At Amazon, until the sale ends. Regular price is $7.99, which is still awfully low for more than fifteen hours of music.

Very funny—the jokes about Romney and Obama are my favorites—but it seems to me that he had a harder time being silly than in previous years.

A list from Gordon G. Chang.

The strong is morally inferior to the weak.

The victor is morally inferior to the loser.

It is not easy to be wholly consistent in one's pronouncements, especially if one pronounces a lot.

Theodore Dalrymple in a FrontPage symposium on Alexander Solzhenitsyn and his legacy.

Merry Christmas.

This article by John Lott and (his son, I guess) Ryan Lott is infuriating. Isn't there anyone these days who says, "I'd like to win, but if I can't win honestly then I'd rather accept defeat"?

(Via NRO.)

A lot of fun. Click on one of the white balls and drag it to the other objects until the ball looks like the ball on the box. The trick is figuring out the correct order.

(Via Steve Bass, whose free newsletter is worth signing up for if you like this kind of timewaster.)

From J.G. Thayer at Contentions. Sample entries:

Truce: A period during which Hamas limits its offensive actions to rockets and mortar shells, smuggles in more and more weapons, and Israel is not allowed to hit back.
 
Resumption of hostilities: Hamas increases the rocket and mortar attacks, resumes suicide bombings, and other attacks. Israel is still not allowed to hit back.
 
War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, Atrocities: Israel hits back.

Useful also in translating Reuters.

Note the structure of this opening sentence (emphasis added to make my point shriekingly obvious):

An Israeli air strike killed a Hamas gunman in the Gaza Strip after Palestinian militants fired dozens of rockets and mortars into southern Israel on Wednesday, dampening prospects for a renewed ceasefire.

The firing of rockets and mortars preceded the air strike, so shouldn't the article mention them first? The cause before the effect?

Note also the phrase "into southern Israel." Later in the article comes "at Israel." In fact, the Palestinian Arabs were trying to hit Israeli civilians, not aiming at or into an abstract piece of geography.

Still later in the article: "The latest violence erupted on Tuesday night when Israeli soldiers killed three Hamas gunmen. The army said the men were preparing to plant explosives along the border." Israel's action qualifies as an "erupt[ion]" only if one ignores the bombardment of Israeli towns since last Friday. But of course violence in that conflict is insignificant unless Israel commits it.

(Via LGF.)

Russell Roberts believes it may have been a provision in the 1997 Taxpayer Relief Act that changed the capital-gains rules affecting housing:

You don't want to tax-advantage one investment over another or you induce a disproportionate flow of capital into that asset. That's the tragedy of the last ten years that's hidden. Tax policy and what came afterward caused trillions of dollars (not millions, not billions, but trillions) from China and here and elsewhere to go into building new and bigger houses rather than into more productive assets. It was a colossal mistake approved by a Republican Congress and signed by a Democratic president.

That's the view of John O'Sullivan, who should know:

I can still recall [Thatcher's] breakthrough performance in a July 1977 debate on the Labour government's collapsing economy. She dominated the House of Commons so wittily that the next day the Daily Mail's acerbic correspondent, Andrew Alexander, began his report: "If Mrs. Thatcher were a racehorse, she would have been tested for drugs yesterday." She was now on the way to becoming the world-historical figure who today is the gold standard of conservative statesmanship.

Mrs. Palin has a long way to go to match this. Circumstances may never give her the chance to do so. Even if she gets that chance, she may lack Mrs. Thatcher's depths of courage, firmness and stamina -- we only ever know such things in retrospect.

But she has plenty of time, probably eight years, to analyze America's problems, recruit her own expert advice, and develop conservative solutions to them. . . .

Mrs. Palin had four big occasions in the late, doomed Republican campaign: her introduction by John McCain in Ohio, her speech at the GOP convention, her vice-presidential debate with Sen. Joe Biden, and her appearance on Saturday Night Live. With minimal preparation, she rose to all four of them. That's the mark of star.

If conservative intellectuals, Republican operatives and McCain "handlers" can't see it, then so much the worse for them.

