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Mark Steyn makes a good point in “There were two creeps in the men’s room.”
… The human comedy is not to be disdained. Nonetheless, after listening to the post-arrest audio tape of Craig’s interview with police Sgt. Dave Karsnia, I find myself inclining toward Henry Kissinger’s pronouncement on the Iran/Iraq war: It’s a shame they both can’t lose. As it happens, I passed by the very same men’s room at the Lindbergh Terminal only a couple of months ago. I didn’t go in, however. My general philosophy on public restrooms was summed up by the late Derek Jackson, the Oxford professor and jockey, in his advice to a Frenchman about to visit Britain. “Never go to a public lavatory in London,” warned Professor Jackson. “I always pee in the street. You may be fined a few pounds for committing a nuisance, but in a public lavatory you risk two years in prison because a policeman in plain clothes says you smiled at him.”
Just so. Sgt. Karsnia is paid by the police Department to sit in a stall in the men’s room all day, like a spider waiting for the flies. The Baron von Richthoven of the Minneapolis Bathroom Patrol has notched up a phenomenal number of kills and knows what to look for – the tapping foot in the adjoining stall, a hand signal under the divider. Did you know that tapping your foot in a bathroom was a recognized indicator that a criminal act is about to occur? …
Jonah Goldberg has a winner reviewing the Katrina conduct of the media.
… there was one thing missing from the coverage of this natural, social, economic and political disaster: the fact that Katrina represented an unmitigated media disaster as well.
Few of us can forget the reports from two years ago. CNN warned that there were “bands of rapists, going block to block.” Snipers were reportedly shooting at medical personnel. Bodies at the Superdome, we were told, were stacked like cordwood. The Washington Post proclaimed in a banner headline that New Orleans was a “A City of Despair and Lawlessness,” insisting in an editorial that “looters and carjackers, some of them armed, have run rampant.” Fox News anchor John Gibson said there were “all kinds of reports of looting, fires and violence. Thugs shooting at rescue crews.”
TV reporters raced to the bottom to see who could moralistically preen the most. Interviewers transformed into outright scolds of administration officials. Meanwhile, the distortions, exaggerations and flat-out fictions being offered by New Orleans officials were accelerated and amplified by the media echo chamber. Glib predictions of 10,000 dead, and the chief of police’s insistence that there were “little babies getting raped,” swirled around the media like so much free-flowing sewage.
It was as though journalistic skepticism of government officials was reserved for the White House, and everyone else got a free pass.
Of course the Bush administration made serious mistakes — politically, logistically and otherwise — in a difficult situation. But Katrina unleashed a virus of sanctimony and credulity for urban legends almost without precedent. …
It’s decades late, but Teddy Kennedy is finally getting some critical comment from the left.
… The source of unhappiness is Kennedy’s efforts to kill an offshore wind farm on Nantucket Sound. Cape Wind was to be the first such project in the United States and a source of pride to environmentally minded New Englanders. Polls show 84 percent of Massachusetts residents in favor. But now it appears that America’s first offshore wind farm will be near Galveston, Texas.
Proposed the month before Sept. 11, 2001, Cape Wind remains in limbo. It’s been frustrated at every turn by a handful of yachtsmen, Kennedy included, who don’t want to see windmills from their verandas. Many millions have been spent spreading disinformation and smearing the wind farm’s supporters.
The towers would be at least five miles out and barely visible from shore on the clearest day, but the summer plutocrats resent any intrusion on their waterfront vistas — and, equally, any challenge to the notion that they control everything.
“But don’t you realize — that’s where I sail!” may stand as Kennedy’s most self-incriminating quote. …
Jack Kelly writes on how the media lets the Dems slide.
… But media bias is not the main reason why Republicans suffer more from scandals. Democratic voters expect Democrats to steal on their behalf. Lawmakers are judged on the basis of how many goodies from the federal treasury they can shower on their constituents. The typical Democratic voter doesn’t mind terribly if their senator or congressman takes something for himself along the way. (Time Magazine’s story on Rep. Mollohan’s re-election was headlined, “Pork Trumps Scandal.”)
