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Remember the Newsweek article on glo’warming? Jeff Jacoby goes after it in two parts. Here’s part one.

… Meacham, … assures his readers, Newsweek’s climate-change anxieties rest “on the safest of scientific ground.”

Do they? Then why is the tone of Sharon Begley’s cover story — nine pages in which anyone skeptical of the claim that human activity is causing global warming is painted as a bought-and-paid-for lackey of the coal and oil industries — so strident and censorious? Why the relentless labeling of those who point out weaknesses in the global-warming models as “deniers,” or agents of the “denial machine,” or deceptive practitioners of “denialism?” Wouldn’t it be more effective to answer the challengers, some of whom are highly credentialed climate scientists in their own right, with scientific data and arguments, instead of snide insinuations of venality and deceit? Do Newsweek and Begley really believe that everyone who dissents from the global-warming doomsaying does so in bad faith? …

… A few weeks ago, the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Marlo Lewis published an article opposing mandatory limits on carbon-dioxide emissions, arguing that Congress should not impose caps until the technology exists to produce energy that doesn’t depend on carbon dioxide. In response to Lewis’s reasonable piece, the president of the American Council on Renewable Energy, Michael Eckhart, issued a threat:

“Take this warning from me, Marlo. It is my intention to destroy your career as a liar. If you produce one more editorial against climate change, I will launch a campaign against your professional integrity. I will call you a liar and charlatan to the Harvard community of which you and I are members. I will call you out as a man who has been bought by Corporate America.”

This is the zealotry and intolerance of the auto-da-fé. The last place it belongs is in public-policy debate. …

John Fund has good news for the Supremes.

Good news for Chief Justice John Roberts: Everyone knows the American people lack confidence in the White House and Congress right now, but a new Quinnipiac University poll finds that, of the three branches of the federal government, Americans have the most confidence in the Supreme Court. …

Debra Saunders notes many disquieting things about John Edwards. We dodged a bullet in 2004. He was almost the vice president.

… Every time an Edwards opens his or her trap, you can feel the desperation. And no matter how nasty they get, it can’t help, because John Edwards’ biggest problem is that he comes across as the biggest phony in the race.

He’s the swell who charged UC Davis $55,000 — for a 2006 speech on poverty; the self-styled populist who not only treated himself to two $400 haircuts, but also passed the tab along to his campaign; the global warming scold who built a 28,000-square-foot mansion.

Edwards is so full of himself that he doesn’t do his homework. He demanded that fellow Democrats forswear contributions from Rupert Murdoch, the man behind Fox News — oblivious to the fact that Murdoch’s HarperCollins had paid him a $500,000 advance, and $300,000 in expenses, for Edward’s 2006 book, “Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives.”

Elizabeth Edwards disingenuously told the Progressive that when her husband voted for the war resolution, “Mostly the antiwar cry was from people who weren’t hearing what he was hearing. And the resolution wasn’t really to go to war. The resolution, if you recall, was forcing (President) Bush to go to the U.N. first.”

That’s simply not true. The resolution title was clear: “to authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq.” There was no language requiring Bush to win U.N. approval.

And how does Edwards deal with a vote he now calls a mistake? At a February Democratic forum, John Edwards crowed, “I think I was the first, at least close to being the first, to say very publicly that I was wrong.”

Elizabeth Edwards is trashing the front-running Democrats because her husband is trailing in the presidential primary — and rather than take each of them on directly, he is hiding behind his wife’s skirt.

Victor Davis Hanson on anonymous abusers.

… More often, the misuse of anonymity involves journalists’ “unnamed” sources. Michael Isikoff wrote a story in 2005 for Newsweek, apparently based on an anonymous but “solid, well-placed” source, that told of callous military guards at Guantanamo flushing a Koran down the toilet.

The account turned out to be false, but the supposed blasphemy may have caused riots in the Islamic world — and untold damage to the prestige of the U.S. military at a time of war. Yet Isikoff never identified from whom he got such a tale or why he rushed to print something so explosive based on evidence so shaky.

Then, of course, there was CBS anchorman Dan Rather, whose career imploded over the use of anonymity. An unnamed source had given CBS News a supposedly authentic memo showing that George W. Bush had weaseled out of many National Guard obligations. But despite Rather’s insistence that the anonymous source was reliable, bloggers easily demonstrated how the document was an abject forgery.

What can we learn from all this — while savoring the irony of authors and journalists fudging on their own ethical standards as they race to uncover the supposed ethical lapses of their government officials?

If an “I accuse” author like Scott Thomas Beauchamp or Michael Scheuer avoids using his own name, or reporters like Dan Rather or Michael Isikoff won’t name a source for a potentially history-changing story, there is often a good suspicion why: They apparently don’t look forward to questions about why — and how exactly — they wrote what they wrote.

Instead, anonymity gives them free rein as judge and jury, exempt from cross-examination. This “trust me” practice goes against the very grain of the American tradition of allowing the aggrieved the right to face his accusers. …

George Will with a nifty column combining a history lesson with a warning about the Hillary tendencies.

… Clinton leapt to explain the subprime problem in the terms of liberalism’s master narrative — the victimization of the many by the few. In a speech favorably contrasting a “shared responsibility” society with an “on your own” society, she said, in effect, that distressed subprime borrowers are not responsible for their behavior. “Unsavory” lenders, she said, had used “unfair lending practices.” Doubtless there are as many unsavory lenders as there are unsavory politicians. So, voters and borrowers: caveat emptor.

But this, too, is true: Every improvident loan requires an improvident borrower to seek and accept it. Furthermore, when there is no penalty for folly — such as getting a variable-rate mortgage that will be ruinous if the rate varies upward — folly proliferates. To get a mortgage is usually to commit capitalism; it is to make an investment in the hope of gain. And if lenders know that whenever they go too far and require inexpensive money the Federal Reserve will provide it with low interest rates, then going too far will not really be going too far.

In 2008, as voters assess their well-being, several million households with adjustable-rate home mortgages will have their housing costs increase. Defaults, too, will increase. That will be a perverse incentive for the political class to be compassionate toward themselves in the name of compassion toward borrowers, with money to bail out borrowers. If elected politicians controlled the Federal Reserve, they would lower interest rates. Fortunately, we have insulated the Federal Reserve from democracy. …

Speaking of the sub-prime problem, Dick Armey thinks the market has the proper cure, and intervention will only make things worse.

… When you go beyond the demagoguery and look at the economics, it is clear the mortgage market is correcting itself and that a government bailout would only make matters worse. …

… Subprime loans have expanded homeownership by introducing new, risk-laden borrowers to the market. As in any market, the price of a loan reflects this added risk by the lender. Even in the best of times, subprime loans are much more likely to go into default, given their greater inherent risk. …

… Let’s put this in perspective. For all of the media’s hysteria, less than 15% of the 44 million mortgages in America are in the subprime sector. As a total of all mortgages, foreclosure rates are 0.6%, up slightly from 0.5% last year.

While these foreclosures are often individually difficult, this hardly has the potential for wholesale economic catastrophe. Losses are estimated to be $35 billion at most — equivalent to a stock market decline of 0.2%, according to Stephen Cecchetti of Brandeis University.

The real estate and mortgage markets are a textbook example of a market imbalance and its inevitable correction. Lenders overexposed to subprime loans, such as New Century, lost their bets and are now in bankruptcy. While the subprime market will be painful in the short term, it will inevitably lead to a healthier economy in the long run. …

Remember last week when the Boston Globe treated us to the Harvard study of ‘diversity gone awry’? Daniel Henninger looks at the implications.

Diversity was once just another word. Now it’s a fighting word. One of the biggest problems with diversity is that it won’t let you alone. Corporations everywhere have force-marched middle managers into training sessions led by “diversity trainers.” Most people already knew that the basic idea beneath diversity emerged about 2,000 years ago under two rubrics: Love thy neighbor as thyself, and Do unto others as they would do unto you. Then suddenly this got rewritten as “appreciating differentness.”

George Bernard Shaw is said to have demurred from the Golden Rule. “Do not do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” Shaw advised. “Their tastes may not be the same.” No such voluntary opt-out is permissible in our time. The parsons of the press made diversity into a secular commandment; do a word-search of “diversity” in a broad database of newspapers and it might come up 250 million times. In the Supreme Court term just ended, the Seattle schools integration case led most of the justices into arcane discussions of diversity’s legal compulsions. More recently it emerged that the University of Michigan, a virtual Mecca of diversity, announced it would install Muslim footbaths in bathrooms, causing a fight.

Now comes word that diversity as an ideology may be dead, or not worth saving. Robert Putnam, the Harvard don who in the controversial bestseller “Bowling Alone” announced the decline of communal-mindedness amid the rise of home-alone couch potatoes, has completed a mammoth study of the effects of ethnic diversity on communities. His researchers did 30,000 interviews in 41 U.S. communities. Short version: People in ethnically diverse settings don’t want to have much of anything to do with each other. “Social capital” erodes. Diversity has a downside.

Ann Coulter gives the lowdown on the left’s loony liars.

… Joe Wilson went from being billed in the media as a trusted adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney and billed (by himself) as an eyewitness to the president’s “lies,” to being an apron-wearing househusband who had been sent on an errand by his wife.

Not only did he fail to debunk the Niger yellowcake story, he also forgot to bring home the quart of milk his wife had requested. (Wilson is now demanding a congressional investigation into who leaked the classified information that his wife wears the pants in the family.)

The Joe Wilson celebrity tour officially ended when The Washington Post editorialized: “It’s unfortunate that so many people took (Wilson) seriously” — not the least of whom were reporters at The Washington Post itself.

Most recently, The New Republic’s “Baghdad Diarist” has been unveiled as a liar, another illustrious chapter in that magazine’s storied history of publishing con men and frauds.

If conservatives are the ones driven by ideological passions, then why are liberals the ones always falling for laughable hoaxes in support of their anti-war ideological agenda? And if liberal beliefs are true, why do they need all the phony stunts to prove them? How about liberals keep hoaxes out of politics and return them to their rightful place: “proving” Darwinian evolution.

Aftenposten, a Norwegian newspaper, exposes the nursing home problems in the socialist paradise. This, in a country with billions in oil revenues.

Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) reported Wednesday that it’s becoming more and more difficult for elderly Norwegians to get a bed in a nursing home, nearly all of which are public institutions in Norway. Few private options exist.