A preposterous yet widespread argument for Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg's suitability as Hillary Clinton's replacement.

Via Russell Roberts.

That's William Tucker's description of nuclear power, or as Tucker calls it, terrestrial energy. Max Schulz of the Manhattan Institute likes Tucker's book:

Almost all the conventional energy sources we employ are forms of solar power, Tucker notes, including fossil fuels. When we burn coal and oil, we unlock stored solar energy that originally rained down from the sun. Or we can “turn to a variety of technologies that tap the sun’s rays directly or draw on physical processes driven by the sun’s heat,” like solar panels and windmills.

Nuclear power is different. The energy source comes not from the sun, but from deep within the earth (hence the title). “There is one great difference between terrestrial energy and solar energy,” writes Tucker, “and that is the energy density. Terrestrial energy is far more concentrated--by a factor of about two million.”

This can have dangerous possibilities--just one gram of matter was turned into the energy that annihilated Hiroshima. But it also offers an almost boundless opportunity to provide the energy humanity needs at a time when we are accustomed to think of our resources as limited. Tiny amounts of material and land can generate enormous volumes of power, without pollution or greenhouse gas emissions.

If Spengler is right that much of the Middle East is near collapse, then we need new sources of energy as soon as possible. Increased nuclear power should be one of them. (This article from early 2005 convinced me of nuclear power's usefulness and importance.)

Khan Academy, "a not-for-profit organization with the mission of providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere," offers "700+ videos on YouTube covering everything from basic arithmetic and algebra to differential equations, physics, and finance." I've tried only a few, but they look great. And while I'm at it, a tip of the metaphorical hat to YouTube for giving people such as Khan (and me) an easy way to make material available to the world, at no cost to creator or audience.

(Via Stuart Buck.)

"She looks at a problem that seems insolvable," said George J. Klir, the retired professor who recruited her 18 years ago. "And she finds a way to solve it, again and again."

He's referring to Jessica Fridrich, a professor of electrical engineering at Binghamton University.

As a teenager, Dr. Fridrich saw a man demonstrating the Rubik's Cube at a mathematics seminar, and scrambled defiantly through a crowd to touch it. She says it was immediately clear that she was "cube possessed," her shorthand for people who spend most of their waking hours learning to speed-solve the cube. Even though no cubes were for sale in her country then — the few people who had them bought them in Hungary — she would not be stopped. She picked up Kvant, a Russian math journal that outlined one method of solving the cube, and worked it out on paper.

When she finally got her first cube, left behind by family friends visiting from France, she began to improvise, cubing faster and faster to beat record times from Prague, Hungary and the United States printed in newspapers. By the time the Czech national championship took place in 1982, Dr. Fridrich was one of the fastest speedcubers in the country. She won the championship, solving the cube in less than 23 and a half seconds — a time that would now be laughably long in international competition — going onto place 10th in the first world championship in Budapest.

(Via Tyler Cowen.)

Gordon G. Chang, on reports of protests in different parts of the country:

Putin's Russia did not take the opportunity afforded by high commodity prices to build a more sustainable economy. So Russia rode the energy wave up, and it is now riding the wave back down. . . .

Moscow's economic problems could not have come at a better time for us. Putin was using new-found strength to erode democracy at home, undermine Russia's neighbors, and disrupt global stability. He revealed himself as a dangerous-and reckless-force. . . .

We may have common interests with the Russian people and with Russia's neighbors, but we have nothing in common with Moscow's leaders. They apparently think we are locked in a zero-sum game with them, and we should agree on this one point. So let's borrow some recently forgotten wisdom from Ronald Reagan. With regard to the Kremlin, our policy should be that we must win and they must lose.

Jennifer Rubin on Bush's proposal for a loan to GM and Chrysler:

Only the Bush administration could come up with a plan that is even less effective than what Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid would find acceptable.

Jay Nordlinger posts emails from conservatives in liberal parts of the country (and world):

I live in Madrid, Spain, and people here assume that, just because I’m American, I’m for Obama. One night, at a dinner party I was hosting, a guest went into my study to use the telephone, and upon entering yelled out in horror as he saw my framed 1980 campaign poster of Ronald Reagan (“Let’s Make America Great Again”) on the wall. I ran in to see what was going on and he actually spit on it! I have given up talking politics here. Thank God for the Internet and podcasts.

