation. The intellectual romance is similar, too. After a recent lecture series at the American University of Beirut, Noam Chomsky visited Nasrallah to heap praise on him, hardly unusual for the sort of intellectual the AUB tends to attract. One professor there, Timur Goksel, is the former spokesman for UNIFIL [United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon—mg]. That his students describe him as basically pro-Hezbollah and appreciates the Party of God's resistance against aggression, suggests that no one should put much faith in the efficacy of a U.N.-brokered peace.
 

Gary Schmitt and Dan Blumenthal describe how our diplomatic approach toward North Korea "has accentuated China's role in the region at the expense of our most important Pacific ally":

[P]olls show a large percentage of Japanese believe North Korea to be a real threat. . . . We have been asking Tokyo to take on more of the burden in our alliance. In turn, it has supported almost all of Washington's requests. Japan has dispatched ships to support American troops in Afghanistan, as well as troops to help with Iraq's reconstruction. The government has agreed to pay a significant portion of the costs associated with relocating American troops out of Japan. And Japan's politicians have shown real leadership in overcoming the country's pacifist past to be a more responsible ally to the United States in the region and globally.

But all of this is premised on their trust in us, and their expectation that we will mind their interests as well as our own. Following a diplomatic track that makes Japan's concerns secondary to the neverending, never- successful six-party talks is a sure way to dampen that trust.
 

Sunday: "Bomber kills 25 at cafe in northern Iraq"

Monday: "Gunmen kill 50 in Iraqi market attack"

I believe increasingly that nothing can prevent Sunni-Shia war in Iraq, and that Daniel Pipes had it right:

I cheer the goal of a "free and democratic Iraq," but the time has come to acknowledge that the coalition's achievement will be limited to destroying tyranny, not sponsoring its replacement. There is nothing ignoble about this limited achievement, which remains a landmark of international sanitation. It would be especially unfortunate if aiming too high spoils that attainment and thereby renders future interventions less likely. The benefits of eliminating Saddam's rule must not be forgotten in the distress of not creating a successful new Iraq.

Fixing Iraq is neither the coalition's responsibility nor its burden. The damage done by Saddam will take many years to repair. Americans, Britons, and others cannot be tasked with resolving Sunni-Shiite differences, an abiding Iraqi problem that only Iraqis themselves can address.

The eruption of civil war in Iraq . . . would be a humanitarian tragedy but not a strategic one.

(First two links via Jihad Watch.)
 

Thomas Sowell:

An international study of 26 urban areas with "severely unaffordable" housing found 23 of those 26 subject to strong "smart growth" policies. What is "smart" about causing skyrocketing housing prices by making it illegal to build anything on vast amounts of land?

It is smart if you already own a home and the astronomical costs of buying or renting are going to have to be paid by other people who move into the area. It may be especially smart if restrictions on building cause the value of the home you already own to go up by leaps and bounds.
 

In a Washington Post story about the (supposed) bipartisan support for military action after 9/11:

A Washington Post-ABC News Poll in November 2001 asked, "Would you support or oppose sending a significant number of U.S. ground troops into Afghanistan if it meant getting into a long war with large numbers of U.S. troops killed or injured?" Among Republicans, 72 percent answered yes; among Democrats, 57 percent said no.

Jim Geraghty comments,

Fascinating. Remember, this is a question about Afghanistan, not Iraq. I don't know about you, but Afghanistan always stood out as a war we had to win at all costs; we could not let Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda network, and his Taliban hosts emerge in one piece after what they did to us. If it took a lot of casualties, it took a lot of casualties; every enemy and potential enemy of America was watching to see what the consequences were for killing thousands of Americans on a late summer's day.

And yet, 57 percent of Democrats thought "large numbers of U.S. troops killed or injured" wasn't worth it. I suppose one can say that it's easy to say when you're not the one getting killed or injured. On the other hand, if fighting al-Qaeda isn't worth risking large numbers of casualties, what is? Is anything?

Seriously, that poll suggests that Democrats and Republicans view national security and protecting the country from threats differently. And that divide was there in November 2001; it is not a development of recent events.
 

Dave Barry:

Inside the pubs, you will usually find Irish people, who are very friendly to strangers, especially compared with the British, who as a rule will not voluntarily speak to you until you have lived in Britain for a minimum of 850 years. The Irish, on the other hand, will quickly start a conversation with you, and cheerfully carry it on at great length, with or without your help.

