Catherine Vogt

John Kass, at the Chicago Tribune, has a little story of a middle school student’s experiment which tells us a lot about life in America today. Catherine Vogt’s Oak Park, Illinois could just as easily have been any other fashionable upper middle class community from coast to coast.

Just before the election, Catherine consulted with her history teacher, then bravely wore a unique T-shirt to school and recorded the comments of teachers and students in her journal. The T-shirt bore the simple yet quite subversive words drawn with a red marker:

“McCain Girl.”

“I was just really curious how they’d react to something that different, because a lot of people at my school wore Obama shirts and they are big Obama supporters,” Catherine told us. “I just really wanted to see what their reaction would be.”

Immediately, Catherine learned she was stupid for wearing a shirt with Republican John McCain’s name. Not merely stupid. Very stupid.

“People were upset. But they started saying things, calling me very stupid, telling me my shirt was stupid and I shouldn’t be wearing it,” Catherine said.

Then it got worse.

“One person told me to go die. It was a lot of dying. A lot of comments about how I should be killed,” Catherine said, of the tolerance in Oak Park.

“In one class, I had one teacher say she will not judge me for my choice, but that she was surprised that I supported McCain,” Catherine said.

If Catherine was shocked by such passive-aggressive threats from instructors, just wait until she goes to college. …

One student suggested that she be put up on a cross for her political beliefs.

“He said, ‘You should be crucifixed.’ It was kind of funny because, I was like, don’t you mean ‘crucified?’ ” Catherine said.

Other entries in her notebook involved suggestions by classmates that she be “burned with her shirt on” for “being a filthy-rich Republican.”

Some said that because she supported McCain, by extension she supported a plan by deranged skinheads to kill Obama before the election.

Duck!

If I were to follow the examples of Joseph Smith, L. Ron Hubbard, or Barack Obama, and invent my own religion, could I demand that the nearest municipality boasting a Ten Commandments monument allow me to erect another monument listing my own teachings on the courthouse lawn? Should the city fathers fail to oblige would a federal circuit court of appeals (that isn’t the 9th Circuit) rule in my favor? Is it possible to imagine that the United States Supreme Court could wind up ruling on my petition?

The Wall Street Journal reports that it has all worked out just that way for Corky Ra.

A couple of decades after a visit from “beings Extraterrestrial” inspired him to found the Church of Summum in 1975, Summum Bonum Amen Ra, born Claude Nowell and known as Corky, had another epochal encounter. He saw a monolith depicting the Ten Commandments on the courthouse grounds in Salt Lake City, says Su Menu, the Summum religion’s current leader, and “felt it would be nice to have the Seven Aphorisms next to them.” The monument would be inscribed with the principles that, according to Summum doctrine, Moses initially intended to deliver to the Hebrews before deciding they weren’t ready to understand them.

Several Utah municipalities Mr. Ra approached declined the opportunity to display the Seven Aphorisms, provoking a legal battle that arrived at the Supreme Court Wednesday.

Daniel Henniger editorializes:

In 2007, the federal appeals court for the Tenth Circuit ruled in favor of Summum, giving the religion permission to put up its Seven Aphorisms monument in Pioneer Park. The Supreme Court will decide whether the Summums of America deserve their own patch of the public green.

Laughable though it looks, Pleasant Grove City v. Summum is a textbook example of tensions that have pulled our courts between noble readings of the Constitution — in this case, the First Amendment’s speech protections — and what the average person might call the common-sense requirements of running a civil society.

Henniger is perfectly correct. Modern liberalism’s abject inability to resist any appeal couched in idealistic rhetoric gives it a terminable case of philosophic round heels.

Joe Hyams, novelist, screenwriter, biographer, and Hollywood columist (IMDB entry) and author of the much admired Zen in the Martial Arts passed away in Denver last Saturday at the age of 85.

Hyams was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts and attended Harvard. He served in the US Army during WWII, and was awarded the Purple Heart and Bronze Star. After the war, he became a nationally syndicated columnist, writing on Hollywood and the film industry.

He studied the martial arts for 50 years.

Alain Burrese describes Hyams’ MA career.

Joe Hyams took up fencing lessons in the 1950’s and through those classes he met film music composer Bronislau Kaper. In 1958, Kaper introduced him to Ed Parker, who was teaching Kenpo in the weight room in Beverly Hills Health Club. Mr. Hyams became one of Ed Parker’s first private students and also one of Mr. Parker’s first black belts.