* * * * *

“More than one person has wandered into my private study, chanced upon Nordlinger, Goldberg, Bork, Collier & Horowitz (Destructive Generation is a great freakin’ book), Steyn, Noonan, Will, etc., and emerged to say, ‘I didn’t know you were a Nazi.’ Nice, huh?”

* * * * *

A reader wrote to say that he was spat on while collecting signatures for the Civil Rights Initiative in California in 1996. Lovely.

And, hang on, there was at least one accusation of Nazism too: “Our volunteer coordinator — a registered Democrat, incidentally — was called a Nazi by one passerby. He politely corrected the person, explaining that Nazis were the people who killed his parents’ families during the Holocaust.”

He has more.

By me (also posted here). Featuring the Lederspan Singers. My hope is that someone who'd like to memorize a few lines of the Declaration of Independence might find it helpful. I got the idea from this, which between Saturday-morning cartoons taught me the Preamble to the Constitution.

Downloads: mp3, lead sheet, video.

Spengler:

Financial crises, like epidemics, kill the unhealthy first. The present crisis is painful for most of the world but deadly for many Muslim countries, and especially so for the most populous ones. Policy makers have not begun to assess the damage.

. . . Moderate Islam was the El Dorado of the diplomatic consensus. It might have been the case that Pakistan could be tethered to Western interests, or that Iran could be engaged peacefully, or that Turkey would incubate a moderate form of Islam. I considered all of this delusional, but the truth is that we shall never know. The financial crisis will sort them out first. . . .

The lights are going out across the Middle East; states are failing, and it is not in the power of the West to make them whole again. All the strategic calculations that busied policy analysts and diplomats are changing, and the West has a very short time to learn the rules of a new and terrible game.

He also comments, "with great caution, given the absence of accurate information," on the attacks in Bombay (I'm staying with the name Mark Steyn favors):

I have good reason to believe that the Indian authorities lied about the attack. India claimed that 10 shooters were involved, because nine were killed and one captured. The actual number is closer to 30, I am reliably informed, not counting support personnel in Mumbai who arranged safe houses with extra ammunition and explosives months in advance of the attack. It was not a suicide attack at all, but a new kind of urban terror assault, in which the participants had a reasonable expectation of survival, and the majority did in fact survive. That is an important wrinkle, for a better class of combatant can be recruited for missions in which survival is at least possible.

No analyst I know has answered with confidence the question, cui bono? To whose benefit was the attack? It has been suggested that al-Qaeda diverted a Pakistani military intelligence team from Kashmir to Mumbai, in a demonstration of power against India. But there may be another dimension. The Mumbai attack has been a test of a different kind of warfare, the kind that emanates from failed states: the tactics of the Somali pirates applied to random destruction of civilian lives.

Now online, searchable and free.

Abe Greenwald (emphasis added):

I know, I know: Extreme winters are a sign of “climate change.” Except mild winters are also a sign of climate change. Whatever truth there is to global warming, it isn’t inconvenient. It’s the most easily adaptable “crisis” ever discovered. Not only is it supported by the only scientific theory to be confirmed by contradictory data, but its adherents don’t have to worry about defending themselves, because as Barack Obama recently said, “The science is beyond dispute.” And the solution fits into a wildly popular pre-existing paradigm: blame America, then ask it for things.

Max Boot:

It is good to see that Multi-National Division-Baghdad has removed its ban on interpreters wearing masks. I and many others had protested against this measure which, notwithstanding the improving situation in Iraq, could have cost some interpreters their lives. . . . As Stars and Stripes notes: “The change comes after U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., 12 other members of Congress and an interpreters’ association asked the Pentagon in a letter to rescind the ban.” Good for them for getting involved - and good for officers in Iraq for rethinking this ill-advised policy.

