I’m getting old, so I get up early. And I’m currently living in California (“the fiery furnace”), featuring the Mediterranean style of climate, where nights are cool, mornings are pleasant, and afternoons are hot as hell. The Bay area has about the same population as New York City, and prime time parking is a problem. So, all in all, I like to run as many errands as possible first thing in the morning.

When I roll down the hill onto El Camino Real, the local main drag (whose name reflects the fact that the first settlers of significant portions of today’s United States did not, in fact, arrive via the Mayflower) around 6:30 AM Pacific Time, there is nobody up and about, but my elderly self, and the Mexican guys who work at the car wash, who can be seen crossing over to McD’s to get their modest breakfasts, before starting a long day of car polishing and cleaning.

I get my car washed and waxed at the place they work. It costs $30 for the whole treatment, and it takes time, but we Anglos fill our own gas tanks, give the keys to Mexican attendant, then sit comfortably at umbrella-ed cafe tables sipping lattes, and enjoying balmy Pacific breezes, while large crews of Mexican workers clean, wax, and polish our cars to perfection.

Nobody but desperate, sincere, and strongly motivated immigrants is ever going to do that kind of unpleasant work at low enough wages to make the service possible. Yeah, you might get Americans to do it for $100 an hour, but nobody is going to pay for multi-hundred dollar car washes.

Close the borders, throw them all out, and we’ll all be washing our own cars. Just as we’ll all be cleaning our own houses, not eating out (after restaurants with $100 an hour dishwashers and busboys) become prohibitively expensive and close, and renting small apartments (since you can’t get cheap construction labor, and house prices have sky-rocketed out of reach). Food will be kind of pricey too, once we have to pay the kind of money it takes to motivate the native-born Great Unwashed to do anything. Who do you think picks the lettuce? Who do you think works in the slaughterhouses?

At the bottom of the foothill of the Santa Cruz Mountains I currently reside upon, there is a strip mall with an inexpensive restaurant, where I sometimes drop in for a burger and a pitcher of beer. Several recent weekend evenings (when my wife was out of town on business), I drove down there for dinner, and on Friday and Saturday nights at 7 and 8 o’clock, I saw Mexican workmen hammering and sawing away, well after normal working hours on weekend evenings, fixing up a storefront for a new restaurant. When I see men working hard at 7 and 8 o’clock at night, pulling double shifts on weekend evenings, I am impressed at the character of those men. You won’t find many cars in the nearby parking lots of Oracle or Electronic Arts (where the work produces a lot less perspiration and a lot higher pay) at equivalent hours.

Most illegal aliens come here and work hard. Most of them try to do a decent job, which is more than you can say for lots of people native born. They pay taxes, and they are Roman Catholics with strong family values. When I look at those illegal alien Mexican workers, I see the kind of people who work for a living, who are sooner or later going to vote Republican.

News is slow this week, so some clever journalist is breaking some old information as news, and the same story is bouncing all over the MSM echo chamber. In reality, the Paleoene-Eocene Thermal Maximum was detected by James Kennett and Lowell Stott as early as 1990.

AP’s story:

Scientists have found what might have been the ideal ancient vacation hotspot with a 74-degree Fahrenheit average temperature, alligator ancestors and palm trees. It’s smack in the middle of the Arctic.

First-of-its-kind core samples dug up from deep beneath the Arctic Ocean floor show that 55 million years ago an area near the North Pole was practically a subtropical paradise, three new studies show.

The scientists say their findings are a glimpse backward into a much warmer-than-thought polar region heated by run-amok greenhouse gases that came about naturally.

Mesonyx probably drove too many SUVs.

Sigmund, Carl and Alfred gets fed up, and tells it like it is.

The time has come once more for SC&A to unload.

We don’t care who we insult or who takes offense. Unlike the other brilliant therapists who regularly blog, we are dead and thus don’t give a rat’s ass about what you think. Further, we are smarter than you, better looking than you and the object of desire of fabulous and good looking women. For you whiny,metro-sexual and sensitive bastards out there, we concede you look very nice in your pink shirt, yellow paisley tie and dress flip-flops with tassels

Onwards.

Let’s get real about immigration. The same cheap ass bigotry that is on display today in much of the right wing blogosphere, predates you. That’s right- your high minded bigotry, couched as ‘concern,’ is nothing new.

When the Irish Catholics came off the boat in New York, escaping from famine and certain death, high minded Americans beat the crap out of them because the freakin’ Catholic papist evil bastards were going to ruin the country.

When the Italians and the Jews got off the boat in New York, there were those who met them at the docks and welcomed them with baseball bats- literally. Why? Because the damn Jews and more papist evil bastards Italians were going to ruin America. Later migrations of other ethnic groups were met with similar experiences. If the welcome in New York wasn’t enough, that human flotsam that boarded trains to middle America had it even worse. There was no ‘neighborhood,’ there was not much of an immigrant community to find refuge. Immigrants to these shores faced hatred and bigotry that was unimaginable. Some of this fine and caring ‘immigrant aid societies’ sold children into servitude in theMidwest (Norman Rockwell never got around to painting pictures of Italian and Irish kids being beaten and worked like farm animals), to never again see their parents. There are countless, similar stories, but they are irrelevant. The only saving grace this country had is the truth that Europeans were even crueler and in other parts of the world, the kafir was treated even worse.

Incredibly, immigrants survived despite the bigotry of many of this country’s citizens. Now, pay attention lefties and stop touching yourselves. Your as racist and bigoted as any on the left. We’ll get to your sorry and miserable asses later. As for the Hispanics reading this, stick around- you too, are in need of a reality check.

Here’s the deal- Hispanic immigrants aren’t going to ruin America. You know why? Because they come here as ‘wretched refuse.’ They have no other place to go. They see the buffet and smorgasbord of possibilities and are willing to work for their share. They have crossed mountains and deserts because they have a dream- they are not broken. That has always been the American way.

Hat tip to Dympha.

AJStrata is appalled (as am I) by the positions being taken by some of the most respected conservative bloggers, and concludes that the conflict within conservatism may split the movement.

I feel like politics in this country has entered the twilight zone. People I respected for brilliant logic and insight and top notch debate have become emotional, simplistically surreal in their proposals. The level of the discussion has dropped way down into fevered accusations in some places and pure denial in others…

Most people in this country are not crying for retribution against people who have worked to make a living and raise a family. The folks who started with “deport the criminals”, and who moved on to “make the criminals felons”, and who have since moved on to “starve them out by making it impossible to get a job”, have rightfully been labled extremists. The anti-reasonable-solutions crowd is motivated by emotion, some strange combination of a need for retribution and fear of a future they cannot control…

The extremists who think any sign of compassion (i.e., any deviation from humiliating people working without the proper papers) is ‘amnesty’ are a small minority. The American People are a smart, caring, reasonable people who have led the world in many areas solving many problems. When I see numbers like these in polls where emotion is not a driver (the Dubai Ports World issue was the one exception in many, many years) I see the wisdom of a great nation. To some they see only the ignorant masses who are simply mistaken because the have not seen the light.

Well, from here it is not hard to see what happens. The 25% who cannot stomach a comprohensive bill will destroy the governing coalition of conservatism. In an 80-20 world you are never going to get what you want. The anger in this minority and being rejected is hot and I doubt these people will ever be able to deal with losing. The fact they have been forced to say democracy should not lead on this issue because there is not majority in the Republican caucus (which is being whipped by special iinterest money, not the national interest) shows the vacuousness of their position. The shifting goal posts from mass deportations to starving them out of jobs indicates these people know, deep down they are losing this debate. They do not have the President or the people on their side. But my feeling is they have invested too much emotion to come back from the brink. Somehow Durbin was able to survive is 80-20 moment. The conservative coalition will not survive this I fear. But if that is the price we pay to retain our humanity and compassion, then that is the price we pay. So be it.

I’d say it goes beyond humanity and compassion. Conservatism is all about a preference for freedom and spontaneous order, for allowing the voluntary choices made by individuals interacting freely to proceed wthout coercive interference.

Illegal aliens are here because we need inexpensive low-skilled workers and want to employ them. They are illegal because our immigration policies and regulations are unresponsive to that reality. This unfortunate situation has gone on as it has for so long because denial and hypocrisy are uncontroversial and politically cost-free.

We ought to enforce the laws we have, but we shouldn’t have laws we really do not want to enforce. I’ve heard a lot of shrieking recently about unusually high gasoline prices. What do you suppose would happen to food prices, housing prices, service industry prices, if there were no Latin American immigrants here willing to do the hardest and most unattractive jobs at the lowest wages?

AJStrata is perfectly correct. We are not going to create an immigration Gestapo to perform door-to-door searches. We are not going to uproot and deport families who have been living here for years. It won’t happen. The American people will never stand for it.

Andy Garcia’s independent film The Lost City officially opened April 28th, but is only gradually beginning to show up on the screens of suburban art theatres.

Made with a budget of only ten million dollars, TLC was a personal labor of love begun by Garcia more than twenty years ago, in 1983, which arose from an idea of portraying pre-Castro Havana as a kind of Casablanca.

The protagonist (played by Garcia himself), “Fico” Fellove, is a member of the younger generation of an upper-class Cuban family. His father, Don Federico Fellove, is a humanist professor at Havana University. His uncle, Donoso Fellove, manages the family tobacco plantation and produces cigars. Fico is an apolitical man-about-town, content to preside amiably over his popular nightclub, El Tropico, passionate only about the music and dance of his native Cuba.