The vast majority of those who are allocated a nursing home room are over 90 years old, and those who win admission also are much weaker and sicker than successful applicants were just 10 years ago. …

… So serious have nursing home deficiencies become that the government minister in charge of health and social care, Sylvia Brustad of the Labour Party, had to promise an investigation this week into charges that those who do secure a spot in state homes are often undernourished. …

Slate’s Explainer tells why lead is used in paint.

… Why would a toymaker ever use lead paint?

Because it’s bright, durable, flexible, fast-drying, and cheap. Paint manufacturers mix in different lead compounds depending on the color of the paint. Lead chromates, for example, can enhance a yellow or orange hue. Municipal workers often use lead paint because it resists the color-dimming effects of ultraviolet light: The double yellow line in the middle of the road? That’s loaded with lead. …

Right Coast with the solution to Chinese quality problems.

… the market is already reacting.

Consumers are thinking twice about buying no-name Chinese products with long lists of ingredients. U.S. distributors are checking their sources. Retailers, especially those who stock a lot of Chinese goods, are becoming a lot more concerned about their reputations. And Chinese firms and their partners are investing in brands.

How does all this happen? Firm by firm, case by case and step by step. You might recall the recent case of the 1.5million Thomas & Friends toy rail cars and accessories with lead paint. Fair or not, Thomas & Friends has lost quite a chunk of its brand-name capital, and its very survival is in question. No doubt Thomas & Friends has some new protocols.

How long will it take for the market to respond? Pretty much the same amount of time it takes other branded toy manufacturers to check and recheck for lead paint on their products. …

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Mark Steyn was in the National Review commenting on some of our breeding arrangements.

… The abortion lobby talks about a world where every child is “wanted.” If you get pregnant at 19 or 23, you most likely didn’t really “want” a child: It just kinda happened, as it has throughout most of human history. By contrast, if you conceive at 42 after half a million bucks’ worth of fertility treatment, you really want that kid. Is it possible to be over-wanted? I notice in my part of the world that there’s a striking difference between those moms who have their first kids at traditional childbearing ages and those who leave it to Miss Stewart’s. The latter are far more protective of their nippers, as well they might be: Even if you haven’t paid the clinic a bundle for the stork’s little bundle, you’re aware of how precious and fragile the gift of life can be. When you contemplate society’s changing attitudes to childhood — the “war against boys” that Christina Hoff Sommers has noted, and a more general tendency to keep children on an ever-tighter chain — you have to wonder how much of that derives from the fact that “young moms” are increasingly middle-aged. I wish Miss Stewart happiness and fulfillment, but she seems a sad emblem of a world that insists on time-honored traditions when decorating the house for Thanksgiving but thinks nothing of reordering the most basic building blocks of society. …

Financial Times with a timely op-ed; Pick stocks, buy houses, don’t worry.

Here’s what I like about the so-called housing bust. Every house is for sale. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to realise this is a voyeur’s dream. First off, before this creeps out, know this: I’m now in the market to buy a house.

I’ve been renting for the past couple of years and now is the time to buy. There’s not only blood in the streets; there’s full-scale hemorrhaging. I’ll get to specific numbers in a second but this is the exact time you should be considering buying. There’s no rush, however. You have a good year before the next stampede begins, but begin it will. So I’m taking my time checking out houses as they come up for sale.

Let me belt it out: US household assets are $54,000bn. Liquid net worth (cash, mutual funds, bonds etc) is $27,500bn. Household debt is $13,000bn. In other words, the US household balance sheet is looking great: $54,000bn in assets ($27,500bn liquid) to cover $13,000bn in debt. Heck, we’re under-leveraged as a country right now and should probably take on more debt. …

American Thinker shows how the media, this time Reuters, shape the new about the economy.

The headline on the Reuters story syndicated all over the world today is “Wal-Mart Hits the Wall: World’s largest retailer issues bleak forecast, pointing to cash-squeezed customers, higher fuel prices, interest rates.” The accompanying story describes Wal-Mart as “struggling” — which would carry dire implications for the U.S. economy, because Wal-Mart, which serves 127 million customers every week, “is considered a barometer of the health of the U.S. retail sector.” The clear thrust of the article is that Wal-Mart, and hence the U.S. economy, is in trouble.

Really? What the article actually shows is that Wal-Mart’s second-quarter sales “were $91.99 billion, up almost 9 percent from a year ago.” Moreover, its earnings rose to $3.1 billion, up from $2.08 billion a year ago. So, in reality, sales and profits were higher than last year. These are not the financials of a company that is in trouble. …

Victor Davis Hanson wonders what the last 17 months of W’s administration will bring.

… The responsibility of governance is not the same thing as easy op-ed criticism, and the nation is learning just that as it listens to our would-be future presidents—whether Obama’s apparent Pakistan invasion option, or Hillary’s pandering with pseudo-accent to African-Americans, or the obsessions of Mrs. Edwards with Obama, or her husband’s continual embarrassment of living high in one nation, while lecturing others about the needs of the other.

I say all this remembering that friends used to tell me that in March 1991 George Bush would win by a landslide in 1992, and in 1987 Ronald Reagan would either be impeached or resign, or that after 9/11 and the despicable pardons, Bill Clinton would be ranked among our very worst presidents.

The point is that few know exactly how the country and the world will look by November 2008, but it may very well be that the U.S. will enjoy a position of strength and respect abroad and security at home — and someone still in office in late 2008 will get a great deal of credit for that.

Tony Blankley, watching the defeatist Dems run for cover, reminds us of things they have said.

… The Democrats, after spending the winter, spring and early summer frantically calling to get out of Iraq as fast as their little feet could carry them, are now, as autumn approaches, demonstrating their Olympic-class backpedaling skills.

By winter (with the complicity of the drive-by media — hat tip to Rush), the Democrats hope to expunge the historic record of their failure of war nerve this spring. This is the moment for Republicans — from the president, to the candidates for president, to the incumbents and challengers for offices all the way down to dog catcher (and especially dog catcher) to remind the public of the springtime Democratic Party defeatism and lost nerve. …

… The leadership of the Democratic Party has, by their public words this spring, disgraced themselves for a generation. Republicans have the right — and the duty — to engrave in the public mind the springtime Democratic perfidy and cowardice in the face of the enemy.

This spring and early summer: Sen. Harry Reid said the war is lost, Gov. Richardson said that on his first day in the Oval Office he would order our troops to leave Iraq immediately (even if it meant throwing down their weapons on the way out), Hillary bragged that if Bush doesn’t end the war, she would do so immediately upon her arriving in the Oval Office (God preserve us), Sen. Obama took pride of place in his adamantine opposition to, and immediate departure from, the Iraq war. …

Gabriel Schoenfeld posts on the media’s war against the American people.

Roy Spencer in Tech Central reviews the growing evidence against global warming.

In case you hadn’t noticed, the global warming debate has now escalated from a minor skirmish to an all-out war. Although we who are skeptical of the claim that global warming is mostly manmade have become accustomed to being the ones that take on casualties, last week was particularly brutal for those who say we have only 8 years and 5 months left to turn things around, greenhouse gas emissions-wise.

I’m talking about the other side – the global warming alarmists.

First, NASA’s James Hansen and his group had to fix a Y2K bug that a Canadian statistician found in their processing of the thermometer data. As a result, 1998 is no longer the warmest year on record in the United States – 1934 is. The temperature adjustment is admittedly small, yet there seemed to be no rush to retract the oft-repeated alarmist statements that have seared “1998!” into our brains as the rallying cry for the fight against global warming.

Then, the issue of spurious heat influences on the thermometers that NOAA uses to monitor global temperatures has reared its ugly head. Personally, I’ve been waiting for this one for a long time. Ordinary citizens are now traveling throughout their home states, taking pictures of the local conditions around these thermometer sites.

To everyone’s astonishment, all kinds of spurious heat sources have cropped up over the years next to the thermometers. Air conditioning exhaust fans, burn barrels, asphalt parking lots, roofs, jet exhaust. Who could have known? Shocking. …

John Stossel and the farm bill.

By now you’ve probably heard that a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report states:

From 1999 through 2005, the USDA “paid $1.1 billion in farm payments in the names of 172,801 deceased individuals. … 40 percent went to those who had been dead for three or more years, and 19 percent to those dead for seven or more years.” One dead farmer got more than $400,000 during those years.

And they say you can’t take it with you.

Defending the USDA, the GAO adds, “The complex nature of some farming operations — such as entities embedded within other entities — can make it difficult for USDA to avoid making payments to deceased individuals.”

Exactly. The agricultural section of the U.S. code is nearly 1,800 pages.

There’s an easy way to avoid such absurdities: Abolish all farm subsidies. …

Walter Williams speculates on how many people get killed by environmentalists.

Environmentalists, with the help of politicians and other government officials, have an agenda that has cost thousands of American lives.

In the wake of Hurricane Betsy, which struck New Orleans in 1965, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed building flood gates on Lake Pontchartrain, like those in the Netherlands that protect cities from North Sea storms. In 1977, the gates were about to be built, but the Environmental Defense Fund and Save Our Wetlands sought a court injunction to block the project.

According to John Berlau’s recent book, “Eco-Freaks: Environmentalism is Hazardous to Your Health,” U.S. Attorney Gerald Gallinghouse told the court that not building the gates could kill thousands of New Orleanians. Judge Charles Schwartz issued the injunction despite the evidence refuting claims of environmental damage.

We’re told that DDT is harmful to humans and animals. Berlau, a research fellow at the Washington, D.C-based Competitive Enterprise Institute, says, “Not a single study linking DDT exposure to human toxicity has ever been replicated.” In one long-term study, volunteers ate 32 ounces of DDT for a year and a half, and 16 years later, they suffered no increased risk of adverse health effects.

Despite evidence that, properly used, DDT is neither harmful to humans nor animals, environmental extremists fight for a continued ban. This has led to millions of illnesses and deaths from malaria, especially in Africa. After WWII, DDT saved millions upon millions of lives in India, Southeast Asia and South America. In some cases, malaria deaths fell to near zero. With bans on DDT, malaria deaths and illnesses have skyrocketed. …

Imus update from Neal Boortz.

The French News Agency thinks we’re stupid. We get a good chance to see what their propaganda’s like.

BoreMe.com with world class insults

News Biscuit wonders what it’s like to have a child prodigy for a kid.

