The full text of the President's speech on Iraq that he gave today at the Naval Academy can be found here. Commentary on it can be found here and here. Here are just a few of the many highlights:

There is much, much else that President Bush said in this speech about the particulars of his strategy and the training of Iraqi military and police units as well as other matters of crucial interest to those concerned with our progress in that country. It was perhaps the best speech of his presidency (of interest to those who say he never admits mistakes will be several lines where he does precisely that).

He promised, moreover, that he will elaborate on themes only lightly touched upon today in speeches to come in the days ahead. The nation needs to hear it, and we need to hear it over and over again. The President needs to take control of the discussion and to explain to the American people why the negative analysis being reported by the MSM is only a small part of the whole picture. We wish him well.

Often we hear mentioned the criticism that unless Intelligent Design proponents can specify who the designer of their alleged irreducibly complex biological structures and processes is, their theory is mere speculation and not science. Not only do the critics demand to know who the designer is but also how the designer actually accomplished such wondrous feats of engineering.

This demand to identify the designer is misguided, however. It is certainly possible to conclude that we are observing an intelligently designed phenomenon without knowing anything about who designed it or the process the designer employed.

Bill Dembski makes this point in chapter 32 of his book The Design Revolution. The salient passage is quoted below:

If it were demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that the bacterial flagellum is a mechanism which must have been somehow designed by an intelligent architect of some sort, it would be foolish to refuse to acknowledge the fact in science journals simply because we don't know how it was done or who the designer is.

Indeed, Brian Greene points out in his book The Fabric of the Cosmos that theoretical physicists often posit the existence of entities and phenomena which defy observation and any kind of physical description. Nevertheless, their existence is inferred from the need to satisfy our theories about why the world is the way it is. Some examples of such entities or phenomena are entangled particles, the Higgs field, the inflaton field, other dimensions, branes, and strings.

The demand that ID theorists identify their designer is a red herring which is itself designed to deflect attention from the persistent and uncomfortable fact that biological structures give the appearance of having been exquisitely designed for a purpose. Critics insist on being told who the designer is so as to divert scrutiny from the additional fact that mindless mechanisms are disappointingly inadequate to account for the degree of intricacy that abounds in every cell in our bodies.

Finally, a voice of reason and sense from the Democratic side of the aisle. Unfortunately, since he is supportive of the Bush policy Senator Joe Lieberman's column won't get nearly as much play in the media as did John Murtha's call for an immediate pullout:

Follow the link to read the rest of Lieberman's outstanding article which includes this graph:

Good stuff.

Wretchard at Belmont Club relates the story of Randy "Duke" Cunningham's heroics in the skies over Vietnam 33 years ago. In 1972 he was a marvelous hero, having shot down three MIGs in a single engagement.

Today he stands disgraced for tax evasion and accepting millions of dollars in bribes as a Congressman. He has resigned his office and will probably go to jail.

The level of his corruption is staggering, and he should go to jail for it, but, even so, it's a terribly sad story of human fallenness.

Charles Krauthammer writes with much more clarity on the subject of torture than he does on Intelligent Design. Indeed his recent piece in the Weekly Standard provides excellent insight into the debate over the McCain Amendment.

At the outset he draws some important distinctions between three kinds of prisoners. He distinguishes between the ordinary soldier caught on the field of battle, the captured terrorist, and the terrorist with information. Krauthammer discusses what each is entitled to and how each should be treated.

He also dispenses with the "torture doesn't work" canard and puts McCain's own inconsistencies in his defense of his amendment in bold relief.

Krauthammer is careful to stringently circumscribe both the conditions under which harsh measures should be employed and the people who should be allowed to use them, and his recommendations make a lot of sense. All in all it's quite a good article for someone interested in the moral and practical aspects of the question.

We naturally and rightfully recoil from the thought of employing pain in our interrogations of our enemies. We want to banish the idea from our minds, but Krauthammer argues cogently that in a world in which we are confronted by a mortal enemy bound by none of the rules that have at least partly constrained "civilized" nations, we cannot ban it absolutely. There must, he insists, be exceptions. The real argument should be over what constitutes a legitimate exception.

Slate has a piece on Lawrence Krauss, a physicist who has been critical of the scientific bona fides of Intelligent Design and modern string theory. Here's an excerpt:

Quick question: According to Krauss and many other physicists string theory is not science, it's metaphysics, so what's the difference between string theory and Intelligent Design?

Answer: You can teach string theory in public school science classes without precipitating a national outcry over the damage being done to science education in this country. It may not be science, it may be pure metaphysics, but it doesn't imply that there might be a G-O-D. Thus all the objections that are raised against the teaching of ID are set aside with a great gaping yawn when string theory is mentioned in physics classes, even though those objections all pretty much apply as much to string theory as they do to ID.

ThreatsWatch has a good summary of the fighting in western Anbar province in Iraq, particularly Operation Steel Curtain.

Of particular interest amidst all the talk of the need for the Iraqis to "step up" and shoulder the load is this:

There's an interesting phenomena unfolding on the domestic political front. For months the Democrats have been calling for timetables for withdrawal and the administration has been countering that when the Iraqis are ready to take over the task of providing security we'll step back. Now the Iraqis are assuming more of the burden and thus there will be a reduction of troop levels in Iraq following the election just as the administration has planned.

Look, however, for the Democrats to portray any future troop draw-downs as Bush caving in to their demands that the administration start bringing the troops home. The Democrats will seek to score political points from the fact that Bush will do exactly what he has said he will do all along.

President Bush is finally starting to talk about the need to do something to stop the flood of illegal aliens pouring across our southern border.

Michelle Malkin, however, is unimpressed. We're with Malkin. We'll believe the President is serious about illegal immigration when he stops talking about it and starts proposing serious legislation to get it stopped.

We like the idea of a wall stretching from Brownsville, Texas to the California Pacific coast. We also suggest making Vicente Fox pay for it somehow since his countrymen are the reason we need the thing.

Why should liberals have all the good music? Here's some good hard pounding rock for conservatives. Go to Andrew Sullivan's site, scroll down to Bush Was Right, and click on the link.

Sort of reminds you of Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire, perhaps purposely.

Just when Ward Churchill fades from the news a clone pops up to remind us that being a committed leftist in academia often means being a complete jerk:

That's it? That e-mail provoked this wing-nut professor to threaten her? How can this guy face himself in the mirror in the morning after having tried to bully and intimidate a young college co-ed for expressing a desire to have people come out to listen to an Iraq War vet? How many John Daleys are out there threatening students for ideological reasons and endorsing the killing of American officers? Such people don't belong in the classroom at any level and we hope the guy never gets a job teaching again. It'll be interesting to see who, if anyone, hires him.

Perhaps somebody over at The Democratic Underground will be eager to find a position for someone like Mr. Daley who shares their general outlook and attitudes.

Ever wonder why parents home school or send their kids to private schools? Maybe this Boston Globe article will give some insight:

Hmmm. She's not sure, but a teacher pressing his political views onto students in an English class just feels like something that ought to be looked into.

We have a question for the English teacher, Mr. Chenkin. We wonder how he feels about teaching Intelligent Design in schools. Want to bet that he's against it?

Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost has a list of 100 films, broken down into fifty categories, that are, in his opinion, the most overrated in that category and the most underrated. It's amazing that he's actually seen all these movies plus all the others in each category he would have to have seen in order to compile this list, but evidently he has.

If you're a movie fan, you'll enjoy perusing Carter's 100.

Philosophically risqué; dressers and daring polemical provocateurs might wish to see this.

We wonder: If a student shows up wearing one of these to school will he/she be sent home? It doesn't say at the site how to obtain them, but it'd be great fun to send some along to students at Dover High School in Pennsylvania. It'd be even more fun to make a gift of one to each new member of the Dover school board.

While you and I may purchase gold in ounces, CBs tend to buy in tons. If, in fact, Russia moves forward with their plan to double their gold reserves, it would mean 500 tons of gold will be taken out of the market! To suspect that gold will top out at $500 is silly.

There is a deeper, hidden message here if one looks more closely. If you care to do the research, you will see that countries around the world are starting to question the wisdom of their reserves being mostly U.S. dollars.

If this is true, those dollar reserves will be exchanged for assets which represent true wealth, i.e. gold. Also, and this point shouldn't be dismissed, those dollars will eventually find their way back to the U.S. and result in higher, much higher inflation. I suspect we are already experiencing this as the real rate of inflation is increasing. Not in terms of the government CPI (consumer price index) nor the PPI (producer price index) as they are manipulated to such an extent as to be worthless. And not in terms of computers, DVDs, large-screen TVs, or anything else we import from China, but rather food, real estate, or anything made from petroleum.

Got gold?

WSC

The people Michael Moore and others on the Left refer to as "freedom fighters" and compare to the "Minute Men" of the American revolution are continuing their war against Iraqi children:

The people who do these things are subhuman savages and either the leftists who lionize them are terrible judges of character or they themselves believe that no atrocity should be condemned as long as it's perpetrated by those who hate America.

This is frightening in its implications. After all, this man was in charge of the Canadian military at one time:

We ourselves find it just a little hard to believe that the same president who won't raise a finger to prevent illegal aliens from flooding this country through Mexico is secretly funding the construction of military bases on the moon to kill aliens from space who haven't harmed a soul, as far as we know, and who don't demand welfare benefits, smuggle dope, or even take jobs from Americans.

There's even more lunacy in the original story, if you can imagine it. This, for example, from a spokesperson for a Canadian "Exopolitics" organization:

How does this spokesperson know that the aliens are "ethical"? Has he spoken with any of them? Has he posed ethical questions to them like, "Is it ever right to be an illegal alien?" Or, "If their exhaust emissions are depleting the ozone layer, shouldn't they stay away?" Until important questions like these are answered the spokesperson will have to forgive our doubts about the aliens' alleged ethics.

Here are fifteen things which are going, or probably will go, the way of rabbit ears, mens' dress hats, corner grocery stores, typewriters and record players over the course of the next twenty years. By the year 2025 it will likely be harder than it is today to find:

Phone booths, SUVs, movie theaters, newspapers, pennies, utility poles, service stations (esp. full service), camcorders, neckties, encyclopedias, bank tellers, recent tombstones, independent auto mechanics, wooden pencils, and standard transmissions.

Perhaps readers can suggest more candidates for our endangered species list.

This open letter to Jose Padilla reveals much about the mindset of the American Left. It drips with concern for a man who is believed to be a terrorist and who plotted to kill Americans. The writer, a lawyer with the ACLU, commiserates with Padilla because his rights were allegedly abridged by the government, and maybe they were. But can't the ACLU insist that American citizens receive their due process rights without making it sound like those who may have been denied certain rights are ipso facto persecuted innocents regardless of what may be the facts of their case? The writer sounds very much as if he believes that anyone who is believed to be a threat to Americans should receive our sympathies. Here's part of the letter:

Evidently, if Padilla is only guilty of planning to blow up an apartment building with natural gas instead of a couple of city blocks with a radiological weapon he can't really be such a bad guy. We should feel deeply sorry for him.