Fico admires Aurora (played by Spanish supermodel Inés Sastre), the beautiful wife of Luis, his liberal idealist brother (who is actively engaged in a conspiracy of patriots to topple the corrupt dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista), and serves as her friend and confidante. But family is the most important thing to Fico, and he is devoted to both his brothers, even to Ricardo, the self-righteous and fanatical radical leftist.

The Fellove family’s pleasant way of life is soon, of course, destroyed by Revolution. TLC combines the story of the family’s unhappy fate with a lyrical portrait of a Lost City, a lost country, a lost way of life. Garcia delivers both a remarkable performance and a very moving film.
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History of the project.

The Dutch will not protect their own members of parliament from Islamic threats these days, but they are still breaking new ground by legalizing group, as well as homosexal, marriages. But some citizens of the Netherlands think sexual latitudinarianism has not gone far enough. Reuters is reporting that Dutch pedophiles have formed a new political party with an ambitious agenda.

Dutch pedophiles are launching a political party to push for a cut in the legal age for sexual relations to 12 from 16 and the legalization of child pornography and sex with animals.

The Charity, Freedom and Diversity (NVD) party said on its Web site it would be officially registered Wednesday, proclaiming: “We are going to shake The Hague awake!”

The party said it wanted to cut the legal age for sexual relations to 12 and eventually scrap the limit altogether.

“A ban just makes children curious,” Ad van den Berg, one of the party’s founders, told the Algemeen Dagblad (AD) newspaper.

The party said private possession of child pornography should be allowed although it favors banning the trade of such materials. The broadcast of pornography should be allowed on daytime television, with only violent pornography limited to the late evening, according to the party.

Toddlers should be given sex education and youths aged 16 and up should be allowed to appear in pornographic films and prostitute themselves. Sex with animals should be allowed although abuse of animals should remain illegal, the NVD said.

The party also said everybody should be allowed to go naked in public.

The government of Zimbabwe cannot afford to print enough paper currency to meet the needs of its runaway inflation.

Official sources said the recent 150 percent pay rise for soldiers, teachers, policemen and nurses had put a strain on money supply.

Reserve Bank officials told IRIN that plans to print about Zim$60 trillion (about US$592.9 million) were briefly delayed after the government failed to secure foreign currency to buy ink and special paper for printing money.

Inflation has shot to 1,042 percent and is still climbing as the economic meltdown continues, putting Zimbabwe’s rapidly dwindling working class in an ever more precarious position.

Ethnic tension marked by massive protests by members of the Azeri Turkish minority have broken out in Iran over the publication of a cartoon. The BBC reports:

Azeris said the cartoon, which was published earlier this month, compared them to cockroaches.

Reports from the cities of Ardebil, Naqadeh and Meshkin Shahr say Iranian security forces fired on demonstrators, killing at least five people.

Dozens of others were injured and hundreds arrested.

The cartoon was published in a state-owned newspaper.

It showed a succession of people attempting to talk to a cockroach in Persian.

Each time, the insect responded by saying, in Azeri: “What do you mean?”

Azeris are the largest ethnic minority in Iran, and the cartoon caused outrage among those who believed it suggested that all Azeris were stupid.

Thousands of people took to the streets in protest and, shortly afterwards, the newspaper was shut down and its editor arrested.

But that did not quell the anger. In the latest protests on Saturday, government buildings were targeted, and a number of banks and television stations burnt down.

The Azeri minority, resident largely in Northwestern Iran, make up more than 25% of the population of Iran, and are regarded as srong supporters of the fundamentalist Isaic regime. One Iranian blogger in Los Angeles views the fundamentalist regime as pursuing a policy of Turkification, and illustrates the relevant physical ethnic differences.

Chuck at YARGB is providing coverage, and has posted a very helpful ethnic map of Iran.

Gateway Pundit is collecting coverage of the rioting.

A retirement community reports.

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Hat tip to MeaninglessHotAir.

William G. Zincavage (25 Apr 1914 -2 Nov 1997)
USMCR 4 Sep 1942 – 16 Dec 1945.

Corporal, Third Marine Division, Special Troops

First Marine Amphibious Corps – Solomon Islands Consolidation, New Georgia Group Operation, 1943
Third Marine Amphibious Corps – Marianas Operation, 1944
Fifth Marine Amphibious Corps – Iwo Jima Operation, 1945

Today’s Washington Post has a surprisingly sympathetic article on some Global Warming skeptics.
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Hat tip to Reid Detchon.

Click here and move cursor.

Slowtrain reprints a must-read article which I had not previously seen.

The apparent inability of the West to understand the motivation of Islamic extremism and terrorism, the lack of will, and the absence of any coherent and effective idea for dealing with the intrinsic problem of the diametrical nature of Islam to the Western ideals, is baffling. What is even more troubling is the doctrine of appeasement (excuses on behalf of Islam by western leaders) that is emerging in response to Islamic terrorist attacks, threats, and apparent intimidation of the West, whereby European leaders have elected to appease Muslims rather than engage them in honest and constructive dialog to transform the fundamental ideology that breeds hatred and inspires unspeakable acts of cruelty. This response is eerily reminiscent of the tepid response to the rise of Nazism, not too long ago.

To most Islamic leaders, perhaps, many Muslims, Islam is still at war with the Christian Europe, “crusaders”, as the Islamic extremists and terrorists like to portray the West. Hence, efforts by the West to establish democracy in the Middle East are viewed as Christians invading Islam. To the West, this is a paradox, but to many Muslims, this is clearly an attack on Islam. After all, democracy being another ideology is invariably in competition with Islam. Moreover, democracy originated in the West, the land of the “crusaders”, all the more reason for jihad, hence, the mind bugling and most gruesome killing of innocent Iraqis by Islamic extremists and terrorists to stop democracy from taking root.

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Hat tip to PJM.

A story in the Observer reveals that Clint Eastwood has been directing two Iwo Jima films, both to be released later this year.

(Its author, Justin McCurry, is a seriously annoying pommy twit who applies a leftwing slant to every detail of the news story.)

The first film will be based on James Bradley’s Flags of Our Fathers, a history of the battle focused on the famous Marines’ flag-raisings on Mount Suribachi, one of which was captured in the famous photograph by Joe Rosenthal.

The second film, focusing on the Japanese point of view, will be titled Red Sun, Black Sand.

Japanese Iwo Jima veterans who met Eastwood say they are confident the films will honour their fallen comrades. ‘I asked him to make a human drama, not a war film,’ said 83-year-old Kiyoshi Endo, of the Japanese Iwo Jima Veterans’ Association. ‘I wanted him to show how the soldiers felt when they were fighting and, having read the script, I think he has done that. Who won or lost is not the point.’

The Japanese Iwo Jima Veterans’ Association must be a pretty small group.

Digby admires a country western song. He thinks that “Gretchen Wilson and Merle Haggard’s song “Politically Uncorrect” perfectly captures the sense of exceptionalism and specialness of southern culture.”

I’m for the low man on the totem pole
And I’m for the underdog God bless his soul
And I’m for the guys still pulling third shift
And the single mom raisin’ her kids
I’m for the preachers who stay on their knees
And I’m for the sinner who finally believes
And I’m for the farmer with dirt on his hands
And the soldiers who fight for this land

Chorus:

And I’m for the Bible and I’m for the flag
And I’m for the working man, me and ol’ hag
I’m just one of many
Who can’t get no respect
Politically uncorrect

(Merle Haggard)
I guess my opinion is all out of style

(Gretchen Wilson)
Aw, but don’t get me started cause I can get riled
And I’ll make a fight for the forefathers plan

(Merle Haggard)
And the world already knows where I stand

Repeat Chorus

(Merle Haggard)
Nothing wrong with the Bible, nothing wrong with the flag

(Gretchen Wilson)
Nothing wrong with the working man me & ol’ hag
We’re just some of many who can’t get no respect
Politically uncorrect

And Digby wishes his own camp enjoyed an equivalently strong cultural identity:

The non-southern Party appears to exist mainly as a repository of opposition to conservative policies. Is that true?

Perhaps the big question is this: If you could write a country song about Blue State identity, what would the lyrics say?

That sounds like an invitation, doesn’t it?

Walter Olson (at Overlawyered) links Steve Bodio on simply astonishing new forms of pet ownership regulation adopted, at the behest of a sinister new alliance of NIMBY liberals and Animal Rights activist groups.

In the case of Albuquerque, New Mexico, Steve Bodio quotes the following membership alert received from a dog group he belongs to:

City Councilor Sally Mayer is again proposing sweeping changes that would drastically limit fanciers’ ability to breed and own dogs, while doing little to address the city’s problems with irresponsible ownership. The proposal is currently set for a vote at the May 1st city council meeting. Fanciers are encouraged to attend the meeting, which will be held in the Council Chambers on the basement level of the Albuquerque/Bernalillo County Government Center building at One Civic Plaza NW, Albuquerque. The meeting beings at 5pm.

“The proposal, known as the HEART ordinance (Humane and Ethical Animal Regulations and Treatment), contains draconian regulations, oppressive fees, and allows the government unfettered access to animal owner’s homes and personal information. Worse, the measure was put forth based on “findings” that were established without any studies being conducted and without any input from responsible dog owners and breeders.

“The measure’s restrictive provisions include:

• An annual $150 permit for each unaltered dog or cat over six months old.