The typical Republican voter wants his senator or congressman to keep his taxes low, his government honest. He is furious when GOP lawmakers stick their fingers in the cookie jar, or give lip service to values they do not practice.
Republicans must be squeaky clean to win elections because their voters will crucify them for behavior Democratic voters wink at so long as the pork keeps flowing. This is why his GOP colleagues already have stripped Sen. Craig of his committee assignments, and many have called for his resignation, while Democratic senators are comfortable having among them a man who left to drown in his automobile a young woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair.
Corner posts on the African proverbs that won’t go away.
… On what conceivable grounds is it warranted to say, “What would the Africans do?” Even on the wishy-washy proverbial terrain Clinton is usually dealing with — “children,” “villages,” etc — is there any empirical basis for arguing that the African Way is superior to our own? Maybe there are studies that show “Africans” are happier than Americans — when the former aren’t dying of malnutrition or medieval health care, or desperately trying to emigrate to the West, no doubt. …
Adam Smith.org reminds what we owe to Milton Friedman.
NY Sun says Pete Seeger is facing up to his Stalin worship.
… “I’m singing about old Joe, cruel Joe,” the lyrics read. “He ruled with an iron hand / He put an end to the dreams / Of so many in every land / He had a chance to make / A brand new start for the human race / Instead he set it back / Right in the same nasty place / I got the Big Joe Blues / (Keep your mouth shut or you will die fast) / I got the Big Joe Blues / (Do this job, no questions asked) / I got the Big Joe Blues.”
Mr. Seeger continued in his letter to me: “the basic mistake was Lenin’s faith in [Party] DISCIPLINE!” He often tells his left-wing audiences, he said, to read Rosa Luxemburg’s famous letter to Lenin about the necessity of freedom of speech. And despite all of my criticisms of Mr. Seeger over the years, he ended warmly, saying: “You stay well. Keep on.” …
John Tierney keeps us up with the war on drugs.
I recommend a couple of articles chronicling the unintended consequences of the war on drugs. One, by Ethan Nadelmann, is a global look at the damage done by prohibitionist policies. The other, by Radley Balko, is a look at a doctor convicted for prescribing opioids — and this case is in some ways more troubling than the Hurwitz case that I’ve been writing about. …
Thomas Sowell on health care.
Anne Applebaum is just what the doctor ordered if you’re tired of the Diana thing.
… In fairness, I should note that the grumblers don’t deny the tragedy of the princess’s death—of course it’s sad when a young mother dies suddenly. But they do rightly cast skepticism on the notion, prevalent outside Britain, that Diana’s death somehow “changed” the country forever. Though this latter idea is often repeated—among other places on the cover of Time International last week—as time goes on, it looks ever more absurd.
In fact, the genuinely bizarre aspect of the all-consuming Dianamania that gripped Britain a decade ago this week is how slight a trace it has left behind. Actually, the royal family is pretty much the same, only quieter. From Diana, they learned that there is such a thing as too much publicity. Prince Charles and his children are more rarely seen in public; the prince’s current consort, Camilla Parker Bowles, is admired for holding her tongue. When the queen mother died in 2002—at age 101, the quintessence of old-style British manners—more people showed up to mourn than had appeared for the funeral of the people’s princess. …
James Taranto picks up on the foolish health care plans of John Edwards. It is increasingly obvious this candidate was a gift from the gods for our comic relief.
Who does John Edwards think he is, our mother? The Associated Press reports from Tipton, Iowa, on the lovely and talented one’s latest brainstorm:
Edwards said on Sunday that his universal health care proposal would require that Americans go to the doctor for preventive care.
“It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care,” he told a crowd sitting in lawn chairs in front of the Cedar County Courthouse. “If you are going to be in the system, you can’t choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years. You have to go in and be checked and make sure that you are OK.”