No, we shouldn't. We should feel contempt for him even as we agree that he needs to be granted every right that the American Constitution affords him. Even if he didn't actually plot to carry out the crime, but merely talked about doing it, he's still a despicable figure. There'll be time enough for sympathy if he's found to be completely innocent. Give him his legal rights, whatever they may be, but don't expect the rest of us to feel sorry for the man unless it turns out that he had nothing to do with plots to harm Americans nor expressed approval of such plots.

One of the charming quirks about the behavior of young girls - my daughter's friends, for example - is that they instinctively defer all decisions involving the group to a particular individual as if she were somehow anointed by God for preeminence. There need be no verbal communication in these interactions, they just happen as a matter of course, as if everyone tacitly understands that there's a hierarchy of status which no one in the group is to challenge.

If one of the lower ranking girls should have the temerity to dissent from the dictates of the alpha female the unfortunate young lady would suffer immediate social excommunication and be banished from the royal court. I once asked my daughter why girls accept this state of affairs as normal, to which she replied with a shrug which suggested that she had no idea and that no one really wonders about it except me.

I thought of this, oddly enough, after reading writer Susan Ives' complaint that "Intelligent design disrespects faith, discounts faith, destroys faith."

Faith, Ives avers, is:

Ms. Ives constructs a strange argument. Suppose it were the case that science demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that the universe and everything in it were indeed the product of purposeful, intelligent engineering. Would Ms. Ives then feel that her faith was devasted beyond repair? Would she greet the news with fascination or would it throw her into a religious crisis? Simply to pose the questions, I think, is to answer them.

Her confusion stems from a Kierkegaardian view of faith that makes it the more virtuous the less evidence there is to support it. Her view is that metaphysics and physics are sealed in airtight compartments without either ever leaking into the other. This is pretty naive. The idea that faith is somehow vitiated by empirical evidence is really quite peculiar. Jesus, after all, offered his disciples plenty of empirical evidence that he was the Son of God and he expected those demonstrations to strengthen their faith, not destroy it.

All of that aside, though, Ms Ives completely misrepresents Intelligent Design. ID is not an attempt to "prove" that God exists. Nor is it an attempt to demonstrate some tenet of religious faith to be true. It is simply a conclusion inferred from observations of the physical world that powerfully suggest that the universe in general, and life in particular, appear strongly teleological. If this teleology is not just an illusory appearance but a factual reality, it would certainly be of religious interest, just as Darwin's claims have been of religious interest to people, many of them atheists, but so what? Should we shrink from investigating the nature and structure of the cosmos just because it might bolster one's faith or encourage another one's skepticism?

Ms. Ives seems to be implicitly arguing that Christians and other theists should not be engaged in the scientific enterprise, nor should they be doing philosophy, because the more they understand about God's creation, and the more scientific and philosophical support they find for their religious beliefs in the creation they study, the more damage they'll do to their faith. This is ludicrous, of course. Most of the great scientists of the past, Newton, Boyle, Maxwell, Galileo and so on were Christians who delighted in the attempt to understand more about God through their science. They were all "intelligent design" proponents though the term wasn't in use during their era, and they saw no problem in deriving nourishment for their faith from the fruits of their science.

What does all this have to do with teenage girls? Well, Ms Ives is either arguing that Christians should not undertake to study the world or she's advocating a teenage girl version of theory precedence, viz. that Christians engaged in science and philosophy dare not presume to arrive at conclusions at odds with the reigning materialist paradigm. Materialism is the tacitly acclaimed alpha theory that all must acknowledge, to which all must pay deference and which no one dare flout on pain of social ostracism and intellectual banishment. It's the metaphysical assumption whose rightful place, like that of the teenage princess, at the very top of the theoretical hierarchy is always assumed and never challenged.

Why Ms Ives should think materialism should be granted this place of epistemological privilege, though, and what there is about materialism that has earned it such lofty status, she doesn't say. Perhaps the reason she doesn't is that, as with the teenage princess, there really is no good justification for the deference materialism expects to be shown. It survives atop the heap only so long as people like Ms Ives unthinkingly assume it just belongs there.

THANKSGIVING DAY 1789 BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - A PROCLAMATION:

All Presidential Thanksgiving proclamations can be found here. No doubt those who say that this country was not founded by religious men nor upon Judeo-Christian presuppositions would rather you not read these, but here they are.

We hope that each of us takes time this day to reflect upon all that we have to be grateful for and to reflect, too, upon our relationship to the God from whom all of our blessings flow. Have a great Thanksgiving Day.

This ABC News report contains much of relevance to the current torture debate. It needs to be borne in mind in reading what follows that ABC very probably would like to put the worst construction on what they've uncovered, but if their aim is to make the CIA's methods look morally indefensible they don't succeed. Here are excerpts of the article with commentary:

Okay. We can agree that forcing someone to listen to Eminem is unkind, but it scarcely rises to the level of torture. What about the other methods the CIA uses?

Note that these techniques have been used on only a dozen of the top al Qaeda detainees. They are not used indiscriminately, nor are they used by untrained personnel.

Of these, only the last three can be considered to cause extreme pain or suffering and how much suffering they cause is completely up to the detainee. This is an important point. Unlike abuse carried out as retribution, punishment or for the amusement of the abusers, the detainee has complete control over how much of this treatment he must endure.

Maybe, but do they believe they're actually being drowned or do they only feel like they're being drowned? If the latter then it's not a mock execution. The prisoner doesn't have to think he's going to be killed in order to be unable to withstand the treatment.

Where's ABC's substantiation that "many" feel this is an unreliable tool? They cite the opinion of two officers who so believe. Very well, but how many others are convinced that the information gained from these dozen or so terrorists was reliable? Moreover, if other techniques are effective in extracting valuable information then why does the CIA go to the trouble and legal risk of employing less effective methods?

This raises an important question. Exactly what constitutes cruelty? Surely it's not just a matter of inflicting severe pain on someone. If it were, then surgeons in Civil War field hospitals would have been cruel. They were not so regarded, of course, because they were trying to accomplish a long term good. For an act to be cruel the actor must be motivated by a desire to hurt or degrade another simply to punish, amuse, exact retribution, or to vent his own frustrations. Any of these motivations would make the administration of pain cruel and thus evil, and any agent of the government who acts upon such motives should face punishment.

The motivation to save lives, however, is in a completely different moral category. If there is adequate reason to believe that the detainee is withholding information that could prevent the loss of life then inflicting severe pain or discomfort in order to elicit that information is not "cruel" as long as it is reasonably assured to work, and as long as there are no more effective or reliable methods available.

The cruelty of an act also depends on the amount of control possessed by the prisoner as we discussed above. A detainee who is powerless to stop the administration of pain is in a much different position than one who has complete control over how much he wishes to endure. If the pain is inflicted in order to obtain lifesaving intelligence from a terrorist who otherwise refuses to yield it, and the treatment stops when the terrorist gives up that intelligence, and the terrorist knows it will stop when he gives up that information, then the treatment is not intrinsically cruel.

I leave it to the professionals to determine the extent to which harsh methods are reliable. My only concern is to make the case that, if they are, they are not immoral, or at least not necessarily so. It would be helpful to know how effective conventional techniques have been in gaining significant information from top al Qaeda people. ABC doesn't tell us, but they do say that Kalid Mohammad was pleading to be able to divulge what he knew after only two and a half minutes. That seems pretty effective.

The use of the conjunction "however" in the above paragraph implies that what follows is somehow contrary to what precedes it, but the content of the "however" paragraph is completely irrelevant to the preceding paragraph. Is ABC just sloppy or is it trying to discredit the argument that there are advantages to the use of "harsh measures" without having to do the heavy lifting involved in actually refuting it?

This is an example of one of the weakest of the arguments in the torture debate. The fact that questionable information was acquired on one occasion is hardly reason to think the practice is generally unhelpful. Nor is it a reason, eo ipso, to refrain from harsh measures. After all, any interrogation technique is going to yield some unreliable information. What we need to know is the overall quality of the information gleaned from all detainees who were subjected to the treatment. Was it all unreliable? If not, the salient question becomes how reliable does it have to be in a given circumstance to warrant the use of harsh measures.

ABC belatedly acknowledges here what they elided above - that although one or two officers think these measures are not effective, "many" others think they are. Although ABC expatiates on cases like al Libbi's where the results are questionable, they don't bother to give us specific examples of cases where the intelligence gained from these techniques has saved lives. Is that because there are no such cases, is it because the information is classified, or is it because they just don't want to tell us about such cases? They should at least tell us which of these possibilities explains their silence.

Every effort should be made to prevent these sorts of incidents, of course, and if they occur through negligence or wantonness they should be met with discipline appropriate to the case just as any careless shooting of civilians by troops should be disciplined. But the fact that there have been a relatively few deaths (compared to the 82,000 people who've been detained since 2003) no more discredits the use of harsh interrogation than does the tragic deaths of a small number of civilians at checkpoints discredit the procedures followed by the military at these locations.

The ABC report is useful in describing exactly what sorts of interrogation practices are permitted by the CIA and what the limits of those are. Whether other agencies work under similar strictures and whether they are as closely monitored we can't say, but it seems that the images that the word torture usual connotes -- electric shocks, fingernail pulling, savage beatings, mutilations, etc. -- are not acceptable treatment for detainees in our custody. For that we can be grateful.

Anyone who looks back on his life and seeks to identify the influences which led him to the place he presently finds himself will probably be able to point to a half dozen or so people, in addition to his parents, who exerted a strong push on his life in at least one of its aspects.

There are those who help shape one's character, one's ambitions, one's religious, philosophical, and political views, and so on. In my own life there have been several such men, some I knew personally and others whom I never formally met but whose influence I nevertheless soaked up through their written work like leaves soak up sunshine.

One example of the latter is William F. Buckley. When I was fresh out of college in 1969 I stumbled across Mr. Buckley's Firing Line television show. I was just beginning to develop an interest in political affairs, having somehow managed to scoot through college in the ideologically charged 60's with hardly a political thought in my head to show for it.

I was impressed with all the things about Buckley that impress everyone who watches him - his wit, his breadth of knowledge, his mastery of the language, his ability to articulate conservative ideas with an eloquence and charm that disarmed his opponents - but most of all I was impressed with his demeanor. He was never rude or overbearing. He never got nasty or raised his voice. His colloquies with his guests were always marked with courtesy, good humor, and unfailing graciousness. In those early years of my adulthood he was an exemplar of how political disagreements should be debated and how discourse should be conducted.

Although I possessed none of his gifts, I subliminally decided that I wanted to be like him anyway, to the extent that I could. I read his books and National Review, the magazine he founded in the 1950s, and found myself wishing to learn all the things I should have learned in college but was too busy being a jock to trouble myself with. I regretted, having fallen under his sway, that I had squandered so many years and opportunities that could have been devoted to the cultivation of a fuller intellectual life.

Eventually, my interests evolved in various directions and followed channels not closely related to politics, but those other pursuits were always in some sense a product of the appetite he had stimulated in me for learning. He had given my appreciation for what Hannah Arendt calls the "life of the mind" a spark, a sturdy kick start, and I have always been grateful for the richness that that has added to my life.