• A $150 litter permit, which expires six months after the date of issue. Breeders would be limited to four litters per year.

• A limit of four dogs and two cats per household (or six cats) unless residents purchase a $50 multiple companion animal site permit.

• Allows one adjoining property owner to petition for the revocation of a multiple companion animal site permit. (I will come back to this one)

• Prohibits anyone with an intact animal permit from having a multiple companion animal site permit. [WHAT DOES THIS MEAN??]

• Requirements that owners microchip or tattoo their dogs and cats.

• Prohibiting crating of dogs outdoors and tethering for more than 1 hour per day.

• Mandates owners provide “environmental enrichment” defined as “toys and other safe products.that will stimulate mental, physical and grooming activities.”

• Requires any animal that is picked up by animal control to be spayed/neutered, even if the owner has an intact animal permit and immediately reclaims the animal.

“In applying for any permit, dog owners would be forced to comply with a long list of provisions, including submitting to property and record-keeping inspections.

“The proposal would also put severe restrictions on animal service businesses such as dog groomers and doggie daycares. Of interest to all dog owners, these businesses would be required to provide a list of all their clients and their contact information to the city. Generally the government must get a subpoena from a judge for client lists and company records.

“It is critical that local fanciers immediately contact Albuquerque’s city officials and convey their strong opposition to this ordinance. Area purebred dog owners, including members of the Rio Grande Kennel Club, are working to oppose the ordinance and to support fair and reasonable animal control legislation that does not penalize responsible owners and breeders. However, more help is urgently needed!

“What You Can Do:
AKC encourages dog owners to contact their city council member and express your opposition. To find out who represents you on the Albuquerque City Council tp://www.cabq.gov/council/ccmaps.html. It is extremely important that council members hear from their constituents!

“For more information, contact:

Patte Klecan
Rio Grande Kennel Club”

IT PASSED.

As Steve reports in the same posting, he had already run into the same thing in Bozeman, Montana.

And Los Angeles, he also reports in another posting, has passed a draconian dog ordinance:

Los Angeles County has passed an ordinance that requires all dogs to be sterilized and microchipped, effective June 3, 2006. It applies only to those dogs kept in unincorporated areas, but cities such as Los Angeles are being urged to enact similar requirements. Should the cities follow suit, 10 million people will be soon be so regulated, more than the population in forty-four states. Dogs may be exempt from this requirement if they are registered with an approved registry and are either titled, entered in an approved competition annually, or owned by an individual belonging to a dog club with enforced breeding restrictions. Animal rightists are currently fighting to further tighten these exemptions’ details. Required intact licenses for breedable dogs cost $60 per year; altered ones cost $20. Litters must be reported to the county, as must every puppy buyer’s identity. Additional requirements and penalties of this sterilize and track program may be found at http://animalcontrol.co.la.ca.us/html/Main1.htm. LA County says it’s hiring additional animal control officers to go door to door to enforce this anti-breeder ordinance.

And Chicago is proposing the same thing, says the Sun-Times:

Owners of Chicago’s estimated 600,000 dogs would be required to microchip their pets, limit tethering, pay stiff fines for letting them roam free and choose between neutering and sharply higher license fees, under a sweeping crackdown proposed by an influential alderman.

Grooming, boarding and doggie day-care facilities would be licensed and subject to strict operating standards under the legislative package championed by License Committee Chairman Eugene Schulter (47th).

A lifelong dog lover whose deceased Irish terriers Kerry and Conner were “part of the family,” Schulter said he’s driven by a desire to “create a safer and better environment” for Chicago’s dogs.

This alliance between the Aninal Rights extremist groups and conventional liberal politicians to microchip, sterilize and regulate out of existence the family dog is cause for real alarm. What if, for reasons of your own, you wanted to breed your mixed breed animal? What if you raise dogs, as Steve Bodio does, from an exotic foreign breed, not yet recognized by the AKC?

Steve Bodio identified one Sportsman’s Group trying to fight them on this: the Sportsmen’s and Animal Owners’ Voting Alliance.

John J. Miller, in National Review, offers a list of the 50 greatest conservative rock songs.

No Zappa? (There’s a reason they put up statues of him in Vilnius and Prague.) No Zevon? (Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner will be annoyed.) No Randy Newman? (Not even Political Science?) This list could be much improved.
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Hat tip to Brice Peyre.

Jewish children with teacher, 1911

The Library of Congress is exhibiting the photography of Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944). These remarkable images were made as magic lanterns slides, and were displayed in color using a set of red, green, blue filters. The LOC has been able to produce new digital colored images by a process they are calling digichromatography, and their results are very impressive.
————————————Hat tip to Chuck.

SandRat on Free Republic has posted the following alleged item of military correspondence. I suspect that this is just a joke, but the slogans are good.

Subject: U.S. Navy Directive 16134

The following directive was issued by the commanding officer of a naval installation somewhere in the Middle East, and it was obviously directed at the Marines.

To: All Commands
Subject: Inappropriate T-Shirts
Ref: ComMidEastFor Inst 16134//24 K

All commanders promulgate upon receipt.

The following T-shirts are no longer to be worn on or off base by any military or civilian personnel serving in the Middle East:

“Eat Pork Or Die” [both English and Arabic versions]

“Shrine Busters” [Various. Show burning minarets or bomb/artillery shells impacting Islamic shrines. Some with unit logos.]

“Napalm, Sticks Like Crazy” [Both English and Arabic versions]

“Goat – it isn’t just for breakfast any more.” [Both English and Arabic versions]

“The road to Paradise begins with me.” [Mostly Arabic versions but some in English. Some show sniper scope cross-hairs]

“Guns don’t kill people. I kill people.” [Both Arabic and English versions]

“Pork. The other white meat.” [Arabic version]

“Infidel” [English, Arabic and other coalition force languages.]

The above T-shirts are to be removed from Post Exchanges upon receipt of this directive.

The following signs are to be removed upon receipt of this message:

“Islamic Religious Services Will Be Held at the Firing Range At 0800 Daily.”

“Do we really need ‘smart bombs’ to drop on these dumb bastards?”

All commands are instructed to implement sensitivity training upon receipt.

President Bush intervened in the conflict between the Justice Department and Congress, ordering the material taken from Rep. William Jefferson’s office sealed for 45 days, obviously in order to provide time for judicial review.

The president deserves commendation for acting responsibly on the occasion of a conflict in the Constitutional balance between federal branches. I think myself that a number of usually extremely perspicacious commentators on the Right went off half-cocked on this one.

Readers will recall that the FBI searched Rep. Jefferson’s office on Saturday and Sunday, and that the US Constitution, Article 1, Section 6, says:

The Senators and Representatives shall receive a compensation for their services, to be ascertained by law, and paid out of the treasury of the United States. They shall in all cases, except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any speech or debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other place.

——————
In evaluating these kinds of issue, I think that a good starting point is always Justice Joseph Story (Y 1798)’s Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833).

On Article 1, Section 6, Justice Story decidedly notes the importance of legislative immunity :

§ 856. The next part of the clause regards the privilege of the members from arrest, except for crimes, during their attendance at the sessions of congress, and their going to, and returning from them. This privilege is conceded by law to the humblest suitor and witness in a court of justice; and it would be strange, indeed, if it were denied to the highest functionaries of the state in the discharge of their public duties. It belongs to congress in common with all other legislative bodies, which exist, or have existed in America, since its first settlement, under every variety of government; and it has immemorially constituted a privilege of both houses of the British parliament.

It seems absolutely indispensable for the just exercise of the legislative power in every nation, purporting to possess a free constitution of government; and it cannot be surrendered without endangering the public liberties, as well as the private independence of the members.

§ 857. This privilege from arrest, privileges them of course against all process, the disobedience to which is punishable by attachment of the person, such as a subpoena ad respondendum, aut testificandum, or a summons to serve on a jury; and (as has been justly observed) with reason, because a member has superior duties to perform in another place. When a representative is withdrawn from his seat by a summons, the people, whom he represents, lose their voice in debate and vote, as they do in his voluntary absence.

The legislative immunity in Britain, Story notes, was confined to intervals only modestly longer than the actual sessions of Parliament.

§ 858. The privilege of the peers of the British parliament to be free from arrest, in civil cases, is for ever sacred and inviolable. For other purposes, (as for common process,) it seems, that their privilege did not extend, but from the teste of the summons to parliament, and for twenty days before and after the session. But that period has now, as to all common process but arrest, been taken away by statute.

The privilege of the members of the house of commons from arrest is for forty days after every prorogation, and for forty days before the next appointed meeting, which in effect is as long, as the parliament lasts, it seldom being prorogued for more than four score days, at a time.

In case of a dissolution of parliament, it does not appear, that the privilege is confined to any precise time; the rule being, that the party is entitled to it for a convenient time, redeundo.

In today’s United States, when it ordinarily takes a year or more to go to trial, one would expect legislators to be able to claim very long intervals of immunity.

Even in Britain, Story notes, that Spirit of Modernity has tended to curtail the principle of legislative immunity short of the point where it might benefit the contents of Rep. Jefferson’s office.

§ 859. The privilege of members of parliament formerly extended also to their servants and goods, so that they could not be arrested. But so far, as it went to obstruct the ordinary course of justice in the British courts, it has since been restrained.

In the members of congress, the privilege is strictly personal, and does not extend to their servants or property.