One evening, in a busy Dublin pub, I watched an elderly, well-dressed, cap-wearing gentleman as he sat in the corner and, for two solid hours, struck up a lively conversation with every single person or group who sat within 10 yards of him, including a group of German tourists, only one of whom spoke even a little English. The man spoke to them in a thick brogue on a variety of topics for several minutes while they looked at him with the bright, polite smiles of people who do not have a clue what is being said to them. When he finished, they conferred briefly in German, and then the one who spoke a little English said, quote, "Everyone is pleased that he or she is welcome."
 

By "unnecessary," Daniel Pipes means not that Israel shouldn't fight now, but that Israel could've prevented this clash:

For 45 years, 1948-93, Israel's strategic vision, tactical brilliance, technological innovation, and logistical cleverness won it a deterrence capability. . . . By 1993, this record of success imbued Israelis with a sense of overconfidence. They concluded they had won, and ignored the inconvenient fact that Palestinian Arabs and other enemies had not given up their goal of eliminating Israel.

. . . [T]he import of hostilities under way is not what has been destroyed in Lebanon nor what the U.N. Security Council resolves; it is what the Israeli public learns, or fails to learn.
 

At City Journal, Heather Mac Donald sets forth "the conservative principles that militate against amnesty, for immigration-law enforcement, and for a radical change in immigration priorities." Excerpts:

Protecting one form of lawbreaking may require protecting others as well. The city of Maywood in Los Angeles County declared itself a sanctuary zone for illegal aliens this year. Then it got rid of its drunk-driving checkpoints, because they were nabbing too many illegal aliens. Next, this 96 percent Latino city, almost half of whose adult population lacks a ninth-grade education, disbanded its police traffic division entirely, so that illegals wouldn’t need to worry about having their cars towed for being unlicensed.

* * * * *

As Nicaragua’s minister of foreign affairs, Norman Caldera Cardenal, put it [at a May conference of Latin American diplomats]: “It is the responsibility of all nations to respect the dignity, integrity, and rights of all migrants.” (The delegations dutifully acknowledged the U.S. prerogative to decide its own immigration policy, but these ritual genuflections were insignificant compared with the invocations of migrants’ rights.) In less diplomatic language, Mexico’s bicameral permanent legislative commission calls American immigration policy “racist, xenophobic, and a profound violation of human rights,” reports George Grayson in The American Conservative. . . . [W]hen the illegal-alien demonstrators and their government representatives demand respect for migrants’ “human rights,” they are asserting that U.S. immigration laws must fall before a more powerful claim.

* * * * *

After 9/11, the Department of Homeland Security deported 1,500 illegal Pakistanis. An additional 15,000 then left voluntarily, reports Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies. There is no reason to think that this enforcement-through-attrition strategy won’t work as well for Hispanic illegals. Simply requiring employers to verify the status of their workers would deny jobs to 3 million illegal workers, which should lead many to leave.

* * * * *

If someone proposed a program to boost the number of Americans who lack a high school diploma, have children out of wedlock, sell drugs, steal, or use welfare, he’d be deemed mad. Yet liberalized immigration rules would do just that. The illegitimacy rate among Hispanics is high and rising faster than that of other ethnic groups; their dropout rate is the highest in the country; Hispanic children are joining gangs at younger and younger ages. Academic achievement is abysmal.

* * * * *

Open-borders conservatives point to the relatively low crime rate among immigrants to deny any connection between high immigration and crime. But unless we can prevent immigrants from having children, a high level of immigration translates to increased levels of crime. Between the foreign-born generation and their American children, the incarceration rate of Mexican-Americans jumps more than eightfold, resulting in an incarceration rate that is 3.45 times higher than that of whites, according to an analysis of 2000 census data by the pro-immigrant Migration Policy Institute. . . .

Gang life—both Hispanic and black—immediately asserted itself last July when the Los Angeles Unified School District opened a model high school to ease overcrowding. Despite amenities that rival those of private schools—a swimming pool, Mac computers, a ballet studio, a rubber track, and a professional chef’s kitchen—it instantly gained the distinction of being one of the most violent campuses in the system. Shots rang out in front of the school on the second day of classes, reports the Los Angeles Times, and three days after opening ceremonies, police arrested a student with an AK-47 on the campus perimeter. Brawling students attacked safety officers and tried to grab their guns in December, while cops pepper-sprayed a dean breaking up a gang fight in March. Students sell meth in the classrooms, graffiti covers the stairwells, textbooks, and high-design umbrella-covered picnic tables, and a trip to the bathroom requires an adult safety escort.

* * * * *

Spanish may be developing into a language of cultural assertion and opposition. A Hispanic resident of El Paso told New York’s radio station WNYC in May that teen workers in fast-food and other retail outlets regularly refuse to answer her in English when she addresses them. At a city council meeting this March in Maywood, California, the illegal-alien sanctuary, a resident suggested that a council member was using English as a sign of disrespect. All this adds up to a significant, and accelerating, transformation of American culture.