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Mark Steyn, in the Western Standard,

About a decade ago, Bill Clinton developed a favourite statistic–that every day in America 12 children died from gun violence. When one delved a little deeper into this, it turned out that 11.569 persons under the age of 20 died each year from gun violence, and five-sixths of those 11.569 alleged kindergartners turned out to be aged between 15 and 19. Many of them had the misfortune to become involved in gangs, convenience-store holdups, drive-by shootings, and drug deals, which, alas, don’t always go as smoothly as one had planned. If more crack deals passed off peacefully, that “child” death rate could be reduced by three-quarters.

But, ever since President Clinton’s sly insinuation of daily grade-school massacres, I’ve become wary of political invocations of “the children.” In Iraq, for example, everyone in U.S. uniform is a “child.” “The moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute,” as Maureen Dowd of The New York Times wrote about Cindy Sheehan. Miss Dowd had rather less to say about the moral authority of Linda Ryan, whose son, Marine Cpl. Marc Ryan, was killed by “insurgents” in Ramadi. But that’s because Mrs. Ryan honours her dead child as a thinking adult who “made a decision to join the Armed Forces and defend our country.”

The left is reluctant to accept that. Ever since America’s all-adult, all-volunteer army went into Iraq, the anti-war crowd have made a sustained effort to characterize them as “children.” The infantilization of the military promoted by the media is deeply insulting but it suits the anti-war crowd’s purposes. It enables them to drone ceaselessly that “of course” they “support our troops,” because they want to stop these poor confused moppets from being exploited by the Bush war machine.

Which brings me to Canada’s most famous warrior: Omar Ahmed Khadr, captured five years ago this month fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan, and today, since the repatriation of various Brits and Australia’s David Hicks, the most celebrated of Her Majesty’s subjects to be enjoying George W. Bush’s hospitality at Guantanamo. Mr. Khadr is alleged to have killed Sgt. First Class Christopher Speer of America’s Delta Force in the battle at Khost–or rather in the aftermath, when he was lying on the ground playing dead and hurled a grenade. And perhaps I should say not “Mr.” Khadr but young Master Khadr, for he was 15 at the time. …

Christopher Hitchens does yeoman service destroying some of the anti-war left’s canards about Iraq and Afghanistan.

Over the past few months, I have been debating Roman Catholics who differ from their Eastern Orthodox brethren on the nature of the Trinity, Protestants who are willing to quarrel bitterly with one another about election and predestination, with Jews who cannot concur about a covenant with God, and with Muslims who harbor bitter disagreements over the discrepant interpretations of the Quran. Arcane as these disputes may seem, and much as I relish seeing the faithful fight among themselves, the believers are models of lucidity when compared to the hair-splitting secularists who cannot accept that al-Qaida in Mesopotamia is a branch of al-Qaida itself.

Objections to this self-evident fact take one of two forms. It is argued, first, that there was no such organization before the coalition intervention in Iraq. It is argued, second, that the character of the gang itself is somewhat autonomous from, and even independent of, the original group proclaimed by Osama Bin Laden. These objections sometimes, but not always, amount to the suggestion that the “real” fight against al-Qaida is, or should be, not in Iraq but in Afghanistan. (I say “not always,” because many of those who argue the difference are openly hostile to the presence of NATO forces in Afghanistan as well as to the presence of coalition soldiers in Iraq.)

The facts as we have them are not at all friendly to this view of the situation, whether it be the “hard” view that al-Qaida terrorism is a “resistance” to Western imperialism or the “soft” view that we have only created the monster in Iraq by intervening there. …

Great posts from the Captain. First, he notes a German paper getting the news straight from Iraq. Then he posts on the humor in the “ethics bill.” Finally, he wonders if Obama’s ready for prime time.

1. Der Spiegel has reflected and led overwhelming German opposition to the war in Iraq practically from the moment of the invasion in 2003. They have often featured George Bush on their cover in unflattering pictures and with negative headlines such as “Power and Lies”, an issue last year in which they declared Iraq lost. However, they finally sent their own reporter for an in-depth tour of Iraq, and the magazine realizes that the world media has missed the story

 

2. How bad is the ethics bill that the Democrats just pushed through Congress? Even lobbyists have started to point out its loopholes to the Washington Post. Under the new rules, Representatives and Senators will no longer be able to accept free meals — unless the lobbyist also provides money for their re-election at the meal. No, I’m not kidding:

 

3. The primary campaign has turned into a very long dance for Barack Obama, who seems determined to prove at every opportunity that he has two left feet. In New Hampshire, Obama told a crowd that the US military effort consists mainly of “air raiding villages and killing civilians” — which his tone-deaf campaign confirmed moments later to reporters …

Michael Barone with the first of two pieces on the Dems and free trade.

One issue that’s going to come up this fall that you haven’t heard much about is trade. Or at least I hope it’s going to come up. The Bush administration has submitted four free-trade agreements for approval by Congress — with Peru, Colombia, Panama and South Korea. At the moment, their chances don’t look very good. Democrats have taken to opposing FTAs almost unanimously. In July 2006, the House voted by only a 217-215 margin for the CAFTA, the FTA with four Central American countries and the Dominican Republic. House Democrats voted 188-15 against, House Republicans 202-27 for. In the Senate the vote was 54-45, with Democrats voting 33-10 against and Republicans 43-12 for. Those numbers suggest that the four pending FTAs are in severe trouble unless some votes are switched. …

David Broder is the next grown-up to write about trade.

… the Democratic aspirants for president vied last week in their debate in Chicago to see who could be most irresponsible on trade issues.

The setting encouraged pandering; 17,000 union members filled seats at Soldier Field, mobilized by the AFL-CIO, which was dangling the prospect of labor endorsements and campaign funds in the primary battles just ahead.

The bar for applause lines was set high early in the proceedings when Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, the longest of long shots, said that “it’s time to get out of NAFTA and the WTO,” referring to the free-trade agreement with Mexico and Canada and the World Trade Organization.

That led moderator Keith Olbermann of MSNBC, apparently auditioning for the part of Lou Dobbs, to ask other candidates, “Scrap NAFTA or fix it?” as if those were the only alternatives. …

Thomas Sowell writes on the tragedies in Minnesota and Utah.

Two recent tragedies — in Minnesota and in Utah — have held the nation’s attention. The implications of these tragedies also deserve attention. Those politicians who are always itching to raise tax rates have seized upon the neglected infrastructure of the country as another reason to do what they are always trying to do. Those who live by talking points now have a great one: “How can we fight an expensive war and repair our neglected infrastructure without raising taxes?”

Plausible as this might sound, tax rates are not tax revenues. The two things have moved in opposite directions too many times, over too many years, for us to take these clever talking points at face value. This administration is not the first one in which a reduction in tax rates has been followed by an increase in tax revenues. The same thing happened during the Reagan administration, the Kennedy administration and the Coolidge administration. Tax rates and tax revenues have moved in opposite directions many times, not only at the federal level, but also at state and local levels, as well as in foreign countries. How many times does it have to happen before people stop equating tax rates with tax revenues? Do the tax-and-spend politicians and their media supporters not know any better — or are they counting on the rest of us not knowing any better?

Even if we were to assume that higher tax rates will automatically result in significantly higher tax revenues, the case for throwing more money at infrastructure would still be weak. Some of the money already appropriated for maintaining and repairing infrastructure is being diverted into other pet projects of politicians. Money supposedly set aside for repairing potholes and maintaining bridges is diverted to the building of bicycle paths or subsidizing ferries or buses. These other things have more of a political pay-off. …

John Leo with a good column on Duke.

If anyone ever starts a museum of horrible explanations, the one-liner by Newsweek’s Evan Thomas about his magazine’s dubious reporting on the Duke non-rape case — “The narrative was right but the facts were wrong” — is destined to become a popular exhibit, right up there with “we had to destroy the village to save it.”

What Mr. Thomas seems to mean is that the newsroom view of the lacrosse players as privileged, sexist, and arrogant white male jocks was the correct angle on the story. It wasn’t. …

Division of Labour tells us how Katrina aid is used to purchase luxury condos 200 miles from the coast. ITAGCOW? (Is this a great country or what?)

With large swaths of the Gulf Coast still in ruins from Hurricane Katrina, rich federal tax breaks designed to spur rebuilding are flowing hundreds of miles inland to investors who are buying up luxury condos near the University of Alabama’s football stadium. …

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• August 13 PDF

John Fund is first today with his column on earmark reform – NOT!

… Pretending that the earmark process will be made transparent and accountable as a result of a phony ethics bill is vital to Congress’s effort to convince voters they’ve sobered up on spending. Among other travesties, the new ethics bill strips out previously agreed-upon language barring members from trading earmarks for votes, and in the Senate vests none other than Majority Leader Reid with the power to determine if an item is subject to earmark-disclosure rules.

Concealing just how the pork-barrel culture works is important to congressmen in both parties, because the process can’t really be defended on the merits. Nothing illustrates that better than the exchange that took place just before Congress broke for its August recess between Democratic Rep. John Murtha, the overlord of spending on the House Appropriations Committee, and GOP Rep. John Campbell, a antipork reformer from California.

Mr. Campbell, a certified accountant, rose to challenge a $2 million earmark for a “paint shield” being developed by the Sherwin-Williams Co. in Cleveland. Since the actual sponsor of the earmark, Rep. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, chose not to defend her handiwork, Mr. Murtha took up the cudgel on her behalf. Mr. Campbell simply wanted to know if the Pentagon had asked for the paint shield, since the rationale for the spending was that it would “protect people against microbial threats.”

Mr. Murtha imperiously assured Mr. Campbell that the shield was “a very worthwhile project,” and that “I’m sure the military is interested in this kind of research.”

Mr. Campbell persisted and asked if, “in fact, the military has asked for this kind of technology?” When Mr. Murtha was silent, Mr. Campbell said, “I guess the answer to that is no.” …

Bob Novak on the same issue.

With the midnight hour approaching Saturday Aug. 4 near the end of a marathon session, Democratic and Republican leaders alike wanted to pass the Defense appropriations bill quickly and start their summer recess. But Republican Rep. Jeff Flake’s stubborn adherence to principle forced an hour-long delay that revealed unpleasant realities about Congress. …

Jeff Jacoby reminds us there are worse things than the criminal class in congress. It’s true! There’s the criminal class running countries in Africa. Jeff writes on Zimbabwe.

Debra Saunders noticed the foolish Newsweek piece on global warming skeptics.

