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We always knew the NY Times was biased. Now we learn it is corrupt. Gail Heriot at The Right Coast comments on a front page ad for Macy’s masquerading as news.

I find this scary. I know that many conservatives worry about the New York Times’ liberal bias. And they should worry. But geez louise I don’t expect the New York Times to turn over its front page news section to what is most likely its biggest advertiser–and to distort the facts to boot. That’s either craven, rock stupid or both.

Why would the New York Times refer to Terry Lundgren, Macy’s embattled CEO, as “one of the brightest stars in American retailing” in a front page story? This is utter fantasy, and the New York Times presents no evidence of its truth. In the last few months, Macy’s stock has declined 40%. Profits are down a whopping 77%. Sales have slumped. The only important marketing decision that Terry Lundgren has ever made in his life was to gamble on the Macy-fication of American retailing–terminating successful regional department stores across the country and turning their locations into Macy’s. That gamble has turned distinctly sour. Lundgren’s not a bright star; he’s a supernova, and Macy’s seems well on its way to becoming the black hole of American retailing. …

The Captain with a lengthy detailed post on WaPo whitewash of Anita Hill.

… Besides, Marcus leaves out some testimony herself. For instance, J.C. Alvarez flew back to Washington to testify a second time in front of the panel, because she could not believe her eyes and ears when Hill testified. Alvarez, who worked in the same office at the same time, had a few choice words for the panel:

No, Senators, I cannot stand by and watch a group of thugs beat up and rob a man of his money any more than I could have stayed in Chicago and stood by and watched you beat up an innocent man and rob him blind. Not of his money. That would have been too easy. You could pay that back. No, you have robbed a man of his name, his character, and his reputation.

And what is amazing to me is that you didn’t do it in a dark alley and you didn’t do it in the dark of night. You did it in broad daylight, in front of all America, on television, for the whole world
to see. Yes, Senators, I am witnessing a crime in progress and I cannot just look the other way.

Alvarez had more to say about her recollection of Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas:

On Friday, she played the role of a meek, innocent, shy Baptist girl from the South who was a victim of this big, bad man.

I don’t know who she was trying to kid. Because the Anita Hill that I knew and worked with was nothing like that. She was a very hard, tough woman. She was opinionated. She was arrogant. She was a relentless debater. And she was the kind of woman who always made you feel like she was not going to be messed with, like she was not going to take anything from anyone. …

And he posts on the phony soldier stuff.

… this is a story. It’s a story of intellectual dishonesty, partisan gunslinging, and distraction tactics designed to protect a major Democratic Party fundraiser. That’s the real story behind this latest absurdity. …

Power Line posts with a great answer to ‘phony soldiers’ with “Phony Democrats.”

Ilya Somin in Volokh illustrates one of the reasons for Russia’s backwardness, the Russian Orthodox Church.

Alexy II, Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church recently made a speech before the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe denouncing homosexuality as “an illness” and a “distortion of the human personality, like kleptomania.” He also claimed that homosexuality is part of “a new generation of rights that contradict morality, and [an example of] how human rights are used to justify immoral behavior.”

Such homophobia is hardly unique to Alexy and his Church. However, they are in a particularly poor position to lecture the Europeans on human rights in light of the fact that the Russian Orthodox Church is hand in glove with Vladimir Putin’s repressive regime, endorsing that government’s authoritarian policies and even using the power of the state to harrass other religious groups and suppress art they disapprove of. …

Charles Krauthammer celebrates the great changes in French foreign policy.

… This French about-face creates a crucial shift in the balance of forces within Europe. The East Europeans are naturally pro-American for reasons of history (fresh memories of America’s role in defeating their Soviet occupiers) and geography (physical proximity to a newly revived and aggressive Russia). Western Europe is intrinsically wary of American power and culturally anti-American by reflex. France’s change from Chirac to Sarkozy, from foreign minister Dominique de Villepin (who actively lobbied Third World countries to oppose America on Iraq) to Kouchner (who supported the U.S. invasion on humanitarian grounds) represents an enormous shift in Old Europe’s relationship to the United States.

Britain is a natural ally. Germany, given its history, is more follower than leader. France can define European policy, and Sarkozy intends to.

The French flip is only one part of the changing landscape that has given new life to Bush’s Iran and Iraq policies in the waning months of his administration. The mood in Congress also has significantly shifted. …

Hugh Hewitt reminds us Hillary is a radical.

