corrigenda

Cuban Book Burners Invisible to ALA

2007-01-05T07:30:00.000-08:00

Why am I not surprised? This alert is from Steve Marquardt, Dean of Libraries Emeritus, South Dakota State University, and Amnesty International USA Legislative Coordinator for Minnesota. Librarians with a brain and a conscience should be outraged at the transparent, pro-Castro apologetics emanating from the American Library Association.

Every time I read about such nonsense from the ALA, I'm reminded of the Library Science professor I had who declared that he would never write a recommendation for any student who didn't belong to the ALA.

So, in effect, students who do not want to support or collaborate with an organization that runs interference for Cuban book-burners may find their career adversely affected.

Please read, then act:

If government-ordered book burning is OK with you, you need read no further. Have a nice day.

If, however, ALA's refusal to post such news on its "Book Burning in the 21st Century" web site concerns or at least puzzles you, then I ask for your help in restoring the integrity of ALA.

Cuban courts in April 2003 ordered the incineration or destruction of the entire holdings – thousands of items – held in six independent libraries. You can read the documentation for yourself as follows, as the Rule of Law and Cuba web site of the Florida State University, by using the following key words:
http://www.ruleoflawandcuba.fsu.edu/documents-matanzas-9e.cfm. Search for "incineration."
http://www.ruleoflawandcuba.fsu.edu/documents-santiago-6e.cfm. Search for "incineration."
http://www.ruleoflawandcuba.fsu.edu/documents-sancti-spiritus-4e.cfm . Search for "destruction."
http://www.ruleoflawandcuba.fsu.edu/documents-matanzas-2e.cfm. Search for "incineration."
http://www.ruleoflawandcuba.fsu.edu/documents-havana-10e.cfm. Search for "destruction."
http://www.ruleoflawandcuba.fsu.edu/documents-ciegodeavila-2e.cfm . Search for "destruction."

After 18 months of repeated requests to post news of this crime against intellectual freedom on its web site devoted to "Book Burning in the 21st Century" ( http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/bookburning/21stcentury/21stcentury.htm)
ALA has yet to do so. We have supplied a paragraph for posting, complete with links to the court documents (see final page of attachment), but Don Wood of the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom continues to say that he needs verification of the book burning from a major news source (despite posting news on his web page from small local newspapers). We have sought this coverage, but there is understandably little interest in "news" that is now nearly four years old!

Reputable and objective verification does exist in the total of 151 direct references to Cuba's sentencing documents in the comprehensive reports published by Amnesty International ( http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR250172003?open&of=ENG-CUB)
and the Organization of American States (http://www.cidh.org/annualrep/2006eng/CUBA.12476eng.htm ). The details are in the attachment.

This issue is important to the reputation of our profession and the integrity of our Association. Reasonable people can differ about the legitimacy of Cuban laws allegedly violated by persons operating independent libraries and accepting information materials from the US Interests Section in Havana, but if government-ordered burning of thousands of "subversive" books is not worthy of mention, then our professional association has indeed turned a new ethical corner.

I urge you to send a letter, preferably a letter on your letterhead and in your own words, asking ALA President Leslie Burger why, given reputable and objective documentation at the international level, the Office for Intellectual Freedom refuses to post news of the book burning in Cuba. Even a quick e-mail will help.

Please send the letter SOON – preferably no later than January 11, to be sure that she gets it before leaving for ALA MidWinter in Seattle.

Key points:

• Evidence of the court ordered book burning is found in the sentencing documents posted at the Rule of Law and Cuba web site hosted by the Center for the Advancement of Human Rights at Florida State University.

• This documentation has been accepted by and referenced 151 times in comprehensive reports issued by Amnesty International and the Organization of American States Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

• It is easy to post links to these reports by respected human rights and international organizations on the Book Burning web page. Why has ALA OIF not done so?

• Ask for a reply and an explanation from our ALA President.

The ALA President's address is:

Leslie Burger, ALA President
Princeton Public Library
65 Witherspoon Street
Princeton, NJ 08542
609-924-8822 ext. 253
FAX: 609-924-7937
lburger@princetonlibrary.org

AND please send a copy of your letter to the editorial page editor of the Seattle Post Intelligencer or the same officer at The Seattle Times, in the hope that they also may pose the same question during the ALA MidWinter conference:

Mark Trahant
Editorial Page Editor
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
101 Elliott Ave. W.
Seattle, WA 98119
E-mail: editpage@seattlepi.com

James F. Vesely
Editorial Page Editor
The Seattle Times
P.O. Box 70
Seattle, WA 98111
Phone: 206/464-2132
Fax: 206/382-6760
E-mail: opinion@ seattletimes.com

I thank you for your support, participation and commitment to intellectual freedom!

The status of this blog

2006-12-26T10:50:00.000-08:00

I am always amazed that people read this blog, given the billion or so alternatives out there. Many thanks to those of you who wrote (or complained) about my failing, of late, to post my thoughts, both light and dark.

I've been out of the country for some time (Far East) and arrived back just in time for the holiday season.

I don't know the future status of this blog, given my (growing) family and work responsibilities. I hope to post more after the holidays, primarily on the subjects of books, culture, and the library world. However, I have very little interest or time to devote to the politics of the ALA. I tried to keep up with the twists and turns of ALA politics, but this is simply a swamp in which I cannot bring myself to swim, given my other concerns, which include a new child, two other on-line writing commitments, and my day job.

If you are interested in all things ALA, I suggest some of the site-links on the side. My only interest in the ALA is their relationship to the censorship, anti-censorship, and the culture wars in general. I cannot get excited about which set of crooks is elected to run our country, so I'm not likely to care which hard-politicos of the left run ALA.

This blog was always a grab bag of my roles as librarian, conservative Catholic, and supporter of Israel. Assuming I can continue this blog, I'm only going to concentrate on books and culture, with less emphasis on library politics, Israel, and Catholicism. So, depending on what you came here for, here are a few suggestions of other places to visit on the net:

If you want library politics, please see SHUSH, which has reinvented itself as The Notebook. Also note his many useful links. These should keep any library junky very busy.

If you came here because of my support for Israel and my dismay concerning the knee-jerk Israel-bashing in the academic world, then you should check out little green footballs, Daniel Pipes' Weblog, Sandstorm: Martin Kramer on the Middle East (a wonderful blog on academia and the Middle East), or Catholic Friends of Israel, group blog (which seems to be two people primarily).

If you're here because you're a fellow Catholic (or interested in things Catholic), please check out The Bone Chapel or Against The Grain. "The Bone Chapel" is new, but covers all things Catholic, as well as the world of high culture (literature, poetry, classical music, and art) from a Catholic perspective. "Against the Grain" covers Pope Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church. "The Bone Chapel" seems to be more traditionalist than "Against the Grain."

For the culture wars, including the wars against Jihad and illegal immigration, I give the highest marks to Andrew Cusack and Cella's Review. Mr. Cusack is only 22 years old. That he writes so well at such a young age is only mildly irritating to we less-talented folk in the mire of middle age. Mr. Cella is likewise a gifted wordsmith. He writes one of the five best blogs on the subjects of jihad and also the culture wars, in my humble opinion. No small feat in net of over one billion blogs.

One more can't-miss blog: David Pryce-Jones. This blog has linked to Pryce-Jones many times. His subject is not so much Jihad as our submission to Jihad. He also writes extremely well on a variety of subjects related to Western Civilization and culture. He was writing about Arabs and Islam long before it was fashionable outside of Mid East Study circles. I'm told he wrote a wonderful biography of Unity Mitford, but I cannot find a copy. Still, there are some things of his in print, plus he writes better on his blog than most do in their books.

I shall make an attempt to carve out space in my schedule to post here more regularly after the holidays. If successful, I can continue corrigenda in 2007. If not, we shall all have to move on. For you that will be easy; simply book mark the above links.

Merry Christmas to all.

Double-walled beer glasses!

2006-09-08T08:05:00.000-07:00

From RedEnvelope.com, as seen on the Today Show,double-walled beer glasses keeps your beer cold. Yeah, yeah, it'll keep hot drinks hot without burning your hands, too.

But it keeps beer really cold!

The book meme

2006-09-02T20:57:00.000-07:00

Only a fool would do this quiz after having consumed copious amounts of Saki, but here goes. After reading Christoper Blosser's picks at Against The Grain I feel compelled to subject the six readers of this blog to my selections.

So get out your Big Chief tablets and your crayons and write this down:

One book that changed your life:

The C.S Lewis Reader by C.S. Lewis.

I had abandoned my youthful atheism and was ripe for something to pour into that empty hole. Lewis' works were a bucket of cold water, both bracing and refreshing.

One book you've read more than once:

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh.

I Read it right after the above Lewis compilation. It continues to nourish with repeated readings.

One book you'd want on a desert island:

The largest collection of G. K. Chesterton I could find. If I could get Orthodoxy and The Man Who Was Thursday and Lepanto in the same volume, I'd be content. Except for being stranded on a desert island.

One book that made you laugh:

The DaVinci Code. It was supposed to be funny, right?

One book that made you cry:

The Blessing of a Broken Heart by Sherri Mandell.

Mandell's son, Koby, was 13 when he and a friend were murdered by Palestinians in Israel. Their brains were bashed in with rocks. Stinkin' Koranimals; may they rot in hell. Mandell is more forgiving than I am. She recounts her ordeal in dealing with the death of her child. It is inspiring and (oddly) uplifting.

One book that you wish had been written:

Lepanto: the model for winning the war on terrorism.

One book you wish had never been written:

Christ Among Us

A terrible and dishonest book that fabricates a multiplicity of Church teachings without the honesty of simple dissent. Sadly, this is used in Catechism classes in many parishes.

One book you're currently reading:

The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family by Mary S. Lovell.

All the Mitford sisters were smart and beautiful. I admit to having retroactive crushes on every one of them. I have a special fondness for Nancy, because she ran a bookshop. And not just any bookshop, the Mayfair bookshop in London. But even Diana, who was the most hated woman in Britain after she married a Nazi, is attractive. I'm sorry, but it's true. Lovell's bio of these sisters is also a bio of English life before and after WWII. Not to be missed.

One book you've been meaning to read:

Upon reaching middle age, I promised myself I would read Dumas Malone's six volume biography of Thomas Jefferson before I die. I will soon begin the first one, Jefferson the Virginian, and hope to travel to Monticello next year, after which I will, hopefully, complete the others at a rate of one per year.

There you have it. Those who read this blog from a mental institution (you know who you are) may now begin your course of study, in the vain attempt at attaining my level of knowledge and study.

The rest of you can go back to your lives.

Shadenfreude, anyone?

2006-09-02T13:37:00.000-07:00

Even the best of us get taken it by charades, con games, and hoaxes. But when I read in the British Guardian that a hoax love letter had fooled A. N. Wilson, the biographer of poet laureate Sir John Betjeman, I had to wonder how hard it was to pull off the con.

The letter in question confirmed a love affair that was unknown, or at least unconfirmed, before now. When gossip becomes fact -- and sometimes even when it doesn't -- biographers are happy to wallow in the mud. But the bubble burst when a journalist pointed out that the first letter in each sentence of the letter spelled out "A. N. Wilson is a shit."

The only biography by Wilson that I have read is his ridiculously Freudian bio-deconstruction of C. S. Lewis. It was truly one of the worse biographies I have ever slogged through, Wilson's writing abilities notwithstanding. Wilson was accused of fudging the facts, as well as bending any reasonable interpretation of certain events to glean the maximum amount of sleeze, real or imagined, from the events of Lewis' life.

Was Wilson, again, looking a bit too hard for the libidinous to "balance" the laudable?

Admirers of C. S. Lewis, including his friend and biographer George Sayer, might be forgiven for having a chuckle at Wilson's expense.

Middle School teacher burns flags in class

2006-08-23T05:23:00.000-07:00

Free speech? Creative teaching? Unpatriotic behavior? Who knows? But a Stuart Middle School teacher burned not one but two U.S. flags in class.

I think it's the fire in the classroom that concerns me. I just don't trust your average 7th grade social studies teacher not to burn down the school.

The poor guy is now on that non-teaching, paperwork-pushing, waiting-to-see-if-I'm-fired-duty. He's probably working in the permanent records department. Now there's a good place for a fire.

The Grass is not so green

2006-08-15T10:59:00.000-07:00

Gunter Grass ("The Tin Drum") admitted that he joined the Nazi SS at age 17. David Pryce-Jones takes the novelist/moral guide to task.

This would not be a big deal accept for two things:

1)Grass has spent his life admonishing Germans to tell the truth about their terrible past.

2)Grass has been one of the major finger-pointers of the German left.

As Pryce-Jones put it:

Truth-telling for him meant criticizing the United States at every opportunity, defending the Soviet Union as far as possible, and pointing an accusing finger at fellow Germans for covering up their Hitlerite past.

Grass now joins the ranks of other lefties, from Gertrude Stein to G.B.Shaw to Paul Lacan to Heidegger who supported, by word or deed, the odious Nazi regime.

Germany is, evidently, reeling from the announcement.

We Don't Need Your Stinkin' Book

2006-08-02T11:33:00.000-07:00

Okay, they didn't say it like that. But when a library patron offered to purchase a copy of Melanie Phillips' Londonistan (radical Islam in Britain) for the Brooklyn Public Library in New York, he received a curiously cold response:

Thank you for your question. Normally, the library doesn't add a nonfiction title to the collection (and especially one that is potentially incendiary) unless a review from a trusted source (professional journals) can be found. Unfortunately, we have not found such a review for Londonistan. Therefore, at this time, the library will not be adding Londonistan to the collection.

So says Wayne Roylance, Adult Selection Coordinator for the library.

Oh really, Wayne? If Michael Moore's new book or Al Franken's new screed has not been reviewed in a "professional journal," you would not accept it?

And what's with "potentially incendiary?" Is that in the American Library Association's position on censorship? Please give space to a variety of viewpoints, unless one is potentially incendiary, in which case, forget it.

Can we assume that donations of potentially incendiary books by Noam Chomsky, Ward Churchill, or any of a dozen left-wing authors who specialize in blaming Israel for the world's problems will be rejected, especially if there are no reviews in professional journals?

I wonder if this will be the least bit controversial in ALA circles. Whatever happens, I am consistently floored by the attitude of so many from the "anti-censorship" crowd.

A good book you may have missed

2006-07-31T07:24:00.000-07:00

If you are still on Summer break from your school, you are probably not a librarian. Looking for that good novel to read, before going back to curriculums and standardized testing? John J. Miller, writing in the Wall Street Journal, has a suggestion that I must second: Yevgeny Zamyatin's largely unknown book "We."

Zamyatin's dystopian novel is said to have influenced both Huxley's "Brave New World" and Orwell's "1984." If you read all three books (and you should) the similarities between "We" and the two more famous novels is striking. All the moreso since "Brave New World" and "1984" are very different novels in both tone and content; they simply share the now-standard elements of the sub-genre dystopian literature. But while these two familiar books are unalike, they each bear some likeness to "We."

I've never seen "We" on a Banned Books Week list or table, either in a library or a Barnes & Noble. While this may be due the book being less known than some other "banned" books (which are so banned that you cannot walk into a library or bookstore without tripping over the damn things), there is also the book's lack of pedigree, so to speak. Unlike "Brave New World," Zamyatin's novel cannot be read, or deconstructed, in any way that diminishes its anti-Communist charactor, a fact that would have doomed the book, even in the United States, during the cold war, when "anti-Soviet" attitudes were considered uncouth or even fascistic.

True, Orwell took his knocks from the lefty establishement, and had some trouble publishing both "Animal Farm" and "1984" at first. But Orwell had (then) unimpeachable lefty credentials, which included having fought in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side. Orwell also, despite his vehement and cogent attacks on Stalinism, considered himself a socialist and a "man of the left." Zamyatin went from being considered a loyal communist to being denounced as a counter-revolutionary parasite in a very short period.

Although Zamyatin finished "We" in 1921 it was not published in his native Russia until 1988.

Miller's review contains many tid-bits of information on Zamyatin and his famous novel. His review is a welcome reminder that many authors have suffered for their work, often in ways much more cruel than finding out your novel of teenage sex has been "banned" from the local elementary school library.

To Hell With Random House

2006-07-23T23:53:00.000-07:00

On David Pryce-Jones'blog there's a very disturbing story about the publishing fate of George Orwell.

It seems that Random House owns the publishing imprint that publishes George Orwell's books, including both Animal Farm and 1984. Despite the enormous profits that publishers of Orwell have made over the years, Random House has elected not to publish the final volume of the Collected Orwell.

Although Pryce-Jones doesn't specifically name a reason, apart from money-grubbing, I cannot but wonder if Orwell's listing of fellow-travelling commies (contained in this last volume) didn't make the volume politically incorrect for someone at Random House.

Of course, most of the people who work at Random House are under the age of 25 and probably couldn't tell you what a Stalinist was if their life depended on it. They've probably never read a book by Orwell, either, apart from some vague memory of "that animal story I read in high school."

So maybe they are just money-grubbing parasites who feel no obligation to Western culture. Pryce-Jones concludes:

"I hope never to buy a Random House book again, and welcome any ideas short of jihad to shame them and their smelly little money-grubbing."

I second that. I hope their business goes belly-up.

8 grocery employees stabbed in Tennessee

2006-07-23T23:32:00.000-07:00

The stabbings took place in Tennesse, but the story comes from Boston.com

Here's the punchline: The lunatic who stabbed eight people (one is in critical condition) was chasing his next victim through the parking lot when a passerby pulled his handgun and ended the terror.

This sort of thing happens everyday. By that I mean that lawful gun owners repel intruders and stop murderers every day. The vast majority of the time a shot is never fired by the gun owner. Usually just the sigh of the gun, a declaration that "I have a gun," or the sound of a gun (the slide of an automatic or the pump of the shotgun).

The interesting thing is that these stories are usually only local; they appear only in the paper of the town where the incident took place. With the internet, everywhere is local. So Boston readers can wonder what their fate would be if someone went on a stabbing spree at their place of empolyment.

Probably a lot of deaths and calls by politicians to register or ban all knives.

Insanity in Academia, part 127

2006-07-11T05:03:00.000-07:00

I have heard tales of the group Scholars for 9-11 Truth, who believe the 9-11 attacks were faked, but I guess I didn't really want to believe such a group exists.Alas, they do.

My favorite is the Clemson prof whom a student notes was "in a coma for six years." Yeesh!

Thanks to Jonah Goldberg at The Corner on National Review Online for this glimpse into the madness.

Happy July Fourth

2006-07-03T21:17:00.000-07:00

I can think of no better way to celebrate July 4th than rereading the Declaration of Independence. Laissez Faire Books has reprinted it on their blog.

God bless America.

Univ Library Boss Cancels NYTimes in Protest

2006-06-30T14:14:00.000-07:00

The Times has taken a lot of flack lately for exposing a secret U.S. government program monitoring terrorist financial transactions. The backlash has finally hit the library world. At the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, the dean of library services has canceled that library's sub to the Times.

Selection or censorship? That's easy. If you tilt left, this is blatant act of censorship. If you tilt right, well, you can't have EVERY newspaper, so some have to go and some can stay.

The howlers have stated that the Times was canceled for political reasons, and this is what singles out this decision as a bad one.

"The censorship is just unspeakable," Romo said. "There is no reason, no matter what your beliefs, to deny a source of information to students."

The removal also runs counter to the American Library Association's Bill of Rights, which states: "Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval."

Yes, but things can be removed, especially if like-sources are still available, if the source in question in deemed inadequate, unreliable, or unprofessional. This is done all the time. If you doubt this, you have really drank to much of the special Koolaid they hand out at library school.

This is part of the library dean's argument: that the NYTimes has completely dropped the ball on professional and ethical behavior. Any school can choose to have the Washington Post, and therefore, not take the NYTimes. I personally would not have done it, but it is within his rights.