NEWSWEEK’s global-warming cover story purports to reveal the “well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry” which for the last two decades “has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change.” It’s the same story run repeatedly in mainstream media: the overwhelming majority of scientists believe the debate on global warming is over — but if there are any dissenting scientists left, they’ve been bought.

Here’s the rub: If dissent is so rare, why do global-warming conformists feel the strong need to argue that minority views should be dismissed as nutty or venal? Why not posit that there is such a thing as honest disagreement on the science? …

Robert Samuelson too. And he writes for Newsweek!

We in the news business often enlist in moral crusades. Global warming is among the latest. Unfortunately, self-righteous indignation can undermine good journalism. Last week’s NEWSWEEK cover story on global warming is a sobering reminder. It’s an object lesson of how viewing the world as “good guys vs. bad guys” can lead to a vast oversimplification of a messy story. Global warming has clearly occurred; the hard question is what to do about it.

If you missed NEWSWEEK’s story, here’s the gist. A “well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change.” This “denial machine” has obstructed action against global warming and is still “running at full throttle.” The story’s thrust: discredit the “denial machine,” and the country can start the serious business of fighting global warming. The story was a wonderful read, marred only by its being fundamentally misleading.

The global-warming debate’s great un-mentionable is this: we lack the technology to get from here to there. Just because Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to cut emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 doesn’t mean it can happen. At best, we might curb emissions growth. …

… But the overriding reality seems almost un-American: we simply don’t have a solution for this problem. As we debate it, journalists should resist the temptation to portray global warming as a morality tale—as NEWSWEEK did—in which anyone who questions its gravity or proposed solutions may be ridiculed as a fool, a crank or an industry stooge. Dissent is, or should be, the lifeblood of a free society.

George Will shows how common and ordinary Obama is.

Sen. Barack Obama recently told some Iowa farmers that prices of their crops are not high enough, considering what grocers are charging for other stuff: “Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?” Living near the University of Chicago, Obama has perhaps experienced this outrage, but Iowans, who have no Whole Foods stores, might remember 1987, when Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis urged Iowa farmers to diversify by raising endive. Said a farmer to a Boston reporter, “Your governor scared me just a hair.”

Obama is not scary, just disappointing. Regarding a matter more serious than vegetables — a judicial confirmation — he looks like just another liberal on a leash. His candidacy kindled hope that he might bring down the curtain on the long-running and intensely boring melodrama “Forever Selma,” starring Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. It was hoped Obama would be impatient with the ritualized choreography of synthetic indignation that degrades racial discourse. He is, however, unoriginal and unjust regarding the nomination of Leslie Southwick to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, whose jurisdiction is Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.

Southwick, currently a law professor, joined the Army Reserve in 1992 at age 42 and transferred in 2003 to a National Guard combat unit heading to Iraq, where he served 17 months. He is 57 and until last December was a member of a Mississippi appellate court. The American Bar Association, not a nest of conservatives, has given him its highest rating (“well qualified”) for the 5th Circuit.

But because he is a white Mississippian, many liberals consider him fair game for unfairness. Many say his defect is “insensitivity,” an accusation invariably made when specific grievances are few and flimsy.

Obama, touching all the Democratic nominating electorate’s erogenous zones, concocts a tortured statistic about Southwick’s “disappointing record on cases involving consumers, employees, racial minorities, women and gays and lesbians. …

The Captain is the first of some of our favorites to post on Rove’s exit.

… It sounds as if he’s through with political consulting. He’s done it for a couple of decades, and the high-profile and high abuse of the last seven years has burnt him out. That didn’t stop him from putting out a few predictions and valedictory advice for the GOP in the Gigot interview. Among them, he predicts that the Democrats will nominate the “fatally flawed” Hillary Clinton — no great surprise — and that the Republicans will beat her.

CQ readers will remember that I have had the pleasure — and I use that word deliberately — of meeting Karl Rove twice, once in DC and once here in the Twin Cities. On both occasions, Rove kept the room laughing while displaying a remarkable recall of numbers and polling trends. Despite everything that had been launched at him, Rove obviously relished his work and enjoyed talking about it. He pulled no punches, and he answered every question asked of him. Many of us were skeptical of his optimism in 2006, and correctly so, as it turned out, but he never took offense or belittled anyone for it.

His departure will no doubt be the subject of celebration for the president’s most vociferous critics, but I think they’ll wind up missing him more than the president’s supporters. They won’t have Rove to kick around any more, and after the shock wears off, it will become apparent how silly all the Rove-kicking was from the beginning.

Hugh Hewitt is next.

Power Line too.

WSJ editors with nice things to say about Hillary. Seriously!

Hillary Clinton has been catching heat for refusing to swear off campaign cash from lobbyists, with critics accusing her of being a stooge of corporate and special interests. We’d say she deserves some credit.

At last week’s YearlyKos event, former Senator John Edwards stooped for an easy applause line by challenging his fellow candidates to refuse donations from “Washington lobbyists.” Mrs. Clinton refused to take the sound-bite bait. When asked if she’d continue taking such cash, she replied: “Yes I will because, you know, a lot of those lobbyists, whether you like it or not, represent real Americans. They actually do. They represent nurses. They represent social workers. Yes, they represent corporations that employ a lot of people.” …

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• August 12 Word

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Mark Steyn takes note of a quiet climb down by climate scolds.

Something rather odd happened the other day. If you go to NASA’s Web site and look at the “U.S. surface air temperature” rankings for the lower 48 states, you might notice that something has changed.

Then again, you might not. They’re not issuing any press releases about it. But they have quietly revised their All-Time Hit Parade for U.S. temperatures. The “hottest year on record” is no longer 1998, but 1934. Another alleged swelterer, the year 2001, has now dropped out of the Top 10 altogether, and most of the rest of the 21st century – 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004 – plummeted even lower down the Hot 100. In fact, every supposedly hot year from the Nineties and this decade has had its temperature rating reduced. Four of America’s Top 10 hottest years turn out to be from the 1930s, that notorious decade when we all drove around in huge SUVs with the air-conditioning on full-blast. If climate change is, as Al Gore says, the most important issue anyone’s ever faced in the history of anything ever, then Franklin Roosevelt didn’t have a word to say about it.

And yet we survived.

So why is 1998 no longer America’s record-breaker? Because a very diligent fellow named Steve McIntyre of climateaudit.com labored long and hard to prove there was a bug in NASA’s handling of the raw data. He then notified the scientists responsible and received an acknowledgment that the mistake was an “oversight” that would be corrected in the next “data refresh.” The reply was almost as cool as the revised chart listings.

Who is this man who understands American climate data so much better than NASA? Well, he’s not even American: He’s Canadian. Just another immigrant doing the jobs Americans won’t do, even when they’re federal public servants with unlimited budgets? …

Joshua Muravchik notes the Dems are facing an inconvenient truth.

It’s time to declare victory and go home. That was the formula that Senator George Aiken famously suggested for Vietnam in 1966. Today, it bears relevance to Iraq. No, not to the U. S. military presence in that country, but to the Democrats in Congress.

Since November, the Pelosi-Reid Democrats have demonstrated shocking disdain for the well-being of our country. Their only concern has been to defeat or embarrass George W. Bush. Once, one of the noblest American traditions held that politics stops at the water’s edge. But, for the Pelosi-Reid Democrats, it seems that the inverse is true: namely, that national interests stop when the opportunity arises for partisan point-scoring.

In the last few weeks, however, a number of Democratic voices have been raised to observe that General Petraeus’s surge strategy seems to be working in Iraq. …

Jonah Goldberg writes on the terrorist/criminal debate.

Bank robbers rarely use suicide bombers. Forgers don’t declare war on capitalism, democracy and modernity. Kidnappers rarely behead their victims without asking for a ransom. And when they do ask for ransoms, only rarely do they demand infidels submit to the will of Allah instead of asking for unmarked bills.

These incandescently obvious observations illuminate, in a small way, the resplendent stupidity of the notion that we should treat members of al-Qaida like run-of-the-mill criminals.

Al-Qaida’s business plan is to make money and kill people in order to impose a global caliphate of Islamic rule. The Mafia’s business plan is to make money in order to … make money. Murder is, as Tony Soprano might say, the cost of doing business. Murder for al-Qaida is the business (and if you die in the process, you get to spend eternity at an Islamic Bada-Bing Club). …

Power Line posts on Spitzer’s troubles and NASA’s climate snafu.

The Captain tells a story about an LA hospital.

Martin Luther King Hospital in Los Angeles has one of the worst reputations in the nation among major metropolitan hospitals. In 2004, the Los Angeles Times ran a devastating exposé on the hospital, showing how federal funds went to waste in a mismanaged muddle that spent far more per patient than any other hospital in the area. Yesterday, the federal funding disappeared — and so will MLK Hospital:

Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital shut down its emergency room Friday night and will close entirely within two weeks, a startlingly swift reaction to a federal decision to revoke $200 million in annual funding because of ongoing lapses in care.

The extraordinary developments mark an end to nearly four years of failed attempts to reform the historic institution, treasured by many African Americans as a symbol of hope and progress after the 1965 Watts riots.

Los Angeles County health services director Dr. Bruce Chernof announced the closure plan Friday afternoon, hours after the hospital learned that it had failed its final test, a top-to-bottom review by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The hospital, formerly known as King/Drew, has shown itself unable to meet minimum standards for patient care since January 2004, according to the regulators.

This is a catastrophe for that area of Los Angeles, and an entirely avoidable catastrophe at that. …

King Corn by Rich Lowry.

Republican presidential candidates flocked to Ames, Iowa, for the Iowa straw poll this weekend, an event that is both an early winnowing process for the GOP presidential field and an object lesson in how one state can hijack the nation’s energy policy.

Ethanol is to Iowans what marijuana is to Rastafarians: a substance that is considered quasi-holy, but only because it delivers really good times. Presidential candidates become fanatical supporters of the corn-based fuel as soon as they begin to compete in the Iowa caucuses. Before it’s over, Mitt Romney might have to promise to use ethanol as pomade and Mike Huckabee — in a naked play for the religious right — to baptize people in the stuff. …

Ilya Somin in Volokh works to set the Che record straight.