Senator Clinton can be pleasant, is certainly intelligent and is absolutely the front-runner for the Democratic nomination and perhaps even the favorite right now to succeed George W. Bush in the Oval Office.

But as the past three weeks have made abundantly clear, Hillary is no “liberal,” or even a “progressive.” She is a radical, and one far outside the mainstream of American politics. In the growing recognition of the true nature of her political ideology is the obvious strategy for whoever the GOP nominee is: Throw the light on what she believes and proposes and keep it there. …

Max Boot posts a couple of times on Blackwater.

LA Times Op-Ed says Ahmadinejad walked away with a win thanks to the folks at Columbia who have yet to meet a fascist they don’t like.

One of the world’s truly dangerous men, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, left New York a clear winner this week, and he can thank the arrogance of the American academy and most of the U.S. news media’s studied indifference for his victory.

If the blood-drenched history of the century just past had taught American academics one thing, it should have been that the totalitarian impulse knows no accommodation with reason. You cannot change the totalitarian mind through dialogue or conversation, because totalitarianism — however ingenious the superstructure of faux ideas with which it surrounds itself — is a creature of the will and not the mind. That’s a large lesson, but what should have made Ahmadinejad’s appearance at Columbia University this week a wholly avoidable debacle was the school’s knowledge of its own, very specific history.

In the 1930s, Columbia was run by Nicholas Murray Butler, to whose name a special sort of infamy attaches. Butler was an outspoken admirer of Italian fascism and of its leader, Benito Mussolini. The Columbia president, who also was in the forefront of Ivy League efforts to restrict Jewish enrollment, worked tirelessly to build ties between his school and Italian universities, as well as with the powerful fascist student organizations. At one point, a visiting delegation of 350 ardent young Black Shirts serenaded Butler with the fascist anthem. …

 

Jonathan Turley, card carrying liberal, thinks maybe the NRA gets something right about the second amendment.

… Considering the Framers and their own traditions of hunting and self-defense, it is clear that they would have viewed such ownership as an individual right — consistent with the plain meaning of the amendment.

None of this is easy for someone raised to believe that the Second Amendment was the dividing line between the enlightenment and the dark ages of American culture. Yet, it is time to honestly reconsider this amendment and admit that … here’s the really hard part … the NRA may have been right. This does not mean that Charlton Heston is the new Rosa Parks or that no restrictions can be placed on gun ownership. But it does appear that gun ownership was made a protected right by the Framers and, while we might not celebrate it, it is time that we recognize it.

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• October 3 Word

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Clarence Thomas give a dinner Monday night attended by some of our favorite writers. There have been many reactions and we will have a few tonight. The first blog post from The Right Coast has a link (via Instapundit) to the 60 minutes interview from Sunday night, so we’ll start with that.

The Captain was there too.

Monday evening, I attended a two-hour dinner event at the Heritage Foundation with Justice Clarence Thomas, his wife Virginia, and a small number of other bloggers and New Media members. It confirmed for me that the media has never gotten a grasp of the man under the robes, possibly because they have not spent even the small amount of time with him that we did tonight and that Steve Kroft did with his 60 Minutes interview — and they have missed a real story from that failure. And while the nominal reason for the evening was his book launch — and we each received autographed copies — it turned into a wide-ranging conversation that had little to do with the book.

The evening started with Justice Thomas greeting us, taking pictures and chatting us up a bit. He asked me what I wrote about at Captain’s Quarters, and I replied, “Just about anything — politics, culture, foreign policy, and Notre Dame football,” at which he let loose his unique gust of laughter. “Notre Dame football?” he asked incredulously. “You’d better stick with foreign policy this year!” …

Kate O’Bierne with a Corner post.

I had the pleasure of joining about 20 members of the new media for a dinner with Amazon’s #1 author for dinner this evening. Justice Thomas was wise, candid, and upbeat. The “controversial” justice stresses that he hasn’t had a negative incident in his 16 years on the Court. He explains it is humbling that he is treated so well by audiences he addresses and others he meets. He cheerfully notes that when he has encountered some opposition on university campuses, “it is always the faculty, never the students.” He laughingly allowed that he would have to be “a Middle East dictator with nuclear weapons to be invited to Columbia,” adding that it wasn’t an invitation he was interested in. …

Paul Mirengoff of Power Line.