I heard Bill Buckley give a lecture a few years back, and I wanted to tell him after his talk how much he has meant to me, but he was surrounded by adoring fans and besides, I thought, he probably hears stories similar to mine all the time anyway. I've regretted not taking the opportunity then, and I thought I'd write him and tell him what I wanted to tell him that night, but I somehow never got to it. I suppose I assumed that WFB has always been around and always will be. There'll be other opportunities.

Now I see that his 80th birthday is the 24th of this month, and I realize that if I don't do it soon it might never happen. That would be an omission I would deeply regret, so as Mr. Buckley approaches this milestone in his life I've resolved to contact him and tell him what he has meant in mine.

Happy birthday, Bill.

Well, if you are a Republican and you tend to support the current administration you might wish to know that there are certain precincts in the Left-wing blogosphere in which you are quite unpopular. One of these is Democratic Underground where one ranter goes on at great length telling us how much he hates us, what loathesome creatures we are, what morans (his spelling) we all are. He finally concludes by urging us all to kill ourselves.

Perhaps this represents the Left's new strategy for winning in 2008.

Anyway, not everyone on the Left is this sick, of course, but judging by the comments he received on his post, many of them are. They're evidently consumed by a hatred so vile and irrational that it seems demonic. Don't take my word for it. Read it yourself and tell me that this guy and the people he speaks for are not quite simply stark, raving lunatics.

Thanks for the tip to Michelle Malkin.

Bill has been predicting that the price of precious metals is going to continue to rise, perhaps precipitously, making it a very attractive investment. It looks like he knows what he's talking about. The spot price of gold has currently reached $493 an ounce. This time last year it was around $425 an ounce. Investors are buying and pushing the price up, and it will be interesting to see if they regard $500 as a benchmark signalling them to sell and score profits.

If not, it may soar several hundred more dollars. Yikes!

Stuart Taylor at National Journal has an excellent analysis of charges by the Democrats that Judge Samuel Alito is outside the "mainstream" of American judicial thought. Among his numerous trenchant comments Taylor quotes from Alito's 1985 job application to the Reagan Justice Department:

Taylor then says this:

Democrats who think the mainstream is to be found on the leftmost shore of every river will be unmoved by Taylor's piece, but if you're interested in the coming battle over Alito's nomination you'll want to read the rest of his argument. It's well worth it.

Amidst the sky-is-falling rhetoric of the media over the vote last Thursday night to cut social programs from the budget there is this scarcely mentioned fact tucked away in an AP report:

In other words, Congress did not make any cuts in benefits, they merely cut the rate at which the amount the government spends on these programs would increase every year. A report on NPR the other morning quoted one congressman as saying that instead of the budget increasing over the next several years at a rate of 7.5% the "cuts" will slow its increase to a rate of 7.3%.

In almost none of the other reports on this vote that I could find was this brought out. Instead the reader was given the strong impression that money was being taken out of poor peoples' wallets and put into the greedy hands of the rich.

In an e-mail from Jim Wallis, the editor of Sojourners magazine, he makes this completely unsubstantiated and irresponsible allegation:

What's morally unconscionable is to mislead people into thinking that spending on these social programs is actually being reduced. There's no mention in Wallis' message as to what the rationale is for the "cuts", whether current recipients will indeed lose benefits, whether it will be duplicate benefit programs which are to be cut, whether the eligibility for benefits is being tightened -- no context whatsoever. Just pure rhetoric and propaganda.

Evidently Wallis is of the view that we should just throw every penny we have at the problem of poverty because to withhold anything is morally unconscionable. Mr. Wallis needs to be asked exactly how much of our national wealth he thinks we should be transferring to the poor. At what point, exactly, do we say that we have done enough? When we are transferring 100% of our GDP? If not that, why not?

Is it too much to ask that the media and other liberals report these things competently and accurately?

Gary Glitter, the impressario of Rock and Roll, Part Two, a favorite theme at high school and college football games and other sporting events, is facing a possible sentence of death by firing squad in Vietnam, believe it or not. If you're interested you can get the details here.

How many ways can the Democrats demonstrate that they have no responsible or intelligent alternative to the President's policy in Iraq? This article in the L.A. Times by Ron Brownstein summarizes some of the Democrats' recent proposals. They're stunning in their shallowness:

The foolishness of this is hard to overstate. If these plans were adopted the insurgents would know that if they could just cling to life for another year Iraq would fall into their laps. The Iraqi people and even much of their military would have little more to do with the Americans and intelligence on terrorists would dry up. No one would want to be seen as helping the Americans if they knew that in a year the insurgents would be exacting their revenge.

If the Iraqi military is not yet fully ready to control the country by next October when the Americans withdrew their support, literally all hell would break loose. Civil war between Shia and Sunni would almost certainly ensue. Iran would then move into the Shia south, Syria would move into the Sunni triangle, and Turkey might well invade the Kurdish north. The oil and other wealth of Iraq would be up for grabs. Al Qaeda would romp through the country lopping off the heads of anyone who had had dealings with the United States. No one in the region would have cause to fear an American return so small states like Kuwait which sit on vast wealth would be gobbled up by predatory neighbors. Terrorists would train openly without having to fear American arms, and would operate with impunity throughout the region. The whole world would sit by, unable and unwilling to do anything to prevent the region from crumbling into war, famine, and chaos.

John Murtha created a huge fuss in the House with his plan to begin pulling out now and to complete the withdrawal within six months. He envisions an over the horizon quick reaction force of Marines to be reinserted if any trouble flairs up. With all due respect to Rep. Murtha, his idea is just stupid. Why pull the Marines out at all if you think you may have to reinsert them later? Sending them in after having surrendered the Iraqis to the tender mercies of the insurgents would be lunacy.

Even if this country would stand for their reentry into Iraq, which they surely wouldn't, where would they go? They'd have to rebuild their bases and supply lines and, most improbable of all, their relationships with the same Iraqi people they had recently deserted. They'd get no help from resentful, embittered Iraqis and the maelstrom that would ensue in Iraq after an American withdrawal would make anything short of a total re-invasion of the country a suicide mission.

In other words, Kerry is saying that we should do pretty much what the administration has said we will do. Question for Sen. Kerry: What should we do if the election doesn't go well? Pull out anyway? Stay until the country is politically stable? If the latter, how is that in any way different from what the President is already doing?

Now there's a bright idea. Many Shiites and Sunnis would relish getting at each other's throats. What better incentive can we give them to tear into each other than to tell them that if they don't behave we'll just have to get out of their way?

It boggles the mind to think that these ideas come from the minds of United States Senators. Little wonder that the American people fear to turn over the reins of national security to the Democrats.

At one point in his piece Brownstein says this:

Precisely. It's always easier to criticize others for not doing what you think they should be doing than to offer a coherent plan for doing it yourself. Especially when you have no idea at all of what you're talking about.

The normally astute Charles Krauthammer demonstrates that he's not infallible and that on the matter of the philosophy of science he's in fact quite clueless:

Well, "clear" is what he's not being. For the umpteenth time we reiterate. ID is:

1. not incompatible with evolution even if some of its advocates remain skeptical of many aspects of evolution.

2. not a contest between evolution and God. No ID advocate, qua scientist/philosopher, claims that God is the designer. The most ID can claim is that God could be the designer.

3. not a "god of the gaps" theory. It's not a theory that reacts to things we don't know by positing a god. It's a theory that bases its conclusions upon what we do know. Most relevantly, what we do know is that information, everywhere we see it being generated, is the product of intelligence, and there's no sufficient reason to think that things would have been otherwise in the generation of the information contained in biological machines, cells, and processes.

4. not asserting that God was behind the lemur. ID asserts that the mechanisms which produced lemurs and everything else in the biosphere include among them intelligence. The claim that intelligence is at least in part responsible for life is no less scientific than the claim that natural selection and genetic mutation and other blind, purposeless mechanisms are the exclusive cause of the evolution of life.

Krauthammer adds:

In an amusing example of sawing off the branch upon which one is sitting, Krauthammer argues that the earth shows forth elegance, simplicity, brilliance, economy, creativity, and implies that these are the marks of divine intelligence. But if so, intelligence, whether divine or otherwise, is empirically detectable, since Krauthammwer has detected it, and he nicely refutes his own position stated above.

He goes on to ridicule those who criticize the Darwinian claim that evolution is an "unguided process." Finding fault with this definition, he writes,:

In fact, physics and chemistry never use these terms for precisely this reason. To assert that the processes of physics and chemistry are unguided and purposeless would be to remove them from the province of science and deposit them in the arena of metaphysics, which is exactly where all such claims belong, including those of the Neo-Darwinists. You cannot test the claim that any physical force is purposeless, and so the claim is not made in science, except in biology, and it is as out of place there as, say, a political journalist, even a good one, holding forth amongst controversies in the philosophy of science.

South Africa seems to be drifting the way of many another black African nation toward an accomodation with tyranny and corruption. The people of Africa must feel cursed. Why, they must wonder, can't they ever seem to get relatively competent, honest, and humane leadership that has some staying power?

Brian Maloney writes about South African president Thabo Mbeki's coziness with Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe at Michelle Malkin's blog:

Well, that last paragraph may be a little premature, but the trend lines for South Africa surely aren't comforting. Nor is it comforting to reflect that the MSM is snoozing through this story. You can bet that had South Africa still been under white rule and there were signs of oppression brewing reveille would've sounded in the journalists' barracks a long time ago.

There are rumors afloat that Abu al-Zarqawi was killed in a raid on a house in Mosul although White House sources are calling the reports unlikely. We can hope, though.

Perhaps you are unclear as to what distinguishes the two political parties which dominate our current political scene. If so, you might try this little quiz:

Ask yourself which party is least likely to:

If you answered "the Democratic Party" for each of these questions then you scored 100%. If you found yourself in agreement with the Democrats on more than two or three of questions then you're probably a political liberal. If you agreed with roughly half of them then you're probably a moderate, and if you disagreed with all but one or two then you're probably a conservative.

A friend at the University of Michigan has sent an open letter to President Bush. I thought it was worth being seen by others as well so I'm posting it here:

Well put, Richard.

Former UNSCOM weapons inspector Bill Tierney speaks out in this interview at Front Page.com about Iraq's WMD. His conclusion: Iraq had them and Bush was right to go to war. If you're skeptical read his reasons. If you do you will almost certainly understand why George Bush came to the conclusion he did about Iraq's possession of WMD.

You will also understand why his opponents' claims that he deceived the nation about the presence of WMD in Iraq is both unfair and foolish.

Back in July of this year I posted an article on the topic of diversity.

While the concept of diversity is a corner stone of political correctness, I showed my concern in that post for how it will devastate our country.

To elaborate further, and hopefully drive the point home, I have included the following quotes from President Theodore Roosevelt who even in his day saw the danger of such wrong thinking...

I can't help but wonder if the concept of "hyphenation" applies to the last names that women choose these days when they get married.