Few people still admire Lenin and Stalin. Mao Zedong also has few remaining fans in the West (though he still hasn’t gotten the negative recognition he deserves for being possibly history’s greatest mass murderer). One communist icon, however, still has staying power: Che Guevara. Go to any college campus or hip hangout and you’ll find no shortage of Che T-shirts, Che posters, and even Che cell phone messages. The truth, however, is that Che was no less a brutal killer than other communist leaders. If he failed to rise to the same “heights” as Lenin or Mao, it was largely for lack of opportunity. …

National Review shorts.

Adam Smith tells us how bad the nanny state in England has become.

The nanny state in overdrive was witnessed this week in Urchfont, near Devizes, in Wiltshire. A pensioner, who for eight years has been tending the local flowerbeds (at her own expense), is being told she must stop unless she gets three “men at work” signs, a bright yellow jacket and another person to watch for traffic.

A highways inspector spotted June Turnbull at work and asked the parish council chairman Peter Newell if the council had the necessary “Section 96″ safety license. Apparently the parish has health and safety responsibilities for volunteers on county-owned land. …

WSJ with a nice surprise concerning the level of high school econ knowledge.

Pop quiz. Which has been most important in reducing poverty over time: a) taxes, b) economic growth, c) international trade, or d) government regulation?

We know what our readers would say. But lest you think American young people are slouching toward serfdom, you’ll be pleased to know that 53% of U.S. high school seniors also answered “b.” …

Division of Labour posts on the value of donkeys protecting herds. Would that the political donkeys be good at protection.

Tuesday’s Dallas Morning News runs the (literally) most ass kicking story I’ve read, “Guard Donkeys Used to Protect Texas Herds.” It illustrates some interesting examples of entrepreneurial discovery, tacit knowledge and substitution between animals as productive inputs.

MILANO, Texas – Coyotes and wild dogs were slaughtering calves on Herbie Vaughan’s ranch in the Cedar Creek valley south of Milano until about eight years ago when he took an old-timer’s advice and installed guard donkeys in the herd.

“When I put the donkeys out there, I no longer had a coyote problem,” says Vaughan. “It’s like they disappeared. I don’t know why, but it worked.” …

Jay Ambrose on Newsweek’s abuse of global warming skeptics.

NEWSWEEK magazine, which tells us in a recent edition about a “well-funded,” global-warming “denial machine,” is itself something of a trashing machine, a journalistic pretender that mistakes smear for substance.

The stumbling, bumbling exercise in ad hominem McCarthyism takes it as an unchallengeable truth that global warming is a human-induced catastrophe that could be readily prevented, and concludes there is just one way to explain the “naysayers” to this holy writ: They are part of a “well-coordinated,” heavily financed scheme cooked up by self-serving corporate interests to dupe the public and confuse or buy off politicians. …

John Lott answers Freakonomics with Freedomnomics.

Freedomnomics is John Lott’s free market retort to the wildly popular book, Freakonomics — that pastiche of thin analysis that skims over topics as diverse as sumo wrestling, real estate rip-offs, used car prices, and children’s names.

In particular, Lott disputes the most explosive claim in Levitt and Dubner’s work — that Roe v. Wade was a major factor in the stunning drop in crime in the 1990s. That huge assertion, based on four pages of analysis that included the negative impact of Communist Romania’s no-abortion policy, could easily have been labeled “fewer blacks, less crime.”

Lott argues, by contrast, that the Supreme Court’s legislative fiat in 1973 actually increased crime by boosting out-of-wedlock births and single-parent households. These crime-correlated statistics exploded in the 1970s and ’80s as social sanctions against extra-marital sex disappeared and as the legal but odious option of abortion was rejected by millions of now-pregnant unmarried women.

If abortion isn’t the life-saving procedure that Levitt and Dubner suggest it is, other factors must have caused crime rates to plummet during the last decade of the 20th century. Accordingly, Lott provides evidence that the reinstitution of capital punishment in the early ’90s explains some of the drop — a conclusion that coincides with the findings of other analysts and confirms what most folks, including criminals and police officers, sense intuitively — that people go out of their way to avoid being killed. Stated otherwise: harsher penalties, less crime. …

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• August 9 Word

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Power Line posts on a Journal op-ed we’d previously ignored.

Earlier this week the Wall Street Journal published a powerful column by the former Romanian intelligence officer Ion Mihai Pacepa. The subject of Pacepa’s column was the destructive effect of the left’s intemperate attacks on the president. Buried in Pacepa’s column is this intriguing paragraph:

During the Vietnam War we spread vitriolic stories around the world, pretending that America’s presidents sent Genghis Khan-style barbarian soldiers to Vietnam who raped at random, taped electrical wires to human genitals, cut off limbs, blew up bodies and razed entire villages. Those weren’t facts. They were our tales, but some seven million Americans ended up being convinced their own president, not communism, was the enemy. As Yuri Andropov, who conceived this dezinformatsiya war against the U.S., used to tell me, people are more willing to believe smut than holiness. …

Ion Pacepa’s column is here.

During last week’s two-day summit, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown thanked President Bush for leading the global war on terror. Mr. Brown acknowledged “the debt the world owes to the U.S. for its leadership in this fight against international terrorism” and vowed to follow Winston Churchill’s lead and make Britain’s ties with America even stronger.

Mr. Brown’s statements elicited anger from many of Mr. Bush’s domestic detractors, who claim the president concocted the war on terror for personal gain. But as someone who escaped from communist Romania–with two death sentences on his head–in order to become a citizen of this great country, I have a hard time understanding why some of our top political leaders can dare in a time of war to call our commander in chief a “liar,” a “deceiver” and a “fraud.”

I spent decades scrutinizing the U.S. from Europe, and I learned that international respect for America is directly proportional to America’s own respect for its president. …

The New Editor posts on Gingrich’s description of the presidential campaign ‘verges on insane.’

Contentions introduces Peter Wehner, a new contributor.

Mr. Wehner with his first post for us. His subject is the phony candidate.

Matt Drudge has posted this headline on his site: “Editor For SC Largest Paper: Edwards Is ‘A Big Phony.’” That claim may qualify as the understatement of the political year. John Edwards has gone from what U.S. News & World Report describes as “the happy-face centrist” to the Candidate from the World of Kos. Has any ’08 candidate traveled so far (to the left), so fast, and in such a transparently false manner?

There are the predictable flip-flops. Today Edwards says the Iraq war was a mistake; in 2002, he insisted that “Saddam Hussein’s regime represents a grave threat to America and our allies. . . . [W]e must be prepared to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein, and eliminate Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction once and for all.”

Having been an early supporter of the war on terror, he now refers to it as a “bumper sticker.” John Edwards is now a passionate critic of NAFTA—after having had nice words to say about it just a few years ago. …

Jim Lileks with eminent domain thoughts.

Thomas Sowell on collapsing bridges.

… It is not just the people but the incentives that are responsible for the neglect of infrastructure, while tax money is lavished on all sorts of less urgent projects.

In other words, when there is a complete turnover in political leaders over time, the same problem will remain because the same incentives will remain when new leaders take over.

Some people claim that the problem is how much money it would take to properly maintain bridges, highways, dams and other infrastructure. But money is found for other things, including things far less urgent and some things that are even counterproductive.

The real problem is that the political incentives are to spend the taxpayers’ money on things that will enhance politicians’ chances of getting re-elected. …

Jeff Jacoby on scalping laws.

I’M NOT a sports fan; never have been. Maybe that’s why all the atmospherics surrounding ticket scalping raise more questions in my mind than they answer.

For example: Why is someone who sells tickets to a Red Sox fan outside Fenway Park for a heavily inflated price called a “scalper,” while someone who charges the same fan $4 for a bottle of water inside the stadium is called a “concessionaire”?

Another question, admittedly not germane to the transaction itself: How can people who shudder with revulsion when Atlanta Braves fans do the “tomahawk chop,” or who find Chief Wahoo, the Cleveland Indians’ cheerful emblem, politically offensive, refer so disdainfully to the resale of tickets as “scalping”?

But what I really don’t understand about the scalping brouhaha is why anyone thinks the government should be involved in deciding how much a willing buyer can pay a willing seller for tickets to a lawful entertainment event. …

Sports Illustrated tells us about the latest case for our friends at Institute for Justice.

Carlos Barragan and his son Carlos Jr. don’t torture dogs, don’t inject ‘roids and don’t bet on sporting events they ref. They’ve never run from the law or the tax man or a grand jury.

What they do run is a little boxing gym for kids in National City, Calif., between the Mexican border and the San Diego barrios.

So why is the city trying to shut them down?

Luxury condos, that’s why.

David Brooks gets us up to date on baby names.

NY Times reports on the next thing ethanol mandates are screwing up.

DEKALB, Ill. — While much of the nation worries about a slumping real estate market, people in Midwestern farm country are experiencing exactly the opposite. Take, for instance, the farm here — nearly 80 acres of corn and soybeans off a gravel road in a universe of corn and soybeans — that sold for $10,000 an acre at auction this spring, a price that astonished even the auctioneer.

“If they had seen that day, they would have never believed it,” Penny Layman said of her sister and brother-in-law, who paid $32,000 for the entire spread in 1962 and whose deaths led to the sale.

Skyrocketing farmland prices, particularly in states like Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska, giddy with the promise of corn-based ethanol, are stirring new optimism among established farmers. But for younger farmers, already rare in this graying profession, and for small farmers with dreams of expanding and grabbing a piece of the ethanol craze, the news is oddly grim. The higher prices feel out of reach. …

Slate tells how sunscreen SPF is established.

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• August 8 (word)

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The Boston Globe had a stunning article this weekend -The Downside of Diversity.

IT HAS BECOME increasingly popular to speak of racial and ethnic diversity as a civic strength. From multicultural festivals to pronouncements from political leaders, the message is the same: our differences make us stronger.

But a massive new study, based on detailed interviews of nearly 30,000 people across America, has concluded just the opposite. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam — famous for “Bowling Alone,” his 2000 book on declining civic engagement — has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.

“The extent of the effect is shocking,” says Scott Page, a University of Michigan political scientist.

The study comes at a time when the future of the American melting pot is the focus of intense political debate, from immigration to race-based admissions to schools, and it poses challenges to advocates on all sides of the issues. The study is already being cited by some conservatives as proof of the harm large-scale immigration causes to the nation’s social fabric. But with demographic trends already pushing the nation inexorably toward greater diversity, the real question may yet lie ahead: how to handle the unsettling social changes that Putnam’s research predicts. ….