Note that Justice Story accords Congress only a lower case “c.” The American principle of Republicanism was decidedly stronger and more keenly felt in 1833 than it is today, when presidents are accompanied routinely by a complement of bodyguards and functionaries the Sultan of Byzantium might envy. I think Justice Story’s observations are informative, as always, but I think an able attorney would not have the least difficulty in arguing either side of Rep. Jeffeson’s claim to the application of Article 1, Section 6 privileges to his office papers (and bags of currency).

My wife sent this link to me, describing the site as her “equivalent of an intellectual chew toy.”

performs Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit. That’s pretty bent.

4:54 minute video

Tim Graham compares the MSM’s treatment of Ron Howard’s The DaVinci Code (2006)—and its treatment of the Danish cartoons—to its treatment of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004).

âu2013 The DaVinci Code received more of a publicity push from the networks than The Passion of the Christ. The number of segments devoted to the movies in the year before their cinematic release was 99 for The DaVinci Code to 66 for The Passion. Most of those came on morning shows. By far, the biggest Code promoter was NBC’s Today, which more provided more stories (38) than the other two network morning shows combined (29). By contrast, NBC was in third-place in Passion segments (11).

âu2013 The Passion of the Christ was treated as a social problem — the biggest TV anti-Semitism story of that year — while The DaVinci Code was presented more often as an “intriguing” theory rather than threatening or offensive to Christians. Nearly every one of the 66 network segments on The Passion on ABC, CBS, and NBC touched on those complaints. But only 27 of the 99 Code segments focused on Christian and Catholic protests.

âu2013 While the faith of millions of Americans, Christianity, is singled out for criticism, with one “fascinating” fictional detail after another, the networks either refused to air or barely aired mild Mohammed cartoons out of great sensitivity to American Muslims. At the same time that Christianity is questioned as a false religion in The DaVinci Code, the networks demonstrated an exquisite sensitivity to American Muslims on the sensitive subject of threatened violence against mostly mild Danish cartoons mocking the prophet Muhammad. ABC aired a glance at one cartoon on two programs. CBS and NBC declared they would censor the images.

âu2013 In their push to promote The DaVinci Code, the networks routinely failed to address how the book most offended Christian sensitivities: that Christianity itself is a lie. The networks showed their lack of belief or interest in religion as they almost always failed to examine Brown’s most contentious charge: that Jesus was not the Son of God. While many noted the scandalous claim of a sexual relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, only six stories explained the Code’s denial of the divinity of Jesus.

âu2013 While Mel Gibson was attacked and even psychoanalyzed for his religious beliefs, DaVinci Code author Dan Brown and filmmakers Ron Howard and Brian Grazer were never personally examined or challenged about their personal religious beliefs, their willingness to milk controversy, play fast and loose with facts, and offend Christians for personal gain. Whenever the networks decided to address fact and fiction in The DaVinci Code, they almost always found it was stuffed with falsehoods. But they never focused on the idea that Brown, Grazer, or Howard should be criticized for being too casual with the truth.

âu2013 The networks also bought into the DaVinci Code craze by picking up and publicizing other Code-related books attacking Christianity and the Catholic Church, but their standard of evidence was hardly an example of what a skeptical journalist would apply. Authors of new books like The Jesus Papers and The Jesus Dynasty were offered publicity forums, even though the network journalists pronounced the evidence behind the claims was flimsy, even non-existent. So why did the networks promote them?

In the waning decades of the 19th century, Western societies experienced a wave of panic over the idea that various intoxicating substances offered pleasures so exquisite and seductive as to overcome the will and corrupt and enslave their users. One intoxicant after another became the target for prohibition efforts by ameliorist do-gooders.

All forms of prohibition make whatever is banned more desirable, and result in black markets. Black markets provide an opportunity for large profits by criminals, and typically lead to violence as rival gangsters fight over territories. The association of large profits with victimless forms of crime commonly results in the corruption of law enforcement.

Theodore Dalrymple draws on his medical experience as usual, in today’s Wall Street Journal, to debunk opiate addiction.

In 1822, Thomas De Quincey published a short book, “The Confessions of an English Opium Eater.” The nature of addiction to opiates has been misunderstood ever since.

De Quincey took opiates in the form of laudanum, which was tincture of opium in alcohol. He claimed that special philosophical insights and emotional states were available to opium-eaters, as they were then called, that were not available to abstainers; but he also claimed that the effort to stop taking opium involved a titanic struggle of almost superhuman misery. Thus, those who wanted to know the heights had also to plumb the depths.

This romantic nonsense has been accepted wholesale by doctors and litterateurs for nearly two centuries. It has given rise to an orthodoxy about opiate addiction, including heroin addiction, that the general public likewise takes for granted: To wit, a person takes a little of a drug, and is hooked; the drug renders him incapable of work, but since withdrawal from the drug is such a terrible experience, and since the drug is expensive, the addict is virtually forced into criminal activity to fund his habit. He cannot abandon the habit except under medical supervision, often by means of a substitute drug.

In each and every particular, this picture is not only mistaken, but obviously mistaken. It actually takes some considerable effort to addict oneself to opiates: The average heroin addict has been taking it for a year before he develops an addiction. Like many people who are able to take opiates intermittently, De Quincey took opium every week for several years before becoming habituated to it. William Burroughs, who lied about many things, admitted truthfully that you may take heroin many times, and for quite a long period, before becoming addicted…

Why has the orthodox view swept all before it? First, the literary tradition sustains it: Works that deal with the subject continue to disregard pharmacological reality, from De Quincey and Coleridge through Baudelaire, Aleister Crowley, Bulgakov, Cocteau, Nelson Algren, Burroughs and others. Second, addicts and therapists have a vested interest in the orthodox view. Addicts want to place the responsibility for their plight elsewhere, and the orthodox view is the very raison d’être of the therapists. Finally, as a society, we are always on the lookout for a category of victims upon whom to expend our virtuous, which is to say conspicuous, compassion.

The myth of addiction has a powerful appeal to the human imagination, and is enormously useful in exculpating personal misbehavior. But a society which holds more than a million people in prison for victimless crimes is paying a terrible price in order to cling to its illusions.

The 2006 climbing season on Mount Everest, with 9 dead already, seems likely to overtake the previous 1996 record of 12 fatalities. This climbing season featured a new kind of record as well, however, with reports of 40 climbers proceeding past a dying British climber on their way up.

Washington Times:

Mark Inglis, an amputee who conquered Mount Everest on artificial legs last week, yesterday defended his party’s decision to carry on to the summit despite coming across a dying climber.

As his team climbed through the “death zone,” the area above 26,000 feet where the body begins to shut down, they passed David Sharp, 34, a stricken British climber who later died. His body remained on the mountain. Mr. Inglis, 47, a New Zealander, said: “At 28,000 feet it’s hard to stay alive yourself. He was in a very poor condition, near death. We talked about [what to do for him] for quite a lot at the time and it was a very hard decision. “About 40 people passed him that day, and no one else helped him apart from our expedition. Our Sherpas (guides) gave him oxygen. He wasn’t a member of our expedition, he was a member of another, far less professional one.”.. About 200 people have died on Everest since the first expeditions in the 1920s. The corpses are stepped over by climbers traveling the most popular routes.

Sir Edmund Hillary, the first climber to summit Everest and a representative of a different era, condemned their action.

The New Zealand Press Association reports that Edmund Hillary has questioned the actions of Mark Inglis and others on the night British David Sharp, 34, died. “In our expedition there was never any likelihood whatsoever if one member of the party was incapacitated that we would just leave him to die,’’ Hillary, told the Otago Daily Times today.

Hillary said people have completely lost sight of what’s important and that the difficulties posed by operating at high altitude is no excuse. “I think the whole attitude towards climbing Mt Everest has become rather horrifying…people just want to get to the top, they don’t give a damn for anybody else who may be in distress and it doesn’t impress me at all that they leave someone lying under a rock to die.”

Vinnie makes videos, and decided he needed an Apple G5. He couldn’t afford the $5000 price tag for the machine plus bells and whistles, but reasoned that perhaps he could persuade 20,000 strangers to part with $.25 each, in return for a promise that if the goal was achieved he’d blow up his old Mac.

He fulfills his promise in this 4:48 minute video.

The bill making English “the official language” of the United States was a meaningless piece of political puffery designed to appease voters, but Dennis Prager’s comments on the liberal method of argument are dead on.

The highest-ranking Democrat in America, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, described the Senate bill making English the national language of the American people as “racist.” And the New York Times editorial page labeled the bill “xenophobic.”

Welcome to the thoughtless world of contemporary liberalism. Beginning in the 1960s, liberalism, once the home of many deep thinkers, began to substitute feeling for thought and descended into superficiality.

One-word put-downs of opponents’ ideas and motives were substituted for thoughtful rebuttal. Though liberals regard themselves as intellectual—their views, after all, are those of nearly all university professors—liberal thought has almost died. Instead of feeling the need to thoughtfully consider an idea, most liberal minds today work on automatic. One-word reactions to most issues are the liberal norm.

This is easy to demonstrate.

Here is a list of terms liberals apply to virtually every idea or action with which they differ:

Racist
Sexist
Homophobic
Islamophobic
Imperialist
Bigoted
Intolerant

And here is the list of one-word descriptions of what liberals are for:

Peace
Fairness
Tolerance
The poor
The disenfranchised
The environment

These two lists serve contemporary liberals in at least three ways.

First, they attack the motives of non-liberals and thereby morally dismiss the non-liberal person.