* * * * *

Connecticut’s Greenwich Hospital recently treated an illegal Guatemalan with severe drug-resistant TB, after his local hospital in Port Chester, New York, had gone bust from uninsured immigrants. The uncompensated bill for two and a half months of in-patient treatment totaled $200,000, not including the fees for the numerous specialists on the case, which probably added another $100,000 to $150,000. One surgery alone to remove a crippling accretion on his spine—a condition unknown outside the Third World—lasted an entire day. All of the Guatemalan’s associates tested positive for TB, and all worked in restaurants, reports his surgeon, Dr. Katrina Firlik, in the Wall Street Journal. Such episodes, invisible to conservative elites, make a deep impression on local taxpayers and insurance policyholders.

Worth reading in full.
 

Rich Lowry:

It’s not only neocons in the United States who believe in transforming the Middle East, a goal that has been widely scoffed at in the wake of our setbacks in the Iraq war. Hezbollah and Hamas and their task-masters in Syria and Iran cherish the same goal, only with a radically different vision. The hot war Israel is now waging to its south and north shows again that the Middle East will definitely be transformed — the question is by whom?
 

Thomas Sowell:

While liberals may think of the 1960s as the beginning of many "progressive" trends in American society, cold hard facts tell a very different story. The 1960s marked the end of many beneficial trends that had been going on for years -- and a complete reversal of those trends as programs, policies, and ideologies of the liberals took hold. . . .

As for black economic advances, the most dramatic reduction in poverty among blacks occurred between 1940 and 1960, when the black poverty rate was cut almost in half, without any major government programs of the Great Society kind that began in the 1960s.

Liberals love to point to the rise of blacks out of poverty since 1960 as proof of the benefits of liberal programs, as if the continuation of a trend that began decades earlier was proof of how liberals saved blacks.
 

Several days ago Natan Sharansky said the following:

"I hope [Israeli Prime Minister Olmert is] not making one mistake, and that is planning for more weeks ahead. At most, he will have days." Why, I asked him, will Israel only have days, especially if Hezbollah continues firing rockets into Israeli civilian areas? "Because of the world," he answered. "At the moment Israel starts becoming successful, the world tells us to stop."

He's a wise man:

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan called for an immediate halt to fighting in Lebanon Thursday, and warned Israel's "excessive use of force" had proven counterproductive to the goal of wiping out Hezbollah.
 

An excellent post from Melanie Phillips includes a terse corrective history of Israel's founding. Her frustration with what she's termed "the moral inversion" of the world's attitude toward Israel is plain, justified, and contagious.

I did send her two comments:

Ms. Phillips,

You're right that America "has flinched from what needs to be done" in the war against the jihadists. I hope you realize, however, that it's our Left, the large "Blame America First" segment of the populace and its panderers in Congress, holding us back. The Right recognizes the enemy and is ready to fight.

Also, I must object in part to this: "[I]t is America’s lack of steadfastness, courage and strategic vision over many years which have allowed this crisis to unfold." No doubt we've made many and enormous mistakes, but perhaps our greatest error was our failure to recognize how corrupt and craven Europe has become. We didn't think -- didn't imagine -- that we would have to do nearly everything ourselves.

Sincerely,
Michael Greenspan
 

But Dixie Chicks are out of the top ten.
 

It hadn't occurred to me that snapping a football is a specialized skill, but of course it would be. And because he's so good at it, New York Giant Ryan Kuehl is entering his tenth season in the NFL:

It was in Cleveland that Kuehl honed his snapping skills.

"There must have been more than 100 guys in our first minicamp, and they asked everyone who thought he could snap to work with [holder] Chris Gardocki and [kicker] Phil Dawson," Kuehl said. "[Special teams coach Ken Whisenhunt, aka Whiz] asked Chris who the best was, and he said that I was. Whiz didn't even know how to pronounce my name, but he came up to me the next day and said, 'You're snapping field goals today.' After the last minicamp, he told me I was their long snapper. I worked my tail off during the rest of the offseason. I played defense my first two years in Cleveland as well, but snapping was the meal ticket."
 

A nice piece on Jack Larson and Noel Neill, who played Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane in the 1950s series The Adventures of Superman.

(Via Terry Teachout.)
 