WSC

Let's hear no more talk from House Democrats about pulling out of Iraq as soon as possible. They've voted overwhelmingly, 187 to 3, to shun that option. Maybe after the embarrassment this has brought them they'll be a little more circumspect, and fair, in their criticisms of the war.

Or not.

The Democrats, having considerable experience themselves with such ploys, claimed that the Republican resolution to withdraw immediately from Iraq was a mere political stunt. They sniffed that they would not be gulled into taking it seriously and would therefore vote massively against it. But this is all quite disingenuous, actually.

Why not take the resolution seriously and send the country and the world a message that support for the Bush Iraq policy is minimal in the House? Why not take a stand on principle and demand that our troops come home if that's what the Democrats believe? Why not show the nation how much strength the Democrats have in the House on this issue?

It seems more likely that they don't have any real strength on the issue and rather than make public that uncomfortable fact they chose to conceal it by pretending to protest the Republicans' dirty trick by voting en masse to defeat the resolution. So far from being a protest vote of some bizarre kind, the Democrats' capitulation was actually a very important admission. They seem to be acknowledging that serious opposition to Bush's Iraq policy exists only in the fever swamps of the Left, the media, and Hollywood. Beyond those ideological ghettos, out where the voters are, people may be skeptical, but they're not ready to cut our troops' psychological lifeline.

Rep. John Murtha is a good man. I don't believe he's playing politics with his call for the end to the American effort in Iraq. I think he sincerely believes that his call to terminate our presence in Iraq at the earliest practicable date is the right thing to do. Even so, he's wrong and he's being used by those of his fellow Democrats whose chief goal is to hurt President Bush.

The Republicans, however, have called their bluff. If the Democrats truly believe that the war is a failure, if they believe we should get out now, the Republicans are giving them the chance to say so on the record by introducing a sense of the House resolution that calls for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. If Democrats think that pulling out now is the wrong thing to do then they have the chance to express that opinion, too, by voting against the resolution. The vote is coming up tonight.

It's time for President Bush's critics to tell the American people exactly where they stand on Iraq. It's easy to snipe and criticize when there's no price to pay. It's easy to say that Bush has failed in Iraq and that we have no business being there when one's words aren't recorded for all the world to see, but now they will be. And the Democrats are going ballistic. Taking a stand on the record is the last thing they want to do.

Their reaction to the resolution highlights their hypocrisy. If they had sincere convictions about the war they would just vote one way or the other, either to withdraw immediately or not, but their convictions are not sincere. Their stance on the war is for many of them pure political opportunism and the Republican call to put up or shut up is an embarrassing spotlight on their abysmal behavior.

They know that an immediate withdrawal is a morally indefensible position and to endorse it would be politically fatal in a general election. They also know that that's exactly what the Michael Moore/George Soros/MoveOn.org crowd that funds their campaigns and gets out the vote are demanding. They find they have demagogued their way between Scylla and Charibdys and the Republicans are simply giving them the opportunity to declare whether they are going to act like adults or throw in with the jejunne Hollywood elites.

Imagine. The Democrats are outraged that they have to declare themselves either for an immediate withdrawal or against it. Why?

It's really pretty pathetic.

Judge Sam Alito's now famous job application can be found here. Scroll down to page two for the autobiographical information which has created a stir on both Left and Right. Alito states clearly that he believes the Constitution does not protect a right to abortion.

It will be interesting to see how Democratic senators challenge him on this statemment in the confirmation hearings. Will they argue that he is wrong and that there is indeed such a protection? This would be a reckless tactic because they'll then be required to cite chapter and verse which would prove most embarrassing to the entire pro-choice enterprise.

It's more likely they'll just want to severely reprimand him in one of their interminable speeches, to which he will be unable to respond, for his impertinence in casting doubt upon liberal dogma and then try to get him to commit to a reverence for established precedent, or some such thing. Their big donors at MoveOn.org and elsewhere, however, recognize the utter pointlessness of this strategy, and will demand that the Democrats do whatever they can to stop this nomination no matter how many knees to the groin they have to administer. Judge Alito better be wearing a cup come January.

Meanwhile, an odd reaction to this application is bubbling in some precincts on the Right. Conservatives are insisting that we shouldn't read too much into Alito's words, that everyone exaggerates on job applications, that nothing in his judicial record suggests he'd overturn Roe v. Wade, etc. This is an astonishingly disingenuous and disappointing argument.

Do these conservatives mean to suggest that Alito might not vote to overturn Roe and that therefore the Left should have no qualms about approving him? Are they conceding to the Left that a Justice who would overturn Roe could be justly blocked by the Democrats while maintaining that Alito is not that sort of judge? Do they mean that the Left shouldn't be concerned about his anti-abortion statements because he might not have really meant them? What kind of a strategy is this?

These Republicans seem to be proclaiming with some enthusiasm that Judge Alito is not really what conservatives hope he is, or that he's actually not impeccably honest since he doesn't really believe what he wrote on his application, and therefore Democrats shouldn't mind confirming him. That's absurd.

If he wasn't telling the truth on the job application and if he doesn't really believe that Roe is an instance of judicial usurpation of the democratic process then conservatives shouldn't support him. This argument that he's not really all that conservative, when made by conservatives to mollify liberals, is sheer stupidity married to dishonesty.

Harold Meyerson at the WaPo writes that:

Alito's answer should be, "Darn right I believe it. Why shouldn't I? If anyone can show me why my analysis of what the Constitution says is wrong I'll recant. Otherwise, let's move on to the next question." He might add that "Moreover, those Republicans who are seeking to mislead the public on my position on Roe are a bunch of dishonest dunderheads."

A "smoking gun" has emerged in Iran that has brought rare unanimity of opinion between the U.S. and its erstwhile European allies about Iran's intentions to build nuclear weapons. Somehow, the U.S. has come into possession of a laptop that has on it a detailed record of Iran's various steps toward developing nukes.

The Iranians have made a calculated decision, it seems, that the political climate in the U.S. will prevent Bush from taking immediate action against them, so they feel emboldened to continue with their nuclear program, and also to try to hurt us with their oil policy. Their hope, perhaps, is that Bush will remain crippled throughout the remainder of his term and that the next president will be much less of a threat to their ambitions.

I think, though, that they have misunderestimated George Bush. The only thing keeping him from hitting Iran tomorrow is that he doesn't want to juggle two messes in the Middle East simultaneously. If Iraq should stabilize over the next twelve-month, Tehran could be in serious trouble. Look this time, however, for the United States to be joined by more allies than fought with us in Iraq.

If this analysis is correct, it explains a couple of things. For one, it explains why the Left is so desperate to weaken Bush. They simply don't want the United States to launch any more assaults in the Middle East and to enjoy any more military successes. The best way for them to ensure that this does not happen is to keep Bush preoccupied at home with one nip at his heels after another. A man busy fighting off a swarm of mosquitoes is ill-positioned to do much else.

The second thing it explains is why Shia-dominated Iran would be supporting a Sunni-dominated insurgency that is killing Iraqi Shiites. The longer Iraq remains unsettled the longer Bush will likely delay in calling the Tehran mullahs to account. If they can keep Iraq unstable for another 18 to 24 months they may be able to survive Bush's tenure. That's worth the cost of abetting the murders of a few thousand of their co-religionists in Iraq.

Dick, I'm not sure what "Ineradicable" means but I want to followup anyway.

You mentioned in your article that "Creationism is an attempt to vindicate the Genesis account and to reconcile science with the Bible. It starts with the assumption that Genesis is true, and rejects any hypotheses incompatible with this assumption."

I'd like to take that statement and run with it a bit if I may. I originally intended to post this on the Feedback page but thought better of it and decided it warranted a place front and center.

From E.W.Bullinger's How To Enjoy The Bible pages 351-352. I quote:

Given this information and its reconciliation of the geological record with the biblical account of creation, I am quite perplexed that there is so much apparent ignorance on the part of Christians regarding the issue.

If you're not fully persuaded by the message above, I would like to challenge you to pursue it further. Research the ample references Bullinger provides to substantiate his position. The argument of Creationism vs Evolution is a major issue of our day. If you are a Christian that believes in the Bible as the Word of God, shouldn't you have a scriptural basis for your conviction that can weather the storm of the enemy as it breaks across the bow?

WSC

Our local paper, The York Dispatch, ran this column from the Tufts Daily a couple of weeks ago which several times repeats the claim that Intelligent Design is a religious belief. Today they carried another essay in which George Will repeats the same claim. One despairs of ever purging this misconception from the public mind, but the task is even more hopeless when public intellectuals insist on perpetuating it. It takes on the character of an ineradicable stain on the debate over Intelligent Design.

I submitted the following reply to the Dispatch whose editors have apparently decided to ignore though they have chosen not to share with me their reasons:

For a good example of how the media totally confuses ID with creationism see this piece in the San Francisco Chronicle.

In commenting on Pat Robertson's anathemas upon the community of Dover, PA, Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page juxtaposes two thoughts which are frequently voiced by critics of Intelligent Design, but which are mutually incompatible. He writes that the voters of Dover, by electing an entirely new school board, were, in effect, seeking to keep religion out of their school and maintain the separation of church and state. Page exclaims:

A little later on in his essay, however, he utters this opinion, one commonly heard expressed by those who seek to banish ID from science classes:

Mr. Page seems to suffer from Constitutional confusion. If the separation of church and state is sufficient reason to keep ID out of science classes how can teaching it in a history or social science class be justified? Does he think that the putative great wall of separation surrounds only the science departments of our schools? If ID is suitable for a history class then the only reason that it would be unsuitable for a science class is that it's not good science, not that it violates the separation of church and state.

I did a little bit of research and found that the State Street Corporation is the largest holder of General Motors at 95,318,342 shares. They boast of being not only "the #1 servicer of U.S. pension plans" but also "investment manager of U.S. pension assets and a leading pension manager globally".

One has to ask themselves how safe their pension is if some or all of it is invested in GM. GM was down over 5% today...ouch!

If and when GM declares bankruptcy, what do the people whose pension fund is so heavily invested in GM do as their pension withers away to nothing?

Truly a sad scenario but one that could have been avoided if these people would have diversified their wealth as they accumulated it by transferring it into solid assets such as precious metals i.e. gold.

The moral of the story is, don't gamble your future well-being on shares of companies in the US whose profits are contingent on a booming US economy simply because the new "global economy" ensures that those days are over.

WSC

RealClear Politics says that Senator Rick Santorum is finished in Pennsylvania. The latest polls show him trailing his challenger, Bob Casey, by 15 to 20 points.

If this is true it's certainly too bad, but Santorum has alienated much of his Republican base, and Casey neutralizes him among a large sector of the remainder of Pennsylvania voters. Santorum could count on his strong pro-life stance to garner him a lot of votes among pro-life Pennsylvanians, but he's now facing that rarest of breeds, a pro-life Democrat whose father was a popular pro-life governor of the state. Thus, Santorum's position on this issue is not the asset it was against previous opponents. Indeed, it hurts him among pro-choice voters who resent his outspoken advocacy of Terri Schiavo's right to live.