Conservative publications disapear from the shelves all the time. If you press, you'll get the "we can't afford everything" excuse. I guess liberal publications are a lot cheaper. I've personally watched the journal of the National Association of Scholars vanish from a university library. The people who axed this quarterly journal of conservative scholars were only to happy to admit that it "didn't meet the library's standards of scholarship." Yeah, who are we kidding? The NAS journal was brought back after complaints.

Then, of course, there's the tried and true method of non-censorshop censorship: only "selecting" those sources that meet one's political approval. Since your library never ordered National Review (and never will), you cannot be accused of censoring it. Nope, no bias there.

Having said all this, I think the dean at Incarnate Word made a mistake. He politicized the source selection at his library, something conservatives have complained about for years when liberals (or radicals) are in charge of selection. He should not have done this. The university (and its libraries) are far too political now. If he thought the periodical collection lacked balance (or depth) he could look into adding new titles.

Besides, this just gives rabid, activist librarians another excuse to consider themselves as the last defenders of freedom.

Tom Rice, a recent graduate of the University of North Texas library sciences program, said that in pulling the Times, the library contradicted everything he learned in school.

We felt like we were in an alternate reality when we read the e-mail," Rice said. "Then we realized how serious it was."

When the Koolaid wears off, Tom, you'll realize that your library school was the alternate reality.

LAURA BUSH VS. LOONY LIBRARIANS

2006-06-21T11:07:00.000-07:00

Wow, check it out: Michelle Malkin linked to Corrigenda! You have to scroll down to the end. A fine piece on the ALA's invite of Laura Bush to New Orleans, and the predictable crying from the ALA nursery.

Were this not the Summer break for this private school librarian, I might have noticed Malkin's link and had some new posting up for visiters. As it turned out, I had a post on single-malt scotch. Oops. What can I say? Alcohol clouds your judgement.

Fortunately, SHUSH - for the conservative librarian has been keeping up with the Laura Bush bruhaha, even printing the responses to her invite from various librarians. A couple of the librarians are put out by the ALA's announcement that the doors will be shut and no one allowed in the 1st Lady's speech after it starts, a fairly standard proceedure.

"I actually think that this is unprecedented and goes against our open meetings policy" opines Diedra Conkling. Mmm...you may be right, Diedra. Unless of course we're talking about Cubans who are less-than-enchanted by Castro's dictatorship. They're not welcome before or after the doors are closed.

Glenlivet to recreate special still

2006-05-24T05:59:00.000-07:00

Finally, some good news in the world!

Bottoms up.

Some good news with the bad

2006-05-19T08:51:00.000-07:00

A survey of literature's leading lights by the Pulitzer committee has resulted in as list of the best novels of the last twenty-five years. I was prepared to be disappointed, even dispirited, but there are diamonds amidst the animal droppings.

First the bad news. Toni Morrison's BELOVED was named the best novel of the last twenty-five years. Good grief. Words fail me. Actually, a few words come to mind, but they are not fit for a family blog.

I'm not the only one who considers this choice controversial.

Roger Kimball summed it up:

"Toni Morrison is the perfect New York Times poster girl," said Roger Kimball, the co-editor and publisher of The New Criterion, America's leading review of the arts and intellectual life, and the publisher of Encounter Books.

"Someone whose opinions and skin colour immunise her from criticism and whose cliché-riddled, melodramatic prose impart a hungry urgency to the tired Left-liberal yearnings of the paper's cultural commissars. Pathetic, but wholly typical."

However, there is some good news. Coming in at number number eight is WINTER'S TALE by Mark Helprin. Good grief! Maybe I'm a cynic, but I never thought someone as politically incorrect as Helprin would be honored by his (decidedly liberal) peers. Helprin deserves a better slot in the top ten, but it is an amazing tribute to his talent that he made the list at all. The cultural gatekeepers are usually less honest in their choices.

Don DeLillo and Philip Roth each appear twice in the top ten. DeLillo might be pleased; I doubt Roth is happy with barely cracking the top five. I say this without rancor. Roth is very talented. He would have justification for crying foul. John Updike should be happy. Although his RABBIT books (collected as one volume) might have been listed separately, resulting in Updike taking fourth through seventh place.

Of course, real writers don't think in such crude terms.

Here's the top ten:

1 Beloved - Toni Morrison (1987)
2 Underworld - Don DeLillo (1997)
3 Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy (1985)
4 Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels - John Updike (1995)
5 American Pastoral - Philip Roth (1997)
6 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole (1980)
7 Housekeeping - Marilynne Robinson (1980)
8 Winter's Tale - Mark Helprin (1983)
9 White Noise - Don DeLillo (1985)
10 The Counterlife - Philip Roth (1986)

Personally, I would've put something by Walker Percy in that list before A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES, but I confess to not being able to get through John Kennedy Toole's posthumous prize-winner. Still, CONFEDERACY does have an almost American-Idol-like following. You just can't keep that book down.

The beginning of the end

2006-05-05T05:53:00.000-07:00

The Moussaoui trial has ended. The terrorist received life in prison (a particularly harsh prison, as it turns out) rather than execution. The behavior of all concerned ranges from the dissapointing to the disgusting. I've thought for some time now that we do not have the stomach for this war. In the end, we fear being tagged as racist, intolerant, or uncivilized more than we fear the assassin's blade. Here's a perfect example of our intellectual and moral decay, from Slate's Dahlia Lithwick:

"This decision, which will doubtless bring with it some serious national fallout, is more subtle, and more courageous, than the prosecution itself. Acting as a check on a runaway state, these jurors refused to allow a government needing a scapegoat and a man wishing for martyrdom to stand in the way of the facts. These jurors understood that for this country to kill a terrorist for his ideas, hopes, and dreams is not much different than the terrorist's desire to come here and kill us for ours."

Read the part in bold again. This is where we're headed. Over at The Corner on National Review Online, John Derbyshire sums up my feelings:

Thank God the Moussaoui trial is over. I have never been so embarrassed for my country. The low point of the thing — and a low point for our nation in its accelerating slide to oblivion — was when that U.S. Navy Lieutenenat sniveled and blubbed on the witness stand while Moussaoui jeered at her — quite rightly, in my opinion. I expected Jimmy Carter or Oprah to show up at any minute. An American officer, in uniform, weeping IN THE FACE OF THE ENEMY! She should be court-martialed. Instead, I feel sure she will get promoted. ("If you emote, we must promote.") The trial transcripts must have been translated into Arabic, Farsi & Pushtu by now, and are being passed around among the terrorists as morale boosters, with much hilarity and Moussaoui-style jeering.

Judge Brinkema's closing remarks were typical of the whole sorry performance, and gave Moussaoui yet another opportunity to play the man — the only man in the courtroom. Does anyone, DOES ANYONE, think we're going to defeat Islamofascism by squirting clouds of this multicultural mush at it? The terrorists sure as hell don't. Does anyone think the enemy gives a fig for our determination not to "focus on hatred, bigotry, and irrationality" (Judge Brinkema). I wonder if you can win a war without deploying hatred. Homer didn't think so.

The New York Post described Judge Brinkema's closing remarks as "a tongue lashing." I would say that's about right. They have suicide bombers — and, any day now, nukes which they will use. We have wet tongues.

"When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, naturally they will favor the strong horse."—-Osama bin Laden. Yes, they will. We are doomed, doomed.

Movie Critics Aghast at Andy Garcia's 'The Lost City'

2006-05-02T06:02:00.000-07:00

Let's talk about the other immigrants. The actor Andy Garcia has made a movie about the victims of the Cuban revolution, and the critics have wet their pants. From the New York Times to Village Voice, all are aghast that anyone could criticize Che Guevara. You know who Che is, don't you? He's the cold-blooded murderer and co-dictator that adorns the shirts of every third idiot in yesterday's demonstrations.

Where was all this concern for the immigrant when Elian Gonzalez was being returned to Castro's gulag island resort at the point of a gun?

May Day: three cheers for capitalism

2006-05-01T09:53:00.000-07:00

Eamonn Butler, in a piece from thebusinessonline.com, sums up May Day nicely.

"...the promise of “pro-labour” regulation, such as maximum working hours, can be very different from the reality. It looks as if it must benefit the workers, but in fact it can end up harming them."

Are you listening, America's Catholic Bishops and Priests?

"Minimum wage laws, for example, make unskilled workers more expensive to hire. So business people respond by hiring fewer of them, or they cut fringe benefits or impose more onerous working conditions. That is no problem for skilled workers – such as those senior trade union members pressing for the regulation – because they earn much more than the minimum anyway."

No harm to the academic, either, or to those wearing the clerical collar. In fact, "pro-labor" legislation seems to make perfect sense to those who will not benefit from its genius.

It's worth remembering why one system thrived and the other died.

Illegal Immigrant Appreciation Day

2006-05-01T07:03:00.000-07:00

Bet you thought I'd have nothing to say, didn't you? Well, I don't. But here's a bit of cross-border cultural appreciation.

Yes, it's sick and twisted, but I'm boycotting good taste in solidarity with my brothers and sisters who are skipping school and work for a principle.

Harper Lee born today

2006-04-28T09:14:00.000-07:00

Well, born on this day eighty years ago. Best known for TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, she also wrote...

I can't think if a damn thing she wrote other than MOCKINGBIRD. Today in Literature has a nice story on Lee.

Did you know Harper Lee also helped research Capote's IN COLD BLOOD? You probably knew that, because you watched the recent movie on Capote's most famous work. I haven't seen the movie, but soon, soon....

Lee, according to this article, "makes a case for not only living quietly in small-town America but for keeping quiet."

Don't I always complain about American being too noisy? That life is too noisy?

Well, maybe on this blog I don't, but trust me, my poor wife has to endure many lectures on the subject, usually in our car (where there's no escape) and often with my voice rising to a shrill and pompous crescendo (to make the point about the noise).

Here's what Lee said,

I would like to show children my own town, my own street, my own neighbors. I live on the corner. My next-door neighbor is a barber, and his wife owns a dress shop. My down-the-street neighbor has a grocery store, and my neighbor down the hill is a teacher. My neighbor to the rear is a doctor; behind him is a druggist. If children were visiting--from abroad or from other parts of the country -- they would have cookies and ice cream for them, and take them to the park with the lake and the swimming pool, and my cook, Mary, would make them an enormous cake covered with caramel frosting, and for dinner give them fresh vegetables from the garden and Southern chicken cooked right.
And then we would let them alone....

Wow. Can I live there?

New Orleans Police to Return Seized Guns

2006-04-21T07:56:00.000-07:00

Law abiding citizens who were not even suspected of criminal activity had their guns confiscated after hurricane Katrina. Thanks to the NRA and the Second Amendment Foundation, police have had to give them back.

"Natural disasters may destroy great cities, but they do not destroy civil rights," said Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, which joined the NRA in the lawsuit.

How sad that people were deprived of their right to self-defense just when the criminal class began its ravenous journey through the flood-ravaged neighborhoods of Louisiana.

We all heard the "George Bush hates black people" mantra. We probably won't ever hear the "Mayor Nagin is against self-defense" sound bite.

Waco Massacre Anniversary

2006-04-20T10:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the 13th anniversary of the butchering of 80 men, women, and children by the Janet Reno's federal goon squad in Waco, Texas. I wanted to post yesterday, but I waited to see what the coverage would be. It was sparse. Over at Of Arms and the Law there's a good link and some interesting info:

"Carlos Ghigliotti, infrared expert, dead of a heart attack. Fred Zegel, infrared expert, died of unreported causes. One of the ATF agents committed suicide, saying he'd been blamed for the failure (he'd posed as a UPS deliveryman to gain info, and was a bit clumsy at it, not that that played any role in anything, but agencies look for scapegoats). One of the TV cameramen who filmed the first raid died at an early age, reportedly of drinking too much. At least one of the FBI higher-ups was drinking too much, it was said. Robert Rodriguez, ATF agent who tried to stop and raid (and whom David Koresh rather liked), forced out of the agency (and successfully sued them over leaking personal info to harm him ... as usual in a bureaucracy, the one guy who does things right is persecuted for making everyone else look bad)."

I was living in Los Angeles at the time. I was the only person among my coworkers who questioned the Federal Government's right to raid a compound that was, by all local accounts, civilian and police, no threat to anyone.

The things I remember:

1) The horrible press coverage.
2) Sen. Charles Schumer's smirking support for the raid, an attempt to show he can be tough on someone besides taxpayers.
3) Congressman Sonny Bono's admirable disgust when watching a tape of the massacre. Bono was new to Republican politics; he hadn't yet learned to dump his principles in the toilet at the first sign of government malfiesance.
4) Republican Senator John C. Danforth's ridiculous coverup of the ATF/Federal Government coverup. Ah, yes, just leading the fight for smaller, less intrusive government. Here's what Danforth's bio said about the massacre: "In September, 1999, Danforth was appointed Special Counsel by Attorney General Janet Reno to investigate the federal raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas." Appointed by Janet Reno to investigate the massacre. Oh yeah, that's the path to truth and justice.
5) The Documentary section of the Oscar committee didn't give an oscar to the excellent expose, WACO: The Rules of Engagement. Later they gave one to Michael Moron's fabricated piece of agit-prop, "Bowling for Columbine."
6) But most of all I remember the phone call made by the young girl inside the Branch Dividian Compound to an ATF agent, asking the agent "is someone is going to come inside and kill me?" The agent assured the little girl that no one was coming in at all.

OSU librarian's book recommendations "sexual harassment"

2006-04-17T13:42:00.000-07:00

Item number 4,671 of a long list of things ignored by the Bush administration during these "conservative days." An OSU librarian charged with sexual harassment for recommending conservative books for freshmen.

Even amidst the usual Stalinesque overtures and Kangaroo Courts we've come to expect from the Academy, this one stands out.

"Scott Savage, who serves as a reference librarian for the university, suggested four best-selling conservative books for freshman reading in his role as a member of OSU Mansfield’s First Year Reading Experience Committee. The four books he suggested were The Marketing of Evil by David Kupelian, The Professors by David Horowitz, Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis by Bat Ye’or, and It Takes a Family by Senator Rick Santorum. Savage made the recommendations after other committee members had suggested a series of books with a left-wing perspective, by authors such as Jimmy Carter and Maria Shriver."

After this THREE PROFESSORS filed a complaint saying the book recommendations made them feel "unsafe."

But, of course, other people on campus spoke up for the librarian's rights, didn't they?

"The complaint came after the OSU Mansfield faculty voted without dissent to file charges against Savage. The faculty later voted to allow the individual professors to file charges."

I can already feel the emails coming in: "Why complain about Bush? This is not his fault. Do you really expect the federal government to get involved?"

Yes, I do. I expect the president to use the bully pulpit to expose such Stalinist manuevers. I also expect the Bush administration to question the unimpeded flow of taxpayer money to Ohio STATE University in light of this travesty.

In terms of education, the only "accomplishment" this administration can boast of is the further federalization of the public school system.

Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the Oval Office. What conservatives have gotten out of this is pathetic.

Girl, 5, Forced To Apologize For Hugging Classmate

2006-04-07T05:14:00.000-07:00

From TheBostonChannel.com comes the tale of one 5-year-old hugging another 5-year-old, then being forced to apologize.

At issue is a hug Savannah said she got on the playground from a friend named Sophie. Savannah hugged Sophie back. The hugs resulted in Savannah having to write a letter, complete with teacher corrections, that read, "I touch Sophie because she touch me and I didn't like it because she was hugging me. I didn't like when she hugged me."

Of course, this is not how either of the children felt; they like hugging each other. I've seen my daughter receive a dozen hugs from classmates before I could drag her away from school.

What kind of sick freaks make a 5-year-old denounce a perfectly harmless activity which the child enjoys? The sick freaks at Greenmeadow Elementary School in Maynard.

It reminds me of a Maoist detention center where counter-revolutionaries are made to write down their crimes against the people, denouncing each misstep and claiming their "crimes" are distasteful to them.

And, of course, there's the CYA spin job by the administration:

School Superintendent Mark Masterson told NewsCenter 5 there was a "dispute of the facts between a hug and a lifting of a child off the floor." The superintendent said the school reported "one girl bear hugged another girl and lifted her off the ground.

Of course. That's why the note the poor child was forced to write (and rewrite) mentioned "touching," not lifting someone off the ground. Try again, weasel.

The family said they are so upset they'll start looking for a new school for their daughter to attend.

I would recommend private school, if they can afford it.

Leader charged for 'Soviet crimes'

2006-04-05T08:29:00.000-07:00

Poland is charging Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski with "communist crimes," resulting from his 1981 declaration of marial law in Poland.

Why, I wonder, has this not happened all over the world since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism? Other than the execution of Romania's first couple, and Germany's prosecution of former East German strongman Eric Honnecker, there has been a notable absence of rough justice for Marxist murderers.

Of course, this may indicate the differing views that our own cultural elites (and those in other countries) have towards communist butchers, as opposed to fascist butchers. Many an "intellectual" has a soft spot for Castro, but mention the name Pinochet in their presence and they go apoplectic with rage.

A few years back a British woman was exposed has having been a spy for the Soviet Union. Confronted by the media in her garden, she shrugged it off with some nonsense about standing up for the oppressed. And by "oppressed" she didn't mean Russian Jews or residents of the Gulag. As far as I know she was never prosecuted, nor was there any big hew and cry that she should be.

Imagine what might have happened had she been pegged as fellow traveler of Pinochet or General Franco. The chattering classes would have hounded her to an early grave.

Lucky Jim...again

2006-03-27T12:26:00.000-08:00

I'm rereading LUCKY JIM by Kingsley Amis. I have a soft spot for all those pre and post-war British novelists/poets, from Evelyn Waugh to Philip Larkin. In the novel, the hapless lecturer Dixon, trying desperately to navigate the treacherous terraine and abstruse code of behaviour at the college where he teaches Medieval Studies, is worried early on about an article he is trying to have published. Dixon is deathly afraid of getting the sack from a job he neither completely understands or wishes to remain at. Getting published in a "learned journal" would provide some insulation from the constant threat of dismissal. Walking with the head of his department, Dixon is asked for the title of his as-yet-unpublished article. Dixon replies, after much memory searching, that the article is entitled: The Economic Influence of the Developements in Shipbuilding Techniques, 1450 - 1485. Dixon believes this to be a suitable title:

"It was a perfect title, in that it crystallized the article's niggling mindlessness, it's funeral parade of yawn-enforcing facts, the pseudo-light it threw upon non-problems."

Anyone even remotely connected with the academic world should read this novel.

In the introduction to this Penguin edition, David Lodge argues for the novel's importance, but states that upon rereading it he found it less humoruous than he remembered. I disagree. I find that the older I get the more appreciate books like LUCKY JIM.

Thought for the Day...not

2006-03-27T06:49:00.000-08:00

An Anglican clergyman named Rev. Allan Billings had an interesting theological observation on the BBC, according to Stephen Pollard's blog. The Righteous Rev. noted:

"Paying taxes is how love operates at a distance."

Mmm. Makes one wonder why tax collectors were held with such suspicion and in such contempt in the bible. Didn't Jesus realize they were only trying to spread the love?

Thanks to The Corner on National Review Online for this one.

Oscar Blues

2006-03-06T06:55:00.000-08:00

Well, they made a film called "Brokeback Mountain," which proves we are all ready to embrace the gay lifestyle, I mean, er, gay rights.

BUT, they didn't give the Oscar to "Brokeback Mountain, which means we are all a bunch of NASCAR-watching homophobes who secretly desire to beat Matthew Shepard to death.

"I felt like 'Brokeback Mountain' was a film that brought Americans together over issues of homophobia," said Grant Colfax, who hugged and wept with his partner, Rod Rogers, as the final award of the night went to a movie that instead explored issues of race.

Yeah, what's up with Hollywood? Giving an Oscar to a film that bloviates about racism? That's unheard of!

"I think that's an absolute horror," said Brad Bruner, who is a leader in the Golden State Gay Rodeo Association. "It's an outright sign of homophobia in our country. ('Crash') won no awards before this. It makes me sick."