This evening, in honor of the publication of My Grandfather’s Son, the Heritage Foundation hosted a dinner for Clarence Thomas and his wife Virginia, along with a group of conservative journalists and “new media” types. I have been at social gatherings where Justice Thomas was present but had never actually met him before. Those who know him have told me how warm and gracious he is, and these qualities certainly were evident tonight.

Justice Thomas began his after-dinner remarks by saying he wishes the new media had been around at the time of his confirmation hearings because it “gets beyond the monopoly” held by the liberal media. In this connection, he noted that the old media is misrepresenting the tone and the point of his book by focusing on “anger.” The real tone and point of the book, he said, is quite different. Thomas believes his life story will offer insight and hope, especially to young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. For example, he seeks to counter the message, all too prevalent in the black community, that studying hard is a tantamount to being white ,and to call attention to an older tradition in the black community that focused on scholastic achievement. That, of course, is the tradition his grandfather represents. …

Jim Taranto was at the dinner too. He has a couple of posts centered on the lovely Anita Hill.

John Fund with a short on the phony soldiers flap.

Anne Applebaum writes more on what she calls the “Nonstop Thrill Ride of Russian Politics.”

LA Times op-ed says Mugabe has always been a thug.

… The characterization of Mugabe as a good man gone wrong extends to popular culture as well. In the 2005 political thriller “The Interpreter,” Nicole Kidman played a dashing, multilingual exile from the fictional African country of Matobo, whose ruler was once a soft-spoken, cerebral schoolteacher who liberated his country from a white minority regime but became a despot. Mugabe certainly understood the likeness; he accused Kidman and her costar, Sean Penn, of being part of a CIA plot to oust him.

But this popular conception of Mugabe — propagated by the liberals who championed him in the 1970s and 1980s — is absolutely wrong. From the beginning of his political career, Mugabe was not just a Marxist but one who repeatedly made clear his intention to run Zimbabwe as an authoritarian, one-party state. Characteristic of this historical revisionism is former Newsweek southern Africa correspondent Joshua Hammer, writing recently in the liberal Washington Monthly that “more than a quarter-century after leading his guerrilla army to victory over the racist regime of Ian Smith in white-minority-ruled Rhodesia, President Robert Mugabe has morphed into a caricature of the African Big Man.” …

Cafe Hayek picks a movie – “Lives of Others.”

Mark Steyn was in Macleans reacting to American World War ethnocentrism.

… The other day, Senator Thompson was on the campaign trail and told his audience: “This country has shed more blood for the liberty of other countries than all other countries put together.”

More than “all other countries put together”? As I told our friends to the south, I’m the most pro-American non-American on the planet, but, if that’s the new default braggadocio, include me out. The Washington Post’s attempt to refute Thompson by championing the Soviets was as predictable as it was absurd — the Reds certainly shed a lot of blood but not obviously in the cause of liberty. Yet slightly more startling was the number of pro-Fred American conservatives who sent me scornful emails belittling the efforts of the Commonwealth.

As old-timers will tell you at Royal Canadian Legion halls, the Dominion “shed more blood” proportionately than the United States in the Second World War. Newfoundland — not yet part of Canada — had a higher per capita casualty rate than America. No surprise about that: Newfs and Canucks sailed off to battle two years ahead of the Yanks. And, if we’re talking hard numbers, almost as many Britons died in the war as Americans, despite the latter having thrice the population. …

John Stossel continues his series on health care insurance.

Candidates for president have plans to get more people health insurance. Some would compel us to buy it; others would use the tax code to encourage that. Regardless, insurance is the magic that will solve our health-care problems.

But contrary to conventional wisdom, it’s not those without health insurance who are the problem, but rather those with it. They make medical care more expensive for everyone.

We’d each be better off if we paid all but the biggest medical bills out of pocket and saved insurance for catastrophic events. Truly needy people would rely on charity, not government, because once government gets involved, unintended bad consequences abound. …

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• October 2 Word

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Stuart Taylor with a scathing denunciation of campus left wing radicals.