Jennifer Rubin:

Led by Senators Mitch McConnell and Bob Corker, the Republicans in the Senate began to reclaim lost political ground on Thursday when they held firm against a bailout that was devoid of meaningful corporate restructuring requirements. . . .

In this regard, it doesn’t much matter if President Bush foolishly caves into the UAW. The Republicans still in office didn’t. This is how, inch by inch, a party reclaims its self-respect and, in turn, the respect of the voters. Republicans made it very clear that they are the fiscal grown-ups and they intend to stand up against bad deals. They will lose more than they win next year, but that hardly matters. What does matter is to conform their conduct to their rhetoric, act soberly when everyone else is not and expose the irrationality and malfeasance of the other side. That is how a minority party makes an impression — and claws back to majority status.

As to the administration's reported willingness to divert funds from the Wall Street bailout to the auto bailout, Rubin writes, "Of the many foolish political moves and misguided policy decisions of the Bush presidency, this would rank fairly high."

Shmuel Rosner:

WorldPublicOpinion.org polled 21 countries and found that most people favor an international agreement to eliminate all nuclear weapons:

In 20 of the 21 countries large majorities, ranging from 62 to 93 percent, favor such an agreement. The only exception is Pakistan, where a plurality of 46 percent favors the plan while 41 percent are opposed. All nations known to have nuclear weapons were included in the poll, except North Korea where public polling is not available.

Now we know the “world” would like to get rid of nuclear weapons. What’s next? The world opposes disease? The world stands foursquare against natural disasters?

Investor's Business Daily:

Another day, another oil company fleeing the country. No, this isn't Ecuador, the banana republic that just defaulted on its debt after chasing out investors. It's the United States, and what we're seeing is self-defense. . . .

In a political atmosphere of blaming corporations, it's no wonder. Halliburton fled to Dubai in 2007. Tyco International, Foster Wheeler and Transocean International all went to Switzerland. As a pattern emerges, America's global standing diminishes, in part because it's based on the willingness of companies to invest. It's an especially bad sign when domestic companies flee. . . .

What accounts for this vote of no confidence in the U.S.?

Start with the demonization of oil companies. . . . With an expanded Democratic Congress and an incoming Democratic president determined to create "patriot corporations," it's no surprise to see companies try to get out while they can. . . . [Also,] Big Labor is feeling its oats, swaggering confidently with newfound political power. . . .

None of this portends well for the U.S. business environment. That's why top-performing firms, such as Weatherford [International Oil Field Services], are exiting. Until Congress learns to appreciate and value oil firms, this will continue, leading to less U.S. investment and influence as more competitive climes beckon.

Stephen Moore:

A new poll has found that most young Americans who went to the polls on November 4th, and presumably voted for Barack Obama, had no idea that the Democrats have run Congress the last two years. That's a good thing for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, because her record is as bad as any new Speaker's in history. . . .

The stock market has decisively voted thumbs-down on the Pelosi paradigm, with the Dow falling from 12,157 in November 2006 to 8,600 today. . . .

The night of the Democratic landslide election of 2006, the net worth of the country was roughly $50 trillion. Now it's at least $6 trillion lower. . . . Democrats promised jobs and pay raises, but the unemployment rate has climbed steadily from 4.5% to 6.7%. The misery index (inflation plus the unemployment rate) has nearly doubled during Ms. Pelosi's watch. . . .

[T]he federal budget deficit has soared from $165 billion in fiscal year 2007 to $486 billion in 2008 and could reach $1 trillion in 2009. Meanwhile, routine federal spending has risen by $400 billion in two years — a figure that does not include the cost of the three federal banking bailouts, and counting. All of this can't be blamed solely on President Bush because it is Congress that has the power of the purse. Let's call them partners in fiscal crime. . . .

In about two months, Democrats will have complete power in Washington and Ms. Pelosi won't be able to continue pinning the dismal record of failure on George W. Bush. But she will certainly try to.

Andrew Levy, Daily Mail:

A school choir was forced to withdraw from a Christmas event because organisers branded its carols 'too religious'.

Around 60 children aged between seven and 11 had spent six weeks practising favourites including Once In Royal David's City and Silent Night for the Corringham Winter Festival.