Joe Hyams was the first person to introduce Bruce Lee into the Hollywood community. He helped Bruce Lee, with whom he trained privately get a foothold in Hollywood during Bruce’s struggling years. Mr. Hyams trained with Bruce Lee for two years, and when Bruce left for Hong Kong to pursue his film career, he suggested that Joe learn from Jim Lau, who trained him in Wing Chun.

LA Times obituary

MartialArtsInfo.com obituary

Patented by in 2001 by the KBP Instrument Design Bureau, the PP-2000 was first seen at the Interpolytech-2004 exhibition in Moscow.

Modern Firearms description

Jim Dunnigan’s Strategy Page reports the PP-2000’s recent appearance as an actual issue weapon:

Over the last few years, the Russian police and special operations personnel have been getting a new 9mm submachine gun, the PP-2000. The new weapon has proved to be very popular. It’s reliable, light (3.3 pounds empty) and compact (13 inches, or 33cm, long with the stock retracted). When the gunstock is used, it can also hold a spare 44 round magazine. With the gunstock, the weapon is 22 inches (55.5cm) long. Rate of fire is 10-12 rounds a second. It uses a 20 or 44 round magazines.

A very nice design!

Camille Paglia feels a reflexive, not exactly objective, need to bash Republicans every time she criticizes democrats. One must be even-handed, after all. Her observations on the failure of the MSM to investigate the democrat candidate and her defense of Sarah Palin, though, are well worth reading.

In the closing weeks of the election, however, I became increasingly disturbed by the mainstream media’s avoidance of forthright dealing with several controversies that had been dogging Obama — even as every flimsy rumor about Sarah Palin was being trumpeted as if it were engraved in stone on Mount Sinai. For example, I had thought for many months that the flap over Obama’s birth certificate was a tempest in a teapot. But simple questions about the certificate were never resolved to my satisfaction. …

Obama could have ended the entire matter months ago by publicly requesting Hawaii to issue a fresh, long-form, stamped certificate and inviting a few high-profile reporters in to examine the document and photograph it. (The campaign did make the “short-form” certificate available to Factcheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.) And why has Obama not made his university records or thesis work widely available? The passivity of the press toward Bush administration propaganda about weapons of mass destruction led the nation into the costly blunder of the Iraq war. We don’t need another presidency that finds it all too easy to rely on evasion or stonewalling. I deeply admire Obama, but as a voter I don’t like feeling gamed or played.

Another issue that I initially dismissed was the flap over William Ayers, the Chicago-based former member of the violent Weather Underground. Conservative radio host Sean Hannity began the drumbeat about Ayers’ association with Obama a year ago — a theme that most of the mainstream media refused to investigate or even report until this summer. I had never heard of Ayers and couldn’t have cared less. I was irritated by Hillary Clinton’s aggressive flagging of Ayers in a debate, and I accepted Obama’s curt dismissal of the issue.

Hence my concern about Ayers has been very slow in developing. The mainstream media should have fully explored the subject early this year and not allowed it to simmer and boil until it flared up ferociously in the last month of the campaign. Obama may not in recent years have been “pallin’ around” with Ayers, in Sarah Palin’s memorable line, but his past connections with Ayers do seem to have been more frequent and substantive than he has claimed. …

Given that Obama had served on a Chicago board with Ayers and approved funding of a leftist educational project sponsored by Ayers, one might think that the unrepentant Ayers-Dohrn couple might be of some interest to the national media. But no, reporters have been too busy playing mini-badminton with every random spitball about Sarah Palin, who has been subjected to an atrocious and at times delusional level of defamation merely because she has the temerity to hold pro-life views.

How dare Palin not embrace abortion as the ultimate civilized ideal of modern culture? How tacky that she speaks in a vivacious regional accent indistinguishable from that of Western Canada! How risible that she graduated from the State University of Idaho and not one of those plush, pampered commodes of received opinion whose graduates, in their rush to believe the worst about her, have demonstrated that, when it comes to sifting evidence, they don’t know their asses from their elbows.