Hugh Fitzgerald:

The war in Kashmir is not a war over Kashmir. Kashmir is only the current demand. In the end, it is a war to recapture India for Islam. India, like Spain (think of all those Al-Andalus Streets, as many as there are Haifa Streets, and Al-Quds Streets, and Palestine Hotels, in so many Arab countries), like Sicily, must be recaptured and re-incorporated into Dar al-Islam. The war in Israel is likewise not a war over Israel. It is all part of the same overall effort, to recapture what belongs by right to the Dar al-Islam.

But don't take heart from that, if you live in Italy or France or England. Don't wipe your brow and say "phew, glad we were never part of Dar al-Islam!" The whole world must become part of Dar al-Islam. Sooner or later, that is what is required.

Worth reading in full.
 

Tim Blair has a good post.
 

Robert Roy Britt:

The tiny chips, about the size of a rice grain, can carry the sort of information that would be vital to ER docs trying to save your life after a car crash or in any situation where you couldn’t talk and time was of the essence. . . .

There are other potential uses. . . . The other day, at my son’s day care, a quarter mile from the Interstate, some still-unknown man tried to snatch a young girl who was going to the bathroom via an outside walkway with two other girls in an ill-conceived "buddy system." She managed to wriggle away and lock the bathroom door and stay safe. School policy has been changed, but that guy is still out there. And you can guess where I stand now on chip implants.
 

I imagine other people pointed to this column by Robert Kagan when it appeared last month, but I've only just read it:

No one should lightly dismiss the current hostility toward the United States. International legitimacy matters. It is important in itself, and it affects others' willingness to work with us. But neither should we be paralyzed by the unavoidable resentments that our power creates. If we refrained from action out of fear that others around the world would be angry with us, then we would never act. And count on it: They'd blame us for that, too.

(Via Davids Medienkritik.)
 

ScienceDaily:

The first experiment found that when participants had to solve an anagram before seeing a target brand, they were more likely to claim to have seen the brand before. Participants also had higher preference ratings for the brand relative to competing brands in the same product category.

The second experiment showed that when participants had to solve an anagram before seeing a target brand, they were more likely to claim to have known the brand in high school, and to prefer it over competing brands.
 

Robert Spencer notes an omission from this article about the honor killing of Samaira Nazir:

Of course, nothing is said about these murderers being Muslim, and the use of the word "caste" slyly suggests they are Hindu. That is, in fact, not the case.
 

A toxic lake in Montana "is turning out to be a source of novel chemicals that could help fight migraines and cancer."
 

Bjorn Lomborg, in an interview by Kimberley A. Strassel:

"The U.N. tells us global warming will result in a sea-level change of one to two feet. It is not going to be the 30 feet Al Gore is scaring us with. Is this one to two feet going to be a problem? Sure," he says. "But remember that this past century sea levels rose between one-third and a full foot. And if you ask old people today what the most important things were that happened in the 20th century, do you think they are going to say: 'Two world wars, the internal combustion engine, the IT revolution . . . and sea levels rose'? It's not to say it isn't a problem. But we fix these problems."
 

Two items from Jay Nordlinger:

Every once in a while — pretty frequently, actually — you read of a terror plot, foiled. And you think, “Gee, they did it again — the government’s doing a pretty good job.” But then you think of the old cliché: “The bad guys have to be lucky only once; we have to be lucky all the time.”

I had such an experience when reading a July 7 item from the AP: “Authorities disrupted a terrorist plot to attack the train tunnels beneath the Hudson River that carry thousands of commuters between New York and New Jersey every day, the FBI announced Friday. Law-enforcement officials said the plot involved at least eight people overseas, including an alleged al-Qaeda operative arrested in Lebanon who had sworn allegiance to Osama bin Laden.”

Shouldn’t we pause, somehow, to express our gratitude to these anti-terrorists? Shouldn’t we thank or honor them, in some way, for “disrupting” these plots? We must also say, nervously: Keep going, please. Keep going.

* * * * *

I’d like to give you an item, then make a lil’ statement. Oh, the title of this item? “Whale Concerns Halt Use of Navy Sonar.”

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A federal judge on Monday [July 3] temporarily barred the Navy from using a high-intensity sonar that could harm marine mammals during war games that began last week in the Pacific Ocean.

The temporary restraining order, sought by environmentalists, came three days after the Defense Department granted the Navy a six-month exemption from certain federal laws protecting marine species to allow use of the “mid-frequency active sonar.”

Environmentalists argued that the exemption was aimed at circumventing a lawsuit they filed last week to stop the Navy’s use of the sonar in the Rim of the Pacific 2006 exercise off Hawaii. The use of sonar in the war games was set to start Thursday.