But they were let down at the last minute when their headteacher was informed their programme did not 'dovetail' with the festival's theme

The event ended up going ahead last week with non-religious music and displays from an Irish school of dancing and performing arts students.

Note this:

Father David Rollins, of St John the Evangelist Church in Corringham, added: 'It's rather disappointing. Christmas is a major Christian event.'

If Levy's quote of Fr. Rollins is accurate, then who can fault the event organizers for their cravenness? Why should they stand up for Christmas when a clergyman offers such a timid defense?

(Via Andrew Stuttaford.)

Jonah Goldberg:

The New York Times — which, according to Wall Street analysts, is weeks from holding editorial-board meetings in a refrigerator box — created the journalistic equivalent of CSI-Wasilla to study every follicle and fiber in Sarah Palin’s background, all the while treating Obama’s Chicago like one of those fairy-tale lands depicted in posters that adorn little girls’ bedroom walls. See there, Suzie? That’s a Pegasus. That’s a pink unicorn. And that’s a beautiful sunflower giving birth to a fully grown Barack Obama, the greatest president ever and the only man in history to be able to pick up manure from the clean end.

Just the leftist media doing their (true, not purported) job.

Video from The Onion.

To demythologize Kwanzaa:

[T]hose who celebrate this holiday do so in blissful ignorance of the sordid violence, paranoia, and mayhem that helped generate its birth some three decades ago in a section of America that has vanished down the memory hole.

A joke by the hyper-masculine Glenn Reynolds reminded me of this, from my favorite David Mamet movie:

The truth is, you never should trust anybody wears a bow tie. . . . A cravat's supposed to point down to accentuate the genitals. Why do you want to trust somebody whose tie points out to accentuate his ears?

Here. Seems a nice kid too.

(Via FreshArrival, which I just found and bookmarked.)

Henry Payne:

Taxpayers may think restructuring auto companies means making them more competitive, but the radical green crowd now in power in Washington thinks restructuring means making them more moral. . . .

A New York Times editorial on December 5 said the Detroit Three must “transform themselves into businesses that make fuel-efficient cars, even when gas is cheap.”

This is economic illiteracy. And only government can sustain an economically illiterate business model. The taxpayers are not about to loan to the Detroit Three, they are on a course to own the Washington Three.

Later: Also from Payne, a selection of funny (ridiculous, not witty) quotes from the hearings.

Brendan O'Neill, editor of spiked, on a protest that "briefly stopped flights at London's Stansted airport" Monday:

Here we have an attempt by a tiny clique of well-to-do eco-protesters — with Middle-England names like Joss, Tamzin, and Lily — to prevent thousands of people from flying abroad, whether for fun, to meet loved ones, or, in one distraught woman’s case, to attend her father’s funeral in the Republic of Ireland. This is the very essence of environmentalism: an aloof effort to police and restrain the desires of the mass of the population. . . .

Manmade flight represents humanity’s most naked defiance of nature and its limits, where we take to the skies in the most unnatural way imaginable in order to conquer and explore the globe. And modern airports, with their no-frills airlines and bustling crowds of people thirsting to see the world, represent aspirant consumerism at its most explicit.

This is why the eco-poshos hate flying: it’s clever, arrogant, exploratory, and desirable. And at Stansted today, where 50-odd eco-worthies have prevented thousands from soaring through the skies, we can glimpse, in an undiluted form, a major battle of our times: that between green misanthropy and mass desire.

Mark Steyn in the current edition of National Review (no free link yet):

Brian T. Kennedy of the Claremont Institute had a grim piece in the Wall Street Journal the other day positing an Iranian-directed freighter somewhere off America's shores capable of firing a nuclear-armed Shahab-3 missile that explodes in space over Chicago:

Gamma rays from the explosion, through the Compton Effect, generate three classes of disruptive electromagnetic pulses, which permanently destroy consumer electronics, the electronics in some automobiles and, most importantly, the hundreds of large transformers that distribute power throughout the U.S. All of our lights, refrigerators, water-pumping stations, TVs and radios stop running. We have no communication and no ability to provide food and water to 300 million Americans.