Yeah, I'm sick too. The Israel-blaming film lost. The Tranny actress lost. The Gay cowboy movie lost. The suicide-bombers-are-misunderstood film lost. Another year of pure, unadulterated conservatism from the Academy.

Despite the lack of success for "Brokeback Mountain," which won just three of the eight awards for which it was nominated, cowboy hats and western wear were high fashion at the party.

Let's not forget the spurs, whips, and branding irons. This is San Francisco, after all.

Harry Browne, RIP

2006-03-03T07:03:00.000-08:00

When George H. W. Bush ran against Bill Clinton, I could not stomach voting for either man. So I voted for Harry Browne, the Libertarian candidate. Harry Browne died yesterday, after a long illness.

Browne was always an eloquent spokesman for liberty and the free market. His book HOW I FOUND FREEDOM IN AN UNFREE WORLD was a favorite of mine. Alas, Browne's books were in a box that was stolen when I lived in a coop, no doubt by some replitian leftists who believed property is theft. Oh well, that's what I get for living in cooperative housing.

After 9-11, Browne's influence, such as it was, waned quite a bit, due in no small part to his refusal to sanction any response to 9-11. His was a "protect our own, avoid foreign entanglements" philosophy, but that didn't resonate, even with some libertarians, after the U.S. was attacked on domestic soil.

Still, Browne was a principled, decent, and articulate man. A rarity among politicians.

God speed, Mr. Browne.

The Remnant is coming for you...!

2006-02-28T11:48:00.000-08:00

I've been reading some classic texts of the "Old Right." Albert J. Nock's classic rant, Our Enemy, the State is a refreshing waft of unpolluted air in the age of egalitarianism and big-government conservatism, which I loath. Nock was an elitist, in the best sense of that word. He believed that only by finding, then educating, a "remnant" of the educable few who wanted plain truth could society be turned around from its collectivist and egalitarian march to servitude.

One sentence, however, struck me as unintentionally funny:

"You do not know, and will never know, who the Remnant are, nor where they are, nor how many there are, nor what they are doing or will do. Two things you know, and no more; first, that they exist; and second, that they will find you."

Good heavens! That sounds like the tag line for a horror movie! "No one can escape the Remnant. They will find you!"

I can almost see the trailer in my head.

Omagh bombing

2006-02-26T20:54:00.000-08:00

Back in 1998, before Americans gave a whit about terrorism, a splinter group from the IRA (called "The Real IRA") put a bomb in car and murdered 29 people, including a pregnant mother carrying twins. Recently, a movie of the Omagh bombing was made and shown in the UK and Northern Ireland. This month it is on the Sundance Channel.

It was horrific, even as bombings go. Police were manipulated into evacuating citizens into a safe area (at the end of the street) while they searched a suspect area, whereupon a car bomb blew up in the crowded evacuee area.

For the families of the victims, however, the horror was only beginning. Despite assurances from the police that an investigation was proceeding apace, it became clear that catching the bombers would get in the way of the "peace process." In the movie, Gerry Adams (Sein Fein; IRA) tells the families as much in private. Eventually the "investigation" is shut down.

The interesting thing is that the victims sought justice through private means, which seems very strange in a country governed by the UK. They launched their own investigation, getting names of possible suspects in a very short time; they put pressure on both the police and The Real IRA; and they ran down a police informer, who, it turns out, told the police about the Omagh bombing before it happened. They even decided to file suit against The Real IRA in an attempt to bankrupt the organization. The movie seems to suggest that these private efforts were a complete failure; no doubt the victim's families felt that way. But in fact they accomplished a good deal in a short period of time.

What stood out for me was something I have shouted from the cyber rooftops: peace kills. Peace processes almost never work; they usually get innocent people killed; and they end up making "peace partners" out of murderers. This was certainly the case in the Omagh bombing. It has been true over and over in Israel.

The most surreal thing in the movie was watching the victim's families demonstrate outside the offices of The Real IRA. This is the group the police and Gerry Adams singled out as being responsible for the bombers. This is the organization that the police informant said was responsible for the bombing. This is the paramilitary group that claimed responsibility for the bombing.

WTF?!

Why does this organization have offices in Omagh after claiming credit for slaughtering 29 innocent men, women, and children? I'm on the libertarian end of conservatism, but shouldn't this group have gotten its doors kicked in and its files rifled through by armed officers of the state? This would be like Al-Quada having offices in Manhattan. Too, too sick-making.

This intense and well-crafted movie will leave you in a bit of a downer. But there's an update beyond the movie, available at the first link in this post: a father of four and member of The Real IRA named Colm Murphy was convicted for the Omagh bombing. Murphy was singled out early on as a suspect by TV news investigators. Of course, believing that Murphy acted alone would be almost as idiotic as believing the Palestinians want a peaceful coexistence with Israel.

Lucky thing we're all smarter than that.

Living Deliberately

2006-02-19T20:31:00.000-08:00

I'm revisiting an old favorite, WALDEN, by Henry David Thoreau. I don't know why I felt the need to read this book, again, even as I have half a dozen books I'm currently wading through.

For some reason I remembered the most quotable lines from Thoreau as coming from his essays Civil Disobedience or John Brown. But WALDEN -- in addition to being enchantingly written -- is filled with both familiar Thoreau quotes and new nuggets of wisdom. I'm not certain Thoreau really ever understood economics (but who among the Transcendentalists did?), but he is one of those authors we must read at different times in our short lives. Youth cannot appreciate everything he had to say; age can never remember what it was like to have encountered Thoreau for the first time.

I'm only just fifty pages into WALDEN (Library of America ed.). Here's a sample:

"Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them." (pg 327)

Mmm. I suppose libraries could help with this, except that most libraries today are gushing proud if they have the new Al Frankin book. The high culture commitment is gone, though it's not clear any public library could survive if it took such an mission to task.

On manners and morals:

"The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of any thing, it is very likely to be my good behavior." (pg 331)

On owning a house:

"...for our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them; and the bad neighborhood to be avoided is our own scury selves." (pg 349)

On monuments, pyramids, and other reminders of national greatness:

"Nations are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave. What if equal pains were taken to smooth and polish their manners?"

"As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at them in so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs." (pg 368)

Clearly this Thoreau is trouble-maker.

What the hell is a "meme?"

2006-02-15T07:00:00.000-08:00

I don't know, but evidently it involves answering a series of questions, each with four answers. Someone tagged Greg over at SHUSH, who gave some interesting answers. He concluded with...

"I'm supposed to tag four folks.... so that's you, you,... you over there, and hey you! No fair running away! Yeah I'm talking to YOU! You're IT!"

Okay, I'll bite.

4 JOBS I'VE HAD IN MY LIFE

Dock Worker ("My back!!")
Luggage Salesman ("And the carry-on matches your eyes.")
Travel Agent (why are people SO bitchy when they're planning their vacation?)
Rare Book Dealer(a fantastic job. I miss it. But there was no $ in it)

4 MOVIES I COULD WATCH OVER AND OVER

The Big Sleep (Bogart and Bacall)
The Third Man (Orson Welles ad-libbed one of the greatest lines ever)
Casablanca (play it again and again)
The Parent Trap (the remake. I'm sorry, but this film is adorable!)

4 PLACES I'VE LIVED

Ft. Worth, Texas
Detroit, Michigan
Los Angeles, California
Redlands, California

4 TV SHOWS I WATCH

24
The Shield (on FX)
Lost
American Idol (the early shows, where most everyone is a loser)

4 WEBSITES I VISIT DAILY

DRUDGE
Arts & Letters Daily
Cafe Hayek
LIBERTY BELLES

4 PLACES I'VE BEEN ON VACATION

Ireland
London
South of France (including Monacco)
San Bernadino Mountains (I want to live there!)

4 OF MY FAVORITE FOODS (assuming Single-Malt Scotch is NOT a food)

Green olives
Sushi
Center-cut tenderloin with horsehradish sauce
Warm spinach salad

4 PLACES I'D RATHER BE

Hunting for rare books in an antiquarian bookshop
An Irish pub
In my library (at home) reading (I don't get to do this much)
At Disneyland (Yeah, it's cheesy, but the look on my daughter's face...!)

4 ALBUMS I CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT

The Legend of Johnny Cash
The Goldberg Variations (Bach)
Alfred (the "opera") by Arne (Rule, Brittania, Brittania rule the waves...!)
Heavy Horses (Jethro Tull) (one of the few albums from youth I still love)

4 VEHICLES I HAVE OWNED

The Starsky and Hutch car (Ford Torino?)
One of those truck/car things popular in the 1970's
A Honda
Toyota Camry (my current, non-pimped-out ride)

Wow. When you list your life's CV this way, it's kind of depressing.

Am I supposed to tag someone? I tag Clara over at LIBERTY BELLES.

Reforming Mid East Studies

2006-02-15T05:57:00.000-08:00

Since 9-11 there's been a brave attempt to stem Title VI taxpayer money going to radical Mid East programs at various universities. In Title VI: Let the games begin! Martin Kramer gives us a brief history of the struggle and a status report.

"The program, as initially conceived in the 1950s, was supposed to produce grads fluent in foreign languages, who would go on to serve the country's growing need for area expertise. But over the decades, service-averse academics turned it into a slush fund for subsidizing their pet grad students, who were being groomed for academe. Trendy theory replaced language proficiency as selection criteria. And some centers plowed the money into bogus "outreach"--university-based programs that siphoned taxpayer money to off-campus radicals, who used it to propagandize K-12 teachers."

The reformers, led by Kramer, proposed that an advisory board, appointed by congress, be created to oversee the millions of dollars in taxpayer money being thrown at Mid East studies. The radical profs and their supporters, keen to queer the oversight, proposed an alternative:

"Two years ago, a Columbia dean, Lisa Anderson, proposed that the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies assess Title VI, as an alternative to a Congressionally-appointed board. (You remember Dean Anderson, don't you? She was Joseph Massad's thesis advisor and supporter, and she raised the secret money for the Edward Said Chair.) Anderson had a line into the NRC: she had just served on an NRC panel to investigate aspects of terrorism. She floated the NRC idea to journalist Todd Gitlin, and Columbia's in-house lobbyist also amplified it: "We feel that an advisory board with goals set by an independent body such as the National Academy of Sciences would make most sense." This proposal went up to Senate Democrats, who dropped it into the FY 04 appropriation for the Ed Department. Congress ended up earmarking $1.5 million for a contract with the NRC, for a review of Title VI."

What a scam. Too bad we don't have any Republicans in Congress to raise a public stink about this.

Cheney Accidently Shoots Lawyer

2006-02-13T06:26:00.000-08:00

No lawyer jokes, please. Thankfully, the 78 year-old lawyer accidently shot by the Vice President is in stable condition.

I've decided that this blog should focus more on its core subjects: books, libraries, and education. So if you see less Iraq and more bibliomania or librarian insanity, realize I'm taking the road less travelled.

And, of course, guns are a natural corollary to all of this.

So, back to the lawyer with buckshot in his backside...

Bless his heart, the lawyer forgot one of the most important rules of hunting: if you leave the hunting party, then rejoin them later, you must announce that you are back, otherwise you could find yourself in the line of fire.

Here's the weird part. Sarah and James Brady, whose foundation ostensibly wants to ban handguns, has chimed in with what may qualify as the dumbest response to a topical issue in a long time.

To: National Desk

Contact: Peter Hamm of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, 202-289-5792

WASHINGTON, Feb. 12 /U.S. Newswire/ -- James and Sarah Brady made comments today related to Vice President Cheney's reportedly accidental shooting yesterday in Texas.

"Now I understand why Dick Cheney keeps asking me to go hunting with him," said Jim Brady. "I had a friend once who accidentally shot pellets into his dog - and I thought he was an idiot."

"I've thought Cheney was scary for a long time," Sarah Brady said. "Now I know I was right to be nervous."

Good grief! What is this supposed to mean? Does the Brady Campaign want to ban hunting and not just handguns? It's one thing to try and be funny; it's quite another to use a press release for a supposedly serious organization that solicits public support for changes in our laws to practice your standup routine.

Sarah and James Brady sound like they covet the "Weekend Update" position on Saturday Night Live. Or perhaps they're looking for a invite to "The John Stewart Show" on Comedy Central.

Freud said that jokes reveal what we really believe. What do these lame attempts at humor reveal about the true politics of the Brady Campaign?

ONE MORE THING: Over at Of Arms and the Law, there's a story about State troopers charged with illegal possessing fully automatic weapons. The Brady Campaign's response, according to "Of Arms and the Law" was:

"If that's what happened, it's a lapse in judgment."

What, no jokes? No hysteria? Such restraint!

Has anyone ever asked the Brady Campaign to comment on the massacre at Waco, Texas?

SHUSH on Gay Teen collections in libraries

2006-02-12T09:52:00.000-08:00

I assume all non-lefty librarians read SHUSH - for the conservative librarian. If not, check out this must-read post from Greg.

There's a description of a self-described "lesbian librarian" that is jaw-droppingly instructive:

"Arla Jones, Barton's librarian at Lawrence High School and founder of the school's Gay-Straight Alliance, has become the school's de facto counselor for gay teens because of her extensive gay literature collection and the fact she's a lesbian herself."

Greg's commentary on the above cuts through the treacle.

A Literary Contest for the Rest of Us

2006-02-10T10:45:00.000-08:00

theBookseller.com has an interesting literary contest: The Bookseller's Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year. Here are the contestants:

How People Who Don't Know They're Dead Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It

Bullying and Sexual Harassment: A Practical Handbook

Rhino Horn Stockpile Management: Minimum Standards and Best Practices from East and Southern Africa

Ancient Starch Research

Soil Nailing: Best Practice Guidance

Nessus, Snort and Ethereal Powertools

The first title is my favorite. The second is obviously an error in basic literacy. I would hazzard a guess that the book is a handbook on preventing bullying and dealing with sexual harassment, not a guide to nurturing the bully and oaf within us all.

We had a book at our recent Bookfair entitled: CHILD SAFETY TIPS. On the cover was a little girl in a crosswalk-attendant's uniform, holding a STOP sign. The sign preceeded the title so that it seemed to read STOP CHILD SAFETY TIPS. Even the kids got a laugh out of that one.

Libraries as Terrorist Sanctuaries

2006-02-07T09:16:00.000-08:00

There is a provocative article from Professor Richard L. Cravatts Ph.D. over at TCS Daily entitled "Libraries as Terrorist Sanctuaries."

Here's the set up:

After a credible terror threat to Brandeis University (in neighboring Waltham, Mass.) was traced to a public computer at the Newton Free Library on January 18th, the FBI and local police, eager to prevent a deadly criminal act and hoping to apprehend the perpetrator, rushed to the Newton Free Library to secure the computer on which the threats had been sent, with the possibility of identifying the nature of the threat and the person behind it.

The authorities, with good reason, thought they might have a ticking time bomb situation; something like you see on that TV show "24" or other such programs. Evidently the library's director didn't see it that way.

What they had not anticipated, however, was that their search would be abruptly sidetracked when Kathy Glick-Weil, the library's director, informed them that no one was searching anything without a warrant from a judge -- this, despite the obvious urgency to act in an instance when a perpetrator was fleeing, time was passing, and a potentially catastrophic incident became more imminent by the minute.

It seems to me that librarians might be on better ground when protecting the "privacy" rights of their patrons if they allowed for such emergency situations. Most Americans would allow coercion of a prisoner of war if there was credible evidence that the prisoner knew of an impending terrorist attack. But we get squeamish if extreme coercion is used indiscriminately. Should not librarians allow for a situation in which publically disseminated information via a library computer terminal has the potential to save hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent lives?

This seems like a very bad place to draw your line in the sand. If I'm in favor of gun-ownership rights (and I most emphatically am), it doesn't serve my cause to insist that FBI attempts to put traceable elements in large caches of explosives (in case some nutbag steals the explosives) are but one step on the road to government confiscation of all firearms. Granted, we all have to decicde where to draw that line, but the refusal to allow the FBI to get the information off this public computer terminal seems myopic and irresponsible, especially in light of this:

These are not merely philosophical debates because the use of libraries by terror suspects has been well documented. Reports were received from Florida directly after September 11 from the Delray Beach Public Library, where reference librarian Kathleen Hensman claimed that Mohald Alshehri, listed as a hijack suspect, had used the library's computers. Similarly, library patrons in the Hollywood, Florida area, where five of the 9/11 suspects had stayed prior to the attacks, identified Mohammed Atta, another of the hijackers, as having used two of the area's libraries.

The TCS article also makes another important distinction:

This credible bomb threat was very different than a case in which the crime has already occurred: there is a substantial difference between searching for evidence and suspects during the commission of a crime when the intention is to prevent the crime, on the one hand, and the more typical search for evidence after a criminal act has been committed, when law enforcement officials are not driven by the necessity of rapid response.

Since this case represents a fairly extreme situation -- a credible threat of an on-going crime -- it should serve as the catalyst for some fruitful discussion among librarians. On the other hand, if we disagree vehemently on this situation, any future agreement on what is a proper or improper search of library records is unlikely.

Schools of Reeducation?

2006-02-06T11:14:00.000-08:00

From the Washington Post, a chilling reminder of how badly we are losing the culture wars. In Schools of Reeducation? Frederick M. Hess shows how left-wing cadre in the education schools use ideological criterion to judge potential school teachers.

At the University of Alabama, the College of Education explains that it is "committed to preparing individuals to promote social justice, to be change agents, and to recognize individual and institutionalized racism, sexism, homophobia, and classism." To promote its agenda, part of the program's self-proclaimed mission is to train teachers to "develop anti-racist, anti-homophobic, anti-sexist . . . alliances."

Of course, this cacophany of ism's, coupled with fairly transparent admonitions to practice ideological conformity are nothing new within the academy. But these are the people who determine who gets to be a teacher and who does not. They are, in effect, private entities with quasi-state power. They certify. They qualify. Consider one of the Post's examples:

Ed Swan is pursuing a degree in teacher education at Washington State. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that he flunked an evaluation of dispositions last year. The teacher who failed him explained that Swan, a conservative Christian and father of four Mexican American children, had "revealed opinions that have caused me great concern in the areas of race, gender, sexual orientation and privilege." Washington State insisted that Swan agree to attend sensitivity training before being allowed to do his student teaching -- where observers could observe his classroom performance.

What an Orwellian nightmare. But beyond the problems of ideological lunacy and political correctness looms the most pervasive con game of the 20th and 21st Century: that private, ideologically-motivated, groups or organizations can control an entire profession (teaching, medicine, law) by setting the standards (explicite and implicit) by which one may enter the profession. Or as the Post writer put it:

Schools of education are not merely private entities. Rather, in each state, they are deputized by licensure systems to serve as gatekeepers into the teaching profession.

Conservatives (always late to the battle) complain incessantly about liberal bias in various professions. But they almost never mount an attack on the very source of the problem: the ability of private groups to use public funds and exercise public power over persons wishing to enter a particular profession.

Those Education colleges and Teacher Training Programs which receive public funding should be frightened on a regular basis with the real fear of losing funds, should they stray from an ideologically-neutral curriculum. And on no account should any such organization, university, program, or private entity be allowed to determine who enters a particular field. That's something best left to employer and employee.

Christian organization banned

2006-01-29T20:15:00.000-08:00

A seventy-six year old university Christian Student Union has been banned because it would not change its charter's language to include transgendered persons (instead of simply "men" and "women"), nor would it open up its membership to people from other religions.

"The Christian Union was advised that the use of the words “men” and “women” in the constitution were causing concern because they could be seen as excluding transsexual and transgendered people."

I wonder what liberals and leftists think when they hear such tales? Do they honestly think "Good for them; they should ban all groups that do not let everyone in or that refuse to recognize, explicitly in their constitution, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered persons. This is a great day for tolerance and free speech?"

If this is their response, they are pea-brained freaks who should be shunned by thinking people everywhere.

I suspect that the less-totalitarian among the left block out the numerous, increasingly insane examples of political correctness and tolerance fascism, confident that those involved had only the best intentions. Besides, these crazies are the anomalies that occur naturally when the majority of the population is on your side. When most everyone leans your way (they reason), you will attract more than your fair share of crazies.