In her order, U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper wrote that the environmentalists “have shown a possibility that RIMPAC 2006 will kill, injure, and disturb many marine species, including marine mammals, in waters surrounding the Hawaiian Islands.”

Okay, here’s the statement: I’m not saying whether this is right or wrong; whether it’s right for the world’s sole superpower — on which the freedom and peace of billions depend — to defer its military exercises to marine species or not. Maybe it’s ridiculous; maybe it’s admirable.

All I’m saying — for now — is: What a peculiar society. Has there been anything quite like it, in the long march of man?
 

As ever, if you like those, check out the whole piece.
 

Terry Teachout:

To be sure, I wish the postmodern world were classier than it is, but I also know that it gives each of us the opportunity to be as classy as we care to be. On a recent visit to Storm King Art Center, I rode the tram in the company of a group of tourists who chatted loudly, incessantly, and knowledgeably about the sculptures with which the five-hundred-acre park is filled. One of them actually took a call on her cell phone as we drove past Mark di Suvero’s Mozart’s Birthday. Had I thought to bring a garrote with me, her conversation would have been terminated abruptly. Yet I couldn’t deny that she knew more about modern art than most people, and she probably knew more about di Suvero than I did.

Such is life under democracy.
 

The number one single in the UK was The Byrds' version of "Mr. Tambourine Man." Not bad—I don't mind that track. And Chris Cornell is a year older than I. He doesn't look it, the louse. Or sound it, which is worse.

(Via Tyler Cowen.)
 

I shop in the cold
neon aisles
thinking of pleasure,
I kiss my paycheck
 
a mournful kiss goodbye
thinking of pleasure,
in the evening replenish
 
my drink, make a choice
to read or love or watch,
and increasingly I watch.
I do not mind living
 
like this. I cannot bear
living like this.
 

From "Between Angels," by Stephen Dunn
 

Music is the Trojan horse of multiculturalism.
 

Via Bill Roggio, action against a Shiite militia:

An "Iraqi-planned, Iraqi-led and Iraqi-executed operation," supported by U.S. forces in an "overwatch role" made a foray in Sadr City in northeastern Baghdad (Tharwa on the map.) Nine of Moqtada al-Sadr's militiamen in his Madhi Army were killed, and thirty-one were wounded, according to the Iraqi Interior Ministry.

And via Omar, support for Israel's response in Gaza:

But what really makes me feel optimistic about this new Iraqi way of thinking is that it shows how Iraqis are beginning to distinguish between terrorism and rightful acts of resistance not only in Iraq but also on a global level and are showing decreasing tolerance for extremism and this in my opinion is what builds peace in the region or any given region of this world.

At best it'll be a long uphill trek for them, but there's reason for hope.
 

From a Washington Post article on Will Shortz, who edits crossword puzzles for the New York Times:

It's true, Shortz says, he did lower the bar of the Monday puzzle, traditionally the easiest crossword of the week, which increases in difficulty through Saturday. (The Sunday magazine puzzle, while longer than those in the daily paper, has only a Thursday degree of difficulty.) In response to the whiners, though, he soon ramped up the challenge of the Friday and Saturday puzzles, making those two puzzles today something only the elite can regularly solve.

(Emphasis added, as if you couldn't guess.)

Now if only I knew where crossword groupies hang . . .

(Via Katie Newmark.)
 

John Derbyshire on Bush's belief that "etched in the soul of every person on the face of the Earth is the desire to be free":

I have lived in an unfree country, and most of the people around me didn't particularly mind the unfreedom in itself. A lot of them minded being poor, which was a pretty direct consequence of their particular style of unfreedom (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist). If ever someone comes up with an unfree social system that delivers material goods in abundance, though, we shall see a real, unambiguous test of the President's proposition.
 

Claudia Rosett:

In dealing with North Korea's test-firing of a missile designed to hit the USA, our worst mistake would be to rule out pre-emptive military action. Appeasement would be received by Pyongyang not as an olive branch but as an American surrender to ballistic blackmail.

. . . Kim cannot afford a war. He would lose. But unless he is convinced that in threatening us he invites his own annihilation, he will keep ratcheting up the threats. The pity is that the United States did not destroy Kim's long-range rocket on the launch pad. All U.S. choices are by now fraught with risk. But the riskiest would be to rule out all military options while Kim hones his ability to land a nuclear-tipped missile on Los Angeles.
 