Where he's really paying a price, in our opinion, is among conservatives in general who were dismayed that Santorum endorsed fellow Republican senator Arlen Specter two years ago in his tough primary fight against conservative congressman Pat Toomey. It was the endorsement of Santorum and President Bush that persuaded enough Republicans to vote for the much distrusted Specter in the primary, enabling him to thinly defeat Toomey.

Then Santorum failed last month to back the Coburn amendments to the transportation bill which would have sliced a lot of pork out of the bill. This was an unconscionable lapse for someone who calls himself a conservative, and it did nothing to shore up support among rank and file Pennsylvania Republicans.

Add to the erosion of enthusiasm for Santorum the fact that Casey is the son of a popular governor in a blue state and the fact that the president's numbers right now are not particularly fat and Santorum's low poll numbers are not surprising. He has twelve months to turn things around, but its hard to imagine what could happen on the state level that would give him the opportunity to do that other than conducting a very vigorous campaign.

We're still waiting for Arlen Specter's endorsement. No doubt Santorum is, too.

Bill Bennett calls for Senator Rockefeller to step down from his seat on the Senate Intelligence Committee for doing what he admitted doing to Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. Senator Rockefeller said the following:

Bennett calls for "an investigation, now, into what exactly Senator Jay Rockefeller told Syria and just what Syria might have done with the information made available to them presumably before it was made available to the U.N., the Senate, or the American people."

He goes on to write that:

What is a guy this loose-lipped doing on the Senate Intelligence Committee in the first place, for heaven sakes? It's boneheaded blabbermouths like Rockefeller who are the reason Democrats have such difficulty convincing the American public that they can be trusted with our national defense.

The Fourth Rail has the latest on Operation Steel Curtain and the fighting in Ubaydi. The insurgency has less and less room to maneuver and they're finding that there are more and more competent Iraqi forces with which to contend. The dilemma they face is this: They cannot afford to drain their forces out of Iraq and relocate elsewhere because to lose Iraq is to lose not only a base of operations but also to suffer a psychological defeat in the minds of all Arab people. Arabs will run with the strong horse. A defeat in Iraq means that that horse isn't them.

On the other hand, they cannot afford to stay and fight because they're simply not winning. They're losing militarily and the only thing they're gaining is the everlasting enmity of the Iraqi people. Their only chance is that the Americans will weary of the fight and withdraw. They can hope that the "useful idiots" among the American political Left and media can somehow weaken George Bush to the point where he cannot continue the war. If so, the insurgents will snatch victory from defeat and Iraq will be theirs.

If Bush prevails against his domestic foes, however, then al Qaida will probably seek to set up shop in a nearby country from which they can continue to conduct a low-level insurgency in Iraq and Jordan. Their problem is that there aren't any obvious havens for them anymore. Syria and Iran might have welcomed them in the past but to do so now is to invite an unpleasant visit from the United States Air Force and there's no reason why either of those countries would want that. Iran, in particular, will be very reluctant to give our bombers an excuse to raid their airspace and an opportunity to drop an extra bunker buster or two on their nuclear facilities.

It's looking bleak indeed for the jihadis. On the bright side, though, they can anticipate a delightful sojourn shortly with their seventy two virgins.

A friend of mine who himself served relatively recently as a Resident Assistant on a University of Wisconsin campus was moved by Real Wisconsin Cheeseheads to relate his own remarkable experience at UW. It's a disturbing tale of inexcusable intolerance toward anyone who has the courage to dissent from the politically correct orthodoxy established by left-wing bureaucrats in contemporary universities:

One gets the feeling reading this sort of thing that if conservatives choose to attend a school like the University of Wisconsin they better either keep their mouth shut or have a parent who's a lawyer. It's deeply distressing that the very institutions which are supposed to be bastions of free speech and independent thinking are actually training grounds for censorship and petty tyranny. What kind of nation will our children inherit if people like some of those mentioned above ever ascend in large numbers to positions of political leadership?

Matt Rosenberg at City Journal shines a bright light on the failure of white liberals and black leadership to speak out against the pathological embrace of the Thug culture among black youth. His whole column is worth reading. Here's an excerpt:

One would think that of all people it would be those most concerned about erasing the stereotypes of blacks as stupid and thuggish who would be most outraged by what regularly appears in our entertainment venues as typifying the black "experience." Young blacks who dress and speak as though they are proud of being inarticulate dopes, or who wish to project a menacing image, simply ratify the convictions of whites, who may know few blacks personally, that these are not people they particularly care to know or care to have living in their neighborhoods.

The silence of black leaders on the glorification of misogyny, criminality, and sexual licentiousness in black culture is doing both black society and the cause of racial harmony tremendous harm. They stand by while their young commit slow-motion suicide. Young people think this is the persona they should adopt in order to be authentically black, but that persona imprisons them in the dysfunctional ghetto of black failure. The road out of poverty is paved with the bricks of personal virtue and those bricks are not much in evidence in a lot of what is held up for young blacks to emulate today.

One of the more worrisome ideological developments of the last fifty years has been the increasing intolerance of religious expression among those who call themselves liberals. The University of Wisconsin has a reputation as one of the most liberal schools in the nation, and it's also, apparently, one of the most intolerant of individual religious liberty.

Even though the events described in this article are troubling, it is amusing to see how the champions of personal liberty tie themselves in logical pretzels trying to justify their censorship:

Would all those lawyers and paper pushers who think it appropriate to deny Mr. Steiger the right to meet with fellow students to study the Bible also think it appropriate to deny him the right to meet with fellow students to study Marx or Mao? Would they argue that teachers in public schools should not be permitted to lead a Bible study on school property before school hours? Would they say that congressional Bible studies open to staffers are beyond the pale of constitutional liberties? If R.A.'s can't be ideologically active because they're school employees in a supervisory position over students, does the university hold its faculty to the same standard? It's rather doubtful, isn't it? Yet the case of Mr. Steiger is not substantively different than any of these.

The university policy is so intrusive, so utterly stupid, that one despairs when reflecting upon the fact that these people are administering a major educational institution. Hopefully, Mr. Steiger will take his case all the way to the Supreme Court, if need be, and the rest of the country will see what ninnys run the University of Wisconsin and what kind of a world liberals would create if, God forbid, they should ever have the power.

Yet another Democrat comes across on the Sunday talk shows sounding like a nitwit. This time it was Senator Jay Rockefeller on Fox News Sunday. Read this astonishing exchange with Chris Wallace:

In other words, he thought Iraq posed an imminent threat because he thought George Bush had already made up his mind to go to war. Besides, he was only privy to the consensus view of the intelligence agencies about Saddam's intentions. If he'd have known some of the minority views then he would not have said that Iraq poses an imminent threat. To the extent that this is intelligible does it sound weasly, or what?

You'll have to decipher this. I don't know what question Sen. Rockefeller is answering, but it's sure not the one Wallace was implying.

There's no question here, Senator. It was wrong because, sing it with me now: Bush lied, people died.

Oops. So even when Senator Rockefeller has seen the documents that reveal dissenting views among analysts he still asserts that "There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons. And will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years and he could have it earlier." He must have been very convinced by what he saw. Unshakeably convinced.

Of course not. If he had known then that Chris Wallace was going to throw this all back in his face and make him look like a simpleton on national television he certainly wouldn't have voted the way he did.

Since the Senate voted to authorize the use of force but didn't actually send the troops, why, then, its not the Senate's fault that we're at war. No sir. Bush sent those troops, not the senators who were beguiled by that evil Karl Rove into voting to authorize their deployment.

This is a cry for help. Please stop me before I vote again. I can't help myself. I know I shouldn't vote this way, but Karl Rove has cast a spell on me.

We are witnessing a United States Senator lose his grip on sanity here. The poor man (if a Rockefeller can be appropriately called "poor") is so desperate to dissociate himself from his record, and to pin the blame elsewhere, that he is devolving into incoherence.

Precisely. But when the esteemed nutjob senator does it he's "misled" by bad intelligence. When the Republican president acts similarly, on that same intelligence, he's "lying to the American people." Tell me, are there any intellectual qualifications to being a Democratic senator?

The Democratic strategy seems to be that, rather than try to offer a clear and cogent defense of one's position, a Democrat should overwhelm the questioner with so much muddleheaded mumbo-jumbo that the interviewer simply wears down and gives up. For some, perhaps, it's a conscious strategy that they have to work at. For Senator Rockefeller it seems to just come naturally.

Altogether now, one more time: Bush lied, people died....

Tim Russert interviewed Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean this morning on Meet the Press. To put the kindest interpretation on it, Mr. Dean was unimpressive.

The theme that the Democrats are determined to plant in the public unconscious is that Bush is a liar and his administration is corrupt. This is itself mendacious, but for liberals truth is a virtue only when it suits one's purposes. If lying about an opponent's own truthfulness wins political battles then lie one must.

Bush lied, Mr. Dean tells us without actually using the word, because he withheld evidence that Saddam wasn't involved in the 9/11 attack. Never mind that Mr. Bush never claimed that he was involved, the fact is that he never said that he wasn't, Mr. Dean asserts, and that's the same as lying.

Bush lied, Mr. Dean insists, when he said last Friday that the Senate had access to the same evidence of Iraq's WMD that the White House had. Not only that, but the administration discounted evidence that contradicted their claim that Saddam possessed WMD. Mr. Dean's first assertion was dispelled by Chris Wallace today on Fox News Sunday when he reminded Senator Jay Rockefeller that, if anything, the intelligence the White House was given was more strongly slanted toward the conclusion that Saddam indeed had WMD than were the reports that the senators were given. This makes Democratic support of the war even less defensible than the administration's.

The second assertion, if true, is perfectly reasonable. You have evidence that a known killer is threatening your family. He's acting in a threatening manner. He shoots at your car and acts in every way as if what you've heard is true. He has a motive, revenge, and is cultivating friendships with the sorts of people who have done you harm in the past. Reports are that he's working on building weapons that will put your children at very serious risk should he obtain them. He's possessed and used such weapons in the past and has already made an attempt on your father's life.

Yet there are dissenting reports that cast some doubt on his intentions. If you have the responsibility of protecting your family what is the most prudent course of action? You ask him to open his home for inspection but, although he does, he clearly acts as if he's hiding something. You ask the police to enforce the law and restrain him, but they do nothing. You yourself must either act now or wait until you're 100% certain one way or the other.

Unfortunately, you can never be 100% certain that he's not out to get you, and by the time you're 100% certain that he is planning to kill you, it will, of course, be too late for your family. To act is to risk. Which risk should you take, especially given that it was clear that the world would be a safer place with this man's power to harm taken from him? Should you assume that he is a threat or should you wait when waiting could be disastrous?

It would have been irresponsible for the President to have done anything other than what he did do, given what he believed to be true at the time, and most Democrats felt exactly the same way.

Democrats tell the truth, Mr. Dean avers, Republicans lie. He says this with a straight face despite the prevarications of both President and Mrs. Clinton and many other Democrats since 1992, and despite the fact that the only real evidence of Republican lying is that a relatively minor figure, Lewis Libby, was indicted, not convicted, of lying to a special prosecutor about something that wasn't even a crime.