This is what is referred to as an EMP attack, and such an attack would effectively throw America back technologically into the early 19th century.

If Brian Kennedy were to switch it from an Iranian freighter to an Iranian freighter secretly controlled by a Halliburton subsidiary, he might have a scenario he could pitch to Paramount. But he's got a tougher job pitching it to America. This is the Katrina nation: Our inclination is to ignore the warnings, wait for it to happen, and then blame the government for not doing more. That last part will prove a little more difficult after an EMP attack. I doubt there'll be a blue-ribbon EMP Commission for Lee Hamilton to serve on, or much of a mass media for him to be interviewed by Larry King and Diane Sawyer on. "An EMP attack is not one from which America could recover as we did after Pearl Harbor," writes Mr. Kennedy. "Such an attack might mean the end of the United States and most likely the Free World."

Are there really people out there who want to do that? End the entire Free World? The very term sounds faintly cobwebbed. When nukes were confined to five reasonably sane great powers, the Left couldn't get enough of Armageddon: There were movies, novels, plays, even children's books about the day after, and the long nuclear winter. When it was crazies like Reagan and Thatcher with their fingers on the buttons, the liberal imagination feasted on imminent nuclear immolation. Now it's Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong Il and who knows who else with their fingers on the buttons, and nobody cares: What's the big deal?

Well, the Iranians have held at least two tests in the Caspian Sea to launch missiles in the manner necessary to set off an EMP meltdown. And if you were, say, Vladimir Putin and obsessed with restoring Russia's superpower status, you might reasonably conclude that that might be well nigh impossible without diminishing the superpower status of the other fellow. And, while you wouldn't necessarily want your fingerprints on the operation, you wouldn't go to a lot of trouble to dissuade whichever excitable chaps were minded to have a go.

(Kennedy's piece is here.) I hope Obama proves much more effective in foreign policy than I expect.

And sperm counts are dropping precipitously. Studies in more than 20 countries have shown that they have dropped from 150 million per millilitre of sperm fluid to 60 million over 50 years. (Hamsters produce nearly three times as much, at 160 million.) Professor Nil Basu of Michigan University says that this adds up to "pretty compelling evidence for effects in humans".

Excuse me? Hamsters? What?

The quoted paragraph appears in an interesting and troubling article describing evidence that endocrine disruptors are "feminising males of every class of vertebrate animals, from fish to mammals, including people." Leonard Sax, author of Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated and Underachieving Young Men, discussed endocrine disruptors in an interview last year:

To be honest, the first time somebody suggested to me that drinking bottled water out of plastic bottles might be part of the reason that boys are disengaging from the real world, I thought that person sounded pretty gullible. I figured the next idea they’d try to push was the notion that little green men from Mars are controlling our thoughts.

But as I researched this idea, and as I read the scholarly papers, I came to see that there’s really a huge and rapidly-growing body of evidence now linking these endocrine disruptors, these environmental estrogens, to many of the phenomena I describe in the book: boys being less motivated, young men having more problems with erectile dysfunction, boys breaking their bones more easily than boys did a generation ago, and so forth. When I earned my medical degree, 21 years ago from the University of Pennsylvania, it was extremely unusual to find a young man with erectile dysfunction. Today it’s very common. I prescribe more Viagra for men under 30 than I do for men over 40.

Worrisome.

(First link via Glenn Reynolds.)

Later: Iain Murray writes that "the effects of contraceptives on fish is [sic] a genuine environmental catastrophe," but describes the Independent article as "otherwise over-hyped." He recommends instead this overview (pdf) of the effect of endocrine disrupters (spellings apparently vary). While I'm happy to defer to Murray on all matters environment-related, I note that none of the sources in the analysis he links is dated later than 2000. Maybe Sax and the scientists quoted in the Independent article based their conclusions on newer research, though of course "newer" doesn't necessarily mean "better." (Have I hedged enough?)