In the matter of the Holocaust-denying, terrorism-sponsoring, nuke-seeking, wipe-Israel-off-the-map-threatening, we-got-no-gays-in-Iran-spouting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his September 24 showcase speech at Columbia University: It would be easier to stomach the free-speech grandstanding of Lee Bollinger, Columbia’s president and Ahmadinejad’s histrionically hostile host, and others of Bollinger’s ilk if they were a bit less selective in their devotion to the First Amendment. When a student group recently canceled an event featuring an anti-illegal-immigration speaker for fear of a hecklers’ veto by leftist students, for example, Bollinger had nothing to say.

Looking to the other coast, it would be easier to admire the indignation of certain academics and journalists at the temporarily shabby treatment of crusading liberal constitutional scholar Erwin Chemerinsky by the University of California (Irvine) if those same people had also spoken out against the far more widespread campus censorship of less liberal figures. …

…

Bollinger has never made a serious effort to use such episodes to reverse the censorial drift of Columbia’s campus politics. Other examples range from the suspension last fall (later revoked) of the men’s hockey club for posting recruiting flyers that said “Stop being a pussy” — a less-than-tasteful play on Columbia’s athletic “Lions” — to the ideological litmus tests used by Columbia’s Teachers College to evaluate student performance. Among these tests: “respect for diversity and commitment to social justice.” That terminology is a standing invitation for professors to penalize any student who criticizes racial preferences, openly votes Republican, or defends Larry Summers.

This is also the same Bollinger who joined a vote of the university’s Senate in 2005 to continue a 36-year ban of ROTC programs from Columbia because of the military’s discrimination (which I, too, deplore) against service members who admit to being gay. Did anyone tell him that Ahmadinejad’s government executes people who admit to being gay?

It took a unanimous Supreme Court to teach Bollinger — a prominent First Amendment scholar — that his argument (in an amicus brief [PDF] that he joined) in a major 2006 case was so far-fetched as to be an embarrassment. The argument, also endorsed by hundreds of other legal academics, was that universities might well have a First Amendment right to keep collecting millions of federal tax dollars despite a law cutting off those that do not give military recruiters the same access to students as they give other potential employers. …

Yale thinks money is more important than their principles. James Taranto with details.

James Kirchick in Contentions says Gordon Brown is in hard line opposition to Mugabe.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has set African leaders astir with his ultimatum concerning an upcoming European Union/African Union conference in Lisbon, Portugal. Brown has laid down a simple condition for his attendance at the December conference: that Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe not attend. “We should not sit down at the same table as President Mugabe,” Brown told the Labour Party conference last week. …

The Captain has more good news from a friend.

The government of Nicolas Sarkozy intends to keep pressure on Iran to abandon their nuclear program, and wants to see the rest of the world follow suit. Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told a European broadcaster that Western credibility required the pursuit of tougher sanctions, as the UN continued to dither:

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on Tuesday the West must continue to work on sanctions if it is to be taken seriously by Iran, even as talks continue to resolve a stand-off over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. …

And the Captain also posts on a memo from Hillary’s first attempt at socialized medicine.

Defenders of the S-CHIP expansion refute the accusations of its critics that it amounts to a Trojan horse for nationalized health care. However, The Politico notes that a 1993 memo from Hillary Clinton’s health-care task force proposed using children as a mechanism in order to take control of health-care delivery for all Americans. The revelation gives the White House new momentum for its expected veto:

Back in 1993, according to an internal White House staff memo, then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s staff saw federal coverage of children as a “precursor” to universal coverage.

In a section of the memo titled “Kids First,” Clinton’s staff laid out backup plans in the event the universal coverage idea failed.

And one of the key options was creating a state-run health plan for children who didn’t qualify for Medicaid but were uninsured. …

Dick Morris says the Bill and Hill we see on FOX are the real thing.

Chris Wallace brings out the real Bill and Hillary each time he interviews one of them.

For those who have ever visited Clintonland, it’s sometimes hard to recognize the slickly-scripted, post-White House media personalities of the Clintons: the affable, smiling Hillary seen on the campaign trial or the laid back, take-it-as-it-comes Bill who periodically surfaces for softball interviews.

But every once in a while, there’s a rare moment of clarity. That happened last year when Wallace interviewed the former president. At the end of the interview, Bill lost it. Suddenly the veneer was off, exposing the enraged, snarling, lunging Bill accusing Wallace of “do[ing] his nice little right wing hit job” when he forced Clinton to address his inability to capture or kill bin Laden.

Not a pretty sight. …

Thomas Sowell on Columbia, Duke, and the media.

Michael Barone notes the differences between the GM strike in 1970 and last week’s strike.