Melanie Phillips on the battle in Gaza:

Let us remind ourselves of the context. Israel was condemned for its occupation of Gaza, which was said to be creating ‘despair’ and ‘frustration’ that was causing violence against Israel. Israel withdrew from Gaza. From the day it withdrew, the Palestinians started firing rockets from Gaza into Israel. These rockets have caused some fatalities and injuries. More than 1000 have been fired since the withdrawal. Now two rockets have hit Ashkelon, one hitting a school playground which just happened to be empty. As the Haaretz writer Ze’ev Schiff has observed, this constitutes 'an unequivocal invitation by Hamas to war.'

Virtually none of these attacks has been reported in Britain.

The Palestinians have been smuggling into Gaza a vast arsenal of weaponry and have been tunnelling into Israel. If they haven’t got it already, it is only a matter of time before they get chemical or biological material with which to arm these weapons still further. For the Palestinians, withdrawal from Gaza has provided the opportunity to ratchet up their war against Israel. So much was always entirely predictable (including to people like myself, who supported withdrawal as the lesser of two terrible evils). Since Israel no longer occupied Gaza, it should have been plain — to those who didn’t believe it previously — from these post-withdrawal attacks that the Palestinians’ war was not one of liberation but of extermination (as they had so helpfully announced in both the Palestinian national charter and the Hamas charter).

Virtually none of this has been reported in Britain.

. . . Today, the fighting escalated and so did the casualties. Such is the inevitable price of a war declared upon Israel. Such civilians who are regrettably killed become casualties because the men of terror position themselves amongst them, thus effectively using the Palestinian population as human shields as this small snippet illustrates.

This is not reported in the British media.

Worth reading in full.
 

Theodore Dalrymple on "a little-known fact about prisoners — or British prisoners at least":

About a third of them (I don’t have precise figures) prefer life inside to life outside.

The reasons for this are several. The most important is that prison provides them with boundaries to their own behaviour that they are incapable of providing for themselves. They therefore feel safer in prison than at large; they do less damage there to themselves and, more importantly, to others.

Also:

Criminals, unlike the current British criminal justice system and criminologists, know the value of punishment. Both inside prison and out, they impose their discipline by means of the threat of punishment on their colleagues, friends, family and the rest of society. It is this threat, for example, that prevents a prisoner who has been brutally attacked in jail and injured badly from revealing the identity of his attackers. If he does so, he will be considered a “grass”, a crime that carries with it a life sentence, in as much as he will be under threat of further attack by other prisoners for the rest of his career inside. Indeed, the threat can be extended to his area of residence on his release from prison.
 

Daniel Pipes:

Obtaining the same rights for Christians in Islamdom that Muslims enjoy in Christendom has become the key to the Vatican's diplomacy toward Muslims. This balanced, serious approach marks a profound improvement in understanding that could have implications well beyond the Church, given how many lay politicians heed its leadership in inter-faith matters. Should Western states also promote the principle of reciprocity, the results should indeed be interesting.
 

David Frum:

Never forget: The North Korean nuclear program could never have proceeded as far as it has without crucial assistance from China - and the same is true for the Pakistani and Iranian nuclear programs as well. . . . [N]ow that India has acquired nuclear capability, helping India to achieve a more effective program - which necessarily adds to China's security concerns - represents a small portion of the balance due to China for so recklessly putting at risk the security of the rest of the world. Let's hope that US diplomats are reminding China right now that Japan could go nuclear at any moment it chose - as could, perhaps with a little help from its friends, Taiwan.
 

David Pryce-Jones compares Israel's rescue mission in 1976 to its efforts now:

[O]nce again, terrorists have seized someone Jewish and are demanding the release of prisoners who have been brought to justice. Once again, Israeli forces are poised to free their man; they have the strength to do so, they may have the intelligence too, and Gaza is a great deal closer than Entebbe. The days are passing, and military measures are beginning to look like a posture. Nothing seems changed down those 30 years, except the resolve that went into the Entebbe rescue, and which now has a question mark over it.
 

It was taken in 1840, nearly fifty years after Mozart died.

(Via Norm Geras.)
 

Update: Or not. (Also via Norm.)
 

In his latest "Impromptus":

Please accept my 1,024th example of Why It’s Utterly Amazing that John R. Bolton is U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Here’s an excerpt from a Q&A with the press the other day:

Reporter: And do you think the U.S. position is balanced by calling the kidnapping of the [Israeli] soldier a terrorist act while refraining from commenting on the [inaudible] civilian deaths [inaudible]?

Ambassador Bolton: There is no moral equivalency to, on the one hand, deliberate attacking of civilians, taking lives, taking hostages, versus the inadvertent and highly unfortunate civilian deaths that occur when a country exercises its right to self-defense. Those are not the same act, they are not motivated for the same reasons, they do not carry the same moral weight.