… His findings on the downsides of diversity have also posed a challenge for Putnam, a liberal academic whose own values put him squarely in the pro-diversity camp. Suddenly finding himself the bearer of bad news, Putnam has struggled with how to present his work. He gathered the initial raw data in 2000 and issued a press release the following year outlining the results. He then spent several years testing other possible explanations.

When he finally published a detailed scholarly analysis in June in the journal Scandinavian Political Studies, he faced criticism for straying from data into advocacy. His paper argues strongly that the negative effects of diversity can be remedied, and says history suggests that ethnic diversity may eventually fade as a sharp line of social demarcation. …

 

… “It’s an important addition to a growing body of evidence on the challenges created by diversity,” says Harvard economist Edward Glaeser.

In a recent study, Glaeser and colleague Alberto Alesina demonstrated that roughly half the difference in social welfare spending between the US and Europe — Europe spends far more — can be attributed to the greater ethnic diversity of the US population. Glaeser says lower national social welfare spending in the US is a “macro” version of the decreased civic engagement Putnam found in more diverse communities within the country.

Economists Matthew Kahn of UCLA and Dora Costa of MIT reviewed 15 recent studies in a 2003 paper, all of which linked diversity with lower levels of social capital. Greater ethnic diversity was linked, for example, to lower school funding, census response rates, and trust in others. Kahn and Costa’s own research documented higher desertion rates in the Civil War among Union Army soldiers serving in companies whose soldiers varied more by age, occupation, and birthplace.

Birds of different feathers may sometimes flock together, but they are also less likely to look out for one another. “Everyone is a little self-conscious that this is not politically correct stuff,” says Kahn. …

 

… So how to explain New York, London, Rio de Janiero, Los Angeles — the great melting-pot cities that drive the world’s creative and financial economies?

The image of civic lassitude dragging down more diverse communities is at odds with the vigor often associated with urban centers, where ethnic diversity is greatest. It turns out there is a flip side to the discomfort diversity can cause. If ethnic diversity, at least in the short run, is a liability for social connectedness, a parallel line of emerging research suggests it can be a big asset when it comes to driving productivity and innovation. In high-skill workplace settings, says Scott Page, the University of Michigan political scientist, the different ways of thinking among people from different cultures can be a boon.

“Because they see the world and think about the world differently than you, that’s challenging,” says Page, author of “The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies.” “But by hanging out with people different than you, you’re likely to get more insights. Diverse teams tend to be more productive.” …

John Fund with an overview of the GOP in Congress.

Republicans faced a time for choosing last week, when Senate Democrats brought to the floor an ethics “reform” bill that may make it easier for Congress to dole out pork-barrel spending. In the words of GOP Sen. Tom Coburn, the bill “not only failed to drain the swamp, but gave the alligators new rights.”

Rather than block the legislation and insist on better reforms, image-sensitive Republicans largely backed the bill.

Have they learned anything? They lost control of Congress last year in no small measure because the GOP had become identified with the culture of pork-barrel spending, frittering away the American people’s former confidence in them on fiscal issues.

If 34 Senate Republicans had united and voted against the bill, Democrats would have been forced to draw up more meaningful reforms. They might even have forced Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to accept the very “sunshine” provisions the Senate unanimously adopted in January–so at least the public would know who is doling out pork. But when it came down to it, only 17 voted for prolonging debate on the bill. …

Mr. Fund also has words for the Dems in debate.

Seven Democratic presidential candidates squared off last night in front of 15,000 AFL-CIO union members at Chicago’s Soldier Field stadium. Talk about playing to the audience. There was so much obeisance paid to the agenda of U.S. labor unions, every candidate should have been given a “pander bear” at the end as a prize.

“This is no longer Bill Clinton’s Democratic Party on trade issues,” concluded former California Democratic Party chairman Bill Press on MSNBC. “I predict that soon enough Bill Clinton himself will say we have to renegotiate NAFTA, a signature accomplishment of his first term.”

No kidding. Hillary Clinton for her part wasted little time bashing the North American Free Trade Agreement for allegedly hurting workers. …

John Stossel thinks it’s a good idea for Wisconsin to bankrupt itself with universal health care. Then the rest of us can learn from their misery.

… As usual, most of the new taxes will be imposed on employers. Progressives believe money taken from them doesn’t cost anything. Rich corporations will simply waste less on lavish perks and excess profits. But taxes on business are often paid by workers, stockholders and consumers. Businesses that can’t pass the taxes on to someone else will close or move out of state.

But progressives are oblivious to this fact. They see Wisconsin becoming a fairyland of health happiness supervised by the 16-person “authority” that will oversee the plan. Socialism will work this time because the “right” people will be in charge.

Does it never occur to the progressives that the legislature’s intrusion into private contracts is one reason health care and health insurance are expensive now? The average annual health-insurance premium for a family in Wisconsin is $4,462 partly because Wisconsin imposes 29 mandates on health insurers: Every policy must cover chiropractors, dentists, genetic testing, etc. Think chiropractors are quacks? Too bad. You still must pay them to treat people in your state. …

… That’s why America needs “Healthy Wisconsin.” The fall of the Soviet Union deprived us of the biggest example of how socialism works. We need laboratories of failure to demonstrate what socialism is like. All we have now is Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, the U.S. Post Office, and state motor-vehicle departments.

It’s not enough. Wisconsin can show the other 49 states what “universal” coverage is like.

I feel bad for the people in Wisconsin. They already suffer from little job creation, and the Packers aren’t winning, but it’s better to experiment with one state than all of America.

Don Boudreaux uses his column to examine the “progressives” claim to progress.

My son, Thomas, 10, sometimes amuses himself with a game he calls “Opposite.” Whenever he is struck by the fancy to play this game, he announces to my wife and me that all that he says during the next several minutes will be the opposite of what he really means.

“Mommy is ugly” really means “Mommy is beautiful.” “I’m stuffed!” means “I’m hungry.” To indicate that he’d prefer to play rather than do his homework, Thomas declares that, by all means, he wants to do his homework immediately.

Too often when I read newspapers or encounter government in action I feel as though pundits and politicians are playing “Opposite” with me. Except, unlike with my son, these people genuinely hope to dupe me with their verbal stratagems.

An especially galling “Opposite” in the political sphere is the use of the term “Progressive.” Enemies of individual freedom and responsibility, and of the economic dynamism characteristic only of capitalism, routinely call themselves “Progressives.”

These “Progressives” want America to “progress” back to a state of mind that holds that we ordinary men and women are so naturally weak in mind, body and willpower that we must be protected by heroic white knights from nefarious forces intent on destroying us.

Just as feudal lords protected their serfs from being raped and pillaged by invading hordes, so, too, will the modern state protect us helpless and ignorant ordinary folk from unsafe foods, immoral drugs, blackhearted corporations, naughty words and inexpensive foreign products. …

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Theodore Dalrymple reviews ‘Sicko’ for National Review.

According to Sicko, Michael Moore’s current film about health care in America, the British and French live in a world of “we,” while Americans live in a world of “me.” This is reflected in their respective health-care systems: The British and French sunbathe in the cloudless uplands of universal state-funded health care, where everything is free, at least to the consumer if not to the taxpayer, while Americans struggle horribly in a muddy swamp to pay exorbitant costs for themselves, and even then have often simply to die for lack of funds.

One does not, of course, expect films made for specific propaganda purposes, such as The Battleship Potemkin or Triumph of the Will, to present human dilemmas in a subtle or complex fashion; furthermore, no one can pretend that a comparison of health-care systems is an easy, obvious, or exciting subject for filmmakers. A book on the subject would put most normal people to sleep quicker than a sleeping pill, however concerned about their health they might be. I therefore understand Mr. Moore’s need to simplify by means of a dialectic between heartrending and uplifting human stories.

Nevertheless, and even allowing for his need to avoid ambiguities that would bore the pants off an average audience, his portrayal of Britain’s National Health Service, in which I have worked for 20 years as a doctor at intervals over more than a third of a century, irritated me profoundly. In effect, only someone intent on telling a lie could have presented the situation as he presented it — for even the most fervent ideological supporters of the National Health Service would admit that, as it currently exists, it is not exactly problem-free (to put it mildly). To avoid public criticism of the NHS in Britain is like avoiding evidence of dictatorship in North Korea: It is possible only for the willfully blinkered. …

 

… With his film, Michael Moore is trying to foist an untruth upon the American public similar to the historical untruth that has been foisted (with great success) upon the British public. He is trying to persuade the American public that the American system needs to be replaced by one such as the British, or perhaps even the Cuban.

It is clear that the American system leaves a lot to be desired — as do most systems. It is expensive and not particularly effective when viewed from the point of view of public health. It has strengths, never of course mentioned by Moore: for example, that it is by far the most innovative and performs by far the most important medical research in the world.

Nor is it even a complete public-health disaster: Life expectancy at birth in the United States increased from 75.4 years in 1990 to 77.5 in 2003 (not, incidentally, that people go down the street humming happily about it, suggesting that, within limits, public health is not a major determinant of happiness). And it certainly does not follow from the fact that the American system has weaknesses that the U.S. ought to follow Britain or Cuba, as Moore suggests. As for France: Despite Moore’s dithyrambs, its population consumes by far the highest doses of tranquilizers and antidepressants in the world. There must be some reason for it.

Sicko is a slickly made and compelling piece of propaganda masquerading as a serious documentary. You could write an entire book about its errors and omissions. America going to Canada for medical treatment indeed! Just as Italians go to Norway for the sunshine.

Also from England, a blogger who thinks the law is an ass.

Claudia Rosett says there are a lot of enterprising folks at the UN.

Let no one fault the UN for lack of enterprise and ingenuity. A series of federal investigations over the past few years have been delving into the activities of a growing list of UN officials engaged in all sorts of lively and creative endeavors, from setting up secret offshore front companies, to laundering money meant to buy UN peacekeeping supplies, to allegedly keeping counterfeit U.S. $100 bills in a UN Development Program (UNDP) office safe in North Korea.

Today brings the arrest of a UN employee, Vyacheslav Manokhin, alleged by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan to have taken part in a scheme using the UN letterhead to help “numerous non-United States citizens” enter the U.S. on fraudulent grounds. …

The Captain says the NY Times is ready to back down on their pay-to-read firewall.

