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David Warren, Canadian, looks at Britain and sees Canada’s future.
… In various other ways, Shariah is being recognized, semi-formally. For instance, although bigamy remains nominally a crime in Britain, the Labour government has approved new social provisions by which extra welfare payments, council housing privileges, and tax benefits may be claimed by polygamous households, and the cash benefits to which the extra wives are now entitled may be paid directly into the account of their husband.
At a higher level, the (Anglican) Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, publicly called this week for the recognition of “some form of” Shariah law for Muslims in Britain, and said it should be given equal status with parliamentary law. While Archbishop Williams has a long history of muddled pronouncements, and is widely observed to be emotionally unstable, the strength of his office is now engaged on the Islamist side. …
John Fund charts the ways McCain can win in Nov.
… He is the only potential GOP candidate who is clearly positioned to keep the basic red-blue template of how each state voted in 2004 intact and then be able to move into blue territory.
Let’s assume that Ohio goes to either Mr. Obama or Ms. Clinton. It’s at least as likely that Mr. McCain could carry New Hampshire. The Granite State went only narrowly to Mr. Kerry, a senator from a neighboring state, and Mr. McCain has unique advantages there. New Hampshire elections are determined by how that state’s fiercely independent voters go, and Mr. McCain has won over many of them in both the 2000 and 2008 GOP primaries. He spent 47 days in New Hampshire before this year’s primary and is well-known in the state. If Mr. McCain lost Ohio but carried New Hampshire and all the other states Mr. Bush took in 2004, he would win, 270-268.
It’s true that Democrats will make a play for states other than Ohio that Mr. Bush won. Iowa is a perennially competitive state that could go either way this fall. Arkansas polls show that Hillary Clinton might well be able to carry the state where she served as First Lady for over a decade.
But Mr. McCain’s roots in the Rocky Mountain West complicate Democratic efforts to take states in that region. His fierce individualism and support for property rights play well in Nevada and Colorado, which were close in 2004. New Mexico, next door to Mr. McCain’s Arizona, gave Mr. Bush a very narrow 49.6% to 49% victory in 2004. But Mr. McCain’s nuanced position on immigration marks him as the GOP candidate who is most likely to hold the Hispanic voters who are the key to carrying New Mexico. ….
Jeff Jacoby celebrates Obama’s victories among white Americans.
ON THE SUBJECT of Black History Month, I’m with Morgan Freeman, who described it a few years ago as “ridiculous” – for the excellent reason that “black history is American history,” not some segregated addendum to it. The only way to get beyond racial divisions, he told Mike Wallace of “60 Minutes,” is to “stop talking about it. I’m going to stop calling you a white man, and I’m going to ask you to stop calling me a black man.”
Amen to that. The sooner we resolve to abandon the labels “black” and “white,” the sooner we will be a society in which such racial labels are irrelevant. And what better moment to make such a resolution than this one, when white Americans by the millions are proving that the color of a person’s skin is no longer a bar to anything in this country – not even the presidency.
Whether or not Barack Obama’s bid for the White House ultimately succeeds, it has already demolished the canard that America will not elect a black president. His impressive win over Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucuses could perhaps be dismissed as a fluke, but after Super Tuesday there is not much left to argue about. Obama carried 13 states last week, and the whiter the state, the more imposing his victory.
He took Utah with 57 percent of the vote; North Dakota with 61 percent; Kansas with 74 percent; Alaska with 75 percent. Idaho chose Obama over Clinton by 80 to 17 percent. …
Bob Novak says, “Not so fast.”
Which Democrat really won Super Tuesday? Thanks to the Democratic Party’s proportional representation, it is not easy to say a week later. Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama ran a virtual dead heat for delegates that day in 22 states clearly stacked in Obama’s favor. But the way Obama lost California raises the specter of the dreaded Bradley Effect.
Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, an African-American Democrat, in 1982 unexpectedly lost his bid for governor of California. His defeat followed voters telling pollsters they prefer a black candidate and then voting the other way. In California’s primary last Tuesday, Obama lost by 10 percentage points after one late survey showed him ahead by 13 points and two others gave him a smaller lead.