Second, these words make it easy to be a liberal—essentially all one needs to do is to memorize this brief list and apply the right term to any idea or policy.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has produced three amusing 60 second television ads responding to Al Gore’s about-to-be-released Global Warming agitprop motion picture. link

FBI agents reportedly searched the House office of Rep. William Jefferson, D-LA, on Saturday evening and last Sunday in connection with a bribery and corruption investigation.

Prominent Repubican Congressional leaders, including former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and current Speaker Dennis Hastert, have criticized the FBI’s conduct, and raised Constitutional objections.

Some of the most respected voices on the right side of the Blogosphere, including Glenn Reynolds, Michelle Malkin, and Roger L. Simon have objected to the position taken by the Speakers.

Our good friends need to pause for breath, and reflect seriously. The principle of separation of powers matters greatly. Congressional immunity from arrest matters tremendously. These principles of Republican government are infinitely more important than the successful conviction of one more corrupt democrat congressman. History demonstrates abundantly that we can survive the culture of political corruption of the democrat party. But free government could readily be brought to an end by the domination of the several branches of the federal government by a single branch.

In recent history, Congress has been far more guilty than the Executive of arrogating unauthorized powers to itself, and attacking the Executive on the basis of trumped up and exaggerated charges. But, it is certainly possible to imagine an aggressive ultra-liberal president trying to remove Congressional opposition by false allegations of corruption. Some of us believe that the House Majority Leader was successfuly removed by false charges lodged by a partisan county prosecutor in Texas.

It is on rare occasions like this, in which political leaders take principled positions, ignoring their own party’s interests, that our faith in our system of government and its institutions is justified and confirmed.

Read the US Constitution, Article I. Section 6 which states:

The Senators and Representatives shall receive a compensation for their services, to be ascertained by law, and paid out of the treasury of the United States. They shall in all cases, except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any speech or debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other place.

I think it is impossible to avoid considering Congressional offices as part of the “going to and returning from the same” aspect of Congressional attendance. And the 18th century concept of a felony would apply to what were then commonly capital crimes of violence, not to ordinary bribery and corruption.

Of course, the determination of all this may, and should be left to the wisdom of Third Branch of the Federal Government, the Supreme Court. But, in the meantime, we should be proud that Republican Legislative leaders will defend the rights of their branch of government, even in the case of its least worthy member.

Gin took the slender shaft of the tube in her palm.

For several years now, stories that the progress of today’s flaming youth towards perdition has reached the point where girls in middle school are routinely expected to provide oral sexual services to boyfriends have been appearing regularly in the MSM.

This news meme has culminated in stories of Lipstick, or Rainbow, Parties in which several girls, wearing different lipstick colors apply the same to you-know-what. An enterprising author of teen fiction has even produced a Young Adult novel, titled Rainbow Party, complete with suitable moral.

Cathy Young, in this month’s Reason, blames the Clinton-Lewinsky Oval Office hijinks for producing a national oral sex fixation, and dismisses the phenomenon as an urban legend, quoting 2005 National Center for Health Statistics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study statistics.

(I’ve always wondered why journalists of both the Left and the Right think teenagers answer questions for such studies truthfully? I would expect boys to lie in one direction, and girls in the other.)

I asked the teenage daughter of a college friend about all this, and she said she thought this sort of thing did go on, just not as much as the press accounts suggest.

The New York Daily News says that Prosecutor Fitzerald’s charges of making false statements against former Vice Presidential Chief of Staff I. Lewis Libby may be based on the testimony of CIA officers Robert Grenier and Craig Schmall.

Grenier was CIA station chief in Islamabad, Pakistan, worked on operational plans for invading Iraq, and was recently CIA Counterterrorist Center chief.

But Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief, said Grenier lost his job over his “concerns about aggressive interrogations [of terrorist detainees] at secret sites.”

Grenier is reported to have testified that Libby asked him on June 11, 2003 why the agency had sent former Ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger. And Grenier replied that Valerie Plame was “believed responsible” for arranging her husband’s trip.

Harvard Economics professor Greg Mankiw reports that, at a recent faculty meeting, President Larry Summers confessed:

I have been troubled, and I believe you should be troubled, by survey data suggesting that student satisfaction at Harvard is much closer to the bottom than to the top of any list of leading American colleges, and that the relative satisfaction of our students declines with each year that they are here.

Noting that the Harvard Crimson had reported only days earlier Harvard’s unequalled admissions yield percentage, Mankiw reflects:

It is an odd business that has customers who are simultaneously unhappy about the product and eager to buy it.

Hat tip to PJM.

A grim short story posted on Varifrank imagines the future resulting from the failure of American leadership today.

“10 men before you fall” he whispered to himself as he slowly squeezed the trigger.

———————————————-
Hat tip to PJM.

Al Gore’s agitprop documentary opens in theatres next week, and all our liberals friends will soon be running around in circles, crying: “The sky is falling!” Editorials will proclaim that Gore has definitively proven environmental disaster stemming from anthropogenic climate change is well underway, and dangerously accelerating. My college classmates will be buzzing like a hive of bees on the class email list.

Time to read the National Center for Policy Analysis’ debunking study No 285: Climate Science: Climate Change and Its Impacts. Swimming polar bears and color-changing coral reefs are rapidly headed your way.

Scientific debate continues regarding the extent to which human activities contribute to global warming and what the potential impact on the environment might be. Importantly, much of the scientific evidence contradicts assertions that substantial global warming is likely to occur soon and that the predicted warming will harm the Earth’s biosphere.

The Earth’s climate began a warming trend after the “Little Ice Age” ended in the mid-1800s, long before global industrial development led to substantial increases in greenhouse gases beginning in the middle of the 20th century. About half of the warming during the 20th century occurred prior to the 1940s, and natural variability accounts for all or nearly all of the warming.

To assess future climate trends, climatologists rely upon General Circulation Models (GCMs) that attempt to describe Earth’s climate. The many climate models in use vary widely with respect to the variables they include and in the assumptions they make about how those variables interact. Yet some official reports, including the U.S. National Assessment published in 2000, report only the most extreme predictions, ignoring others that project only moderate warming in the 21st century.

A left-wing web-site has posted a 20 minute video of a stuttering supposed Army Ranger named Jesse MacBeth, who is peddling stories of “killing 30-40 women and children a night,” and all sorts of other atrocities.

Mudville Gazette noted these discrepancies:

1. Special Forces Combat Patch (Wrong)
2. Two “Tabs” sewn above SF patch (Wrong- Only One)
3. No Ranger Tab
4. No Airborne Wings
5. No Unit Crest
6. No Sewn on Rank
7. No One in the Army rolls their sleeves like that.
Bonus: 8. Mustache is out of regulation by extending past the corner of the mouth.

Jeff Goldstein has collected a lot of debunking information: we now know he works in a Wendy’s and fancies himself a socialist revolutionary.

On Meet the Press, yesterday, Senator Lindsay Graham, R-SC, was asked to follow up a previous comment by Tim Russert

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Graham, you have said this: “This is a defining moment for the Republican Party. ... If our answer to the fastest-growing demographic in this country is that ‘We want to make felons of your grandparents, and we want to put people in jail who are helping your neighbors and people related to you,’ then we’re going to suffer mightily.”

SEN. GRAHAM: Well, at the end of the day, as you try to walk me and Charlie (Rep. Charles Norwood R-GA) through what to do with 11 million people, there’s respect for the law and there’s justice. If the law doesn’t create a just result, what good is it? I think it’s not fair for a nonviolent offense to result into upheaval that would be required, a mass deportation, or making people felons.

If you’re going to make 11 people—million people felons, you ought to put them in jail. There are young Marines in Iraq right now of Hispanic origin whose parents, maybe grandparents, are illegal. I think it would be hard for this country—unfairly hard—to say to those young Marines, “Thank you for your sacrifice. While you’re gone, we’ve made your parents and grandparents felons, and we’re going to break your family up.”

We as a nation have sat on the sidelines and watched this happen. Most Americans know for a long time, many years, that Hispanics have been coming across our border, working all throughout our economy, and it’s like “Casablanca.” Now we’re saying, “I can’t believe there’s gambling going on here.”

Respect for the law and a welcoming society, as President Bush says, are not inconsistent. Pay a fine, get punished for breaking our law, let’s don’t break families up, and in an impractical way, a way that would send the wrong signal as who America is in 2006.

MR. RUSSERT: But when you talk about the fastest-growing demographic group, you seem to be fearful of a political backlash to the Republican Party.

SEN. GRAHAM: Everything politicians do has to have a political component. What’s the practical solution to 11 million people here that have come here to work and are working? We’ve got 4.7 percent unemployment. They’re not displacing Americans because it’s the lowest unemployment in history. We’ve got 4.1 percent GDP growth, wages are growing.

My point is that as a party decides what to do with hard problems, the party needs to show its ability to recognize more than one concept. Respect for the law is an essential ingredient of the American culture. But justice also is part of the law. So I agree with the president totally. Let’s secure our borders. I agree with Charlie Norwood, my good friend. Let’s lock the borders down the best we can, but let’s don’t pass on to the next generation of politicians what to do with 11 million people. Why do we want to send every problem down the road? Let’s do it all together, comprehensively, and we’ll be rewarded at the ballot box not just by Hispanic voters. Three-fourths of the American people are ready for a comprehensive solution. Will the Republican Party deliver for three-fourths of Americans?