Two years ago, the New York Times provided on-line readers with a strong disincentive to read their columnists. TimesSelect, which I called the Firewall of Sanity, charged $50 per year for people who just couldn’t get enough of Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman, Bob Herbert, and Frank Rich. Now the New York Post reports that Pinch Sulzberger has finally realized that he has marginalized his own columnists in an on-line universe (via Memorandum): …

The Captain also posts on the New Republic/Scott Thomas story which he has ignored. As has Pickings. Turns out ‘Scott Thomas’ Beauchamp is a fraud and the venerable magazine has been had again.

… Don’t get me wrong. If Beauchamp fabricated these stories, then he deserves his obloquy. The editors at TNR have to face some tough questions about their standards for publication in the aftermath of this collapse. They have damaged their credibility and the bloggers have rightly called them out for a retraction.

Still, there is something of an overkill about this story that bothers me. It’s not as if we can argue that cruelty doesn’t occur in war. Of course it does; when it happens, our military investigates and punishes it. Baldilocks talked about this at length earlier in the story, and she’s right. That’s what separates us from our enemies. We prosecute cruelty, while they encourage it. …

Roger Simon posts on the New Republic also.

Mark Steyn with a Corner post.

Hugh Hewitt interviews Max Boot.

HH: Pleased to welcome back now Max Boot. He is a senior fellow at the Council On Foreign Relations, author most recently of War Made New: Technology, Warfare and the Course of History, about to come out in paperback, by the way. He also blogs at Contentions, the blog of Commentary Magazine. Max Boot, welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show.

MB: Thanks for having me back.

HH: Max, your colleague over at Contentions, your new colleague, Pete Wehner wrote today that the O’Hanlon and Pollack op-ed in the New York Times of last week was “climate changing.” You’ve also posted on that. Is that an accurate characterization?

MB: It certainly is for the time being. I think it’s had a tremendous impact, really, as much as any op-ed that I can remember in history. It really has exploded like a bombshell in the Washington debate, and has put opponents of the war on the defensive. But of course, we have to be realistic and understand here that like any potent weapon, this one is not going to win the war all by itself, and it has a limited half-life. And ultimately, events are going to move on. And if events keep moving in a positive direction in Iraq, I think it will reinforce the sense of the Pollack-O’Hanlon op-ed that things are improving and that this war is in fact winnable. But of course, if we suffer more setbacks, if there are a lot more suicide bombings, if there are a lot more deaths, then the impact of the op-ed will dissipate. So I think we really have to wait and see whether it does mark an inflection point or not. I think it’s too early to say, although it’s certainly a positive development. …

National Review shorts.

Editor of a South Carolina paper looks into John Edwards’ soul.

MONTHS ago, I observed on my blog that I think John Edwards is a phony — a make-believe Man of The People.

Ilya Somin in Volokh reminds the Nazis were of the left. Not the right.

The idea that Nazism was an extreme form of “capitalism” and Hitler primarily a tool serving the interests of “big business” is a longstanding myth that even now retains a measure of popularity in some quarters. This, despite the fact that the full name of the Nazi Party was the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, and that Nazi political strategy was explicitly based on combining the appeal of socialism with that of nationalism (thus the choice of name). Once in power, the Nazis even went so far as to institute a Four Year Plan for running the German economy, modeled in large part on the Soviet Union’s Five Year Plans.

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John Fund with an overview of the excitement in the House last week.

The House of Representatives almost turned into the Fight Club Thursday night, when Democrats ruled that a GOP motion had failed even though, when the gavel fell, the electronic score board showed it winning 215-213 along with the word FINAL. The presiding officer, Rep. Mike McNulty (D., N.Y.), actually spoke over the clerk who was trying to announce the result.

 

In the ensuing confusion several members changed their votes and the GOP measure to deny illegal aliens benefits such as food stamps then trailed 212-216. Boiling-mad Republicans stormed off the floor. The next day, their fury increased when they learned electronic records of the vote had disappeared from the House’s voting system.

 

Speaker Nancy Pelosi made matters worse when she told reporters, “There was no mistake made last night.” Majority Leader Steny Hoyer had to rescue her by acknowledging that, while he thought no wrongdoing had occurred, the minority party was “understandably angry.” …

 

Michael Barone reports on changing attitudes towards the war.

It’s not often that an opinion article shakes up Washington and changes the way a major issue is viewed. But that happened last week, when The New York Times printed an opinion article by Brookings Institution analysts Michael O’Hanlon and Ken Pollack on the progress of the surge strategy in Iraq.

Yes, progress. O’Hanlon and Pollack supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003 — Pollack even wrote a book urging the overthrow of Saddam Hussein — but they have sharply criticized military operations there in the ensuing years.

“As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq,” they wrote, “we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily ‘victory,’ but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.”

Their bottom line: “There is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008.” …

… Gen. David Petraeus, the author of the Army’s new counterinsurgency manual and the commander in Iraq, is scheduled to report on the surge in mid-September. The prospect of an even partially positive report has sent chills up the spines of Democratic leaders in Congress. That, says House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, would be “a real big problem for us.”

The Democratic base has been furious that Democrats in Congress haven’t pulled the plug on the war already, and Democratic strategists have been anticipating big electoral gains from military defeat. But if the course of the war can change, so can public opinion. A couple of recent polls showed increased support for the decision to go to war and belief that the surge is working. If opinion continues to shift that way, if others come to see things as O’Hanlon and Pollack have, Democrats could find themselves trapped between a base that wants retreat and defeat, and a majority that wants victory.

The Captain thinks a USA TODAY poll will also find growing support for the war.

… This follows a similar result from a New York Times poll two weeks ago. At the time, war opponents called it an anomaly. It looks like a trend now, one prompted by good news from the surge. If the news continues to improve, the Democrats may find it difficult to insist on the withdrawal in September.

Gabriel Schoenfeld posts on the possibility the NY Times will be indicted.

Is it possible that the New York Times could still be indicted for revealing the existence of the NSA’s Terrorist Surveillance Program in a December 2005 front-page story?

Shortly after the revelation appeared, a federal grand jury was empanelled to investigate the leak. A range of government officials, including Jane Harmon, then the ranking Democrat of the House Intelligence Committee, pointed to the severe damage that the Times story did to our efforts to intercept al-Qaeda communications and thwart a second September 11. Shortly thereafter, President Bush called the newspaper’s conduct “shameful.” …

Max Boot posts on the problems of the weak horse.

Christopher Hitchens wonders when Oakland, CA police are going to protect their citizens.

… My question was answered last Friday, when the Oakland Police Department finally did storm the premises, along with three neighboring homes, and arrested seven people, including Yusuf Bey IV. This, however, was too late to save the life of Chauncey Bailey, the well-liked editor of the black-owned Oakland Post, who had decided to take up where the East Bay Express had left off and to investigate the finances of YBMB. He was shot dead last Thursday in broad daylight on an Oakland street. A young handyman from YBMB named Devaughndre Broussard has been charged in the Bailey case, and other members of the group are being investigated for involvement in the earlier crimes. The “bakery” itself owes more than $200,000 in back taxes and filed for bankruptcy protection last October. …

Neal Boortz noticed the media in “muscular” lockstep.

Tony Harris of CNN, Jake Tapper of ABC, Mara Liasson from NPR, and CNN’s Candy Crowley all used exactly the same word in referring to Obama’s shallow foreign policy address. The same word … and it’s probably a word you’ve never heard before in your entire life used to describe a speech.

Now think back a bit … think back to the Gettysburg Address if you wish. What the hell, let’s go all the way back to the Sermon on the Mount. We can call that a speech, can’t we? Are you working on this? Are you conjuring up each and every speech you’ve ever heard or read about? Fine … now tell me; how many times have you ever heard of a speech being called “muscular.” That’s right … muscular.

Well if you were listening to Liasson, Tapper, Harris and Crowley last week, you heard each one of them refer to Obama’s foreign policy address as “muscular.” In the case of ABC’s Tapper it was “obviously very muscular.” Not only that, but Tapper also told us it was “strikingly bold.” So … there’s the “bold” word also. The same word used by the Associated Press in their coverage. …

American Thinker with a great post on the global-warming propaganda factory.

I have often wondered how the media are in such lock step on Global Warming. Well, I wonder no more. Recently, I came across a website for the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ). http://www.sej.org/ This website is veritable tool box for any budding reporter assigned to the global warming beat. If you’re an editor at the Palookaville Post, all you have to do is send your cub reporters to this site and they’ll have everything they need to write an article that fits the template and action line perfectly.

The SEJ was founded in 1989. The association is considered an indispensable resource among many reporters. The SEJ proclaims their mission to be the creation of a formal network of reporters that write about environmental issues. To that end, they maintain a website, run a listserv and send out regular email alerts to coordinate the coverage and make sure no one deviates from story template and action line. To reinforce this, they regularly conduct conferences and workshops teaching propaganda writing techniques and holding indoctrination seminars. To promote hands on discipline, they offer a “mentoring program.”

In January of this year, the SEJ published what they call Climate change: A guide to the information and disinformation. The guide is neatly organized into twelve chapters. Except for the seventh chapter titled with the freighted descriptive: “Deniers, Dissenters and Skeptics”, the guide is a one sided presentation that resoundingly affirms global warming and puts down anyone with a different point of view. The site is a virtual digest of the global warming industry. If you’re looking for a road map to the special interest groups behind the hysteria, this is the place to go. The journalist members of this association have obviously abandoned all pretense of objectivity. …

 

Carpe Diem posts on trouble for folks who make their own fuel. Is it called “carshine?”

“Bob Teixeira of Charlotte, NC, decided it was time to take a stand against U.S. dependence on foreign oil. So last fall the Charlotte musician and guitar instructor spent $1,200 to convert his 1981 diesel Mercedes to run on vegetable oil. He bought soybean oil in 5-gallon jugs at Costco, spending about 30 percent more than diesel would cost.

His reward, from a state that heavily promotes alternative fuels: a $1,000 fine last month for not paying motor fuel taxes. He has been told to expect another $1,000 fine from the federal government.

San Diego Union-Tribune contributor with experience with Britain’s NHS comments on ‘Sicko’s’ proposals.

… “Sicko” depicts a perfect NHS, the answer to all of our prayers, equipped with pristine and beautiful hospitals, friendly doctors, helpful pharmacists and happy patients, all getting the care they need in a timely manner – and all for free. But the image is inaccurate and Americans should be careful not to fall for it when determining our own priorities when it comes to fixing health care in this country.