… Reuther hoped that UAW contracts (in 1970) would set a pattern for the economy and lead America toward a social democratic state. The 1970 contract seemed to be doing that: The number of workers covered by cost of living adjustments increased from 30 million to 57 million by the end of 1971. But that only fueled inflation, which led to massive job losses in the auto industry in the recessions of 1979-83. In the 1980s, foreign companies began building auto plants in the United States, almost none of them organized by the UAW. As the Wall Street Journal concluded, “Toyota, not GM or the UAW, now sets the pattern for auto industry labor costs in the U.S. economy.”

It turns out that market competition punishes those firms whose costs are out of line with others. It also produces better value for consumers, as today’s cars are far superior in quality to the clunkers of 1970. And it can make things better for workers, as well. The reason the UAW demanded 30-and-out in 1970 was that workers hated their assembly-line jobs. Newer manufacturing techniques, pioneered by Japanese firms, give workers more autonomy and responsibility — and more job satisfaction. The business model of 1970 is history. But most of us are better off today.

Jeff Jacoby on art scams.

Behold two public displays: One is an immature stunt, the other a work of art. Can you tell which is which?

Display No. 1: In an empty room in Boston’s South End, track lights go on and off at five-second intervals. The lights illuminate nothing except the bare walls and floor. This is “Work 227: The Lights Going On and Off,” the brainstorm of a Scotsman named Martin Creed, who has explained it in these words: “It’s like, if I can’t decide whether to have the lights on or off then I have them both on and off and I feel better about it.”

Display No. 2: An MIT student walks into Logan International Airport wearing a sweatshirt adorned with a plastic circuit board, on which a handful of glowing green lights arranged in a star are harmlessly wired to a 9-volt battery. On the back of the sweatshirt is scrawled “Socket To Me” and “COURSE VI.” The student is electrical engineering major Star Anna Simpson, and the outfit, she explains, is an art project meant to attract attention at an MIT career fair.

OK, so perhaps you already know that Creed’s flashing lights won the $30,000 Turner Prize, …

The Economist agrees ethanol’s a scam.

Carpe Diem says African countries lead the world in red tape.

Rich Lowry sees common sense developing in the climate debate.

… If the United States had participated in Kyoto and it had been fully implemented, according to economist Bjorn Lomborg in his new book, “Cool It,” it would have cost the developed world about $9 trillion to lower the global temperature by about .3 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. That would have put off predicted warming by the end of the century by about five years. …

Damn Interesting has the story of oil drillers who drilled a hole in a lake in Louisiana and watched the water drain out.

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The end of the baseball season is a reminder we haven’t had a Ladies Day for awhile.

So today’s Pickings all come from some of our favorite distaff scribes; Debra Saunders, Anne Applebaum, Mary Anastasia O’Grady, Ann Coulter, etc. and includes Pickerhead’s sixth child who is a freshman at VA Tech and a staff writer for The Collegiate Times. In the About section you can find a picture of her from our ’97 Alaska cruise. She’s the one that was still a yard ape.

Kathleen Parker takes us into the world of slavery – present day!

… In “Sold,” a documentary by former ABC producer Jody Hassett Sanchez, we meet Pakistani boys as young as 3 sold into service as camel jockeys in the United Arab Emirates. We also meet little girls as young as 5 who had been sold as sex slaves.

One of the challenges of modern-day slavery is that good people are often unknowingly complicit. Many of the children featured in the documentary are sold by their impoverished parents, who were promised that their children would have better lives. The reality is something different. Little girls end up as abused prostitutes, while little boys sold as jockeys spend 12 or more hours a day strapped onto the backs of camels, are shocked with metal prods and fed saltwater to prevent their gaining weight.

At a screening here Wednesday, Sanchez told an audience that included U.S. Reps. Mary Bono, R-Calif., and Connie Mack, R-Fla., that she wanted to focus on people who were working to end slavery. She followed three faith-driven people — a Hindu, a Muslim and a Christian from India, Pakistan and Togo, respectively — who have suffered threats and beatings to save women and children. …

 

Mary Anastasia O’Grady reports that our sole socialist senator, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, is in Costa Rica fighting a free trade pact and carrying water for Hugo Chavez. Thanks Vermont!

Ann Coulter has some opinions. How’s that for a news flash? Today her righteous wrath is pointed at academia.