Lindsay Graham’s answer was perfectly correct.

Volunteers recently performing a clean-up on the summit of Ben Nevis, the 4,418ft highest peak in Britain, were surprised to discover a baby grand piano on the top of the mountain. An appeal for information on how it got there was carried widely by the British press.

And an explanation has been forthcoming. 15 moving men from Dundee carried the piano to the top in 1986 as a fund raising stunt to benefit cystic fibrosis research. They were tired out, after lugging it up, and decided not to bring it back down.

John McCain was jeered and booed by New School graduates at his speech at their commencement. His host, university president and Medal of Honor winner, former Senator Bob Kerrey was called “a war criminal.” And student speakers attacked McCain’s speech (which the Senator chose to deliver also at Columbia and at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University) even before he had delivered it.

Jean Rohe, blogging on Huffington Post, was proud of hersef and her fellow students.

Yes, McCain was undoubtedly shouted-out and heckled by people who were not politely absorbing his words so as to consider them fully from every angle. But what did he expect? We could’ve all printed out his speech and chanted it with him in chorus. Did he think that no one knew exactly what he was about to say? And it was precisely because we listen to the views of others, and because, as I said in my speech, we don’t fear them, that we as a school were able to mount such a thorough and intelligent opposition to his presence. Ignorant, closed-minded people would not have been able to do what we did. We chose to be in New York for our years of higher education for the very reason that we would be challenged to listen to opposing viewpoints each and every day and to deal with that challenge in a nonviolent manner. We’ve gotten very good at listening to the views of others and learning how to also make our views heard, even when we don’t have the power of national political office and the media on our side.

I think we must remember that as big as this moment may seem to me today and perhaps to other supporters who are reading this article, this is a very small victory in a time when democracy is swiftly eroding under the pressure of the right wing in this country. We all have much work to do, and for the most part the media do not represent us, the small people who don’t hold any special titles but who feel the weight of our government’s actions on our backs each and every day. I never expected to get the opportunity to speak the way I did yesterday, but I’m so glad that I did. I hope that other people found strength in my act of protest and will one day find themselves in my position, drawing out their own bravery to speak truth.

Mark Salter, Senator McCain’s chief of staff, was moved to reply to the young lady’s blog comments:

Ms. Rohe and those of her fellow graduates who hailed their school’s President as a war criminal and who greeted the Senator’s reference to a friend’s death with laughter proved only one thing, one sad thing, that they could learn a thing or two about tolerance and respect from the students of Liberty University. Like the protestors at the Garden, many in the audience at Liberty University disagreed with various of the Senator’s views. Some disagreed with his support for campaign finance reform. Some disagreed with his support for comprehensive immigration reform with a path toward legalization for undocumented workers. Some disagreed with his position of climate change. Some disagreed with his opposition to the Federal Marriage Amendment. Whatever their differences with him they listened to him attentively and respectfully, as one American to another, divided in some respects, united in much more important ones.

Let me tell you a little bit about the Senator, the man you dismiss so derisively. Once upon time, even among the young, the words courage and hero were used more sparingly, more precisely. It took no courage to do what you did, Ms. Rohe. It was an act of vanity and nothing more. And please don’t worry about the Senator’s discomfort with you. He has managed to endure much worse. McCain was once offered release from imprisonment and torture because of his father’s position as a senior military officer. He declined because he would not leave his comrades behind, and thus, willingly, accepted four more years of hardships life will spare almost all of us from. In his political career he has shown the same character he showed as a Navy officer all those years ago. He has, over and over again, risked personal ambitions for what he believes, rightly or wrongly, are in the best interests of the country. What, pray tell, have you risked? The only person you have succeeded in making look like an idiot is yourself.

You took exception to the paragraph in which he lightly deprecated the vanity of youth. Well, Ms. Rohe, and your fellow graduates’s comical self-importance deserves a rebuke far stronger than the gentle suggestions he offered you. So, let me leave you with this. Should you grow up and ever get down to the hard business of making a living and finding a purpose for your lives beyond self-indulgence some of you might then know a happiness far more sublime than the fleeting pleasure of living in an echo chamber. And if you are that fortunate, you might look back on the day of your graduation and your discourtesy to a good and honest man with a little shame and the certain knowledge that it very unlikely any of you will ever posses the one small fraction of the character of John McCain.

Those of us on the Right often contrast the patriotism of the British and American intelligentsia and media during WWII with the open treason and defeatism which have since become de rigeur fashion accessories for the same classes of society.

The joke is on us. British philosopher A.C Grayling turns the WWII patriotism meme on its head by systematically applying to Allied war policies in WWII the same sort of scrupulous ethicism, combined with Olympian neutrality of personal perspective, today’s treasonous clerks customarily apply to current events.

Allied bombing attacks on enemy civilian population centers (surprise! surprise!) are judged unnecessary and wrong. He’s right, of course, but (though I have not yet received my copy, and therefore not read his book) I doubt very seriously that he has fully addressed the reasons for the adoption by civilized countries of that lamentable war tactic, or done justice to just how far beyond the same kind of standards Germany and Japan by deliberate and conscious policy proceeded.

Mr. Grayling has, undoubtedly, also scanted the attention due to the interesting question of the ethics of publishing a monograph of this kind, addressing these kinds of issues and reaching these conclusions, in time of war, when his countrymen are fighting overseas.

In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility: But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger; Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage; Then lend the eye a terrible aspect; Let pry through the portage of the head Like the brass cannon; let the brow o’erwhelm it As fearfully as doth a galled rock O’erhang and jutty his confounded base, Swill’d with the wild and wasteful ocean. Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide, Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit To his full height.

—Henry V, Act 3, Scene 1.

The Mirror is reporting that a female worker at an embassy in Lesotho became violently ill in the course of a flight from Johannisburg to Heathrow. She subsequently died, and her symptoms were described as reminiscent of Ebola.

The London Times reports:

A SENIOR member of an Islamic organisation linked to Al-Qaeda is funding his activities through the kidnapping of Christian children who are sold into slavery in Pakistan.

The Sunday Times has established that Gul Khan, a wealthy militant who uses the base of Jamaat-ud Daawa (JUD) near Lahore, is behind a cruel trade in boys aged six to 12.

They are abducted from remote Christian villages in the Punjab and fetch nearly £1,000 each from buyers who consign them to a life of misery in domestic servitude or in the sex trade…

Hafez Muhamed Sayeed… (leader of Jamaat-ud Daawa) was accused of inciting riots in Pakistan this year with speeches denouncing western “depravity” after a Danish newspaper published cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.

But the Washington Post took a look at some of the supposedly more tolerant texts in the light of these recent Saudi claims:

Saudi Arabia’s public schools have long been cited for demonizing the West as well as Christians, Jews and other “unbelievers.” But after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001—in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis—that was all supposed to change.

A 2004 Saudi royal study group recognized the need for reform after finding that the kingdom’s religious studies curriculum “encourages violence toward others, and misguides the pupils into believing that in order to safeguard their own religion, they must violently repress and even physically eliminate the ‘other.’ ” Since then, the Saudi government has claimed repeatedly that it has revised its educational texts.

Prince Turki al-Faisal, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, has worked aggressively to spread this message. “The kingdom has reviewed all of its education practices and materials, and has removed any element that is inconsistent with the needs of a modern education,” he said on a recent speaking tour to several U.S. cities. “Not only have we eliminated what might be perceived as intolerance from old textbooks that were in our system, we have implemented a comprehensive internal revision and modernization plan.” The Saudi government even took out a full-page ad in the New Republic last December to tout its success at “having modernized our school curricula to better prepare our children for the challenges of tomorrow.”

The Post found among other examples of expressions of tolerance:

“Some of the people of the Sabbath were punished by being turned into apes and swine. Some of them were made to worship the devil, and not God, through consecration, sacrifice, prayer, appeals for help, and other types of worship. Some of the Jews worship the devil. Likewise, some members of this nation worship the devil, and not God.”
“The clash between this [Muslim] community (umma) and the Jews and Christians has endured, and it will continue as long as God wills.”

“It is part of God’s wisdom that the struggle between the Muslim and the Jews should continue until the hour [of judgment].”

“The greeting ‘Peace be upon you’ is specifically for believers. It cannot be said to others.”

“Do not yield to them [Christians and Jews] on a narrow road out of honor and respect.”

“Jihad in the path of God—which consists of battling against unbelief, oppression, injustice, and those who perpetrate it—is the summit of Islam. This religion arose through jihad and through jihad was its banner raised high. It is one of the noblest acts, which brings one closer to God, and one of the most magnificent acts of obedience to God.”

And the Post notes the significance of the content of Saudi texts:

The Saudi public school system totals 25,000 schools, educating about 5 million students. In addition, Saudi Arabia runs academies in 19 world capitals, including one outside Washington in Fairfax County, that use some of these same religious texts. Saudi Arabia also distributes its religion texts worldwide to numerous Islamic schools and madrassas that it does not directly operate. Undeterred by Wahhabism’s historically fringe status, Saudi Arabia is trying to assert itself as the world’s authoritative voice on Islam—a sort of “Vatican” for Islam, as several Saudi officials have stated—and these textbooks are integral to this effort. As the report of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks observed, “Even in affluent countries, Saudi-funded Wahhabi schools are often the only Islamic schools” available.