Liberal Democrats are going to wake up from their sadomasochistic, anti-Palin orgy with a very big hangover. The evil genie released during this sorry episode will not so easily go back into its bottle. A shocking level of irrational emotionalism and at times infantile rage was exposed at the heart of current Democratic ideology — contradicting Democratic core principles of compassion, tolerance and independent thought. …

I like Sarah Palin, and I’ve heartily enjoyed her arrival on the national stage. As a career classroom teacher, I can see how smart she is — and quite frankly, I think the people who don’t see it are the stupid ones, wrapped in the fuzzy mummy-gauze of their own worn-out partisan dogma. So she doesn’t speak the King’s English — big whoop! There is a powerful clarity of consciousness in her eyes. She uses language with the jumps, breaks and rippling momentum of a be-bop saxophonist.

When Barack Obama named the Machiavelli of the democratic left, Rahm Emanuel, as White House Chief of Staff, the move, amounting to the selection of “a wartime consigliere,” was widely interpreted as evidence of the new administration’s intention of pursuing a highly polarized agenda, rather than, as Obama promised throughout his campaign, moving beyond partisanship.

Further signs of President-elect Obama’s intentions will come with ongoing appointments. Transition team chief John Podesta promised major cabinet-level appointments would be announced next month.

US News & World Reports published an unofficial transition flowchart (.pdf), currently circulating within the Beltway, which has some real eye-openers: e.g., Al Gore as “Climate Czar” and druggie-playboy-turned-Conspiracy-Theorist-and-Environmental-Prophet Robert Kennedy, Jr. as head of the EPA.

Robert Kennedy, Jr.

Walter Olson recently sounded the alarm about this possible appointment in Forbes, profiling Kennedy’s recent career promoting scary theories about childhood vaccinations causing Autism (complete with a CDC cover-up shielding the Drug Industry), air pollution causing Down’s Syndrome, and the Republican Party stealing the 2004 election.

The Politico blog describes government in action enforcing honesty and fairness in campaign finance. John McCain should be proud of his own contributions to the present system.

The Federal Election Commission is unlikely to conduct a potentially embarrassing audit of how Barack Obama raised and spent his presidential campaign’s record-shattering windfall, despite allegations of questionable donations and accounting that had the McCain campaign crying foul.

Adding insult to injury for Republicans: The FEC is obligated to complete a rigorous audit of McCain’s campaign coffers, which will take months, if not years, and cost McCain millions of dollars to defend.

Obama is expected to escape that level of scrutiny mostly because he declined an $84 million public grant for his campaign that automatically triggers an audit and because the sheer volume of cash he raised and spent minimizes the significance of his errors. Another factor: The FEC, which would have to vote to launch an audit, is prone to deadlocking on issues that inordinately impact one party or the other – like approving a messy and high-profile probe of a sitting president.

McCain, on the other hand, accepted the $84 million in taxpayer money, which not only barred him from raising or spending more – allowing Obama to fund many times more ads and ground operations – but also will keep his lawyers busy for a couple years explaining how every penny was spent.

Through the end of September, McCain had socked away $9.4 million in a special fund to pay for the audit.

The Obama campaign does not expect to be audited, but spokesman Ben LaBolt said it would be ready in the event it is.

M.C. Escher, Drawing Hands, 1948.

In a now famous 2002 radio interview, Barack Obama regretted the Warren Court’s failure to break free from “the essential constraints placed in the Constitution by the founding fathers.”

In Newsweek, George Will discusses how Obama’s very candidacy represented a fundamental break with constraints intended by the founding fathers. Barack Obama is the first presidential candidate in US history to achieve election, in the manner of an Escher print, on the basis of no personal achievement beyond the competence and well-oiled organization of his actual campaign for the presidency.

James W. Ceaser, professor of politics at the University of Virginia, writing in the Claremont Review of Books, notes that, contrary to conventional understanding, the Constitution created not three but four “national institutions.” They are the Congress, the Supreme Court, the presidency—and the presidential selection system, based on the Electoral College. “The question of presidential selection,” Ceaser writes, “was just that important to the Founders.”

Under their plan, the nomination of candidates and the election of the president were to occur simultaneously. Electors meeting in their respective states, in numbers equal to their states’ senators and representatives, would vote for two people for president. The electors’ winnowing of aspirants was the nomination process. When the votes were opened in the U.S. House of Representatives, the candidate with a majority would become president, the runner-up would become vice president. If no person achieved a majority of electoral votes, the House would pick from among the top five vote getters. Note well: The selection of presidential nominees was to be controlled by the Constitution.