I know if I were on the left, I'd need some sort of coping mechanism or justification for the utterly ridiculous and authoritarian behavior of so many of my comrades.

'Monologues' banned

2006-01-29T09:30:00.000-08:00

Not all monologues. Just the monologue emmanating from Eve Ensler's vagina.

"The president of Providence College, which is run by the Roman Catholic Dominican religious order has banned a campus performance of The Vagina Monologues -- a play about female sexuality and violence, saying the work contradicts church teaching."

Well, well. This is pleasing on two levels:

1) Schools which call themselves "Catholic" should pay some attention to the actual teachings of the Church.

2) A private entity has the right to set its own rules, subject to its own heirarchy.

Free speech has nothing to do with it. They may stage this play somewhere else. But there is not a 1st Amendment right to stage Vagina Monologues at a Catholic university, any more than there is a 1st Amendment right for me to hold an NRA rally at your church or workplace.

The president of the university drew attention to an oft-ignored part of the Vagina Monologues :

The new school president at Providence, the Rev. Brian Shanley, wrote in a Jan. 18 letter to students that he particularly objected to one tale that uses religious language to describe a sexual encounter between a woman and a teenage girl.

This sounds like statutory rape. I'm told the HBO film of this play does not include the adult-child seduction. In other words, Catholic universities are being asked to air what HBO wouldn't air.

What's next? "Brokeback Mountain" submitted to Catholic film festivals?

Anti-gun nuts get "ever more desperate"

2006-01-25T12:32:00.000-08:00

Over at Of Arms and the Law, David Hardy reports that Wyoming is considering a "no retreat" law similar to Florida. Simply put, under this law citizens are not required to retreat out their back door if someone breaks in their home. They can defend their person, family, and property, with lethal force if necessary.

The Brady Campaign has responded to this by "reminding" Wyoming that this law "made Florida a virtual laughingstock."

That's funny. No one I know was laughing.

Warriors and wusses (and confused columnists)

2006-01-25T07:38:00.000-08:00

I have said a number of times that I take no great offense at those who oppose the Iraq war. I know many people who are intelligent, patriotic and have a working moral compass who did not think the Iraq invasion necessary.

Despite my overwhelming support for our troops and my joy at seeing The Butcher of Bagdad fall, I also have wondered, "Is (was) this trip REALLY necessary?"

So I was not especially nonplussed upon reading Joel Stein's "Warriors and wusses" in the Los Angeles Times. It's pithy and brief, but it tries tries to maintain the following: if Klein does not support the war, Klein is not obligated to support the troops, and Klein should not, as a result, be branded a scum-sucking traitor.

"...I'm not for the war. And being against the war and saying you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken — and they're wussy by definition."

Klein goes on to explain that lending support to the troops can lead to 1) keeping them in Iraq longer, 2) sending them to fight other wars, and 3) giving tacit support to an unjust war.

Two other of Klein's points stand out:

"But when you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you're not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada. So you're willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism, for better or worse. Sometimes you get lucky and get to fight ethnic genocide in Kosovo, but other times it's Vietnam."

And:

"I'm not advocating that we spit on returning veterans like they did after the Vietnam War, but we shouldn't be celebrating people for doing something we don't think was a good idea. All I'm asking is that we give our returning soldiers what they need: hospitals, pensions, mental health and a safe, immediate return. But, please, no parades."

Here's my problem. Klein's first point is valid if your army is the German one cutting a bloody swath across Poland. No reasonable person would say a German is obligated to support such an enterprise out of "patriotic duty." But Saddam really is a bad guy, a butcher, a maniac. It's one thing to say "We could've lived just fine without invading Iraq." It is quite another to suggest that the terrorist armies we encounter there are the moral equivalent of the Polish resistance. And Klein's point really doesn't work any other way.

Klein's second point...

"But when you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you're not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada. So you're willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism, for better or worse. Sometimes you get lucky and get to fight ethnic genocide in Kosovo, but other times it's Vietnam."

...is ridiculous two times. First, after 9-11 it was (and is) perfectly reasonable for a new recruit to believe that fighting in a foreign land is directly connected to stopping terrorist attacks on the U.S. I realize this allows politicians room to promote less-than-absolutely-neccessary wars, and Klein is entitled to assert that Iraq is just such a war. But the phrase "you pretty much know" consists of four weasel words designed to imply that everyone "knows" what comrade Klein knows. Second, the reference to fighting "ethnic genocide in Kosovo" is laughable coming from an opponent of the Iraq war. Where, pray tell, are Milosovich's Weapons of Wass Destruction? How exactly did the conflict in Kosovo threaten American interests or security? And why is stopping the genocide in Kosovo more praise-worthy than the genocide in the Kurdish areas of Iraq, or for that matter, the Sudan? Could it be that the largely white, educated, victims in the former resonate more with white, educated liberals in this country than do the victims of Hussein? Inquiring non-liberal minds want to know.

Klein's third point -- give returning soldiers everything but a parade -- seems to suggest that Americans are incapable of honoring sacrifice if they did not approve of the war. Therefore (and here's the contorted logic) if Americans honor the soldier they will lapse into approving of a war they otherwise would not/should not support. I think this criticism is better aimed at Klein's anti-war friends. It is they who seem incapable of honoring a soldier's sacrifice while expressing reservations about the war. Why? Because they, like Klein, believe that soldiers are "willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism."

Earlier in his piece Klein makes nice with those who support the war (and the troops):

"And I've got no problem with other people — the ones who were for the Iraq war — supporting the troops. If you think invading Iraq was a good idea, then by all means, support away. Load up on those patriotic magnets and bracelets and other trinkets the Chinese are making money off of."

Really? Even though these war-supporting, troop-honoring folks are tools of "American imperialism?" Klein wants to have it both ways. He affects this laid-back "I'm okay, you're okay" stance with regard to the war, in effect saying, "I just want the right to object to the war and not be obligated bow in the presence of those who fought the war," then he throws in his actual view with the most jargon-laden cliche of the anti-war movement ("tools of American imperialism").

Finally, there is something deliberately obtuse in Klein's insistence that no one who objects to the Iraq war be required to honor the young men and women who fought there, due (one supposes) to the moral culpability of soldiers in an "unjust war." But we ask our soldiers to fight anywhere we (or our commander in chief) sends them, without question. Politicians, journalists, citizens, and even celebrities get to debate the war; soldiers are called to pack up and ship out. A modern volunteer army could not function any other way. Given that Klein obviously regards the carpet bombing of the former Yugoslavia as "the good war," how would he fight genocide in Kosovo if each American soldier got to decide individually whether he/she would fight? If the soldiers are personally, morally culpable for being "tools of American imperialism," then they must have the right to say "no thanks" to military engagements they find unjust. How many soldiers would regard Kosovo as a necessary war under those circumstances?

And if soldiers do not have the right to pick and choose their combat, then how, in Klein's moral universe, are they accountable for any war they fight in, just or unjust? We honor our soldiers because they fight on command, not when their favorite blogger or talk show host thinks it is cool.

Klein has failed to address the glaring moral and logical inconsistencies of his position, instead, relying on a breezy style and an absence of Cindy-Sheehan-like name calling to make him sound reasonable. In the end, both the war hawks and the "wussy pacifists" whom Klein dismisses are more consistent.

UPDATE: Klein was interviewed by Hugh Hewitt on his controversial column. Radio Blogger has the transcript.

A heartless corperation

2006-01-24T08:31:00.000-08:00

I'm referring to the New York Times, a souless, miserly corperation (by the myopic standards of the NYT)that pushed aside its cafeteria workers in favor of Restaurant Associates, "a nationally recognized leader in the restaurant and food services industry."Gawker has the full memo, but a big hat tip to Clara at LIBERTY BELLES who alerted me to the story.

Being an advocate for the working masses, however, the NYT is not without regrets in reallocating these human resources:

"Regrettably, this transition necessitates having to bid a very fond farewell to several of our cafeteria and executive dining room staff who have, for many years, done an exemplary job as cooks and servers extraordinaire. We are pleased that a few familiar faces will remain; yet, others will no longer serve in food operations, so please join us in wishing them all the best for a very successful future."

Of course, this is done every day by countless companies. Costs are cut, profits are maximized (or losses staved off), and resources within our robust economy are reallocated. It causes dislocation for some, though rarely permanent loss of employment.

What makes this NYT employee memo so interesting is that the Times and its readers are insufferable when it comes to lambasting businesses in America for their "greed" and "insensitivity" with regards to cutting costs. That a company which doesn't cut costs is threatened with losing its market share, or worse, going out of business altogether, is often lost on tolerant wise men (and women) of The Times.

Why, pray tell, are the jobs of these "exemplary" cooks and servers less important than other (often less exemplary) workers laid off from other industries?

I'm reminded of the incident with WGBH Boston, the PBS flagship station. When the city put a day laborer site near the station, WGBH complained. They wanted the largely Hispanic workers waiting for day labor to congregate somewhere else. Perhaps the Spanish-speaking day laborers interfered with the PBS employees rushing to work to expose corperate greed and stick up for the working class.

Do as I say, not as I do.

"Tolerant Intellectuals" provoke blog shutdown

2006-01-20T08:04:00.000-08:00

Having received my share of hate mail, I can appreciate how the Washington Post must feel.

"The Washington Post shut down one of its blogs Thursday after the newspaper's ombudsman raised the ire of readers by writing that lobbyist Jack Abramoff gave money to the Democrats as well as to Republicans."

Now the Post is a fine paper, albeit a decidedly liberal one. Just as the Washington Times, also a good read, slants to the editorial right. But when WaPo ombudsman Deborah Howell pointed out the well-known, incontrovertable fact that sleaze merchant Abramoff contributed to BOTH parties (as most lobbyist do), the tolerant, intellectual crowd that abhors talk radio, Fox News, and uncivil discourse lost their collective minds.

There were so many personal attacks that the newspaper's staff could not "keep the board clean, there was some pretty filthy stuff," and so the Post shut down comments on the blog, or Web log, said Jim Brady, executive editor of washingtonpost.com.

This is NOT an isolated example or anomaly.

I once sent an email to someone who posted a comment on the Huffington Post. This person scoffed at the idea that Christians in Muslim countries were subjected to violence and intimidation (to put it mildly). I simply pointed out that whatever his views on G.W. Bush, the Iraq war, the war on terror, or Christianity, it did not serve his cause to pretend that anti-Christian bigotry and violence in Muslim countries was a fiction. That very day three Christian girls in Indonesia were set upon by a Muslim mob and beheaded. I also gave examples of government oppression of Christians in Muslim countries. I thought this might start a dialogue. Silly me.

I received a five-page, single spaced, torrent of abuse in which every obscentity known to man was used (including the new obscenity, "Halliburton"). The "long time reader and commentator" on the Huffington Post accused me of 1) not having a college degree (I have two), 2) not living on either coast (guilty!), and of having "some bull***t job like a Walmart greeter and basket pusher."

Ah, there's that innate sympathy for the working class.

People who know me (brownshirts, Wallmart employees, and other fascist scum) will tell you I have a libertarian streak a mile long. This often puts me at odds with other conservatives on certain issues. Depending on what subject is being discussed to death, I have been accused of having "liberal" ideas (only classical liberal, surely).

So why do I identify myself as simply a "conservative?" Why not adopt some phony, third-way position? Because the right side of the aisle, while sometimes (IMHO) mistaken, are sane, decent folk. The other side, currently trolling the WaPo blog, are freakin' nuts.

Besides, why would I want to hang with the crowd that wants to do for Islamic fascism what Alger Hiss did for the Soviet Gulag?

'Munich,' the Travesty

2006-01-19T08:40:00.000-08:00

Between "Munich" and "Syriana" this is banner year in the movies for terrorists. But while the Palestinian murderers in Spielberg's "Munich" aren't depicted with as much honor and sympathy as Syriana's Noam-Chomskyesque fairy tale, they come out better than the Jews in the film, both the living and the dead.Charles Krautthammer deftly dissects the cinematic travesty.

Ironically, Spielberg is reportedly upset that his "Munich" is not being given the Oscar push by his studio that a director of his caliber is accustomed to receiving. Both "Brokeback Mountain" (from the same studio as "Munich") and "Syriana" are getting better buzz. But honestly, doesn't the ranking seem perfectly reasonable by Hollywood standards?

1) Gay Cowboys ("Brokeback Mountain")
2) Evil, oil-stealing Americans ("Syriana")
3) Land-stealing, daddy-murdering "Zionist thugs" ("Munich")

Irony number two: "Syriana" is based on Robert Baer's SEE NO EVIL:THE TRUE STORY OF A GROUND SOLDIER IN THE CIA'S WAR ON TERRORISM. Baer's book, however, is not the Oliver Stone-ish conspiracy theory that the Clooney/Damon gang are peddling. Rather, is a patriotic cry for sanity and professionalism in the Intelligence Community, so that the West might win the war on terrorism. The irony? Baer's memoir is merciless to Arafat and the PLO, tying them to virtually every terrorist act against America in the last forty years. Something you would not know from watching "Munich."

Oh that comrade Spielberg had read Baers' book! We might have been spared the brooding, angst-ridden Jewish assassin that gay-marxist playwright Tony Kushner gave us in "Munich."

Perhaps Spieberg's friends from "Syriana" could have lent him SEE NO EVIL. Then again, it doesn't appear that they ever owned a copy.

Senator Kennedy wants to know what you're reading

2006-01-13T09:39:00.000-08:00

From Division of Labour, it seems that Senator Kennedy is not as juiced about "reading privacy" as he and his colleagues would like you to believe.

"This afternoon Ted Kennedy was interrogating Alito about his reading habits, demanding to know if Alito had read an article expressing some noxious views that appeared in a CAP [Concerned Alumni of Princeton] magazine more than two decades ago."

DoL notes that Kennedy was a suporter of the "Library, Bookseller, and Personal Records Privacy Act as a companion bill to Rep. Bernie Sanders' Freedom to Read Protection Act."

Make that, Freedom for suspected terrorists to Read Act. Alito cannot expect the same treatment that Kennedy would want for Muslim illegal aliens suspected of ties to terrorist organizations.

Many thanks to Division of Labour. Even if he does spell labor the Limey way.

A Million Little Lies, courtesy of Oprah

2006-01-11T07:53:00.000-08:00

I have watched with disgust and dismay the trickle of "serious" non-fiction books exposed as being fraud and fable. From Michael Belliside's ARMING AMERICA to Rigobera Menchu's I, RIGOBERTA MENCHU, the one thing you can count on when a "path-breaking" book exposed as fiction is that the disgraced book will have no trouble making its way into required reading lists at the university.

The latest bestseller to join this ignomious club is James Frey's A MILLION LITTLE PIECES, revealed by Smoking Gun.com to be filled with both gross exagerations and outright falsehoods. Frey's best-seller, which recounts the author's "vomit-caked years as an alcoholic, drug addict, and criminal" bears the Oprah Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.

I have nothing but disdain for Oprah's Koolaid-drinking cult, so this intersection of Frey's books with the rich cow's literary endeavors touches two of my nerves at the same time.

The word I'm looking for is shadenfreude.

Here's what Smoking Gun found out in their investigation of the book:

"...a six-week investigation by The Smoking Gun reveals that there may be a lot less to love about Frey's runaway hit, which has sold more than 3.5 million copies and, thanks to Winfrey, has sat atop The New York Times nonfiction paperback best seller list for the past 15 weeks.
(...)
Police reports, court records, interviews with law enforcement personnel, and other sources have put the lie to many key sections of Frey's book. The 36-year-old author, these documents and interviews show, wholly fabricated or wildly embellished details of his purported criminal career, jail terms, and status as an outlaw "wanted in three states."

It gets better:

"Frey also invented a role for himself in a deadly train accident that cost the lives of two female high school students. In what may be his book's most crass flight from reality, Frey remarkably appropriates and manipulates details of the incident so he can falsely portray himself as the tragedy's third victim."

I cannot help but wonder: why is some loser's "vomit-caked" descent into a hell of his own making worthy such money and accolades? Oprah's response was typically, well, Oprah:

"...Winfrey hailed Frey's graphic and coarse book as "like nothing you've ever read before. Everybody at Harpo is reading it. When we were staying up late at night reading it, we'd come in the next morning saying, 'What page are you on?'" In emotional filmed testimonials, employees of Winfrey's Harpo Productions lauded the book as revelatory, with some choking back tears. When the camera then returned to a damp-eyed Winfrey, she said, 'I'm crying 'cause these are all my Harpo family so, and we all loved the book so much.'"

I'm crying too, sweetheart. Crying for a country that has descended so far into self-loathing that it no longer sees pseudo-intellectual posturing masquerading as intelligent chat.

Frey has now hired a Hollywood attorney-to-the-stars to sue anyone who questions the accuracy of his "memoir."

Here's the clincher, from Smoking Gun:

"Frey's original manuscript was rejected by 17 publishers before being accepted by industry titan Nan Talese, who runs a respected boutique imprint at Doubleday (Talese reportedly paid Frey a $50,000 advance). According to a February 2003 New York Observer story by Joe Hagan, Frey originally tried to sell the book as a fictional work, but the Talese imprint 'declined to publish it as such.'"

Because she's a "black entrepreneur," Oprah avoids criticism, even from conservatives. Her magazine recently published a sympathetic portrayal of a Palestinian suicide bomber. This surprised many, though rich liberals usually make the jump Israel-bashing eventually.

She screamed racism when an upscale, posh, Paris boutique wouldn't stay open late just for her. She did not explain how a country that basks in liberal approval could be so explicitly bigoted. Perhaps she should councel her Hollywood friends not to threaten a move to France everytime an election doesn't go their way.

Although critics now question Frey's account of his jail time, the author doesn't hesitate to discuss the transformational nature of "doin' time." Smokinggun.com noted that

"during that last three-month stretch [Frey] knocked off "Don Quixote," "War and Peace," and "The Brothers Karamazov." He also sampled some Proust, but found it too boring. 'When you have literally hours and hours and hours a day to do nothing because you're locked in a cell, I found that the best way to pass time was to pick up books.'"

Oh, I don't know. Fabricating a memoir might be also an intersting and profitable way to make use of jail time.

Frey should expect an invitation to speak at an ALA convention soon.

U.S. to Cuban Refugees: Go To Hell

2006-01-10T06:04:00.000-08:00

Please remind me again why we elected a Republican President, a Republican-dominated House and Senate, and elected Republicans to a majority of State Governor positions.

Today I wake up to find that 15 Cubans Who made it to a Florida bridge were sent back to Castro's gulag. Nice.

They could have poured across Mexico's border virtually unmolested. Or they could have announced their allegience to Palestinian terrorism, then applied for a Student Visa, whereupon they would have been admitted to the U.S. with very little resistence. Afterwards we would have been scrambling to find out who they were and where they were, but in the short term, with only a few exceptions after 9-11, they would have been okay.

But these refugees did it all wrong. They simply fled a communist regime with the clothes on their back, climbed on a Florida bridge, and mistakenly thought they had found freedom.

You see, we have this rule:

"Under the U.S. government's "wet-foot, dry-foot" policy, Cubans who reach dry land in the United States are usually allowed to remain in this country, while those caught at sea are sent back."

Of course, Elian Gonzales made it to dry land, but that didn't prevent some Clintonista goon from shoving a machine gun in the face of his guardian, then dispatching the (now-brainwashed) child back to the Socialist Fatherland.

But what of the Florida Fifteen? Doesn't a Florida bridge constitute "dry land?"

"The Cubans thought they were safe Wednesday when they reached the Old Seven Mile Bridge. But the historic bridge, which runs side by side with a newer bridge, is missing several chunks, and the Cubans had the misfortune of reaching pilings from a section that no longer touches land."

Immigration attorney Ira Kurzban pointed out that not only is the bridge part of the United States, but that U.S. jurisdiction extends into the ocean as far as 100 miles.