In creating “Sicko,” Moore must have overlooked some of the major news stories about the NHS from recent years. Stories such as one from the BBC stating that in September 2006 more than 6,000 patients in eastern England had to wait more than 20 weeks to begin treatment already prescribed by their doctors. Or a BBC story, also from 2006, noting that over 40,000 patients in Wales had to wait more than six months between being referred for, and actually having, an outpatient appointment. Or the recent London Times story regarding an admission, by Britain’s Department of Health, that some patients will have to wait more than a year for treatment, and that 52 percent of hospital inpatients are currently waiting more than 18 weeks to receive treatment. …

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Rolling Stone takes off after ethanol.

The great danger of confronting peak oil and global warming isn’t that we will sit on our collective asses and do nothing while civilization collapses, but that we will plunge after “solutions” that will make our problems even worse. Like believing we can replace gasoline with ethanol, the much-hyped biofuel that we make from corn.

Ethanol, of course, is nothing new. American refiners will produce nearly 6 billion gallons of corn ethanol this year, mostly for use as a gasoline additive to make engines burn cleaner. But in June, the Senate all but announced that America’s future is going to be powered by biofuels, mandating the production of 36 billion gallons of ethanol by 2022. According to ethanol boosters, this is the beginning of a much larger revolution that could entirely replace our 21-million-barrel-a-day oil addiction. Midwest farmers will get rich, the air will be cleaner, the planet will be cooler, and, best of all, we can tell those greedy sheiks to f–k off. As the king of ethanol hype, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, put it recently, “Everything about ethanol is good, good, good.”

This is not just hype — it’s dangerous, delusional bullshit. Ethanol doesn’t burn cleaner than gasoline, nor is it cheaper. Our current ethanol production represents only 3.5 percent of our gasoline consumption — yet it consumes twenty percent of the entire U.S. corn crop, causing the price of corn to double in the last two years and raising the threat of hunger in the Third World. …

… Nor is all ethanol created equal. In Brazil, ethanol made from sugar cane has an energy balance of 8-to-1 — that is, when you add up the fossil fuels used to irrigate, fertilize, grow, transport and refine sugar cane into ethanol, the energy output is eight times higher than the energy inputs. That’s a better deal than gasoline, which has an energy balance of 5-to-1. In contrast, the energy balance of corn ethanol is only 1.3-to-1 – making it practically worthless as an energy source. “Corn ethanol is essentially a way of recycling natural gas,” says Robert Rapier, an oil-industry engineer who runs the R-Squared Energy Blog. …

Senator Dianne Feinstein did a fine thing last week. Manchester Guardian with details.

California’s Senator Dianne Feinstein on Thursday committed an act of decency that offers at least a slim hope that Congress might become slightly more functional in the autumn than it has been up until now. The United States desperately needs such functionality.

What Feinstein did was to step away from her Democratic colleagues on the Senate judiciary committee by voting in favor of Mississippi appeals court judge, Leslie Southwick for a spot on the US fifth circuit court of appeals. By sending the eminently qualified Southwick to the floor by a one-vote margin (all committee Republicans voted yes and all other committee Democrats voted no), Feinstein did more than just advance the cause of a single nominee. She also re-established the precedent that senators can put merit and evidence over partisanship. …

Bill Kristol writes in the Weekly Standard on the defeatists week of defeat.

… The New York Times was so shocked to discover in late July that public opinion hadn’t continued to move against the war that it redid a poll. The answer didn’t change.

This last incident, though minor, is revealing. On July 24 the Times reported that a new survey had found an increase in the number of Americans retrospectively backing the liberation of Iraq:

Americans’ support for the initial invasion of Iraq has risen somewhat as the White House has continued to ask the public to reserve judgment about the war until at least the fall. In a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted over the weekend, 42 percent of Americans said that looking back, taking military action in Iraq was the right thing to do, while 51 percent said the United States should have stayed out of Iraq. . . . Support for the invasion had been at an all-time low in May, when only 35 percent of Americans said the invasion of Iraq was the right thing and 61 percent said the United States should have stayed out.

In the Times’s view, as explained on its website, this result was “counterintuitive”–so much so that the editors had the poll repeated to see whether they had “gotten it right.” Turns out they had.

As the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto commented: “Well, two cheers for the paper’s diligence, but this also seems to be about as close as we’re going to get to an admission of bias: an acknowledgment that those at the Times are flummoxed that the public is not responding the way they expect to all the bad news they’ve been reporting.”

What’s striking is that the Times was flummoxed. In the real world, the news from Iraq had been (relatively) good for a couple of months. General David Petraeus’s military success had been followed with striking political achievements in Anbar province. At home, a mood of annoyance at the Bush administration’s conduct of the war had started to yield to a realization that we were approaching a choice of paths on Iraq, and that the consequences of embracing defeat would be severe. But that’s not the world the Times editors live in. In their world, this is a war that should never have been fought and that has long been irretrievably lost–and everyone should simply accept those settled facts.

In the real world, the public is skeptical of the administration’s stance on Iraq–but not overwhelmingly or irretrievably so. Here’s what a new Rasmussen poll says: “Twenty-five percent of voters now say the troop surge is working and another 26 percent say it’s too soon to tell. A month ago, just 19 percent considered the surge a success and 24 percent said it was too early to tell.” This means that 51 percent are now at least open to giving the policy more time. That’s up from 43 percent a month ago. …

John Fund posts on the YearlyKos convention and Zimbabwe. Sounds about right.

Nicole Gelinas in City Journal has more on infrastructure problems.

It’s not clear why a major section of the nation’s interstate highway system collapsed Wednesday night over the Mississippi River in Minnesota, causing a still unknown number of fatalities and indefinitely severing an important transportation link. But one thing has been all too clear for decades: America is neglecting its vital physical infrastructure, and the bill is coming due.

As a nation, we’ve long borrowed from our future; everybody knows about the inevitable Social Security and Medicare crises that will happen in the next three decades as the number of retirees expands in relation to the number of workers. Far fewer people understand that we’ve also been borrowing from our past. The federal highway system, the backbone of America’s modern economy, turned 50 last year. But, as I wrote in Forbes magazine in April, we haven’t spent enough, or thought enough, to keep it—and other physical assets that previous generations built—in good working order. We spend only 60 percent of what’s needed to keep roads in good condition, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. In New York State, for instance, 35 percent of major roads are in “poor or mediocre condition,” the ASCE says, while 38 percent of bridges are “structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.” …

 

Fred Thompson on eminent domain abuse.

… Our Founders placed respect for private property as a key principle when writing our nation’s Constitution, and the protection of private property resulted in the United States becoming the greatest economic power in the world and a beacon of freedom to all. This principle is even more important today, as homeownership has become an increasingly integral part of our citizens’ aspirations for a better future for themselves and their loved ones. If the Supreme Court will not protect our right to ownership, then political leaders must step up to the challenge.

Edwards caught bloviating again. The Captain does the honors.

… He had no trouble working with Murdoch’s publishing empire when they dangled $800,000 in front of him. Had he found Murdoch so offensive, he could have taken his book elsewhere; it’s not like another publisher would have hesitated to get the book. Edwards simply took the best offer and didn’t care who wrote the check.

Edwards has transformed himself from an ambulance chaser to a substanceless suit, and now to a classless hypocrite. Even Ann Coulter can’t save this embarrassment.

American Thinker posts on NY Times and law prof at Harvard who team up to slur orthodox Jews.

Noah Feldman has a lot of explaining to do. The Harvard Law School professor published an article in the New York Times Magazine slamming Orthodox Judaism, taking as its departure point the cropping of Feldman and his Korean-American wife from a picture run in the alumni bulletin of the Maimonides School, the Orthodox yeshiva he attended in Brookline, MA. Both Richard Baehr and Ralph M. Lieberman took issue with his approach and the journalistic ethics of the Times in publishing such material.

Now it turns out that there is a bit of a scandal underlying the article, which created a clearly misleading impression of what transpired. And both the author and the New York Times knew that they were misleading readers in order to create a falsely unfavorable impression of the Maimonides School. …

City Journal starts off a couple of comments on the News Corp. purchase of Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal.

Help, the sky is falling! So say the pro-regulation media agitators at Free Press, which fired off what is sure to be the first of many hysteria-ridden press releases about Rupert Murdoch’s successful acquisition of the Wall Street Journal and its parent company, Dow Jones & Co. “This takeover is bad news for anyone who cares about quality journalism and a healthy democracy,” argued Robert W. McChesney, president of Free Press. “Giving any single company—let alone one controlled by Rupert Murdoch—this much media power is unconscionable.”

The argument that the Murdoch–Dow Jones marriage will have a significant impact on American journalism or democracy is absurd. …

… What Murdoch is really after is the value that goes with the Dow Jones and Wall Street Journal brand names. Those brands, and the enormous talent behind them, will give Murdoch a fighting chance in his ongoing push to expand into financial journalism and develop a financial-news cable channel. Anything that degrades those brands, or drives away the companies’ talent, will hurt Murdoch’s chances of capturing the sophisticated audience that he’s seeking. …

The Australian (owned by News Corp.) has some comments too.

… Then there is the fact that Murdoch’s acquisition of the Journal is a poke in the eye for The New York Times. I am only slightly motivated by malice in making this comment.

The Times is a great newspaper, which I have been reading, with fairly brief gaps, for close to 50 years, frequently spluttering with rage over its soft left biases but full of admiration for its vast reach across news spectrums.

However, under the direction of its publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr, who took over the paper in 1992, the fourth generation of the Sulzberger family to hold the job, the paper’s soft leftism has, so to speak, gradually thickened. …

… There are penalties to be paid for watching Fox, such as getting stuck with the windbag strutting of Bill O’Reilly. But O’Reilly’s blathering is a minor test of endurance compared with the poison pen of New York Times oped columnist Frank Rich.

It was Rich who deemed Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ homoerotic, having led the Times’s virulent, year-long assault on the movie and its maker, which was based initially on a fragment of a draft script, probably stolen. Last week Rich displayed his talent for venomous hyperbole under the oped column headline “Who Really Took Over During That (Bush’s) Colonoscopy?” Rich’s answer: General David Petraeus.

Competition from another national elitist general interest paper will be good for the Times.

Murdoch’s Journal will undoubtedly dent its smugness, most recently exposed by its incredulity when a New York Times-CBS opinion poll showed a slight increase in support for Bush’s Iraq strategy.

Outraged that people weren’t following its lead, the Times had the poll repeated, with the same result. Reporting this, the Times declared not that the poll was right but that “we” were. …