… Contrary to all the blather about “free speech” surrounding Ahmadinejad’s appearance at Columbia, universities in America do not invite speakers who do not perfectly mirror the political views of their America-hating faculties. Rather, they aggressively censor differing viewpoints and permit only a narrow category of speech on their campuses. Ask Larry Summers.

If a university invites someone to speak, you know the faculty agrees with the speaker. Maybe not the entire faculty. Some Columbia professors probably consider Ahmadinejad too moderate on Israel.

Columbia president Lee Bollinger claimed the Ahmadinejad invitation is in keeping with “Columbia’s long-standing tradition of serving as a major forum for robust debate.”

Except Columbia doesn’t have that tradition. This is worse than saying “the dog ate my homework.” It’s like saying “the dog ate my homework” when you’re Michael Vick and everyone knows you’ve killed your dog.

Columbia’s “tradition” is to shut down any speakers who fall outside the teeny, tiny seditious perspective of its professors.

When Minutemen leader Jim Gilchrist and his black colleague Marvin Stewart were invited by the College Republicans to speak at Columbia last year, the tolerant, free-speech-loving Columbia students violently attacked them, shutting down the speech. …

Anne Applebaum reports on the effects of Putin on the still born Russian middle class.

… The mere fact of living in a post-Communist country doesn’t explain their tribulations, however. I reckon my friends in Warsaw must be the rough socioeconomic equivalents of my friends in Moscow, but my Warsaw friends are flourishing despite the chaotic coalition government that currently runs their country, and despite the corruption that sometimes prevails in their city government. They might not be zillionaires, but their children study abroad, their apartments have new Ikea bookshelves, and they don’t regularly tell horror stories about their daily lives. They aren’t a would-be middle-class, they’re a real middle class, and eventually they’ll vote like one, too. …

Suzanne Fields writes on college students’ ignorance of history.

… In a shocking study by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), “civic literacy” is found to be declining at some of our finest (and most expensive) colleges and universities. Many graduates leave college with less knowledge of American history, government, foreign affairs and economics than when they entered as freshmen. Knowledge apparently just evaporates. If the survey questions administered by a team of professors to 14,000 college students at 50 colleges had been a test in a college classroom, the average score would be 53.2 percent — or simply an “F” for failure. …

Debra Saunders does her Edwards obit.

… Elizabeth Edwards disingenuously told the Progressive that when her husband voted for the war resolution, “Mostly the anti-war 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.

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 polls – and rather than take each of them on directly, he is hiding behind his wife’s skirts.

Melanie Phillips records the descent of Britain from a results oriented society, to one controlled by process.

Did you happen to assume, by any strange chance, that the purpose of the emergency services was to rescue people in an emergency from the prospect of death or injury? Indeed. So did we all.

Well, more fool us! It turns out that their purpose is to avoid anything that puts themselves at risk – and they’ve got a health and safety rule book that says so.

The more we learn about how ten-year-old Jordon Lyon drowned in a pool in Wigan while two police support officers at the scene did nothing to save him, the more surreal and preposterous life in Britain appears to have become.

In any normal society, these officers would have been disciplined for failing to carry out what one might have presumed to be the essential duty of a police support officer, namely to protect people from harm – not to mention the basic instinct of any decent human being to try to prevent a tragic accident.

But no – their employers, the top brass of the Greater Manchester Police, say they behaved perfectly correctly. This is because both the police and fire service have instructions not to save people who are drowning.

The reasons pile absurdity upon absurdity. Police and fire officers, we are told with the straightest of faces, are not taught to swim or trained to save people from drowning. This apparently means that even if they can swim, they still have to fold their arms and stay put. …

Liza Roesch’s latest assignment for the VA Tech Collegiate Times was to report on a Seung-Hui Cho professor who refused to be interviewed.

… While in Hicok’s English class in spring 2006, Cho wrote a play about a student who plots a school shooting. Hicok voiced his concerns about Cho to Lucinda Roy, English department head. Roy declined comment on this incident.

Much of the poem, called “So I know,” includes thoughts about Cho, notably a line in which the speaker expresses his wishes that he would’ve taken Cho’s life and then his own to prevent the deaths of many more.

“Maybe I should’ve shot the kid and then myself given the math. 2<33,” the poem reads. …

Kathryn Jean Lopez makes a pitch for National Review Online.