There is an an excellent introduction to the films of Yasujiro Ozu posted today on YARGB by the Boulder mathematician who signs himself MeaninglessHotAir, which is also described as “posted by Loner.”

the camera is usually stationary and positioned to capture the point-of-view of a person sitting on the floor. Most of the edits are straight cuts. There are no special lenses. There is no cross-cutting. There are no flashbacks. There are no dream sequences. There are no ghosts. There are no Samurai. From 1935 on there is sound and from 1958 on there is color. In that final movie the camera never moves within a shot and there is not one edit that isn’t a straight cut.

For Ozu, like Hitchcock, a movie was largely done when the shooting script was finished. He generally had a collaborator and for the final thirteen movies that collaborator was Kogo Noda. The scripts are all about character. What plot there is is in the service of the characters and the characters were generally created with specific actors in mind. When it came to shooting the script, Ozu told the actors exactly how he wanted everything done (though not generally why) and they did it and did it and did it until he was satisfied. What are his movies about? Donald Richie suggests in his Introduction to Ozu, that Ozu “had but one major subject, the Japanese family, and but one major theme, its dissolution.”

Those interested in this director will also find this essay of interest.

Victor Davis Hanson imagines WWII, as reported in the manner of today’s American MSM.

The Present Debacle

May 21, 1945 — After the debacles of February and March at Iwo Jima, and now the ongoing quagmire on Okinawa, we are asked to accept recent losses that are reaching 20,000 dead brave American soldiers and yet another 50,000 wounded in these near criminally incompetent campaigns euphemistically dubbed “island hopping.”

Meanwhile, we are no closer to victory over Japan. Instead, we are hearing of secret plans of invasion of the Japanese mainland slated for 1946 or even 1947 that may well make Okinawa seem like a cake walk and cost us a million casualties and perhaps involve a half-century of occupation. The extent of the current Kamikaze threat, once written off as the work of a “bunch of dead-enders,” was totally unforeseen, even though such suicidal zealots are in the process of inflicting the worst casualties on the U.S. Navy in its entire history.

Worse still, our sources in the intelligence community speak of a billion-dollar boondoggle now underway in the American southwest. This improbable “super-weapon” (with the patently absurd name “Manhattan Project” — in the midst of a desert no less!) promises in one fell swoop to erase our mistakes and give us instant deliverance from our blunders — no concern, of course, for the thousands of innocents who would be vaporized if such a monstrous fantasy bomb were ever actually to work.

We are only now coming off even more terrible losses in Europe, after being surprised by a supposedly defeated enemy in the Ardennes where another 20,000 Americans were killed and another 60,000 wounded or missing — again, due to our continued strategic incompetence and abject intelligence failures. Macabre reports of American bazooka shells bouncing off German Tiger tanks and our Shermans ablaze like Ronson lighters have only now come to light as we plow the Belgium countryside for yet another new American war cemetery. Tragically, this is not the first, but the fourth year of this war, when victory rather than endless bloodshed has been long promised.

A number of issues arise. Why is Henry Stimson (“Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail”) still Secretary of War? After the debacles at Pearl Harbor, the Philippines tragedy, the Kasserine Pass disaster, the unforeseen bocage in Normandy, the Falaise Gap escape, the Anzio mess, the fatal detour to Rome, the surprise at the Bulge, the bloodbath at Tarawa, and now the Iwo Jima and Okinawa nightmares, is not five years of his incompetence and arrogance enough? A number of our retired generals seems to agree, who have recently bravely come forward to remind us that Sec. Stimson long ago tried to dismantle key elements of our intelligence services, attempted to curtail the operational command of our Army Air Corps generals in conducting bombings of Europe, and has on more than one occasion intervened to remove targets from Gen. LeMay’s campaign over Japan.

As we see thousands of Americans dying and our enemies still in power after four years of war, it is also legitimate to question the stewardship of Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Marshall. The Sherman tank tragedy, the daylight bombing fiasco, the absence of even minimally suitable anti-tank weapons and torpedoes — all these lapses came on his watch, and the man at the top must take full responsibility for mistakes that have now cost thousands of American lives. Indeed, it is not just that America has worse tanks and guns than our German enemies, but they are inferior even to the rockets and armor of our Soviet allies. The recent publication of “The Sherman Tank Scandal” follows other revelations published in “Asleep at the Philippines,” “The Flight of Gen. MacArthur,” “Gen. Patton and the Atrocities on Sicily,” “Do Americans Execute P.O.Ws?” “Torture on Guadalcanal,” “Incinerating Women and Children?” and “Civilian Massacres in Germany” — publications in their totality that suggest a military out of control as often as it is incompetent…

Recently we have learned that President Roosevelt, the former law school dropout, once again has violated basic freedoms enshrined in our Constitution. Supposed German suspects were subject to military tribunals, tried in secret, and then executed. Tens of thousands of Italians, Germans, and Japanese war-captives are detained in hundreds of American prison compounds, without charges and often in secret. How many were truly captured in uniform, and under what conditions, is never disclosed.

Unfortunately this violation of American values comes not in isolation, but on the heels of the unlawful internment of thousands of American citizens in Western concentration camps, the cover-up of the Cobra disaster in Normandy and the criminally negligent killing of General McNair, and still more rumors that hundreds of American soldiers perished in secret in training exercises on the eve of the Normandy invasion. Yet, the American people to this day have no precise idea how many of their enlisted men and officers have been killed, much less where they perished or how.

Indeed, what little we know comes to light only due to the brave efforts of a few unnamed operatives in the Office of Strategic Services who have in secret provided such information concerning patently illegal activities to the responsible news organizations.

asks Raymond Ibrahim.

Today, one wonders, What would Mohammed do? Would he smile upon “moderate” Muslims such as America’s “friends,” the many secular regimes who do not enforce Islamic law (which itself is based on his own commands) and who cooperate fully with the infidel West, or would he find favor in a man like Osama bin Laden, who defies the West? The answer to this question is easily found in the Koran and historical record of the Prophet.

Allah proclaims: “But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and practice regular charity [i.e. embrace Islam], then open the way for them: for Allah is oft forgiving, most merciful” (Koran 9:5). This message is repeated continuously in the Koran and Hadith, and most Muslim jurists are agreed that these “Sword Verses” abrogate all earlier verses of tolerance and peaceable co-existence between Muslims and non-Muslims. Furthermore, the commandments of the Koran transcend time and are thus as applicable today as they were in the 7th century.

The historical record of Islam — its rise and spread — is even more illustrative than the words of the Koran. Islam was established by the sword. This is an historical fact, not an accusation. It’s not for nothing that Saudi Arabia, home of the Prophet and Islam, depicts a scimitar with the words “There is no god but Allah and Mohammad is His Prophet” on its national flag. Both Muslim and non-Muslim histories of Islam agree that the Warrior-Prophet personally waged war after war with the express purpose of spreading Islam.

These were wars forcing other peoples, first Arabs then non-Arabs, to embrace Islam and submit to the life-guiding Words of Allah (the Sharia), or else to pay tribute and live in humility as subjects of Islam, or else, to die by the sword.

These jihads prevailed for centuries. Indeed, just a mere century after the Prophet died, jihad had established Islam supreme in much of Asia, all of North Africa, and much of Mediterranean Europe (Spain, Sicily). This was more territory than the Roman Empire ever ruled in its heyday. It took Christianity five times as long to achieve such ubiquity (possibly because methods of diffusion differed). Holy War only ceased when Islam was defeated on the battleground — not because a new Revelation from Allah declared that expansion should cease, or that the three choices — conversion, submission, or death — have been abrogated. (The orthodox view in Sunni Islam is that peace will only exist once Islam reigns supreme over the whole world).

Islam is a rigorous faith with many laudable principles and prescriptions. Many people, not only Muslims, agree that other cultures can learn from the ideas of mercy, charity, and justice that also underlie Islam. But the fact remains that establishing Islam’s supremacy itself is the first principle, according to its holiest books and history. Moreover, based on the actions of the Prophet, his Companions and first caliphs, establishing Islamic hegemony through the sword was and thus is the norm.

So, based on his history, words, and deeds, what would Mohammad do? What would he do at a time when, far from assertively spreading Islam, the entire Muslim world believes that they are being ruthlessly persecuted by a Christian and godless West? What would his views and subsequent actions be regarding Israel’s occupation of Palestine, one of Islam’s holiest regions? What would he do about infidels stationed all around the Arabian Peninsula — where no non-Muslim is permitted to stay, per his own command? Iraq? Afghanistan? Would he go, briefcase in hand, to parley at the United Nations? Rebuke bin Laden for his violent ways? No, what he would do is all too clear:

Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book [Christians and Jews], until they pay the jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued. (Koran 9:29)

It is mportant to bear in mind that this injunction and similar verses depict the standard relationship between Muslims and infidels — even when the latter mind their own business. How much more is expected of Muslims when it is they who are under attack from the infidels?

Before he died, Mohammad sent a message to the Christian Roman emperor in Constantinople inviting him to embrace Islam or suffer the consequences. Up to that time, the Christian Empire had little to do with Arabia and nothing to do with Islam. The demand was dismissed. Mohammad then initiated jihads against Christian lands, permanently annexing a good chunk, till Constantinople itself, the seat of Christianity, fell to Islam after 800 years of jihad campaigns. That’s what the Prophet wanted, and that’s what his faithful followers accomplished.

So, what would Mohammad do now that Islam is perceived to be under direct attack?

Al-Qaeda answers that question daily.