Was this presumed 20-point reversal caused by the Bradley Effect, which has worried Democratic leaders about Obama since he became an obstacle to Clinton’s majestic procession to the Oval Office? It is much too early for that conclusion, but the subject is in the minds and private comments of Democratic politicians pondering the stalemate for the party’s presidential nomination. …
Changing subjects, George Will writes on the foolishness that is ethanol.
Iowa’s caucuses, a source of so much turbulence, might even have helped cause the recent demonstration by 10,000 Indonesians in Jakarta. Savor the multiplying irrationalities of the government-driven mania for ethanol and other biofuels, and energy policy generally.
Indonesians, like most Asians, love soybeans, the world price of which has risen 50 percent in a month and 125 percent in a year, partly because of increasing world population and incomes, but also because many farmers have switched land from soybeans to crops that can be turned into biofuels. In 2005, America used 15 percent of its corn crop to supplant less than 2 percent of its gasoline use. In 2007, the government-contrived U.S. demand for ethanol was more than half the global increase in demand. The political importance of corn-growing, ethanol-making Iowa is one reason that biofuel mandates flow from Washington the way oil would flow from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge if it had nominating caucuses.
ANWR’s 10.4 billion barrels of oil have become hostage to the planet’s saviors (e.g., John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama), who block drilling in even a tiny patch of ANWR. You could fit Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Delaware into ANWR’s frozen desolation; the “footprint” of the drilling operation would be one sixth the size of Washington’s Dulles airport. …
Robert Samuelson says, “No stupid! It’s not the economy.”
… We have a $14 trillion economy. The idea that presidents can control it lies between an exaggeration and an illusion. Our presidential preferences ought to reflect judgments about candidates’ character, values, competence and their views on issues where what they think counts: foreign policy; long-term economic and social policy — how they would tax and spend; health care; immigration. Forget the business cycle.
True, presidents try to manipulate it. In 1971, President Richard Nixon imposed wage and price controls in part to prevent inflation from jeopardizing his reelection. The economy boomed in 1972. But the controls were a time-delayed disaster. When they were removed, inflation exploded to 12 percent in 1974. In 1980, the Carter administration adopted credit controls to squelch raging inflation. The result was a short recession — a complete surprise — that probably sealed Jimmy Carter‘s defeat in November.
History’s long view teaches the same lesson. No president tried harder, with good reason, to influence the business cycle than Franklin Roosevelt. When he took office in 1933, unemployment was roughly 25 percent. By executive order and congressional legislation, FDR effectively abandoned the gold standard, adopted deposit insurance, tried to prop up falling farm and factory prices, rescued many defaulting homeowners, regulated the stock market, and embarked on massive public works.
With what result? Well, leaving the gold standard aided recovery. But some economic research suggests that other New Deal measures may have frustrated revival. In any case, all of them together didn’t end the Great Depression. World War II did that. In 1939 unemployment was still 17 percent. …
How’s this for some good news? Steve Chapman thinks nuclear terrorism is unlikely.
… Assuming the jihadists vault over those Himalayas, they would have to deliver the weapon onto American soil. Sure, drug smugglers bring in contraband all the time — but seeking their help would confront the plotters with possible exposure or extortion. This, like every other step in the entire process, means expanding the circle of people who know what’s going on, multiplying the chance someone will blab, back out or screw up.
Mueller recalls that after the Irish Republican Army failed in an attempt to blow up British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, it said, “We only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always.” Al-Qaida, he says, faces a very different challenge: For it to carry out a nuclear attack, everything has to go right. For us to escape, only one thing has to go wrong.
That has heartening implications. If Osama bin Laden embarks on the project, he has only a minuscule chance of seeing it bear fruit. Given the formidable odds, he probably won’t bother.
None of this means we should stop trying to minimize the risk by securing nuclear stockpiles, monitoring terrorist communications and improving port screening. But it offers good reason to think that in this war, it appears, the worst eventuality is one that will never happen.