But these are pesky facts that get in the way of government doing what it does best: splitting hairs in a way that deprives people of their liberty (or their property).

Ah, but these are fifteen illegal aliens (including a two year old) who won't make into the U.S.

Which makes room for fifty dangerous aliens from the Middle East, or 1500 illegal aliens from Mexico.

Perhaps the Florida Fifteen should go to Iraq. I hear it's much easier to cross that border.

We want to be as rich as Cubans!

2006-01-09T06:02:00.000-08:00

Bolivia elected a Castro wannabe (or is he a Chavez wannabe?). Not surprisingly, President-elect Evo Morales has denounced free-market economics.

We should mark this day as the day Bolivia decided to be poor, on principle. I'd like to think the Catholic Bishops in Bolivia would take this opportunity to remind their President that only the free market produces the surplus necessary to allow all persons (including the unborn) a seat at the dinner table. Bolivian Catholics might also remind their president, before "despoil!" becomes the national motto, that private property (a pillar of Catholic social justice) is an essential ingredient in the brew of civilization.

None of this will impress Morales, who will grind his country under his boot heel (with the tacit approval of most of the electorate), but it would do South American Bishops good to occasionally say these things outloud.

Protecting my right to shoot Tookie Williams

2005-12-20T10:32:00.000-08:00

Actually, now that he's dead, shooting Tookie would accomplish nothing...except maybe target practice. But since this site has spent some space criticizing President Bush (for whom I twice voted), I thought a little pat on the back was good. So let's revisit Bush's signing of the "Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act" (S. 397), which effectively ends politically-motivated lawsuits against gun manufacturers. Such lawsuits operated on the dubious claim that gun manufacturers, and not just the criminals, were responsible for armed robberies and murders.

I'm a bit conflicted. I support gun rights as a necessary antecendent of liberty, and I am happy to find something I like about Bush and co. in this dismal second term. But is a federal law governing such things necessary? Desirable? Shouldn't the states be left to decide such things?

In fact, according to the NRA piece linked above, "33 states passed similar legislation outlawing frivolous lawsuits intended to bankrupt the gun industry...". So the states were, for the most part, doing their bit for liberty.

But if even one state (say, California) allowed such frivolous and unjust lawsuits (and assuming gun manufacturers were not silly enough to set up shop in that state), what would be the results? Would a Federal judge (9th circuit, perhaps?) then rule on whether other states had to honor that California court verdict, even if the state the gun was manufactured and sold in did not?

I can't answer 'cause I'm no lawyer. I'm just the violent, deranged, hillbilly who teachers your kids about the Dewey Decimal System.

Peace.

Some Bilge From Blige

2005-12-19T06:28:00.000-08:00

Okay, I confess: I am completely ignorant of Mary j Blige and her no-doubt essential contributions to Western culture and civilization. But when I read her quote from a Guardian piece, via Drudge, saying, "The blacker you are, the worse [living in America] is for you," I had to see for myself what crime/CD/movie/reality TV show this person crawled out from under to thrill us with her penetrating analysis. Turns out she makes R&B records.

But why does this woman, who has by all accounts profited from Amercican capitalism, in an industry that has no affirmative action, sneer at the potential for blacks to become successful? Here's some more:

"If you're mixed, you've got a shot. If you cater to what white America wants you to do and how they want you to look, you can survive. But if you want to be yourself, and try to do things that fit you, and your skin, nobody cares about that. At the end of the day, white America dominates and rules. And it's racist."

Case in point, according to Blige? Hurricane Katrina. We now know that white deaths outnumbered that of any other racial group, and that damage cut across class lines. After all, natural disasters are God's great multi-cultural gift; they don't discriminate. Still, we might expect someone who has wallowed in enough cash to spend years in cocaine-fueled limo rides to appreciate the value of transportation. Those in New Orleans who had cars got out; those who waited on (black) mayor and friend-of-the-people Nagin to send a bus did not.

No comment from Blige on the hazards of having a (black) Democratic mayor and a (female) Democratic governer. Could this be detrimental to the health and well-being of black Americans?

Her family, by her account, was a disaster. Blige says, "they were angry, hateful, jealous, ignorant, prideful people." From her ambition-destoying aunts to her narcissistic father, Blige seems to have experienced some of the disfuntionality that characterizes too many black families. Now she seems to have found some peace with her husband, who came from an in-tact and supportive Christian family.

"He had a mom that raised him, he had a father that raised him. He had a family unit. He had sisters and brothers that weren't jealous of him. He didn't have to fight them. He had beautiful things in him, and he was already a Christian when I met him. When I saw his life, that's the life I wanted."

According to the article, this has mellowed Blige a bit, and, indeed, there is some joy amidst the venom:

"I believe what God says about me. He says that I'm beautiful, I'm strong, I'm a good woman, I have love in my heart, I can be fat or skinny ... I can do whatever I want."

This is a much better message, I think, than the usual harping on how the White Man just won't let you succeed.

On the other hand, which point of view is best when trying to make a strong, soulful, R&B album?

Mapplethorpe exhibit opens in Cuba

2005-12-16T04:58:00.000-08:00

Now let us all pray that it stays there.

Unlimited Government: a cautionary tale

2005-12-14T10:33:00.000-08:00

Alas, it is not a "tale," but the reality of our times.

Anyone who follows this website (all six of you) has probably sensed that my conservatism is heavily tinged (enhanced? poisoned?) with a libertarian streak. Not the high-school-kids-have-a-right-to-drugs libertarianism, but rather the belief in small government, property rights, and federalism. How to express my own brand of libertarian conservatism? If I am smart, I will let people like Christopher Demuth of the American Enterprise Institute do the talking for me.

"Justice Louis Brandeis wrote in a famous opinion that federalism fosters “laboratories of democracy,” where policies can be tried in individual states and their good or poor results noted elsewhere. The growth of federal power has shuttered many of those laboratories. A federal government that can ban the personal use of medical marijuana grown right in your own backyard—which is plainly neither “interstate” nor “commerce,” yet was easily upheld by the Supreme Court last term—can do just about anything to blot out local policy choices."

Demuth gives many examples of this constitutional malaise, but notes that most of the egregious examples pass with no public (and often little congressional) scrutiny.

"My examples may seem arcane and tedious compared to abortion, religious displays in public places, detainment of suspected terrorists, and other hot issues now at the center of our Constitutional arguments. And that is exactly my point. The Constitution’s own purposes, provisions, and architecture of government no longer attract our interest or give us much pause when they stand in the way of doing something that sounds good or is backed by an influential constituency. It is now invoked mostly in opportunistic ways to bulk up arguments about policies we support or oppose for other reasons."

But is this really different from the way things have always been? Without mythologizing the past, Demuth demonstrates that we really have turned a corner.

"In the Republic’s early days, Presidents used their veto power almost exclusively to strike down bills they regarded as violating the Constitution, not those they disagreed with on policy grounds."

Contrast that to the pathetic Republican response to the unconstitutional McCain-Feingold bill, in which both speech and participation in politics is now limited.

"But when McCain-Feingold passed in 2002, it contained even greater restrictions on individual speech and group issue-advocacy than earlier versions of the bill, and lacked any provision to invalidate the full law if parts proved un-Constitutional. Whereupon President Bush, under intense political pressure following six years of Congressional deliberation on the bill, signed it into law anyway—while noting his “serious Constitutional concerns” and his expectation that “the courts will resolve these legitimate legal questions.”

Remember when Tom Delay (R) claimed that congress had cut nearly all of the fat out of the budget? Ponder that nugget of wisdom as you read this:

"It has now been 25 years since Ronald Reagan arrived in Washington announcing his intention to “check and reverse the growth of government.” That quarter century has been governed mainly by Republican Presidents, and increasingly by Republican legislatures, and even the one Democratic President declared that “the era of big government is over.” Yet the federal government’s annual domestic spending doubled during the period, from about $900 billion to about $1.8 trillion (in 2000 dollars). Today the federal government’s fiscal imbalance—the excess of projected future expenditures over projected future revenues—is close to $70 trillion."

Of course, this is debt that you and I will pass on to our children...and their children.

Ah, conservative, fiscal responisbility.

I highlight Demuth's comments on spending madness and financial unaccountability, but he uses these facts to underscore the shrinking of liberty, personal and regional, that accompanies such looting.

Read (and print and keep) the whole piece. My quotes don't do it justice. Demuth has nicely diagnosed our national disease. His "upbeat" conclusion, however, left me cold. Not because it isn't desirable, but because the rest of his piece leaves me wondering if it is even plausable.

A REAL case of innocence: Cory Maye

2005-12-13T10:11:00.000-08:00

If Sean Penn and Sister Helen Prejean can drag themselves away from crying over obviously guilty murderers like Tookie Williams, they might want to get agitated about the horrific injustice going on in Mississippi, where Cory Maye, a man who had the misfortune of sleeping next door to a drug raid, now sits on death row for shooting the first cop through his door.

The above link is to the original coverage of this outrage on TheAgitator.com Check Radley Balko's site often for updates.

Here's the gist of what happened, from Balko:

"Sometime in late 2001, Officer Ron Jones collected a tip from an anonymous informant that Jamie Smith, who lived opposite Maye in a duplex, was selling drugs out of his home. Jones passed the tip to the Pearl River Basin Narcotics Task Force, a regional police agency in charge of carrying out drug raids in four surrounding counties. The task force asked Jones if he'd like to come along on the raid they'd be conducting as the result of his tip. He obliged.

On the night of December 26, the task force donned paramilitary gear, and conducted a drug raid on Smith's house. Unfortunately, they hadn't done their homework. The team didn't realize that the house was a duplex, and that Maye -- who had no relationship with Smith,-- rented out the other side with his girlfirend and 1-year-old daughter."

The police kicked the door in.

"Maye, fearing for his life and the safety of his daughter, fired at Jones, hitting him in the abdomen, just below his bulletproof vest. Jones died a short time later."

Officer Jones, who was not part of the task force, led the raid. He is also the police chief's son. Maye was not the subject of the search; was not residing in the same residence as the person named in the warrant; has no criminal record; and no drugs were found in his home.

Now Cory Maye is on death row in Mississippi.

Much of the blogosphere -- left, right, and center -- is outraged and is spreading the word on behalf of this poor guy. Let's join them.

Don't misunderstand: I'm a law and order guy. I support the police. I have no sympathy for criminals. But this is outrageous.

It's bad enough when no-knock raids in the middle of the night against suspected marijuana possession results in the death of a policeman or the death of a suspect. But for a man with no criminal record and no illegal drugs in his home to end up on death row because he feared for his life and the life of his 18 month-old child is beyond a miscarraige of justice; we're in the Twilight Zone of law enforcement here.

As someone who just qualified for my gun carry permit, and who keeps firearms at home for the protection of me and mine, I am more than a little uneasy with the late-night, no-knock, armed entry of a person's home to enforce laws against drug possession. I would hate to be that wrong address.

And why the middle of the night? They couldn't wait to pin him down until the original suspect got the munchies and headed off to the donut shop? This reminds me Janet "the butcher of Waco" Reno's slaughter at the Branch Davidian compound. The Waco police, showing good common sense, told the Feds they could arrest David Koresh (the object of the raid) when he jogged every morning. The Feds declined and chose a full frontal assault. [I can still remember Sen. Charles Schumer's smirk while the horrors of the raid were being recounted in testimony before congress].

A lot of the blogger posts on Cory Maye have mentioned "southern justice" or "Mississippi miscarraige," as if such things only, or more often, happen in the South. Mmm. I'm thinking of the numerous similar cock-ups in California, as well as the most egregious false imprisonment of the last thirty years, the Amiralt child molestation case in Mass. The Amiralts are still in prison, though virtually no one in Mass. doubts their innocence at this point.

Yankees do bad stuff, too.

Children's Book Author Executed

2005-12-13T05:41:00.000-08:00

Children's book author (and convicted multiple murderer) Stanley Tookie Williams was executed this morning, despite overwhelming evidence that the execution would make Sean Penn and Sister Helen Prejean really, really angry.

"I haven't had a lot of joy in my life," said Tookie.

The amount of joy in the lives of Albert Owens, Yen-I Yang, Tsai-Shai Chen Yang, and Yu-Chin Yang Lin could not be determined, as they were all dead, having been murdered by Tookie.

Tookie never expressed any remorse for the killings, but rather, proclaimed his innocence until the bitter end. While his supporters argued for a life-without-parole sentence, Tookie demanded nothing less than his freedom.

Now that's gonna make a great children's book, don't you think? I'll put it next to my O. J. Simpson biography.

Practice tolerance or we will kill you

2005-12-12T12:38:00.000-08:00

Watching European leaders bend over in the wake of Islamic violence is all the more sickening because the justifications for curbing free speech in Eurabia have the faint ring of familiarity, like we've heard them here too many times.

In Reason magazine Bruce Bawer declares that "European culture leaders should smack down fanatical Islamists. Instead, they're bending over for them."

After Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered by an Islamic savage, the response from government and cultural elites was a combination of self-censorship and self-flaggelation. Now, just as sure as night follows day the various governments are getting into the appeasement act, punishing free speech and criticism as hate crimes against Islam. Norway and Britain lead the pack:

In April, after virtually no public discussion, Norway's Parliament passed a law that punishes offensive remarks about any religion with up to three years' imprisonment—and places the burden of proof on the accused. Three months later, Britain's House of Commons approved a bill that would criminalize "words or behavior" that might "stir up racial or religious hatred."

It would be difficult to implement such totalitarian measures here in the US; they would run up against the First Amendment. But the cultural and intellectual corrosiveness of such measures is certain to be felt in the public sector, particularly the institutions of higher learning.

ACLU types are always squealing about the "chilling effects" of any free speech suppression. How's this for "chilling?"

...in January producer Gijs van de Westelaken canceled a screening of Submission at the Rotterdam Film Festival, whose theme was "censored films." (Instead, the audience saw two pictures sympathetic to suicide bombers.)

Who says violence won't achieve political goals?

Where's General Pinochet When You Need Him?

2005-12-08T09:51:00.000-08:00

I'm dubious about the value, pedogogic or intellectual, of staging the constroversial speech (event) at a university. I suppose if universities were a place of free minds, free speech, and a marketplace of ideas, it would be different. But they are not, and countless examples show this to be the case. However, nothing stifles my Libertarian inner-child and brings out my Brownshirt inner-child than reading about (or witnessing) reptilian leftists shut down a speaker because of that speaker's views. It happened again recently, this time to Ann Coulter at the University of Connecticut.

Appearing with bodyguard, the always controversial Coulter only made it through fifteen-minutes of her speech before having to stop because the ignorant children of irresponsible parents could not cease chanting "You suck, you suck, you suck!"

I have witnessed two of these disgusting displays, both while in Graduate School. On one occasion the Black Student Alliance at the university (a bunch of thugs) shut down Ward Connerly, the Black activist who opposes affirmative action. The head of the university's law school, who was vehemently pro-affirmative action and opposed to Connerly's position, called the student disrupters "fascists." Actually, they are much more like Stalinists. Feeling the business end of a steel-toed boot is exactly what they deserve.

The other instance involved a pro-life group who received permission to put up a display and literature table on campus. I thought the display (huge, aborted fetuses) was over-the-top and in bad taste, so I approached the table to say so. I did this as a gang of leftists, led by a journalism professor, rushed the "exhibit" and subjected everone there to threats and intimidation, including those who were arguing with the pro-life group. They then surrounded the table, marching in a circle to prevent anyone from approaching the group, including those who wished to express reasoned disagreement with the organization. All of this was done not more than twenty yards from the administration, who stood by and watched like the spineless weasles they are.

Also spineless were the protesters, who, although armed with two-by-fours disguised as signs (which they swung at the heads of "fascists"), were suddenly lacking in revolutionary bravery when confronted outside of their mob. I speak of one young man who screamed and threatened a seventeen-year-old freshman girl. When I stepped up and asked him if he wanted to go a few rounds with me, he ran away like the bed-wetting radical he is.

Did I mention this was a public university, funded by tax dollars?

At this particular riot I asked represenatives of the administration, including the University President's Assistant, if the circling and threatening were not violations of the pro-life student's free speech. They explained that the circling and threating represented the protester's form of free speech, and they hesitated to interfere when when free speech rights were in conflict. I'm not making this up.

At the University of Connecticut, where Coulter was shut down, the Progressive Student Alliance brought in Cindy Sheehan as an alternative view. Note that the story makes no mention of Sheehan having any trouble speaking. It was the same way at my university; Angela Davis and other militant, anti-American leftists always spoke unmolested.

When Janet Reno, the Butcher of Waco, spoke at the university, ten libertarian students quietly held up signs. One of them told me they were searched and had their pictures taken, even though they were one hundred yards away from the speaking venue. But then again, it's more important to protect Janet Reno from criticism than it is to protect students who actually attend the university from violence.

Also protesting Ann Coulter at UConn were "Students Against Hate." One of it's members, Jerome, had this to say:

"Words are sharp tools and certain people like Ann Coulter use them to hurt people"

Back in the closet, Jerome. You aren't ready to come out.

Where are the Republicans (or even responsible Democrats) when people's basic rights are violated at tax-payer funded universities?

Perhaps a shirt that says "Stop Murdering"

2005-12-05T06:06:00.000-08:00

Boston mayor Thomas Menino wants Antonio Ansaldi Clothing to stop selling their popular "Stop Snitching shirts. The city has an almost-record high murder rate and the feeling is that the shirts are part of the problem.

"Boston has had 66 homicides so far this year, matching a 10-year high, and police haven't identified a suspect in 70 percent of them. Police say many witnesses fear retaliation, and Menino said the "Stop Snitching" shirts are part of the problem."

I'm dubious, but asking a merchent to voluntarilly stop selling provocative shirts is reasonable, and the clothing store seems sympathetic. But even after Antonio Ansaldi Clothing made understanding noises, the mayor still had to assert the iron fist of local government:

"At a meeting Thursday, the mayor said he would send city employees into shops to seize the shirts."

Menino should really consider a job in the Federal Government.

Perhaps if Boston's leaders were this aggressive in pursuing criminals, the shirt ban wouldn't be necessary.

Protect yourself against Thomas Friedman

2005-12-04T11:28:00.000-08:00

In his latest book THE WORLD IS FLAT, Thomas Friedman urges companies and entrepreneurs to guard against copyright violations and theft of intellectual property. Good advice. Now, according to Grumpy Old Bookman, Friedman is being sued for copyright violation. His book's dust jacket shows a painting. Neither he nor his publisher obtained permission from the artist to use the painting. That's illegal.

Don't do as I do; do as I say.

It's about meatspace, meathead

2005-12-02T21:31:00.000-08:00

I just learned a new word. Perhaps you've already heard this one. It wouldn't be the first time I was the last one to learn of something. My new word is "meatspace." It is not in my 20 volume Oxford English Dictionary. What is meatspace, you ask breathlessly? It is simply the real world, the non-cyber world, where "meat" (that's you and me) exist.

Had I not already chosen for my blog the incredibly pretentious title "corrigenda," I would consider calling it "meatspace." Although such a cutting-edge title might lead the false conclusion that I am hip and clued in.

Oh well. Once more unto the meatspace my friend!

Goodnight Ashtray; Goodnight Moon

2005-11-28T04:41:00.000-08:00

If you have children you know the essential and omnipresent role of certain books in their developmental life. GOODNIGHT MOON is one of these books. If you have never read this book to your child, please report yourself to Child Protective Services immediately.

In memorable board books, the illustrator's reputation is often equal to or higher than the "author" of the book. Clement Hurd's colorful, vivid drawings have captivated generations of babies and small tots. The most recent edition of the book is drawing some controversy, however. Not because a female is depicted as knitting (subservient role! sexist!), but rather for an equally ludicrous act of political correctness: the photo of the illustrator, in which he sported a flaming cancer stick, has now been altered so that the hand is shown suspended in air, sans cigarette, as if Hurd had some cruel, disfiguring arthritis that denied his right hand a relaxed pose.