A survey of Americans' "civil literacy" finds that "[s]eventy-one percent of Americans fail the test, with an overall average score of 49%." At The American Spectator's site, Joseph Lawler, drawing also on Bryan Caplan's book The Myth of the Rational Voter, summarizes bleakly:

What we are left with, then, is a citizenry woefully ignorant of its civic institutions, morbidly unaware of the surrounding world, and irrationally misguided in the voting booth. How is democracy to succeed?

Economists Oliver Hart and Luigi Zingales:

This year will be remembered not just for one of the worst financial crises in American history, but also as the moment when economists abandoned their principles.

Caroline Glick:

In the aftermath of the Mumbai massacres, it is hard to imagine that there is anything as pernicious as the jihadists who sought out and murdered non-Muslims with such cruelty. But there is. Their multicultural apologists, who enable them to continue to kill by preventing their victims from fighting back, are just as evil. . . .

[T]here is nothing that jihadists can do to make the multiculturalists stop defending them. And there is nothing effective that democratic governments can do to defend against the jihadists that multiculturalists will deem acceptable. This is the case because multiculturalists cannot accept the fact that the jihadists are waging war against the West without disavowing multiculturalism itself. And since they will not disavow what has become their religion, they will never be convinced that they must stop defending jihadists.

David Horowitz, as solid a conservative as can be found, argues here and here that we should ignore the question (pdf):

Do we want to go challenging the legitimacy of an election that involved 120 million voters? Have we become deranged leftists like Al Gore who would attack the one binding thread that makes us a nation despite our differences? The mystique of elections is the American covenant. Respect it. Barack Obama is the president of the United States. Get used to it.

* * * * *

[W]hy would anyone who cares about this country want to risk a civil conflict of this magnitude in the midst of two shooting wars with terrorist adversaries and a very hostile intenational environment. Particularly when the president-elect has appointed a national security team that a McCain Administration could live with?

I'm sympathetic, very much so, to Horowitz's concerns, and I believe that Obama possesses the necessary qualifications, but this isn't an arguable SCOTUS decision or possible vote fraud in Chicago. A President who knows himself ineligible to serve has perpetrated an intolerable deception against the American people and can't be trusted with the office. Also, if it's determined after his tenure that his presidency was illegal, mightn't challenges arise concerning the validity of bills and treaties he signed and military actions he ordered?

I'd like the subject of Obama's citizenship investigated quietly and thoroughly. If he came to power legitimately, as I fervently hope he has, that fact should be published and proven, and all of us who've wondered about it should shut up. If his victory was fraudulent, he should resign, or push through a Constitutional amendment making his candidacy retroactively legal. The latter act would be reprehensible, but open; the former would be more honorable, but would leave us with President Biden.

Note: For clarity's sake I've added to this entry since I first posted it.

Later: Michelle Malkin likens those questioning Obama's citizenship to those who think Sarah Palin is Trig Palin's grandmother, not his mother. I hope Malkin's right, and the challenges can be dismissed easily.

Later still: I've decided to stop pressing this. The issue is ripe for conspiracy theorists, and I want not to risk encouraging them. I wrote above that I'd like a quiet and thorough investigation of Obama's citizenship. Unless both those adjectives apply, we'd probably be better off with no investigation at all.

Still later still, and finally: Rick Moran misunderstands the issue of Obama's time in Indonesia, but his characterization of the overall controversy as a "frothy mix of conjecture, speculation, wishful thinking, and downright kookiness" appears painfully accurate. Yet again I wish our large news organizations were objective. Imagine a New York Times story beginning something like, "A lengthy investigation by the Times has found that Barack Obama is indeed eligible to serve as President," and proceeding to detail the evidence, including analysis from reliable and independent experts. It would settle the matter, conclusively and fairly, for all but the fanatics whom nothing could convince. In this universe we're stuck with lawsuits.

(Moran link via Glenn Reynolds.)

Still still later still, and really truly finally: Had I not already decided to ignore the subject, this post from Bob Owens would've settled it for me. I'm stopping now, honest.

(Via—prepare to be astonished—Glenn Reynolds.)

Trust me, you want to, even if you don't know it.

(Via Neatorama, via (indirectly) one of the links in the previous post.)

Here and here, from Craig Newmark.