Most people have probably already experienced the joys of playing with Google Earth and Windows Live Local. NASA is now offering another really cool satellite imaging program, with add-ons for Mars, the Moon, and the Night Sky. Go to: NASA World Wind, and download. Don’t forget the add ons.

Diana York Blaine, a Senior Lecturer in the University of Southern California’s Writing Program, uses Flickr to host her photos, and ill-advisedly (but in keeping with her personal philosophy) chose to upload and display three topless photos of her middle-aged self.

Dr. Blaine’s anatomy came to public attention as the result of her proclivity toward public expressions of feminist victimhood. Blaine took several occasions of accusation of rape by members of the USC football team (all of which were subsequently dropped or dismissed) to declare the USC team and the entire USC male population obliged to stop rape by attendng feminist rallies.

So if a few bad eggs don’t respect women’s right to decide if to have sex with them, why should I hold the whole football team accountable? Because I do. Because I hold every single male on this campus responsible. Because every single male on this campus has the responsibility for stopping rape. Every fraternity brother, every science major, every professor, every one of them. Because they all rape? Of course not. But because only men rape and only men can stop other men from raping.

Annoyed by Blaine’s persistent accusatory rhetoric and narcissitic posturing, a student group blog called Cardinal Martini began publishing a series of postings quarreling with the professor’s statements, and characterizing them as FemiNazi-ism. One of these posts recently outed Dr. Blaine’s topless photos on Flickr, in the course of commenting on the inappropriateness of the lady’s linking to these from a blog she says she created for the benefit of USC students.

My blog is for the 100s of USC students who have told me they wish they could have further exposure to my ideas once our class time together has ended.

And the martyred matron responds:

Many people continue to contact me to express surprise at the outpouring of hatred against me and my unmutilated middle-aged breasts, which I had the audacity to have photographed in several spontaneous life moments and the unmitigated gall to share with others.

The nerve of some people! Don’t I know my place?

But seriously, I am not surprised at all. My life work has centered on researching the ways that sexism functions as a method of control, benefiting a few at the expense of the many. As women in the United States, we are encouraged to serve men, making them happy in ways often detrimental to our own well-being. Feminist scholars write about the many forms such institutionalized sexism takes, all the way from unpaid labor in the home to underpaid labor in the workplace. And because our scholarship opposes current patriarchal ideologies, we threaten the system and therefore are viewed as enemies rather than legitimate contributors to knowledge. Hence the attempts to silence us.

Worse than a Feminist, Dr. Blaine also styles herself a “thanatologist,” and visitors to her blog will find even more dreadful and appalling nonsense on the subject of attitudes and behavior associated with death and grief.
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H/t to PJM.

It’s a good policy to avoid some American cities run by corrupt democrat party machines with incompetent police departments full of officers hired on the basis of political considerations. WBAL reports the case of a Virginia couple who attended a baseball game in Baltimore, got lost, asked a police officer for directions, and were arrested.

Baltimore City police arrested a Virginia couple over the weekend after they asked an officer for directions.

WBAL-TV 11 News I-Team reporter David Collins said Joshua Kelly and Llara Brook, of Chantilly, Va., got lost leaving an Orioles game on Saturday. Collins reported a city officer arrested them for trespassing on a public street while they were asking for directions .

“In jail for eight hours—sleeping on a concrete floor next to a toilet,” Kelly said.

“It was a nightmare,” Brook said. “I was in there thinking I was just dreaming and waiting to wake up.”

This kind of thing is no joke. American city jails are unsanitary and dangerous places, where detainees are commonly housed in unsupervised conditions at the mercy of other prisoners.

The SF Chronicle profiles an intriguing new Google feature:

Elmhurst, Ill., Loves Gay Porn. Which U.S. city seeks the most sex? Who wants to impeach Bush the most? Ask Google Trends…

the fact is, for all of last year, Elmhurst, Ill., population about 43,000, home of the Sunshine Biscuit Co. and former home of the largest Chevy dealer in the United States and pretty much quaint upscale yuppie Anytown, U.S.A., was the American city that looked up the term “sex” most frequently on Google.

Isn’t that cute? Isn’t that interesting? Sort of? I know this because Google just unveiled this nifty and somewhat baffling tool called Google Trends, wherein you simply enter your search term and choose a couple of parameters and hit Return and boom, you can see which regions (or countries or cities) in the world are looking up that term most actively for a given year (the data also shifts day to day), using Google’s massive search database, and it’s random, semipractical stuff like this that makes it difficult to hate Google for whoring out to China and for becoming the new Microsoft and for their billionaire geek teenager CEOs. But that’s another column.

Google Trends. It is utterly fascinating, at least for a while. It is cool and useful and at the same time enormously frustrating due to its obvious limitations, though I imagine it will spawn enormous amounts of titillating filler for countless PR firms and marketers and research papers and news reports that cite all sorts of vague data that seems to tell you something really important but when you stop and think about it doesn’t really tell you all that much at all. You know, just like religion.

Elmhurst, Illinois, is apparently way into sex. Or at least the idea of sex (googling that hugely broad term returns a decidedly unsexy array of sites, including those for “Sex and the City,” the Sex Pistols, Playboy.com, the National Sex Offender Registry and Sex Addicts Anonymous—not exactly a steaming cup o’ hot titillation).

But that’s not all. Elmhurst has darker, juicier secrets. Turns out Elmhurst is also, at least for 2006, the town most actively looking up “anal sex” (followed closely by Norfolk, Va., and, of course, San Antonio, Texas). And also “porn.” And also “gay porn” (just ahead of Las Vegas). And also “vibrator.” Do you sense a trend? I sense a trend. And also someplace I might need to get a summer home.

What does this say about Elmhurst? What does this say about small towns across the United States? What do you think it says? Because that’s pretty much what it says.

Google, thoughtfully, also includes any relevant news articles it can dig up to go alongside your search results to perhaps explain some of the interest. Does this help explain why Rockville, Md., looks up “Vishnu” more than any other city? Verily, I have no idea.

But still, it can get interesting. Who’s looking up “impeach Bush” most actively? Portland, Oregon. (San Francisco is third). “American Idol”? Honolulu, Hawaii—by a strangely huge margin. “Gas prices”? Minneapolis. “Dildo”? That would be Oslo, Norway. “Dildo,” among U.S. cities? Tampa, Fla. “Tom Cruise”? Cambridge, Mass. “Tom Cruise gay”? Irvine and New York. “Da Vinci Code”? Salt Lake City. “Gun control”? Cincinnati. And “Viagra,” for 2006? That’s Fort Worth, Texas. Go figure.

In fact, Google Trends is pretty much the biggest “go figure” tool you’re likely to see all year. You can speculate to your heart’s content about why the hell Phoenix would be looking up “Jenna Jameson” more than Las Vegas, or why Nashville is so heavily into Christ, or why they really love Ashlee Simpson in Newark, N.J., or why Philadelphia, for some unknowable reason, loves the fact that Britney Spears is pregnant whereas Santiago, Chile, really, really loves Pearl Jam, but you could only guess. One bit of historical news: Jesus has resurged and is once again more popular than the Beatles. Just FYI.

—————————————————————Hat tip to Stephen Frankel.

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania supplied a model for the rest of the nation on Tuesday, when a rebellion of state conservatives threw out a dozen deserving long-term GOP incumbents (including my own State Senator back home).

The Wall Street Journal gloats:

It is an understatement to say Pennsylvania conservatives were in a nasty mood. Despite the fact that conservative challengers were outspent on average 8 to 1 in these races, the two top senate leaders were thrown out and 13 incumbent House members bit the dust. (A few of the races are still too close to call.) The two senate leaders had been institutions of power in Harrisburg, with 56 years of incumbency between them. But so displeased were the GOP primary voters that they both could only muster slightly more than one-third of the vote. Senate majority leader Chip Brightbill got knocked out by a tire salesman dubbed “Citizen Mike” Folmer.

In a Mt. Lebanon race, 21-year-old-college student Mark Harris delivered a stunning defeat to long-time big-government incumbent Tom Stevenson. Mr. Stevenson tried to save his job by attacking Mr. Harris as too young and inexperienced to hold office, but Mr. Harris responded by sending the incumbent a copy of “Economics for Dummies.” That tactic evidently sealed Mr. Stevenson’s fate. (We can think of many Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle who would benefit from that book.)

“All the incumbent Republicans who lost were complicit in the advancement of [Democratic Governor] Ed Rendell’s borrow, tax and spend agenda” notes Matt Brouillette, the president of the conservative Commonwealth Foundation. Over the past three years the GOP majorities in the House and Senate have expanded the budget by twice the inflation rate and rubber-stamped an unpopular Rendell income tax hike. The final straw for voters in this economically struggling industrial state (it ranks 49th in job creation over the past 20 years) was that, in an act of remarkable arrogance, the Republicans violated the state constitution against a midterm pay raise by voting at 2 a.m. to hike their own salaries as much as 50%. It’s clear now Pennsylvanians don’t think these raises were for a job well done.

“We have had a dramatic earthquake in Pennsylvania,” conceded a dazed and now deposed Senate President Bob Jubilirer. We hope the tremors are felt by Republicans in Congress and in state capitols around the country. It seems this is a message GOP politicians have to relearn over and over: When they run as Reagan Republicans they win; when they run as big government Democrats they lose.

The New York Times quotes Captain Ed.

A lot of unreliable Congressional Republicans can get ready to start packing their bags this Fall too.