Enjoy it while you can, folks. We’ll be back to “evenhandedness” — illogical, immoral, insupportable — before long.

* * * * *

In a column the other day, Ann Coulter made an absolutely terrific point — I wish I had thought of it. She said, “When is the New York Times going to get around to uncovering an al-Qaeda secret program?” That is not only “provocative,” but penetrating. Is the Times devoting any of its (vast) investigative resources to uncovering the machinations of al Qaeda, as they go about attempting to kill us? Or is the paper entirely focused on the “real enemy”: George W. Bush?
 

I haven't heard most of the appearances Melanie Phillips has made to promote her book Londonistan, but I did record one, her segment on Anita Rani's program on the BBC Asian Network. It runs about 44 minutes including commercials, and Phillips is remarkable for her poise and articulateness. Foes of radical Islam could find no better spokesman. If you'd like a copy, email me at mg615-at-yahoo.com (replace "-at-" with "@").
 

Anne Bayefsky reports on the first session of the Human Rights Council, which replaced the Commission on Human Rights:

[E]xamples of egregious human-rights violations should not have been hard to find. In Darfur, there are three quarters of a million people beyond humanitarian reach, 2.5 million people displaced by the violence, 385,000 people in immediate risk of starvation, and over two million dead in 22 years of violence and deprivation. But it wasn’t genocide in Sudan that interested the Human Rights Council. Nor was it a billion Chinese without civil and political rights. Not 13 million women in Saudi Arabia whose lives depend on hiding from sight in public places and never being caught behind the wheel of an automobile. Not the dire human-rights conditions of 23 million people in North Korea. Not Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s incitement to genocide or his country’s legal system, which includes crucifixion, stoning and amputation.

No; there was only one country singled out by the U.N. Human Rights Council, and that was Israel.

At Turtle Bay, nothing changes but the seasons. I'm glad we have John Bolton there, but I doubt he can accomplish much among such people. Bayefsky wants us to stop funding the UN. That's a good idea. I'd add that whether or not we give it money, if we're going to stay in it, we should boot it from the US.
 

James Jordan and James Powell, "research professors in Maglev Research Center at Polytechnic University of New York," in the Washington Post:

Biofuels such as ethanol made from corn, sugar cane, switchgrass and other crops are being touted as a "green" solution for a large part of America's transportation problem. Auto manufacturers, Midwest corn farmers and politicians are excited about ethanol. Initially, we, too, were excited about biofuels: no net carbon dioxide emissions, reduction of oil imports. Who wouldn't be enthusiastic?

But as we've looked at biofuels more closely, we've concluded that they're not a practical long-term solution to our need for transport fuels. Even if all of the 300 million acres (500,000 square miles) of currently harvested U.S. cropland produced ethanol, it wouldn't supply all of the gasoline and diesel fuel we now burn for transport, and it would supply only about half of the needs for the year 2025. And the effects on land and agriculture would be devastating.

(Via Ronald Bailey.)
 

Eva Cassidy's cover of Cyndi Lauper's song "Time After Time." Cassidy died of bone cancer in 1996, at the age of 33. Here's a site maintained by her cousin.

(Clip via Barnes & Noble's page for the album.)
 

Mackubin Thomas Owens recalls a symposium held "in the aftermath of Vietnam [that] went a long way toward cementing the military’s negative image of the press":

The moderator of a panel that included Peter Jennings of ABC News, Mike Wallace of CBS, and Marine Col. George Connell, offered a hypothetical scenario: In wartime, you are invited to accompany an enemy unit that says it will prove that an ally of the United States is committing atrocities. While accompanying the enemy patrol, you find yourself in the midst of preparations for an ambush that may very well cause the death of Americans. Do you try to warn the Americans?

After hesitating, Jennings replied that he would try to warn the Americans. But Wallace responded that he would regard it as just another story and that he would not feel a "higher duty" to warn the Americans. Col. Connell watched this exchange in what can only be described as a cold rage. When asked to comment, Col. Connell said of Wallace, "I feel utter contempt. Two days later those same two journalists [could be] caught in an ambush and are lying 200 yards from my position, and they expect that I’m going to send Marines to get them. They’re not Americans. They’re just journalists."
 

Clive Davis, a critical admirer of the US, quotes a book he's reviewing, America Against The World:

More than a million legal and illegal immigrants enter the United States every year, but when presented with a choice people around the world say they no longer see America as the prime land of opportunity. Asked where a young person should go to lead a good life, no more than 10 per cent of respondents to a 2005 Pew survey in thirteen of sixteen countries recommended the United States. Australia, Canada, Great Britain, and even Germany were all preferred destinations. Only in India was America still the most popular place if one's children were thinking of emigrating.