A Kansas City bookstore complained:

"This is one of the best-selling kids’ books of all time," he said. "There are certain responsibilities and obligations on the part of the publisher as a steward - not just a marketer - to what I consider an archival document. To go in and do something like that is the pinnacle of arrogance."

I agree.

Kate Morgan Jackson, editor-in-chief for HarperCollins Children’s Books, responded with the typical nanny-state verbiage so common to those who appoint themselves to protect us all:

"One of our responsibilities is to make sure we are publishing" the book "the right way throughout the ages and making it healthy for every generation," [Jackson] said.

Mmm. Perhaps they should print future copies of this always-best-selling book on totally recycled paper, the kind that produces a virtually unreadable page. This would aid in making it "healthy for every generation." Or perhaps they could replace illustration of the female knitting with an obvious male engaged in knitting, to confound the use of unhealthy gender roles.

The leading critic of the digitally-altered photo, Pete Cowdin, has a website to promote his worthy cause: www.goodnightreality.com

His cause is most likely a lost one, however, as tobacco is ranked well above terrorism in the liberal list of infractions.

US author lauds suicide bombers

2005-11-25T22:01:00.000-08:00

Author Kurt Vonnegut is quoted in The Australian as approving of and praising suicide bombers. This does not surprise me as much as it surprised the reporter, who notes Vonnegut's reputation as a "peace activist." Most of the so-called peace activists and even many of the self-described pacifists often drop their pose and reveal themselves as tacit, or explicit, supporters of violence or terrorism.

They are dying for their own self-respect," he said. "It's a terrible thing to deprive someone of their self-respect. It's like your culture is nothing, your race is nothing, you're nothing."

Asked if he thought of terrorists as soldiers, Vonnegut, a decorated World War II veteran, said: "I regard them as very brave people, yes."

The most ludicrous and offensive part of the article is at the beginning:

ONE of the greatest living US writers has praised terrorists as "very brave people"

One of the greatest living US writers? When you're sixteen years old, perhaps. Good grief.

Is that a shrug or a wince?

2005-11-22T10:11:00.000-08:00

A fascinating article that I somehow missed.
Go figure. I cannot determine the date of publication, as the dateline now says "Posted NaN/NaN/NaN NaN:NaN PM." Why admit your age if you don't have to?

It seems that in the wake of the Enron scandal corperate executives fournd occasion to revisit Ayn Rand's classic novel ATLAS SHRUGGED. In the novel, John Galt vows to "stop the motor of the world" in answer to creeping (and not so creeping) socialism. Government bureaucrats, simpering intellectuals, and cowardly capitalists are given a sound thrashing for almost 1100 pages. I won't give any more of the story away, in kindness to those who have not read the book. Oh, what the heck...

"The premise of the book is that such innovators become so fed up with the "moochers" who regulate, tax and otherwise feed off of those who achieve, that the achievers go on strike. They withdraw their talents from the world, threatening to send it back toward the Dark Ages."

It is as fashionable to hate this book as it is to revere every word. I confess that ATLAS SHRUGGED is one of my favorite novels. I reread it periodically (I'm listening to it on tape) so if I start calling everyone a "looter" or tell you to check your premises, please excuse my exuberance.

However, I wonder why the Enron (and WorldCom, Tyco, etc.) scandal should ignite CEO's to dust off their copies for a return trip to Galt's Gulch? Rand, whatever her quirks (and they were many!), would not have defended the fraud of Enron. I think the answer is that many corporate heads see the real crime of the Enrons to be an excuse for further regulation and expropriation of lawfully acquired wealth.

Can the government distingiush between free enterprise and fraud? We know that university professors cannot. This is true, also, of much of the public. The recent inquisition of oil company executives does not give one hope.

"They're going after all CEOs, capitalism itself," says John Aglialoro, CEO of Cybex International, which makes exercise equipment.

Aglialoro shelled out a million bucks to buy the rights to ATLAS SHRUGGED. His is the latest in the many attempts to bring Rand's novel to the screen. He'll need the tenacity of Dagney Taggart to pull it off.

With the Republicans in full retreat (when they're not embracing liberal solutions to every human problem) and businesses being depicted as only slightly less depraved than Al Quada, are we ripe for Rand-style consciousness-raising among embattled and bewildered capitalists?

Who knows?

Who is John Galt?

Phony Theory, False Conflict

2005-11-21T06:54:00.000-08:00

This is not a debate in which I normally wish to participate. I'm speaking of the Creationist/Intelligent Design vs (Darwinian) Evolution conflict that rages on, often more like a dysfunctional family feud at Thanksgiving than a rational debate over verifiable facts. Charles Krauthammer jumps into the fray with a piece that pretty much sums up my feelings. The attempt by ID supporters to supplant, or suppliment, the study of Evolution does damage both to science and religious faith.

Certainly the idea that there is a creator is one that should be fully explored in religion, philosophy, and perhaps even history classes (as in, the history of this idea). As a Roman Catholic I would welcome such discussion. But to attempt a hostile takeover of science class under the guise of "putting God back in the public schools" is to put the theoretical cart before the scientific horse; no one gets a good ride out of this.

Yes, it is sad that in our institutions of higher learning (and in some public schools) the theory of Evolution is often little more than a stick to beat on religious students on behalf of a secular faculty. I once asked a professor the following: Given that the mechanism of Natural Selection (Darwin's law) was deemed inadequate to properly explain evolution, what did he think of scientific alternative, Punctuated Equilibrium? He looked at me -- remembering, no doubt, that I was one of his "right-wing" students -- and said he was not familiar with that theory, but he didn't try to keep up with the varying shades of Creationist dogma.

Punctuated equilibrium is not creationist dogma. It is the alternative evolutionary science explaination for speciation proposed by Niles Eldrige and Stephen Jay Gould, two of the world's formost proponents of evolution. The professor knew enough "Darwin" to beat his presumed opponents ("religious types" and "right-wingers"), but not enough to hold a reasonable conversation on the subject.

Ironically, a thorough discussion of the limits or shortcomings of Darwinism is made impossible by the very people (ID proponents and creationists) who presumably want to question Darwin's major idea: that Natural Selection is the motor force of speciation. All the intellectual air is sucked out of any discussion by the constant insistence that God must defeat Darwin or be Himself defeated. This assault is followed by the gleeful beating of the ID straw men by many on the left whose own commitment to a rational worldview is questionable. Suddenly those who accept such thoroughly discredited ideas as Marxist economics or Feminist anthropology are taking the stage as defenders of rational thought against the superstitious hordes. Environmental Chicken Little Robert Kennedy recently blamed Hurricane Katrina on our failure to sign the Kyoto treaty. No doubt he shakes his head in disgust when Evolution is denounced in favor of unscientific alternatives.

Want some further irony? The person who has poked the most (and the largest) holes in Darwinian Natural Selection is an athiest who regards religion as the source of good music, but not much more, the Australian Philosopher David Stove.

Stove was something out of an Ayn Rand novel in that he cared not a whit whose toes he stepped on. He delighted in the slaughter of sacred cows and on more than one occasion stepped into the snakepit of political correctness.

His most controversial book was DARWINIAN FAIRYTALES, a work in which Stove praised Darwin, accepted the fact that we are "some kind of land-dwelling mammal," then proceeded to destroy both Darwinian Natural Selection and various and sundry Dawinists. [There is a link to a PDF file of DARWINIAN FAIRYTALES on the above Stove website. The folks at the New Criterion have announced that a new American edition of the work is being published. As of now, however, Amazon still lists the book as out of print].

A hearty selection from DARWINIAN FAIRYTALES can be found in the Stove collection AGAINST THE IDOLS OF THE AGE. A book well-worth reading, if only for the section on Darwinism.

Alas, Stove's biting and illuminating thoughts on Darwin and the "Darwinian Fundamentalists" are nowhere to be found in the current shouting match. Perhaps the re-release of Stove's masterpiece will drown out some of the ridiculous nonsense emmanating from the likes of Pat Robertson.

India joins Israel in fencing out Muslim terror

2005-11-18T08:42:00.000-08:00

Interesting. India is putting up a fence to stave off the future threat of Muslim terror. As I recall, when Israel did the same to stop a suicide bombing campaign that peaked at one suicide bomb per day, the "civilized" world wet their collective pants in public. The infants included the UN, Europe, and my own brothers in the Catholic Church (notably Bishops from North America, Europe, and the Holy Land). All and sundry denounced Israel for causing (gasp!) longer commutes to work and worship for the Palestinians. The International Criminal Court put Israel on trial. Castro and Arafat were, no doubt, amused.

Evidently, the thoroughly partisan statement issued by Catholic Bishops denouncing the checkpoints, among other defenses, happened at the same time a Palestinian female was faking an injury at one of the checkpoints, whereupon helpful Israelis and bystanders were blown to bits. If anyone in the Catholic Church saw irony, or the hand of God, in this serendipity, they did not express it in public, other than the above linked opinion piece from Catholic Friends of Israel.

Even conservative Catholics did their part to undermine Israel's security. I'm not referring to the wailing and knashing of teeth common to Paleo-con Catholics, who see the hand of perfidious Zionists in every foreign-policy decision of the Bush administration. Even the neo-cons over at crisis magazine did duty for the anti-Israeli cause. The former editor Deal Hudson, having just resigned after accusations of date rape in his previous job as college professor, penned a pathetic little piece of agitprop disguised as travelogue in which he praised the left-wing Catholic Patriarch Michel Sabbah -- good friend of terrorist Yassar Arafat -- and weeped copious tears for the those inconvenienced by Israel's attempt to defend her children from nail bombs. Here's Hudson mixing Catholic piety with a complete disregard for the lives of Jews:

"Before praying the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday in Old Jerusalem, I took one more look at the wall and the damage being done to Catholic property."

You could imagine several variations on this theme. "Before visiting the birthplace of Christ I watched Jewish soldiers detaining and questioning Palestinians." Or, "After attending Mass in the Church of the Nativity I took another look at the building demolished by Israeli tanks."

Although I voted for George W. Bush twice and support our men and women in Iraq, it seems a bit cowardly for Deal Hudson (and crisis magazine) to have told us that we must sacrifice our young men and women in Iraq, but Israel must not put up a fence between Palestinian nail bombers and Sbarro's Pizza. As far as I know, none of the Catholic conservatives who haunt the airwaves and conservative journals has ever taken crisis magazine to task for their obscene position on the security of the Jewish state.

So what can we expect now? Will the United Nations and the European Union denounce India's "wall?" Will Catholic Bishops moan and wail over this barrier the way they cried and spit over Israel's anti-terrorism barrier? Will the US State Dept. describe India's fence as "problematic?" Will India sit in the dock at the ICC?

And will Deal Hudson, or crisis magazine, run a piece on those in India or Bangladesh who are inconvenienced by India's "wall?"

No doubt they would all say: "Mr. Pennyfeather, the two situations are not the same."

Damn right they're not the same. Only when suicide bombers from Bangladesh start blowing up Indian school children will it be the same.

Join the Condom Club

2005-11-17T08:16:00.000-08:00

From one of my favorite blogs (I really should link to it), joannejacobs.com, comes a tale from Berkeley High School: Join the Condom Club.

Here's the email received by a ninth grader from the school:

"Having sex? Thinking about having sex? Sign up for Condom Club now! Bring your lunch and come to classroom G103 on Wednesday, October 12th to join. Come once and get a sticker for the back of your student ID. Show your ID at the Health Center and receive 12 free condoms a week. Free food."

What? No free beer or cigarrettes? This is outrageous!

If a talk radio host predicted something like "the Condom Club" was in our liberal future, he'd be denounced as a crazy, right-wing, alarmist bent on spreading outlandish rumors to advance his conservative agenda.

I would be happy to find out that Berkeley High's "Condom Club" was just an ugly rumor.

Judging a book by its cover

2005-11-15T10:31:00.000-08:00

A Bloomsbury-published book entitled Hokum: An Anthology of African-American Humor is causing a stir. The cover shows a slice of watermellon, devoured almost to the rind, turned up to reveal (some have said) the image of silly grin. The pic is set against a black background. Charges that the cover is racially insensitive were followed by the author (editor), Paul Beatty, having his appearance on "a prominent national radio show" [PBS?] cancelled.

But here's the interesting part:

"A library in the state of New York also disinvited Beatty to a panel appearance after seeing the cover."

Say it ain't so. Doesn't this violate that ever-cloudy and ambiguous code of no-censorship espoused by all information proletarians slaving away in the paper mines?

No, you say? Disinviting an author based on part of the content of his book is not censorship? Okay. But what if the library not only rescinded the invite, but then declined to catalog the book, reasoning that if they rejected an author's appearance based on the content of his book (and the cover is content), then to carry the book would be the height of hypocrisy.

Remember those hypothetical situations in the library magazines? Your boss constantly insists that you clear decisions with him that are cleary your purview. What do you do? Another one: An angry group of patrons is insisting that dismantle the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender section of the library. Your boss agrees with you but doesn't want to rock the boat. What do you do?

In Grad School we had to work these out in groups. We were also allowed to create our own. A particularly obnoxious young woman in my group was always insisting on two things: 1) libraries should represent the needs and desires of the community. By this she meant that libraries in minority neighborhoods should be staffed exclusively by minorities; and 2) the rejection of any book amounts to censorship.

I came up with one just for her.

You are a librarian in a black neighborhood. A patron walks in and donates a pristine copy of The Bell Curve. You check and discover that your branch does not have copy of the book. You accept the donation.

Distracted by other work, you leave the copy of The Bell Curve on the counter. A patron, who is a pillar of the local civil rights/black activist community, walks in, notices the book and says, "I hope you're not going to put that racist piece of #$%!! in our library!" You mumble something about being against censorship and quitely slip the book under the counter, but Civil Rights Activist will have none of it. He wants your assurance that a book which "is egregiously racist and offensive to this community" will NOT take valuable space in this neighborhood library.

What do you do?

My group buddy declined to say what she would do in such a situation.

I wonder if the unnamed New York Library will face soon face the same question.

Overheard at the Inquisition on "Price Gouging"

2005-11-14T08:14:00.000-08:00

This is what many of us wish one of the oil company execs who showed up for his congressional spanking could have said. The fact that it needs to be said not only to liberal Democrats, but also to "conservative" Republicans, says volumes about the state of the conservative movement today.

From Reason magazine, Inherit the Windfall by Shikha Dalmia.

A sample:

"Yes, we all made record profits this past quarter. We are proud of this achievement and, indeed, in the future hope to surpass it. Our survival and success depends on producing value for our investors, most of whom are ordinary, middle-class Americans—your constituents, as a matter of fact—who invest in our stocks through their pension funds or 401K accounts. "

Very nice. Want another taste? Sample this:

"In fact, the oil industry's margins are well below those of Gannett, the largest newspaper corporation—and no doubt far, far below those of Fox News...". (...) "Besides, we already tried windfall profit taxes—along with leisure suits and polyester ties—with disastrous results. "

Alas, I believe humorous asides are lost on the parasitic free-spenders who currently infest that august body.

"In a market economy, price is set by supply and demand, not wishful thinking. The price of oil has gone up because of growing demand from emerging economies like India and China and disruptions in supply due to natural disasters in North America and political instability in Latin America and Iraq."

Please, please, don't confuse them! Reasons and evidence only cloud their judgement.

"If we could collude to raise oil prices whenever we pleased, why didn't we do so last year when prices at the pump dropped to nearly a dollar a gallon?"

Uh, Mr. Business Man, this is our inquisition. So we'll ask the pointed questions, if you don't mind.

Recently the liberal TV drama West Wing held a mock "live debate" between conservative and liberal candidates. I didn't watch it, having viewed a few episodes of West Wing and found them lacking in the realism that the show's producers obviously see as its strong point. The conservative candidate was played by the wonderful actor and uber-liberal Allan Alda. From the many reports around the blogosphere it appears that Alda's charactor did a very respectable job representing what a conservative candidate would believe, though no one seemed to think that a conservative candidate would actually utter, in public, the lines written for Alda's make-believe Republican.

Sadly, the same could be said for the above lines and our make-believe oil company executive.

Where's Howard Roark when you need him?

Great news, but long overdue

2005-11-11T08:35:00.000-08:00

The marines are cleaning up Husaybah, a stronghold for terrorists in Iraq. This is good news. All praise and glory to our troops.

But why did it take so long? I'm not talking about our men and women in uniform. I have no doubt they've done an awe-inspiring job and deserve endless praise on this Veteran's Day. Why did it take the Bush administration so long to close this gaping wound that borders Syria? We cannot say what went on behind closed doors. Administration supporters would no doubt have us believe that Syria was never off their radar; that this clean-sweep of the border town Husaybah was months, if not years, in the making; and that circumstances prevented taking a hard-line against Syria in the early months of the war.

Not to be an arm-chair defense analyst, but I think that's hogwash. The failure to close the Syrian border in the beginning, and the barely-noticable (until recently) public condemnation of the Syrian regime's machinations in both Iraq and Lebanon tell a different story.

I expect to hear the following justifications for this military strategy:

1) We didn't have enough troops to close the Syrian border.

Well, then we didn't have enough troops to do the job properly. Besides, given that so many of our young men and women died at the hands of insurgents whose last known address was in Syria, it makes no sense to say troop levels were inadequate because the insurgency was so robust. Limited troops makes the case for closing the Syrian border.

2) We needed Syria in the war on terror.

I've actually heard this one. It is so ridiculous, one knows not where to begin in refuting this drivel. Needless to say, regarding the Syrian regime as even a possible, inadequate, fair-weather friend of the war on terror is to forget who allows and supports such terror.

3) Having committed the overwhelming majority of our forces to securing and maintaining the vital centers of the country, we could not abandon this essential mission in favor of securing the border with Syria.

See my response to #1.

4) The increasing unpopularity of the war makes it untennable to do anything that might bring Syria into the conflict.

I've heard this one as well. First, the Syrian border needed to be closed long before Americans entered "intervention fatigue." Second, there is more to neutralizing Syria than simply taking the border towns with military force. Syria was calling our bluff. Our bluff was that no one would cross us now that we made good on our threat of invasion. Syria doubted that we would invade her, now that we were fighting in two countries. This was a safe bet. But we failed to promise, both in public and in private, that failure by Syria to stem the tide of terrorist infiltration of Iraq would result in the regime being put in the preverbial cross-hairs (as in: when we can, we'll take you out). We don't just bomb Sudanese aspirin factories, you know.

5) You're just a stupid librarian blogger. You don't know anything about the complexities of war.

Could be. On the other hand, I cannot be expected to have the same level of foresight and intelligence as those who a) nominated Harriet Miers to the SCOTUS, b) signed McCain-Feingold, c) left our borders bleeding after 9-11, d) folded on drilling in ANWAR during an energy crisis, and e) completely overlooked the possibility of a prolonged surgency in Iraq after initial combat operations were over.

So cut me some slack.

John Fowles, British Novelist Dies at Age 79

2005-11-10T10:58:00.000-08:00

Fowles is often designated the "first post-modern novelist," which would make me tend to avoid his works. That aside, I've always had a soft spot for the book THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN, as well as the movie, starring Jeromy Irons.

Here's the obit for John Fowles in New York Times.

The Harsh Light of (French) Reality

2005-11-10T08:41:00.000-08:00

At the New York Post, Ralph Peters says what must be said:

Paralyzed French officials complain of "unfair" media attention (welcome to the reality club, Pierre). Yet, hardly two months ago the French media celebrated the suffering in New Orleans — ignoring the brave response of millions of Americans to Hurricane Katrina to concentrate exclusively on the Crescent City's lower 9th ward and one nutty, incompetent mayor.

Utterly devoid of self-awareness, the French cherish their image of America as racist. But minorities in the United States have opportunities for which their French counterparts would risk their lives. Our problem is that demagogues convince the poorest of our poor to give up on getting ahead. In France, the non-white poor never have a chance of any kind.