Mr. Russert asked Mr. Dean to tell us what the Democratic alternative is to Republican policy on Iraq, social security, the deficit, and health care. But the DNC chairman refused to answer. Democratic policy, he declared, is to obstruct whatever the president tries to do. "Our job," he announced, "is to stop the administration." No matter what the Republicans seek to do, no matter how right it may be for the country, it must be opposed. The Republicans cannot be allowed to get any credit in the eyes of the public for anything.

Is it enough, Russert asked, to just say "Trust us"? Mr. Dean replied by assuring us that when the time comes the Democrats will have a plan. The party will present their specific proposals after they have retaken the House and the Senate. Of course, this leaves unanswered the question why anyone should vote them into office without knowing what they plan to do once there.

Meanwhile, Mr. Dean intones, their policy is to be honest, which explains, we suppose, why they're increasingly trying to work religious language into their speeches. Perhaps they have just rediscovered that they have in fact been evangelical Christians all along but they had, until the results of the last election came in, forgotten it.

When asked about Samuel Alito, Mr. Dean replied that the judge is "well outside the mainstream," but he wouldn't say whether the Democrats should filibuster him. He wants to wait until after the hearings to decide whether he ought to be blocked, but then why not wait until after the hearings to conclude that he's out of the mainstream? If Mr. Dean already knows that Judge Alito is bad for America what does he need hearings for? Don't waffle, Mr. Dean, be honest.

Mr. Dean implied that the Republicans were hypocrites for insisting that Alito be given an up or down vote when they wouldn't allow such a vote for Harriet Miers. This is perhaps the most absurd thing the DNC chairman said in the entire interview. Harriet Miers would have been given a vote had she not withdrawn her nomination. The Senate didn't withdraw her, nor did the President, as far as we know. Even if he did, withdrawing one's own nomination is hardly the same as having one's nomination blocked by the opposing party's filibuster. The President has the constitutional right to make nominations and to withdraw them, the Senate minority has no similar right to deny the nominee a vote by filibustering the nomination.

Howard Dean is in an unenviable position. He cannot say what he really believes or thinks because it would be fatal to Democratic aspirations, so, since he can offer the nation no reason to vote for the Democrats, he must try to win by convincing people that they should vote against the Republicans. The only way he can do that is by relentlessly proclaiming that Republicans are evil incarnate. Perhaps he'll succeed, but if he does it will only be because he has embodied in himself the vices he unfairly imputes to his adversary.

Earlier this year I predicted the bankruptcy of General Motors. Actually, I should have included Ford also. A year ago GM's stock was selling for $45 per share. Today it's at $24. At the same time, Ford was at $15 per share but closed the week falling below $8. I wouldn't be surprised to see either file for bankruptcy and be bought by China.

Here's another prediction: US will be at war with Iran in less than a year.

Why? Well it might be because Iran is considered to be among the "axis of evil". It might be that evidence is discovered that implicates Iran in Iraq. Or, at least, these excuses could be used to justify the need for an offensive.

But there's another reason that we wouldn't hear about yet much more likely. From the link:

Saddam Hussein did essentially the same thing in Iraq when he demanded that Iraq oil be paid for with euros. Look where that got him.

Personally, I hope I'm wrong on both of these predictions because none of this would be good for the US.

WSC

President Bush has finally, mercifully, at long last, decided to defend himself and the legitimacy of the war against his political opponents who have smelled blood in the water for some time and feel free to say anything, no matter how much at variance with the truth, as long as it will weaken him still further.

The New York Times, for example, has been contemptible in its disregard for basic honesty in its journalism (see here).

But it's not just the Times. Bush has left a vacuum on matters relating to the war and its justification, and the dissemblers and opportunists have rushed in to fill it. As a result, his approval numbers until recently were in free fall.

As William Kristol says in a fine article in The Weekly Standard,

Bush believes in turning the other cheek to insults and falsehoods thrown his way. If he wants to do that in his personal life that's fine, but in politics turning the other cheek just gets you a broken jaw. The people who voted for him, the people who want to win the war on terror and succeed in Iraq, are depending on him to fight, not to concede the field to his enemies. He doesn't yield to al Qaida why should he yield to the Left-wing bomb throwers on Capitol Hill and in the NYT and WaPo?

Friday's speech was a great counter to the groin kicks the Left has been dishing out, but it's just one punch. He needs to be as relentless in pounding home the truth to the American public as he has been in waging war against the savages seeking control of the Arab world and the Muslim faith. It's only the determined, tireless, unyielding fighter who prevails in battle. The British failed to abort the American Revolution because their General Howe was not aggressive in pursuing Washington's army when he had them at severe disadvantage. Union General George McClellan dithered and allowed the Confederate forces time to resupply, move, and plan. Against the Democrats Bush needs to be more like U. S. Grant and less like George McClellan.

He needs to give us more of this:

David Gerlernter, writing in the LA Times, of all places, gets the torture question exactly right:

It is the mark of unreflective minds that they so quickly declare motives and circumstances morally irrelevant. One need not be a relativist or subjectivist to see that, on the question of torture, why it is being contemplated is crucially important in determining whether it should be done.

Of course we should not torture as a general rule. No one argues with that. But before we turn a general rule into an absolute let's make sure we understand what it is we are proscribing and the possible circumstances under which we may regret having proscribed it.

Add to Mr. Bush's powerful speech yesterday the news that Karl Rove is back from his psychological hiatus, and it may be that the White House has turned a corner. Anne Kornblut at the NYT writes:

We're sure Howard Dean is happy for him over at the DNC.

On Veteran's Day we remember all those who fought so that others don't have to, and we honor those who served so that their countrymen and their descendents can be free to pursue their dreams.

In particular, on this Veteran's Day we want to remember our father, GM2c (Gunner's Mate 2nd Class) Richard L. Cleary (1918-1977) of the U.S.S. Vicksburg (CL-86) which served in the Pacific at Iwo Jima, Ulithi, and Okinawa during WWII and in Task Group 38.2 at the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay.

Richard L. Cleary was honorably discharged from the Navy on January 23rd, 1946. We are proud to be his sons.

The Dover Intelligent Design trial is over and we await judge John Jones' ruling which is expected by the end of the year. Meanwhile, we offer five predictions concerning these events:

1. Judge Jones will rule against the Dover school board on the grounds that the board did not meet the standards set in the 1971 Supreme Court decision Lemon v. Kurtzman which establishes a three point test for the introduction of putative religious topics into public schools. He will, however, leave the question of the scientific status of ID unresolved.

The Lemon test states that any governmental action with respect to what is taught in public schools:

We predict Judge Jones will find that, based on statements made by board member William Buckingham - which he denied having made - the purpose of introducing ID into the school biology program was not secular.

2. The new Dover school board will certainly not appeal this decision. Even if the judge were to rule in favor of the district the incoming board has promised to remove the ID statement from the biology curriculum, so, as far as Dover Area School District is concerned, this battle is over.

3. Christianity will have received a black eye because of apparent dishonesty on the part of some on the Dover board who identify themselves as Christians but who appeared to lie about statements they had evidently made. They also appeared to prevaricate on the question of the source of funding for the purchase of the books Of Pandas and People.

4. Since the scientific status of ID will have been left unresolved, and since the validity of ID's claims are thankfully independent of the perceived integrity of some of its advocates, it will re-emerge in other districts across the country where school boards will be more careful to ensure that the rationale for implementing it meets the Lemon test. For those with an open mind on this issue, the arguments of ID advocates are simply too compelling to ignore. Like a cork it will keep popping back to the surface no matter how often its critics seek to push it out of sight.

5. With Justices Roberts and Alito on the Supreme Court, the Lemon test, which seems to be fraught with difficulties, will be overturned.

You heard it all here first.

Tony Blankley, author of The West's Last Chance: Will We Win the Clash of Civilizations? puts the French riots into their proper context:

The Muslims seek to reclaim their historic dominance of Europe not by invading with armies but with immigrants. They will soon become so numerous that the Europeans will either have to fight them (unlikely) or resign themselves to dhimmitude, a second class status relative to the dominant Islamic culture and rule. Europe is in a battle for survival and it is just beginning to wake up to the fact.

From The Fourth Rail:

There's a satellite photo of the area at the link showing the deployment of American forces around Karabilah and the "Shark's Fin". The good news for the Jihadis is that it looks as though there'll be ample opportunities for martyrdom in the days ahead.

The conventional wisdom has it that many lies have been told concerning the justifications for the war in Iraq. The wisdom is partly true. There's been much prevaricating on this question, but the dishonesty has been an exclusive property of the administration's critics.

Norman Podhoretz has an excellent essay in Commentary which lays the whole story on the table in all of its ugliness. One cannot read this column without feeling a combination of disgust and astonishment at the way the truth has been distorted and mangled in the attempt to discredit George Bush. The column is a bit too long to post here in its entirety, but it opens with these words:

Podhoretz's account is a "must-read" essay destined to be one of those pieces which gets quoted over and over as those who care about truth seek to undo the immense damage done by those for whom truth is only important when it happens to be on their side.

The Democrats are the party of "no" and maintaining the status quo. The Republicans are the party of ideas and reform. If you doubt the latter part of this claim you might wish to read this article in the Weekly Standard.

On the McCain amendment that would ban all use of torture by American forces we wrote this on the 26th of last month:

Rick Lowery at NRO has similar thoughts:

A blanket ban on torture is a feel-good measure which allows us to bask in the glow of moral euphoria, but which is in fact morally inane. The McCain amendment should not be passed until it is made perfectly clear exactly what is meant by the word "torture." If this is not done American courts will, as we noted above, be tied in knots for decades by lawyers for detainees who will argue that mere incarceration meets the standard of torture in this amendment.

The lack of clarity doesn't bother David Batstone at Sojourners, however. Batstone says unequivocally that "There are certain acts that a follower of Jesus simply cannot accept. Here is one: A Christian cannot justify the torture of a human being." Well, yes and no. It all depends on what is meant by torture and the reasons why it is employed, but Batstone is not interested in ethical shillyshallying. He insists that "Christians must oppose torture under any circumstances." If one asks why, Batstone replies that:

Not only does Mr. Batstone commit the mistake of assuming that any instance of torture is evil, which is the very point in dispute, but he also cites the inexcusable behavior at Abu Ghraib as implicitly representative of all instances of torture or harsh treatment.

Yet just because some cases of causing a prisoner humiliation or pain are completely unjustifiable it doesn't follow that all cases are. The critical factor is the reasons for subjecting the prisoner to this treatment. If it is done simply out of anger, frustration, or as a sick form of entertainment then the act is surely evil. If, however, it is done for the purpose of saving lives and there is good reason to think that the detainee has information that will in fact save lives, then treatment which may be regarded by some as humiliating, degrading, or mentally or physically painful may be morally justified. Indeed, to believe that a prisoner has such information and to fail to extract it from him because of qualms about causing him discomfort is itself morally irresponsible.

Imagine, for example, that a young woman, your daughter, has been seized by jihadis in Iraq. A video is made by her kidnappers showing her, with a knife at her throat, pleading for her life. In tears and terrified nearly to death she struggles to relate how she has already suffered awful sexual abuse at the hands of her captors. Her abductors announce that she will be decapitated in 24 hours.