Davis describes these statistics as "troubling." Perhaps he views them as an indication that the US is faltering in some important way. If so, he may be right. It's also possible that we remain appealing to would-be emigrants, while other countries have become more attractive than they used to be. That seems to me a reasonable interpretation, one I find optimistic. A more prosperous world would be a good thing all around. We don't fear the competition. Maybe we should, but we don't.
 

Europeans, that is. Guest-blogging at Michael Totten's site, Callimachus looks at a few recent discussions of anti-Americanism. His post touches on some of the same history as this 2003 piece by James Ceaser, which goes into more detail.
 

Charles Krauthammer:

So in 2005 the Palestinians are given Gaza, free of any Jews. Do they begin building the state they say they want, constructing schools and roads and hospitals? No. They launch rockets at civilians and dig a 300-yard tunnel under the border to attack Israeli soldiers and bring back a hostage.

And this time the terrorism is carried out not by some shadowy group that the Palestinian leader can disavow, however disingenuously. This is Hamas in action--the group that was recently elected to lead the Palestinians. At least there is now truth in advertising: a Palestinian government openly committed to terrorism and to the destruction of a member state of the U.N. openly uses terrorism to carry on its war.

That is no cycle. That is an arrow.

(Via Davids Medienkritik.)
 

Ne'er do ye speak unless ye ha' something to say, and when ye are done, be sure and leave off.

John Witherspoon, quoted in Roger Kimball's (excellent) piece "The Forgotten Founder."
 

Mark Steyn:

The immediate consequence of this is that America's friends in India, Australia, Singapore, Denmark and elsewhere will conclude that this country is simply not serious and its descent into moral narcissism too advanced. The long-term consequence will be the opposite of what the justices intended -- the sidelining and eventual discarding of Geneva, at least by nations that wish to survive the depredations of the jihad.
 

David Pryce-Jones:

Palestinians aren’t stupid and I suspect that the man on the Gaza street knows that once again the leadership has gone too far, and all because at the top they are fighting to the death for power and money, and laying the blame for their defects on Israel. If the leadership could take the measure of reality they’d hand Gilad Shalit over forthwith. As things stand, 60 Hamas officials have been arrested by Israel, Gaza residents will be without electricity for several sweltering months, and some bridges have been bombed flat. The disappearance or death of Gilad Shalit — and now [62-year-old Mr. Noam] Moskovitz — will bring down on Palestinians not just more occupation but something close to war.

Caroline Glick disagrees:

As to the current IDF operation in Gaza, it is fairly clear that whatever accomplishments the IDF may achieve over the next few days, Olmert will call for a retreat rather than enable those tactical accomplishments to become translated into an enhanced strategic environment for Israel. Olmert, whose primary goal as prime minister is to reenact the failed withdrawal from Gaza twenty-fold in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem cannot enable the Israeli public to see proof on its television screens night after night that the withdrawal was an abysmal failure.
 

Arabs and Muslims generally live in what anthropologists call a shame society, in which acquisition of honor and avoidance of shame are the key motivators. These values distort reality and oblige people to cancel out feelings of shame through heroics. . . .

 

[Two journalists independently] have reported how would-be suicide bombers utter such key sentences as "Israel attacked my honor," and "Honor and dignity are very important in our culture. And when we are humiliated we respond with wrath." Or again the proud father of a 21-year-old suicide bomber explains how he brought his son up on stories of Israeli injustice, and then asks, "What do you expect from such a young person who grew up knowing all this, going through all this humiliation?"

We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies, we want that we will be able to live in an entirely different environment of relations with our enemies. We want them to be our friends, our partners, our good neighbors, and I believe that this is not impossible.

Useful data here showing that humans contribute only a small or a trivial amount to the greenhouse-gas total. (Small if one doesn't count water vapor as a greenhouse gas, trivial if one does.) That's why, as atmospheric physicist S. Fred Singer wrote in 2001, "even if punctiliously observed, [the Kyoto Protocol] would have an imperceptible effect on future temperatures -- one-twentieth of a degree by 2050." And it isn't being punctiliously observed.

(Via Jonah Goldberg.)
 

Newmark's Door has a lot of good links up.
 

Robert Spencer comments on an AFP story bearing that headline:

Of course. There are always new demands, and always will be, until the world is Islamized under Sharia and non-Muslims subjugated. But Western analysts, ignorant or careless of the jihad ideology, continue to assume that if we just hit on the right mixture of carrots and sticks (mostly carrots, of course), peace will ensue and all will be well.

We must defeat this ideology decisively. I wis