France has no Colin Powell or Condi Rice, no minority heading the equivalent of a Fortune 500 company, no vibrant minority political culture. When Americans who adore la vie en France go to Paris (the intelligentsia's Orlando), they don't visit the drug-and-crime-plagued slums. If tourists encounter a Moroccan or a Senegalese "Frenchman," he's cleaning up the sidewalks after the dogs of the bourgeoisie.

Willfully blind to reality, liberals continue to praise the racist culture of France by citing the Parisian welcome for Josephine Baker or the Harlem jazz musicians in the 1920s. But the French regarded those few as exotic pets. The test is how they treat the millions of immigrant families whose members don't play trumpets in bars or sell their flesh in strip clubs.

There is no Western country more profoundly racist than France. …Does anyone really believe that the country that enthusiastically handed over more of its Jewish citizens to the Nazis than the Nazis asked for is going to treat brown or black Muslims as equals?

Meanwhile, the Chirac government is stunned. Its members truly believed that supporting Arab and African dictators and defying America's efforts to liberate tens of millions of Muslims would buy safety from the 5 million immigrants and their children who have not the slightest hope of a decent future. …

Desperate apologists for France's apartheid system claim that the present uproar is merely about youthful anger, that Muslim fundamentalism isn't in play. Just wait. Islamist extremists aren't stupid. Thrilled by this spontaneous uprising, they'll move to exploit the fervor of the young to serve their own ends.

Expect terror. Whether the current violence ebbs tonight or lasts for weeks to come, the uprising of the excluded and oppressed in the streets of France has only begun.

Thanks to Cliff May over at National Review Online for alerting everyone to this op ed.

First, Kill All the Lawyers...

2005-11-09T10:17:00.000-08:00

Over at LIBERTY BELLES, Clara has discovered that lefty law students aren't the grand intellectuals they believe themselves to be. An organization called "Law Students Against Alito" is trying to stem the fascist tide by rallying future ACLU hacks and money-grubbing, law-suit-spewing legal parasites to the cause of judicial liberalism. But as Clara points out, the group is short on details:

"So tell us, law students, what is wrong with Alito? This group doesn’t seem to have any answers."

Indeed, after insisting that "Samual Alito is wrong for America," they provide no details as to why that might be the case. Instead, they are hosting a contest to get readers of the blog to submit reasons why Alito is totally wrong for America, dude.

I'm not making this up.

A few questions:

Is being "wrong for America" the same as being unqualified for the highest court? Should law students use vague terms of judgement like "moderate" or "mainstream" to indicate whether a prospective justice deserves to be on the court? If LSAA objects to Alito on purely political grounds (he's a conservative and would support conservative views on the bench), would it not be equally justified for Republicans to vote down any more Ruth Bader Ginsbergs based on the same criterion?

Here's the funniest part. In responding in advance to any questions as to why we should trust "America's law students" (all of whom LSAA seems to think it represents) in judging Alito, the LSAA blog assures us:

"America’s law students have read the case law and understand legal doctrine."

Oh. Well that's a relief! Now us NASCAR-watchin' hillbillies can sleep safe in our beds.

Greenpeace fined for coral reef destruction

2005-11-09T05:43:00.000-08:00

When some PETA workers got caught killing and dumping animals I wrote about it and promptly received hate mail, including someone who threw a temper tantrum in the comments section.

When a union hired temp workers to walk their picket line against Walmart, paying them low wages and no benefits (in order to protest Walmart's wages and benefits) I cast a jaundiced eye toward their "strategy." I got about a half-dozen "you-hate-workers" emails.

This, I think, is less egregious than the two aforementioned examples, but cause for pause nonetheless. It seems that Greenpeace's ship, the Rainbow Warrior, "ran aground at Tubbataha Reef Marine Park, in the Sulu Sea," in the process damaging "almost 100 sq m (1,076 sq ft) of coral reef."

Greenpeace was fined $7000.00 for the environmental destruction.

Of course, Greenpeace can always say: "Hey, at least we didn't do it on purpose like those PETA guys or those Walmart protesters."

Jew-hating composer gets award from United Nations

2005-11-04T13:30:00.000-08:00

Tolerant people never cease to be amazed at the compassion and intelligence of the United Nations. Surely only the most reactionary pigs could object to a constant stream of effusive praise for that institution, a pillar of honesty and integrity.

As one of those reactionary pigs, I was not startled to learn that the Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis was given a humanitarian award by UNESCO. Theodorakis (whose name in Greek means "flaming ovens of retribution" -- or something like that) is best known for his sound tracks (Zorba the Greek), but also well known for his engrossing analysis of what ails the world we live in.

From Theodorakis' Greatest Hits:

"Today, we can say that these little people [the Jews] are the root of evil."

Where was Theodorakis when LENI RIEFENSTAHL needed a good film score!

Of course, this is all a misunderstanding. Theodorakis is not an anti-Semite, just a "critic of Israeli policies." For example:

"I am totally opposed to (Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon's policy and I have stressed this repeatedly, just as I have repeatedly condemned the role of prominent American Jewish politicians, intellectuals and theorists in the shaping of today's aggressive Bush policy."

Now what could be anti-Semitic about that? Mikis (as he's known to his friends) is simply pointing out that the Jew inserts himself into positions of power and by use of his wiles persuades the world to go to war.

Mikis was "persecuted and jailed by a series of conservative governments, and later fell afoul of Greece's military rulers in the 1960s and 1970s."

That's a shame.

Paris Intifada Spreading

2005-11-04T07:40:00.000-08:00

The BBC NEWS has some good coverage of Muslim riots and violence, except that they have a hard time determining who is doing the rioting. Are they Catholics? Are Vegetarians burning cars and shooting at policemen?

I think we are in day nine or ten now.

Yahoo News provides a good slideshow of the destruction.

Ain't multiculturalism grand?

I Can't Let This Go...

2005-11-03T12:22:00.000-08:00

I'm sorry. I cannot let this go. The racist treatment of black conservatives, especially Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, by the savages that make up the far left wing of the Democratic Party, is both bile-inducing and unforgivable.

One of my favorite blogs, Cella's Review offers more restrained (and always intelligent) commentary.

At Redstate.org one of the moonbats who grace us all with their comments sent that fine blog the following analysis:

"From: StricklerSports@aol.com
To: info@redstate.org
Date: Nov 3, 2005 11:15 AM
Subject: [Info] Michael Steele

As far as I'm concerned, "Goldie" Steele is an Oreo cookie. I call him "Goldie" for 2 reasons. Goldie was Hitler's dog's name (and Steele is certainly Heir Ehrlich's lap dog) and also the name of the incompetent black mayor in "Back to the Future". The fact that the GOP and it's comrades get huffy about the comments is laughable. Vinny"

Hitler's dog. Wow. I hope that I'm reincarnated as a liberal. I want to know what it's like to be a true intellectual.

Stinkin' savages. May they rot in hell.

The Gift of Malaria

2005-11-03T08:37:00.000-08:00

Over at Collecting my Thoughts, Norma reminds us of the horrific costs of banning DDT spraying in the third world.

While the work of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a vaccine is admirable and praiseworthy, very little attention is focused on just how unnecessary these deaths were.

Humility might be defined as taking account of the hidden (and not-so-hidden) costs of our charitable schemes. Those like the secular saint Rachel Carson, whose psuedo-science so enraptured the intellectuals, have left a trail of barely-hidden bodies.

May tomorrow's "fighters for justice" exercise more prudence and intelligence.

The Racist, Race-baiting Left

2005-11-03T06:59:00.000-08:00

Although I am not a Republican, I never vote Democrat. A free-market, pro-life Catholic finds those liberal fields parched and dry. But I'm open to the possibility. Why will it most likely never happen? This is one of the reasons.

Maryland's Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele is running for the Senate. He is black. He is a Republican. So what is the response of the tolerant, intellectual crowd? Refutation of his positions? Engaging him on the issues? No. Racist insults and petty, childish tantrums which include throwing Oreo cookies at him when he tries to speak.

In addition to taunts of "Uncle Tom" and "Oreo," there's some Nixonian dirty tricks:

"Operatives for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) also obtained a copy of his credit report -- the only Republican candidate so targeted."

Mmm. How did the Party of Honesty obtain his credit report without his social security number? Answer: they didn't. You must have someone's SS# to get their credit report.

Can we now hear from Barby Boxer and Chucky Schumer about their concern for the privacy rights of Americans? How about a lecture on the pestiferous influence of illegality in the campaign process from those who still invoke Nixon's name as the anti-Christ?

No one from the "moderate" wing of the Democratic Party seems to have any views on this.

I'm often angry at Republicans. I dislike their willingness to betray their core principles, ignore those who put them in office, and their tendency to ape their liberal brothers on issues (like spending and border protection) where the differences should be obvious.

But the Democrats make me ill. Hateful, spiteful, lying, race-baiting, arrogant, anti-American, kleptomaniacs who truly view the Euro-socialist elites as superior in every way to their American counterparts.

How do they justify this campaign of vilefication against an African-American who chooses his own path?

"There is a difference between pointing out the obvious and calling someone names," said a campaign spokesman for Kweisi Mfume, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate and former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People."

Yes, there is a difference, but comrade Mfume is either too stupid or too dishonest to see it.

Like the Gay lobby, there is no compromise with these people. You defeat them or they will destroy you.

The Main Event

2005-10-31T06:16:00.000-08:00

President Bush has nominated conservative judge Samuel Alito to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court. By all accounts Alito is sharp and distinguished judge who has admirers in both the conservative and liberal camps (though the latter admire the man more than his judicial decisions).

This is the huge fight for which both sides have been waiting. Some have waited with keen anticipation; they live for the battle. Others have resigned themselves to a very unpleasant political season. And the Miers nomination is now relegated to a vaguely-remembered distraction.

Democratic Senator Harry Reid evidently told Bush in advance that he best not stir the pot with an Alito nomination. I'm sure that went over well.

Over at the The Huffington Post blog and Daily Kos the foot soldiers are ready for battle. Is the Bush administration ready? The Republicans? Conservatives? I don't usually agree with the manic liberal tendency to view all political conflicts as the mother of all fights, but I think they are right on this one. This battle will have to be fought on every level: in congress, in the press, on TV ads, through grass-roots activism, and in the back rooms where arms are twisted and ultimatums are issued through gritted teeth. The loser may be the party who cannot get their "independents" in line.

Jonah Goldberg, over at National Review Online, had this memorable call to arms:

"The seventh seal has been broken, the goat entrails point toward gotterdamerung, it's on."

Let's hope the goat entrails speak the truth this time.

Campaign money comes out of my mouth

2005-10-28T08:24:00.000-07:00

How bad a blunder/betrayal was President Bush's signing of the unconstitutional McCain-Feingold campaign spending bill? Ask talk show hosts in Seattle, Washington.

According to the Seattle Times:

"Comments made by radio talk-show hosts this past summer supporting anti-gas-tax Initiative 912 should be considered in-kind political contributions, a Thurston County Superior Court judge reaffirmed Wednesday."

So now speech, when directed toward one side of a political fight in a looming election, can be treated like an envelope full of money.

I'm just curious, does anyone who watched billionare George Soros, Moveon.org, and a virtual infestation of 527 groups (exempt from McCain-Feingold) spend money in the last election really thing that we've removed filthy lucre from the political process?

Why couldn't we have had a Miers-like rebellion on that issue?

Hat tip to Michelle Malkin.

What Congress Did Is Disgusting

2005-10-27T08:28:00.000-07:00

I was tempted to do the blogosphere version of dancing a jig, in celebration for Harriet Miers withdrawing her nomination to the Supreme Court. But I'm all about substance, as you faithful readers (all six of you) know, so I'll submerge my glee and instead focus on the negative; always an easy task when dealing with Washington.

One of the reasons the Miers controversy became so toxic is that it opened the Pandora's Box on the many other disapointments of the Bush administration. I say this as someone who voted (proudly) for W twice.

Among those disapointments, which include signing McCain-Feingold and ignoring our perforated borders, is this administration's tendency to spend like a sixteen-year-old with daddy's credit card. Writing in RealClearPolitics, John Stossel notes the response to a Senator's attempt to rein in this feasting at the public trough.

"How do [Senators] live with themselves?" Stossel asks.

They live quite confortably with our money is the real answer.

In his book After Liberalism: Mass Democracy and the Managerial State, Paul Edward Gottfried argues that we now live in a society organized around the handing out of spoils. Forget the supposed differences between Republican and Democratic governments; the reality, according to Gottfried, is that all politicians obtain and retain power by handing out the booty collected from you and I (and sometimes handed to you and I). While on the surface this may not be an original thesis, the mechanics of this process, as well as cultural change that influences the political process, are nicely ellucidated in this book.

Is Gottfried correct? One thing is certain: the second Bush term is not a convincing argument against Gottfried's thesis.

...but Miss Moneypenny Carries a Glock

2005-10-26T05:59:00.000-07:00

It seems the new James Bond, Daniel Craig, doesn't like guns. He doesn't discriminate; he hates them all. He evidently makes no distinction between a gun in the hand of a robber, rapist, or terrorist, and a gun used by a law-abiding citizen to fend off or kill said robber, rapist, or terrorist. Sample the wisdom:

"I hate handguns. Handguns are used to shoot people and as long as they are around, people will shoot each other."

We are generally accustomed such sterling sociological analysis from the likes of Rosie "My Body Guards are Armed" O'Donnel or Michael More-on, whose body guard was recently detained for having a handgun in an airport. Yes, Daniel, handguns are used to shoot people. Many of those people are among the thousands of armed intruders who each year are shot or simply detered because a homeowner chose to not subject his family to the predations of the criminal class. In Britain, however, you can be arrested for using deadly force against an intruder on your own property.

"Bond" continues:

"Bullets have a nasty habit of finding their target and that's what's scary about them."

I think another movie icon said it better. From Dirty Harry:

"I don't mind shooting. As long as the right people get shot."

Amen, brother.

But Craig is rich and British. It is doubtful he goes home each night to anything other than top-notch security. Moreover, people like Craig can usually count on extensive police coverage in the areas in which they live. I wonder if the new 007 realizes that his precious London is now known for two things: draconian laws against self-defense (including pepper spray and knives) coupled with one of the highest crime rates in the civilized world? Curiously, reports from London would have us believe that the criminal class IS NOT following the laws against possession of knives and guns. Imagine that.

But then again, Daniel Craig probably doesn't spend a lot of time riding the tube.

UPDATE: (well, not really an update; more of an aside). Over at the No Treason blog, there is a related story on Brazil's attempt to ban handguns. The proposed measure was rejected firmly by 64% of Brazilian voters. It must be tough to be a socialist man of the people, only to have the people throw your authoritarian, statist nonsense back in your face.

I suppose this means that Daniel Craig will have to forgo using his Bond money to buy that Summer home in Brazil.

TIME Magazine: Best 100 Novels in English

2005-10-24T11:49:00.000-07:00

I normally hate these lists. They either pander to modern political correctness or pander to the masses. This one is a bit different. There is no ranking, so there's no controversy over what criterion determined that Finnegans' Wake should out-rank Lolita, or similar such mysteries.

Arranged alphabetically, the list is a paragon of egalitarianism. All stand equal before the list. Unless, of course, your favorite work of literature did not make the list.

Most of my candidates are here: Lolita, Brideshead Revisited, Lucky Jim, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Deliverance, and even The Big Sleep. All good choices, in my humble opinion.

Interestingly, C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe made the list while Harry Potter did not. This is interesting only because the inclusion of Harry Potter on any list that doesn't avoid all children's literature has become obligatory.

Any outrages? Yes, of a sort. "Modern lit" is represented by the usual suspects, including Toni Morrison, Magaret Atwood, and Jonathan Franzen. I cannot comment on Franzen, whose The Corrections is weighty tome I have not even tried to read. But Morrison and Atwood are over-rated hacks who wear their weltanshaung on their sleeve (and in their text). Their inclusion is unsurprising, but particularly annoying given the outrageous exclusion of Mark Helprin, whose work -- both fiction and non-fiction --I have praised on this blog.

And finally, there is included in this list of the best novels, a work by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons called Watchmen.

Isn't this a comic book?

The Pitfalls of Celebrity

2005-10-21T04:49:00.000-07:00

Reality shows have given the common man (or woman) an opportunity to behave like Cameron Diaz or George Galloway. In other words, the opportunity to make an ass out of yourself in public. One of the exceptions to this egalitarian trend is "Extreme Makeover," the show that takes the truly needy and gives them a new house and a new lease on life. If you've seen the show you know it is one of the few reality shows that doesn't make you feel like you need a shower after viewing it.

There's a certain celebrity that comes from being rescued, but unlike some other reality show contestants, the "contestants" on Extreme Makeover seem to handle their new fame and fortune well.

However, Doug Goodale of Portland, Maine may be the exception. The recipient of a half-million dollar log house on an upcoming episode, Doug had a secret and now it's out: he's a felon. Which wouldn't be so bad if Doug had been convicted of passing bad checks or braiding hair without a license, but Doug's felony was of the armed and dangerous kind.

It seems that in 1982 (well before Doug lost his arm in a boating accident) Doug robbed a fast food restaraunt and forced the employees back into the cooler. Did I mention he was armed?

The interesting thing about this is not that a future 15-minute celebrity has a conviction from twenty-three years ago. Can you guess the punchline? Here it is: for the heinous act of armed robbery, Doug received from the state of Maine a 60-day sentence.

People forget how soft on crime this country was in the 1960's and 1970's; how long it took to even begin to turn the criminal justice system toward sanity; and how these liberal attitudes on crime hung on like grim death in the North East until the last decade or so.

No doubt Doug will now be raked over the coals. I mean, does a felon really deserve a $500,000 log cabin?

A more interesting exercise might be to seek out those who bestowed upon Doug 60-day sentence, which is roughly what you'd get if you refused to move your Nativity Scene off of public property, and subject their lives to a little scrutiny.

Now THAT would be a good reality show.

Mandela For Pres! Chomsky for VP!

2005-10-19T10:15:00.000-07:00

File under "Proof Democracy Doesn't Work." From the BBC NEWS: Mandela wins BBC's 'global election'. Scroll down and read the other "winners," including Noam Chomsky, George Soros, and Kofi Annan.

Monarchy, anyone?

Spanish Judge Issues Warrants for Three U.S. Soldiers

2005-10-19T10:02:00.000-07:00

Why am I surprised? A Spanish Judge Issued Warrants for Three U.S. Soldiers in connection with the accidental death of a Spanish journalist in Iraq. American soldiers, who claim to have been fired upon from the "Hotel Palestine," returned fire, "killing a Spanish reporter and Ukranian cameraman" according to Fox News (Now how could anything named after "Palestine" be a source of hostility?).

Of course, the deaths of these two men are tragic. As are the other deaths of non-combatants in a war. But journalists know there is an assumption of risk when you enter a war zone. No one seriously claims that the US soldiers were targeting journalists...

Oop! I forgot. The former head of news for CNN and all around piece of garbage, Eason Jordon, did just that at a forum of Euro-socialists and Scandinavian nut-jobs. This is after Easy Eason confessed that CNN had given Saddam Hussein, the Butcher of Bagdad, favorable coverage in exchange for reporter access (and speaking of favorable coverage for Hussein from CNN).

Now this Spanish judge, unhappy that the U.S. didn't hand over our soldiers in shackles, has called for their arrest, and presumably, their extradition to Spain.

Spain has a history of this. A Spanish judge issued an arrest warrent for Augusto Pinochet when the old Chilean dictator visited a British doctor.

I wonder: if a Cuban exile asked a Spanish court to issue an arrest warrent for Fidel Castro, do you think the judge would oblige? Given the pro-Castro slant of Spain's left-wing intelligencia, it is unlikely. In fact, Castro has visited Spain more than once, I believe, since the first poet was thrown in the dungeon in the early days of the Cuban revolution.

Assuming an imprisoned Cuban librarian ever gets out of the ALA's favorite gulag, perhaps he or she could take up residence in Spain and test my theory.

For now we can only marvel at the transparent agenda of the Spanish court. And I thought we had problems with judges.