An insurgent has been arrested, however, whom the authorities have good reason to believe knows the whereabouts of your daughter, but he refuses to divulge the information. Forms of pressure that may fall afoul of the lofty ideals of the Geneva Accords are applied to persuade him to talk. They work and your daughter is rescued. Would you then take time out from your joy to condemn the interrogators who applied the pressure? Would Mr. Batstone? Would the knowledge of how she was rescued prevent you from thanking God for her deliverance? Would Mr. Batstone declare that the interrogators were morally evil to do what they did? Perhaps I simply have a blind spot on this, but I contend that the interrogators would have been morally delinquent if they could have done it and refused.

Mr. Batstone argues that we should "consider this: Who would Jesus torture? I cannot imagine Jesus finding a single 'exemption' that would justify such an abuse of any individual made in God's image."

Setting aside the theological conflict this claim finds itself in with much of the New Testament which tells us that one day Christ will judge the world and that a lot of 'unexempted' people made in God's image are going to find themselves in significant torment of some kind, I'm not much impressed by the "What would Jesus do" argument. In the first place, Jesus wouldn't have needed to apply pressure to the man to get him to yield. He presumably has other resources at His disposal.

Secondly, the WWJD argument is of very little utility in many areas of our moral life. Just because we can't imagine Jesus doing something doesn't mean it's wrong for us to do it. It's difficult to imagine Jesus making passionate love, or getting involved in politics, or doing the job of a police officer who's working undercover and lying about who he is, or killing the enemy in combat. Indeed, what would Jesus do if he must either steal food or let his child starve, or if He must lie to the Gestapo to save the lives of Jews He is smuggling out of Nazi Europe? Just as it may be right in such life or death circumstances to lie or steal, so too it may be right in life or death circumstances to employ humiliation, deception, or pain.

People who argue as Mr. Batstone and Senator McCain do (I'm loath to be critical of the senator on this score given the horrible treatment he endured at the hands of the North Vietnamese) almost always confine themselves to sweeping generalities and almost never examine how the implementation of their ideas would actually work itself out in practice. Yet it's irresponsible to adopt the ideas without considering their likely consequences.

Charles Krauthammer also has some good things to say on this topic here.

Whatever the judge decides in the Dover trial it's clear that Intelligent Design won't be going away any time soon. Here's a couple of excerpts from an article on the mischief ID subversives are up to in Kansas:

One of the more peculiar comments in the WaPo's article was this from Francisco Ayala, an evolutionary biologist:

Well, of course ID doesn't provide a natural explanation if "natural" is defined as excluding intelligence as a causal factor. Ayala's claim that ID can't be tested is also odd since critics of ID have worked arduously to explain how complex structures like bio-machines could have emerged solely by non-purposive mechanisms. Every time they come up with such an explanation they're attempting to falsify one of the basic claims of ID, the claim that there are no plausible mechanistic pathways for such an evolution.

Moreover, Ayala's hyperventilations about the insults suffered by science, education, and the Constitution are a bit melodramatic. ID is no more an insult to science than is string theory, but it is indeed an offense against the materialistic metaphysics which is presupposed by many scientists. Nor is it an insult to education to expect students to know what some of the shortcomings of Neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory are, and it is certainly not an insult to the document which enshrines free speech in this country to extend that cherished principle to challenges to accepted dogmas that are otherwise insulated from criticism by our public schools.

Here's a question: If, as the defenders of the status quo insist, the evidence for their position is overwhelming, and if ID is such a weak competitor, then what on earth are the defenders of Darwinism afraid of? We would think that they would relish the thought of having ID scrutinized in the classroom so that it can be thoroughly and definitively trounced by the massive might of Darwinian orthodoxy. Yet the establishment types act as if letting a little skepticism in the door would signal the collapse of their beloved theory, so like church censors they protect the fragile flower as though it were a sacred belief that no one dare question. It's as if they fear that in the competition for survival their view would be found to be less fit in the new environment than the more vigorous and attractive interloper. There's a certain justice in that.

Joel Kotkin puts his finger on why immigrants don't riot in the U.S. and why there is so much disaffection among immigrants in Europe. Kotkin's answer in a nutshell is that socialism and other Left-wing policies, especially heavy government regulation of business, have stifled European economies to the point where there simply aren't any jobs available for those who want work no matter how menial.

Here are some excerpts from Kotkin's essay:

We wonder if anyone is listening over at The Nation and other Lefty precincts where the sorts of nostrums that have led Europe to become an economic dead man walking are incessantly promoted in the name of social justice. The young Muslims who are setting France ablaze are evidently not much impressed with socialist versions of economic justice.

We should point out, too, that as compelling as Kotkin's economic analysis is, there's no doubt another reason we don't see in the U.S. the sort of mass vandalism against property that France is suffering. That reason is that most Americans own a firearm, and any crowd of hooligans strutting down a street threatening to burn residents' automobiles is likely to be abruptly brought to account in a most unhappy fashion by the citizens whose cars are about to be torched. The prospect of a chest full of #6 lead shot is a powerful inducement to find less obnoxious ways to air one's grievances.

Of course, taking away this ability to defend one's property is another one of those nutty Left-wing policies whose utter foolishness is being made evident by events in France.

Michael Behe talks about his testimony in the Dover ID trial here. His take on things is considerably at variance with the impression created by some in our local print media:

Perhaps some day people will look back at all this and wonder how anyone could have seriously thought that biological structures were not designed. If so, it will be in large measure due to the efforts of people like Michael Behe.

Andrew Sullivan notes that the KIA rate per month (53) in Iraq is the lowest of any major war we've ever fought. See the data for other wars here.

This is good news, of course, but it doesn't lessen the grief of the families who have lost a loved one fighting against terrorism and oppression in this war. Even so, it puts the media's fixation on the running tally of war dead in some perspective.

The World Tribune.com relays the bleak assessment of American military officers concerning the future of the Republic of South Korea:

If North Korea is allowed to continue to develop its nuclear arsenal South Korea will be faced with three unpleasant options: 1) develop its own nukes, 2) rely on America for protection, or 3) capitulate. 1) is unlikely and 2) looks increasingly doubtful. If South Korea does yield to the North's bullies, Japan will have a much more difficult time resisting Sino-Korean pressure and intimidation. Much depends on South Korea's resolve, and America's. The key is getting nukes out of the North's hands. The world simply cannot allow them to continue to possess these weapaons.

Bill Roggio relates how the coalition forces are handling IEDs in Ramadi:

As the Euphrates rat-lines grow more and more difficult for insurgents to transit from Syria to Baghdad, and as more Iraqi police and military come on-line, the frequency of car bombings and IED blasts will steadily diminish. The question at this point may well be not whether the war is being won, because it certainly appears to be, but whether it will stay won after the Americans withdraw.

This Jonah Goldberg column is worth posting in its entirety:

Indeed, and in their America integrity is subordinated to political success.

It may be hard to imagine outdoing the racism of the KKK, but the Democrats in Maryland where Republican Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele is running for the U.S. Senate are ebulliently doing their best. The Washington Times writes:

Imagine, if you can, that these slurs and insults were levelled against a black candidate by conservatives or Republicans. The outrage would occupy every inch of column space in all the major papers and cable news shows in the country. But the bigots are Democrats, black ones at that, directed at a conservative, so there is relative silence. Racist slurs are acceptable to liberals, evidently, as long as they are made in the service of the proper cause.

Michelle Malkin has much more on the story and the sheer hypocrisy of the left/liberals when it comes to race and racism.

Today is All Saints' Sunday in the Lutheran Church, a day when, among other things, we pause to remember those who have "gone home" during the past year. In his sermon today our pastor remarked that if we understood what our departed loved ones' life was now like we wouldn't wish that they were back with us.

We might add that if we understood what it means to pass from this world of space-time into "divine time" we might be even less inclined to wish them back.

Imagine the "cosmic" time line as a string draped across a sphere. The string represents all of our time past, present, and future. The sphere represents "divine" time which is in contact with every point on the string so that every moment of our past, present and future are in the present of one who resides in divine time.

That would mean that every event that has happened, or will happen, may well be in the present of those who have passed on. It would follow from this that, as difficult as it may be to conceptualize, our own death, which is future for us, is present to the loved one who has already died. Thus the reunion to which we look forward in our cosmic time is already occuring in divine time. We, in some sense, exist both here and there simultaneously.

More than that. If when one dies all of cosmic time becomes their present, then every death which occurs in cosmic time occurs simultaneously with the one who dies. It is for the dying person not as if they were going on ahead of everyone else but rather as if everyone is leaving this life and being born into this new existence together.

For us here on the string of cosmic time the reunion is still future. For those who depart and enter the sphere of divine time, the reunion we anticipate is in their now. For ages Christians have wondered when Christ is going to return for His Church. If cosmic time stands in relation to divine time somewhat as we've sketched it here then the answer may well be that Christ's coming will be at the moment of our death when all of the cosmic future becomes our present. The eschaton will occur at the moment of our passing and it has occurred at the moment of every death which has ever occurred.

Strange stuff, perhaps, but no stranger than what physicists are telling us about the structure of cosmic space/time and the world of the quantum. Perhaps truth, to borrow from a title of a book by Brian Walsh on a different topic altogether, is stranger than it used to be.

The L.A. Times has a very good article by Josh Getlin on Lehigh University biochemist and author of Darwin's Black Box, Michael Behe.

The entire article is both fair and interesting, but here are a couple items worthy of special note:

Some in the media consistently do what Ruse warns against. They seek to portray anyone as a nut who thinks the Intelligent Design people are on to something important. In order to do that successfully, though, they have to mine quotations from laymen and fundamentalist pastors. When people like Behe and Scott Minnich are questioned about ID the media folk are flummoxed. The leaders of the ID movement just don't fit the stereotype of hicks and yokels that the media wants us to believe comprise the movement.

Note the last prepositional phrase. This is precisely why people like the Dover school board members wanted a little balance in the classroom. Those six words are pure religion. There's absolutely no scientific evidence anywhere that life on Earth has no supernatural plan or purpose, nor can there be. Yet statements like this are perfectly acceptable in high school classrooms, but the contrary of such claims is not. The reader will be forgiven if he or she is beginning to think that the battle in Dover is not over the respective roles of science and religion but rather over whether atheism (or agnosticism) will be permitted to remain the official religious view in our kids' classrooms.

That a sequel is on the way is great news. Not only will a follow-up volume enrich Behe, it'll much more importantly, both to him and to us, also enrich the public discourse on a very important issue. We look forward to its release.

This bit of satire was posted at IMAO.

We concur. Show your support for the Democrats. Bring them home.

Check The Fourth Rail for a roundup of news on military operations in Iraq. Among the reports was news of a single airstrike on a safehouse at which there was a meeting of a number of leaders of al Qaida in Iraq. The strike killed five of them. The dead are named and their roles are described at the link. The coalition must be getting very good intelligence to be able to hit a meeting like this.

Also in the post was this account of the fate of several Libyan terrorists who came to Iraq to be martyred for Allah:

Also noteworthy is this:

As long as the insurgents had only to worry about fighting Americans they could always hope that we would tire of the conflict and eventually leave. Their thinking probably was that all they had to do was outlast us and Iraq would be theirs. The emergence of effective Iraqi military and police, however, has changed the picture dramatically. Now the insurgents are in a race to get us out before the Iraqis become so proficient that they can no longer see a light at the end of the tunnel. As we have said before, Bush's policy may be too slow, and it may yet fail, but to proclaim that it actually is failing, as many of his critics do, is to mistake wishes for evidence.

The next time some MoveOn.org type praises the enemy in Iraq as "freedom fighters", as Cindy Sheehan and others have done, they might be directed to this post by Bill Roggio.

The people described in Roggio's piece are not freedom fighters, they're savages, and anyone who attempts to ennoble them by referring to them otherwise is morally complicit in their despicable crimes.

If the al Qaida "freedom fighters" ever prevailed and imposed their Islamist tyranny on the people of Iraq would the Left still praise them? As long as they were still at war with the West, I'm afraid they would. Some on the Left will praise anyone, no matter how evil, who is seeking to kill Americans and destroy America. It's been that way ever since 1917.

I suppose it's not fair of us to accuse the Democrats of being the party of negativity. It's not, after all, as if they don't support anything. It's not that they lack convictions or a positive plan for America. It's just that they don't want voters to know what it is. Here's a partial list:

Big government, minority entitlements, higher taxes, socialized medicine, gun control, welfare, criminal rights, partial birth abortion, less oil and higher costs for fuel, a weaker military, gay marriage, and abandoning Iraq.

It's no wonder they prefer to just attack Bush rather than talk about what they have planned for America.

Francis Fukyama uses the current riots in France as a springboard for comments on the state of Muslim discontent in Europe in general. Here are some excerpts from his essay:

Fukyama's article suggests rather obliquely that in order to avoid future ethnic conflagrations either the Europeans must abandon their national distinctives and allow the Muslims to form semi-autonomous Islamic enclaves or the Muslim immigrant communities must abandon their Islamic distinctives and dissolve into the larger European culture.

Fukyama doesn't say this but the former seems a lot more likely than the latter. Muslims have no wish to assimilate into the larger culture. Their goal is to turn Europe, through immigration, into North Africa. The riots are ostensibly the result of disaffected Arabs feeling like they're second class citizens, but that feeling is a natural consequence of rejecting the culture of the land in which they find themselves. If they truly do want to be accepted by the French, Dutch, and German people they have to act as if they wish to belong. As long as they keep themselves culturally isolated they have no one to blame for their alienation but themselves.

The problem is that the harder Europe tries to accommodate Muslim sensibilities the more untenable Muslim demands will become and the more fractious will be the relationships between ethnic Europeans and the Islamic immigrants in their midst. The only satisfactory long term solution is assimilation, and it's very doubtful that that will happen. Unless it does, however, it seems almost inevitable that there will be, before too many years have passed, a low grade civil war in at least a couple of European countries.

Among the long list of faults the critics of the President find in him are two that seem especially odd. On the one hand, Bush is periodically rebuked for never acknowledging that he's made a mistake, and, on the other, he has been castigated for having dumped Harriet Miers and capitulated to his conservative base in the appointment of Sam Alito.

That he doesn't explicitly admit to having made a mistake is nothing other than prudent. The Democrats who urge him to such confessions do not do so because they wish to offer him consolation and forgiveness. They obviously want to hang the admission around his neck like a millstone and they resent the fact that Bush denies them this little pleasure.

They are wrong, however, to think he doesn't recognize a mistake when he's made one, and the Miers' withdrawal is an example. If it's true that the administration orchestrated her gracious exit, then it is proof that they do indeed recognize their errors and hasten to correct them. Why this should earn them criticism from opponents who demand that the Bushies admit their missteps is unclear.

In any event, they also attack Mr. Bush for recovering from his initial lapse of judgment by doing exactly what he promised his voters he would do during the campaign - pick Supreme Court Justices in the mold of Scalia and Thomas. After stumbling with Miers, Bush recovered his stride, kept his promise, and was quickly blasted for caving to the radical right, as if the Alito nomination were an unexpected surprise, hastily contrived to appease The Weekly Standard and National Review Online, and not at all what the President has been promising to do all along.

We're told by David Broder and others that this nomination arises from the president's weakness rather than his strength. What nonsense.

Sam Alito is precisely the sort of justice President Bush promised us he'd appoint. If he hadn't wanted to reward Harriet Miers for her faithfulness, Alito would probably have been nominated in her stead. To aver that the President was grudgingly forced to go with Alito in order to placate the right-wingers is to once again misunderestimate the man in the Oval Office.

The Democrats, it may be concluded, view any politician who keeps his word as one operating from a position of manifest weakness.

Mike Gene at Telic Thoughts posts the following set of quotes:

The Darwinians all need to turn to the same page in their hymnals. Evolution is not necessarily incompatible with theistic belief, but not many Darwinians seem interested in stressing the point.

Some, like Provine, Dennett, and Dawkins, adamantly insist that a true Darwinian must be an atheist. We wonder how long it will be before the ACLU begins suing schools for teaching Darwinian versions of evolution in science classes. It is, after all, a "Trojan Horse" for smuggling atheism into schools, and it certainly seems obvious from quotes like the above that there's a religious, or anti-religious, motivation for teaching it.

Hadley Arkes does a masterful job in the Claremont Review of Books of taking apart Alan Dershowitz's argument in his Rights From Wrongs: A Secular Theory of the Origin of Rights. Dershowitz sets out in this book to affirm human rights while denying any objective moral truths and any role for God in the establishment of those rights. He has set for himself an extraordinarily difficult task and Arkes skillfully skewers the attempt. He writes:

From these inauspicious premises Dershowitz attempts to construct his view of rights, but, in Arkes' telling, it is a dismal failure, as it must be. If there is no God then we are solely the product of blind nature shaping us for the survival of our species. It's not possible to derive a right from an impersonal provenience.

The man who protests that "You have no right" is talking nonsense. In a world without God or objective moral strictures, each of us has whatever rights we wish to have. If we have the power to do what we want, if we can do what we will and get away with it, there is nothing to say that we should not. There can be no moral inhibition against doing what we want if there are, as Dershowitz says, no moral truths. Thus, though Dershowitz blanches at the thought, neither the holocaust nor slavery can be judged to be intrinsically wrong.

In the secular stew pot in which he cooks his vision of human rights, the unfortunate truth is that might makes right. Men have the right to do whatever they have the power to do, and that's the end of the matter.

The only way to avoid this conclusion is to agree with John Locke who wrote in his Second Treatise on Government that human rights derive from our status as children of God. No man has a right to harm that which belongs to the Creator. Take God away, however, as Dershowitz does, and the whole notion of human rights is no more than a pile of dust in a wind storm. It simply blows away. Arkes' essay provides the wind.

Thanks to PowerLine.com for the tip.

A newly released CBS Poll shows President Bush's approval rating at an all-time low of 35%. What the reader might not realize is that the poll was "weighted" so that only 23.8% of the respondents to the poll were Republicans. This is about half of the number of Republicans in the general population. When the libs do a poll they make sure they get the results they want.

Meanwhile, the Rasmussen poll shows Bush at 43%.

Thanks to RealClearPolitics for the links.

John Hinderaker, a lawyer who writes for PowerLine.com, takes a look at Judge Alito's decision in the strip-search case (Doe v. Groody) that seems to have so offended liberals. As is usual in matters where liberals are outraged there's much less to it than we'll be hearing in the anti-Alito television ads which will soon assail us. Alito's dissent in this case seems to show eminent good sense, which is bound to get him in trouble with the Left to whom good sense is an alien concept.

Hinderaker writes:

What we'll see on the ads, though, will be hysterical claims that Alito wants to strip search your daughters. It's inevitable. The only thing more pathetic than the ads that the Left'll churn out are the people who'll find them persuasive.

First Howard Dean suggests that the White House is playing "Hide the Salami" with Harriet Miers' qualifications and now CBS' John Roberts delivers himself of this bit of smuttiness:

No, Mr. Roberts. What you meant is irrelevant. What you said was crude and degrading, not merely "a little too casual." What is it with you guys on the Left? Haven't you ever heard of class?

The irony here is that the media made a big deal about a private vulgarism directed at Senator Leahy by Vice President Cheney a year or so ago, but they have said nothing about Dean's gross breach of taste on national television, and they're certainly not going to criticize one of their own for his tastelessly salacious metaphor in a public forum.

W. Thomas Smith has an article at National Review Online which should be required reading for anyone who has an opinion on the American effort in Iraq. He points out that all the multitude of positive developments occuring in that country are being ignored by our media so that they can emphasize the difficulties and bloodshed.

The American media seems interested in reporting just one thing: casualties and mayhem. Everything else is off their radar screen because to report it would be to inform the American people that are efforts there are largely successful. It's so irresponsible that it should cost those responsible their jobs, but, unfortunately, it will likely continue as long as Democrats can't be given credit for any success we experience. If the day comes when it looks as though our achievement in Iraq is due to the efforts of a Democratic successor to President Bush, the tone and coverage of the media will spin 180 degrees, Iraq will be touted as a twenty first century Marshall Plan engineered by a latter-day Harry Truman, and the media will transform themselves into the biggest cheerleaders of American involvement in the Middle East.

It's all pretty dishonest and contemptible, but dishonest reporting is the price we have to be willing to pay for a free press.

Rolling Stone has excerpts of an interview Jann Wenner did with Bono. In the course of a ten hour discussion at Bono's vacation house on a Mexican beach they got around to talking about his religious views. Bono fans will find the whole article interesting, but his Christian fans will perhaps find the discussion of religion of most interest:

What role did religion play in your childhood?

Did you feel religious when you went to church?

Who is God to you at that point in your life?

Your early songs are about being confused, about trying to find spirituality at an age when most anybody else your age would be writing about girls and trouble.

You skipped "I Want to Hold Your Hand," and you went right . . .

You were living with his family?

So is that why you were writing such serious songs when you're nineteen?

You never saw rock & roll -- the so-called devil's music -- as incompatible with religion?

Soon after starting the band you joined a Bible-study group -- you and Larry and Edge -- called the Shalom. What brought that on?

How did you end up leaving that?

And forgot to come back?

What draws you so deeply to Martin Luther King?

What is your religious belief today? What is your concept of God?

How does it make sense?

Do you pray or have any religious practices?

How big an influence is the Bible on your songwriting? How much do you draw on its imagery, its ideas?

As a belief, or as a literary thing?

You're saying it's a living thing?

What do you think of the evangelical movement that we see in the United States now?

Teddy Kennedy? Teddy Kennedy occupies the moral high ground? Geesh. Other than that baffling remark it's an interesting interview.

Thanks to Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost for the tip.

This article in the Christian Science Monitor gives us a peek at what's happening in the Afghanistan front of the GWOT. The article gives two accounts of American engagements against the Taliban - this is the first:

Go to the link for a desription of the second operation involving our forces.