Would it be too much to ask that our President say something about this? Yeah, I guess it would.

Castro's Library Pass (Part I)

2005-10-19T06:58:00.000-07:00

If you are a regular reader of the conservative library blogs (and why wouldn't you be?), you have seen many words dedicated to exploring the hypocrisy and duplicity of the ALA's near-manic regard for "free speech," coupled with an old-fashioned fellow-travelers defense of the Cuban dictatorship. A systematic exploration of this spineless servitude to Castro is welcome.

Writing in FrontPage magazine.com, Walter Skold begins a four-part autopsy on the ALA's integrity.

My humble suggestion? Let us keep all four parts close at hand, until next years Banned Books Week, whereupon we should print out the full analysis and put it on our Banned Books table, along with the updated list of books that the Castro regime has consigned to the fire.

Many thanks to Tomeboy's Takes for alerting us to this article.

Mother Leaves 3-Year Old to Die in Hot Car

2005-10-18T10:14:00.000-07:00

This is the kind of story that strains the limits of my blood pressure medicine. From South Carolina: Three-year-old Dominic Moody met his death in his mother’s hot car where she left him for five hours while she worked at a Blockbuster store.

If you think there are mitigating circumstances, think again. Her upstairs neighbor said he would've been happy to watch the child, but was not asked. When she found her child unconscious in the back seat of her sweltering car, she drove around for twenty minutes!

The "mother," Olivia L. Rozier, claims she was trying for twenty minutes to find someone who would dial 911. I guess the phones at Blockbuster Video are not equiped for 9-11 calls.

Here's the punch line: thee-year old "Dominic was wearing long pants, a shirt and a sweater."

It sounds like the mom -- no dad, of course -- was attempting to rid herself of the "burdon" of childrearing. Of course, it's quite possible the woman is just dumber than dirt. Either way, she should receive the harshest sentence possible, which I assume is Life Without Parole. What do you bet there's a whole gang of bleeding-heart pukes ready to proclaim this a horrible accident and plea for no jail time?

The blog Old Controller gets it just right:

"There isn't a penalty stiff enough for this moron. She should be sentenced to life in a cell wallpapered with photos of her son."

Or we could just bring back stoning...

Thanks to Old Controller for bringing this story to my attention. Although there's part of me that wishes I had never read about it.

PETA Commits Genocide Against Animals

2005-10-17T04:31:00.000-07:00

Please excuse the hyperbolic, over-heated headline. I thought that some PETA-esque language was in order here. The meat-is-murder and animals-are-human crowd have been caught killing animals and disposing of them in a supermarket dumpster. The PETA workers have been charged with 25 felony counts in North Carolina, according to the Virginia Pilot.

Although a conservative (reactionary?) with a libertarian streak, I am a bleeding heart when it comes to animals. Animal cruelty is, for me, the mark of a base and souless person. I've always felt that the self-righteous inquisitors of the "animal rights" organizations make preventing cruelty to animals more difficult, not less. That members of PETA's materialist cult should be caught doing the very thing they supposedly abhor is not surprising. Much like the unions who hire temp workers to walk their picket lines for low wages and no benefits, or the organic farmers who treat their field hands like share-croppers from a hundred years ago, these wild-eyed militants embrace that which they allegedly despise because their philosophy springs not from an embracing of the natural order, but rather, from the rebellion against that order. Given the opportunity, they would put a guillotine in the public square and announce an end to cruelty.

Lest you think that these two indicted PETA felons are just bad apples spoiling the barrel, note please that PETA, rather than expelling the felons, is paying their legal fees.

Too, too sick-making.

When There Is No Law

2005-10-14T14:44:00.000-07:00

I'm certain there are many stories from New Orleans that conveniently slip through the cracks in the main stream media because they do not reinforce stereotypes so precious to our guardians of information.

One of those taboo topics is self-defense.

Over at Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog there's an interesting story from early September: a group of citizens who stayed during Hurricane Katrina found themselves a prime target for looters in the aftermath of the storm. Law enforcement, for obvious reasons, was not around. So rather than subject themselves to the mercy of the criminal class, they armed themselves, formed a militia, and deterred potential predators by firing shots in the air and letting all who approached know that failure to identify oneself could result getting shot.

They all survived the looting.

We've all heard stories that the original reports of rapes and murders among the victims of Katrina were greatly exaggerated. Examples such as this one suggest that the number of people robbed, raped, and murdered might be less than originally expected for a variety of reasons, one being self-defence.

Unless, of course, you are at a FEMA camp rather than your own home, in which case FEMA may try to ban your gun at their camp. No word from FEMA on whether hardened criminals or predators are complying with the firearms ban.

#%!!& Pinter wins $%#!! Nobel Prize

2005-10-13T10:31:00.000-07:00

Please excuse the fake obscenities, but I thought it only fitting to celebrate Harold Pinter's Nobel Prize for anti-American politics with some potty mouth.

However, if you are bothered by ACTUAL obscenities, do not read further, as I reprint below one of Pinter's poems in protest of the Iraq war. As you finish each stanza, you should imagine those cartoon guys from the Guiness commercials yelling "Brilliant!"

[Mea culpa: I am a huge fan of the film of Pinter's play Betrayal. The three leads -- Jeromy Irons, Ben Kingsley, and Patricia Hodge -- actually are BRILLIANT. Hodge, particulary, has not gotten the credit she deserves on this side of the Atlantic]

Hallelullah!
It works.
We blew the shit out of them.

We blew the shit right back up their own ass
And out their fucking ears.

It works.
We blew the shit out of them.
They suffocated in their own shit!

Hallelullah.
Praise the Lord for all good things.

We blew them into fucking shit.
They are eating it.

Praise the Lord for all good things.

We blew their balls into shards of dust,
Into shards of fucking dust.

We did it.

Now I want you to come over here and kiss me on the mouth.

"Brilliant!!"

Remembering the U.S.S. Cole

2005-10-12T09:48:00.000-07:00

Today is the five-year anniversary of the bombing of the USS Cole. Michelle Malkin and Catholic Friends of Israel both have news and some thoughtful insights on that terrible act of murder by Islamofascists.

Seventeen sailers were killed. Afterwards Yemeni Muslims danced the night away in celebration. Our response, as both Malkin and CFOI note, was "measured," which is another word for tepid and unlikely to deter.

Spend a moment today remembering the sacrifice of these seventeen patriots.

"Turn back the crop dusters"

2005-10-12T07:31:00.000-07:00

I never intended to blog on a TV show, prefering to concentrate on books, libraries, politics, and other sundry topics. But I just cannot resist saying something about the brain damage I incurred last night while viewing COMMANDER IN CHIEF, a show that puts Geena Davis in the Oval Office.

President Davis (I cannot remember her character's name) got the job of VP after the real VP died. Then the President died, so she got the top slot. SOME people question whether she is up to the task. Because she's inexperienced? Because she got the job after two legitimate politicians spontaneously combusted? No, because of...sexism. (You know, the REAL reason why some of us question Harriet Mier's nomination).

One staffer talking to another staffer: "She's not a woman, she's the president."

Well, that's half right.

She won't let her kids attend private school (even though they obviously did before she became Pres.) because "Your father and I went to public school."

Mother of God! Even Bill Clinton knew better than to subject his daughter to the hellish underworld of the District of Criminals publik skool sistem.

In last night's scintillating tale, nine DEA agents are murdered by the dictator of San Pasquali (or something like that), a Latin American country which, until recently, had a democratically-elected president (who now conveniently lives in the DC area).

President Davis wants El Dictator arrested. Unable to do that without an indictment (I'm sure Austin, Texas DA Ronnie Earle would have obliged), Davis decides to eliminate the crops that are the source of dictator's drug-fueled tyranny. So she goes on TV and tells the American people of her intent to eradicate San Pasquali's chief export if the murderers of the DEA agents aren't brought to justice. Since everyone believes that the El Dictator is responsible, I'm not sure how this is supposed to work.

But then, in a dramatic move that defines this cutting edge drama, President Davis departs from her scripted remarks and calls upon the people of San Pasquali to rise up and arrest their dictator. It may seem to you utterly ridiculous that an American President would think her pleas could mobilize a country to do something extremely dangerous that they heretofore had shown no interest in doing. I certainly felt that way as my jaw continued in its free-fall.

Off go the planes to CROP DUST San Pasquali (bombers are actually engaged in such a situation, but this Pres practices non-violent military intervention). But before the pacifist crop dusters can arrive, the people of San Pasquali rise up, march on the capital city, and demand El Dictator's arrest (I'm imagining Dora the Explorer's "We did it!" dance).

President Davis, breathless with love for all of humanity, turns to her advisor, and says, "Turn back the crop dusters."

I was laughing so hard I fell off the couch.

Like its (much better written) predecessor, WEST WING, COMMANDER IN CHIEF is basically political pornography. It creates a fantasy world in which certain ideas and policies prevail, independent of their failure in real life. I was most astonished by the consequence-free policy: Female, independent (read:liberal) Pres locks horns with dictator, stands fast against tyranny, and never has to fire a shot in anger (or drop a bomb). Is this how creator Rod Lurie envisioned a Kerry or Gore presidency? He might want to confer with ex-pres Bill Clinton on that. Or perhaps ask anyone within ear-shot of that aspirin factory in the Sudan that Clinton bombed. Should Clinton have sent crop dusters to Somalia?

Rumor has it that creator/producer Lurie has been replaced by Steven Bochco (NYPD Blue, Hill Street Blues, Over There). This is virtually unheard of, as the creator of a certified hit is rarely given the shove. Bochco would certainly be the one to purge this show of its laughable storylines.

But then again, if millions of Americans are watching and enjoying this drek, why should they change it?

You Can Have My Internet When You Pry It From My Cold Dead Fingers

2005-10-10T12:41:00.000-07:00

The moonbats at the Guardian are hoping that the moonbats at the UN will take regulatory control of the internet. This has to be read to be believed. The guys who gave us the Oil For Food Program, non-action on an impending massacre in Rwanda, full-time bashing of the Jewish state, and coddling of Islamic Fascism, are now going to regulate the United State's gift to the world.

There were evidently eleven days of hearings at the UN on this subject. According to the Guardian report:

"The issue of who should control the net had proved an extremely divisive issue...".

What evidently was NOT divisive was the question of whether the internet should be controlled or regulated at all.

Over at The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiller, they are certain this will never take place:

"Isn’t it fun watching a bunch of incompetent, impotent idiots fighting among themselves over something that isn’t theirs and never will be theirs? We think it would be more productive for them to figure out just how they’re going to accomplish the hostile takeover before they start fighting over the spoils but hey, we’re as enamored of a retard cage match as the next Emperor, so by all means do continue."

'Nuff said.

"Lost in a Town of Books"

2005-10-10T04:30:00.000-07:00

I'm reading Paul Collins' Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books. This memoir straddles two sub-genres of books: "Books About Books" and the "My Life in a Strange/Fascinating Place" books. The former category is a small, but stubborn sub-genre that still has its own section at your local Barnes & Noble. The latter is most represented by Peter Mayle's wonderful A Year in Provence, although I believe something called A HOUSE IN TUSCANY recently made a small, literary splash.

I happen to enjoy both of these sub-genres, so I was particularly keen on reading about a couple with young son moving to Hay on Wye, that famously bookish town on the border between Britain and Wales, dominated by Richard Booth, the owner of the town's largest (and most chaotic) bookstore, who is the self-declared "King of Hay." Although a former antiquarian myself, I never made the bibliophile's journey to Mecca. I live vicariously through those like Collins who find the place as fascinating as I no doubt would.

Hay on Wye is a town dominated by bookstores, all save one of which are antiquarian bookstores. In the words of Richard Booth: "A town needs a reason to live. (...) This town's reason to live is books." Collins wades into this rural, biblio-culture with a love of all things bookish and the skeptical eye of someone fed on non-fat lattes and mass transit.

Collins is writer who thrives on contrasts. Britain vs Wales, London vs Hay, America vs Britain or Wales, the suburbs vs the small town, chain bookstores vs the independents, all provide fuel for his often witty and occasionally profound observations. Being of a liberal bent, it is not surprising that Americans and conservative Britains come out of the comparison looking somewhat intellectually dessicated.

Example number one was a British game show during which the host departed from the script to make the case for Britain returning the Elgin Marbles to Greece. Collins is not certain the average Britain has ever heard of the Elgin Marbles, but is struck by the fact that in Britain you can get away with such a speech. "You are not allowed to do any of these things with the chimp's tea party that is the American audience, as it might interfere with their swinging their forearms about and yelling hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-HOO!"

I confess to similar feelings when viewing American game show audiences, but why limit one's critical gaze to the pursuit of filthy lucre? Has Collins ever seen the cult-like rapture of the Oprah audience? Or the Koolaid drinkers who line up to see some America-hating starlet walk the red carpet with her enhanced boobs hanging out? Of course, Oprah and the starlet are cast from the same liberal political mold, so they might seem less egregious to the lefty writer/observer.

Myself, upon reading about the "brave" game-show host pontificating about cultural artifacts, I was reminded that the insufferable, politically-correct, psuedo-intellectual blather that has replaced real political discourse in Britain is not limited to the Anglican Church and the BBC.

Are Americans less well-read and cultured than their British counterparts? There was a time when one might have said yes, due in part to the differences in state schools in each country. Of course, the American public (state) schools are notoriously mediocre. They are also firmly under the yoke of the liberal ethos, and have been for at least thirty-five years. Could it be that those Americans who share Collins' worldview are also the same Americans who have turned our schools into the culture-free zones that Collins so dislikes?

Ten years ago I visited London. Walking through a Waterstones bookstore at lunchtime I was struck by a group of Londoners crowded around the "Classic Literature" section. With an hour to spare before rushing back to work, these hearty Brits were pawing over Jane Austin, Leo Tolstoy, and George Gissing. In America, the "Classic Literature" section has disapeared from most bookstores.

But does this mean anything?

Woody Allen once made a movie with references to Vincent Van Gogh and Rembrandt. The studio complained that no one would know those references. Allen had his staff go out into the streets and quiz New Yorkers, who, to their credit, knew all the famous names.

Does this prove anything other than that Londoners and New Yorkers are similarly exposed to at least the vestiges of Western civilization and culture?

An episode of the old John Cleese show, FAULTY TOWERS, provides an example closer to what Collins is trying to say. In the sitcom, Basil Faulty, the owner of the hotel, is berating the Spanish hotel porter, Manuel, over the latter's inability to accomplish a simple task. Frustrated, Faulty says, "This is not a proposition from Wittgenstein!" Laughter followed from the audience. Now I'm quite certain that the average British viewer of that sitcom is not conversant with the philosophy of Wittgenstein. But they got the joke: what Basil was asking the hotel porter to do is hardly the stuff of a dense, German, philosopher!

There is a cultural sense that is passed down from generation to generation. Your average Joe or Jane doesn't remember the details of Plato, Rembrandt, Mozart, or Henry James, but can count exposure to those people among their educational memories. Or they could until "education" became dominated by a frantic scramble to cram for the latest government-sponsored academic test, and increasingly interrupted by Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered tolerance day; Islam appreciation; and various other education-free indoctrination schemes devised by those education "intellectuals," who, like Collins' culturally-sensitive game show host, know what's best for all of us.

None of this detracts from Collins' wonderful tale of living in Wales amidst barns, books, and bibliophiles. You don't have to share Collins' good-natured elitism toward common folks to appreciate his love of lost treasures among the stacks and warehouses of the world's preeminent book town.

Besides, the last time I turned on British television, there were three men in a hot tub having a farting contest. I shan't view it again! I shan't!

Is Harriet Miers Trustworthy?

2005-10-07T09:08:00.000-07:00

From Southern Methodist University, via National Review Online's blog, The Corner, here is a list of speakers invited to opine by the Raggio Lecture Series, an endowed feminist forum started by Harriet Miers, Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court. The embattled Miers, and her sponsoring president, face a torrent of criticism from conservative groups that seems to grow in strength and ferocity with each passing day.

The speakers from (Miers') Raggio forum:

1998: Gloria Steinem

1999: Patricia Schroeder

2000: Susan Faludi

2001: Gwen Ifill

2002: Geraldind Laybourne

2003: Ann Richards

2004: Colleen Barrett & Herb Kelleher

The speakers are supposed to be women, so I can only assume that Herb Kelleher is a pre-op transexual. Hopefully when "Herb" is invited back to opine, s/he will come sans the phallus that radical feminists find so offensive. After all, we have to keep the standards up.

But while I don't know anything about the comedy team of Barrett and Kelleher, I'm fairly certain that Steinem, Schroeder, Faludi, and Richards are all fanatically pro-abortion, including the partial birth kind. I'm sure this will go over well (not!) with those cultural/Christian conservatives whom Bush is trying to mullify with constant, if subtle, assurances that "Miers will vote our way; I promise!"

For myself, Miers' phobia of the conservative Federalist Society (she reportedly freaked when she found some of them on her staff) and her almost sexual attraction to the American Bar Association, a repugnant licensing organization (aren't they all?), says volumes about her future prospects on the court. To put it bluntly, Justice Breyer will eat her conservative lunch.

Miers' conservative supporters seem to honestly believe that her party allegience (Republican for many years) can just wash away any lingering doubts about her competency and commitment.

Paul Cella wonders if the Miers nomination is not part of a larger problem, one that is at least 40 years old, but has only come to fruition during this administration. A frustrating problem to be sure, especially for those of us who support the president (and voted for him twice) and appreciate everything he's done for this country.

The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe: Christian Propaganda?

2005-10-05T07:51:00.000-07:00

Mea Culpa: I actually looked forward to the launching of the Huffington Post blog. While the head dominatrix, Ariana Huffington, had made a switch from right to left, I always thought she was fairly intelligent and more coherent than your average lefty moonbat. I thought -- as incredible as it may now seem -- that she might be attempting to re-establish intelligent liberalism, as opposed to Michael Moron liberalism, which is actually warmed-over radical chic, minus even the pretense of seriousness that Marxists have toward a subject.

I have been underwhelmed with the results. Every has-been, fruitcake, aura-cleansing freak of the left coast has found the Huffington Post a suitable bathroom wall onto which they scrawl their barely-coherent screeds. From the insufferable self-importance of Harry Shearer to the lunatic ramblings of Deepak Chopra (who really should be medicated, for his sake and ours) to the apocolyptic, superstitious psuedo-science of Robert Kennedy ("Sign Kyoto, or face the wrath of Katrina!!"), to view the H-Bomb is to enter a kind of left-wing blog asylum.

Recently, Michael Schaub of The Huffington Post took his turn at being head infant. According to Shaub, when Florida's Just Read, Florida program picked C. S. Lewis' THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE as its latest book pick, this was a massive conspiracy between Bush, a billionaire republican doner, and the forces of darkness to "push Christian dogma on Florida schoolchildren." And to help out a rich Republican doner who evidently has a stake in the upcoming movie.

Yes, Michael, we all know how Hollywood and those movie-tie-ins benefit the right-wing cabal that has stolen American and turned it into Amerikkka.

Here is Michael Shaub's bio:

"Michael Schaub is the associate editor of Bookslut, a literary webzine, and coauthor of its blog. His work has appeared in the Washington Post Book World and The Austin Chronicle. He lives in Austin, Texas."

I have not had the pleasure of reading "Bookslut," but it sounds both charming and intelligent, not like those right-wing sites that are corrosive to intellectual discourse.

I notice that he hails from Austin, Texas. I did a little research. Austin had its own "Let's All Read A Book Together" love-in a while back, though not connected with their school system. The book "chosen" was THE HANDMAID'S TALE, a truly silly pro-abortion book by the vastly over-rated Margaret Atwood. In the futuristic tale the United States is taken over by pro-life militants who force women to procreate for the state. People like Shaub must flee to the utopian shores of Atwood's Canada, where you can still get a non-fat latte and an abortion at the same tax-payer-funded building.

Ah, if only the booksluts of the world would go to Canada. Or maybe "Palestine."