The Founders’ intent, Ceaser writes, was to prevent the selection of a president from being determined by the “popular arts” of campaigning, such as rhetoric. The Founders, Ceaser says, “were deeply fearful of leaders deploying popular oratory as the means of winning distinction.” That deployment would invite demagoguery, which subverts moderation. “Brilliant appearances,” wrote John Jay in The Federalist Papers 64, “… sometimes mislead as well as dazzle.” By telling members of the political class how not to get considered for the presidency, the Founders hoped to (in Ceaser’s words) “make virtue the ally of interest” and shape the behavior of that class.

Barack Obama completed the long march away from the Founders’ intent. Most recent presidential candidacies have been exercises of personal political entrepreneurship; his campaign, powered by the “popular art” of oratory, was the antithesis of the Founders’ system.

The Progressives of 100 years ago wanted to popularize presidential selection by rewarding candidates gifted in the popular art of inflaming excitement through oratory. They opened a door through which, eventually, strode George Wallace, Jesse Jackson, Pat Robertson, Pat Buchanan, Howard Dean and others.

Ceaser notes that the candidate whose path to the presidency most resembled Obama’s was Jimmy Carter. He, too, used an intensely personal and inspirational appeal to compensate for a thin résumé. Having courted the public with flattering rhetoric—promising “a government as good as the American people”—Carter came a cropper as president, partly because he was a one-man political startup. He had been selected by a process that rewarded running as a solitary savior, offering his personal qualities—his supposed moral excellence—as the key to national improvement.

Even CNN has noticed that the Obama Transition web-site has changed its mind about disclosing the specifics of the new administration’s intentions and agenda.

Somebody might start opposing them. Better make them a surprise.

Last week, President-elect Barack Obama launched a Web site with detailed information about his plans for technology, Iraq, and health care policies.

Now they’re gone.

The “agenda” Web pages on Change.gov seem to have mysteriously disappeared on Sunday. By Monday morning, they were replaced with a vague statement saying that Obama and running mate Joe Biden have a “comprehensive and detailed agenda” that will “bring about the kind of change America needs,” with the individual pages deleted entirely.

A version of the now-deleted homeland security agenda recovered from the cache feature of Microsoft’s Live Search is far more detailed, promising to convene a nuclear terrorism summit, declare the Internet “a strategic asset,” and establish a $2 billion fund to “counter al-Qaeda propaganda.” Those happen to be identical to the promises that candidate Obama made earlier this year; they have not been deleted from the campaign Web site. …

Dan Pfeiffer, Obama’s transition communications director, would not say what was going on or whether the deletion meant that some of the campaign promises would be dropped. He sent CNET News a one-line e-mail message saying: “That section of the Web site is being retooled.”

Under “Domestic Policy,” the transition web-site formerly promised to enact a variety of gun control proposals favored by anti-gun groups. The NRA Institute For Legislative Action still remembers what those were:

Making the expired federal assault weapons ban permanent.

In other words, restoring a ban on firearms which are not actually assault weapons by calling them “assault weapons,” relying on public confusion based upon cosmetic resemblances.

Repeal the Tiahrt Amendment.

The Tiahrt amendment, and appropriations rider introduced in 2003 by Rep Todd Tiahrt (R – 4th District Kansas) prohibits the release of federal firearm tracing information to anyone other than a law enforcement agency conducting a bona fide criminal investigation. Anti-gun activists oppose the restriction, because it prevents them from obtaining tracing information and using it in frivolous lawsuits against law-abiding firearm manufacturers.

“Closing the gun show loophole.”

An attempt to prohibit private sales of firearms by individuals not licensed as Federal Firearms Dealers.

“Making guns in this country childproof.”

“Childproofing” is a codeword for a variety of schemes intended to ban firearms by imposing impossible or highly expensive design requirements, such as biometric shooter-identification systems.

———————————

Hat tip to Ben Slotznik.

—this post is repeated annually—

WWI came to an end by an armistice arranged to occur at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. The date and time, selected at a point in history when mens’ memories ran much longer, represented a compliment to St. Martin, patron saint of soldiers, and thus a tribute to the fighting men of both sides. The feast day of St. Martin, the Martinmas, had been for centuries a major landmark in the European calendar, a date on which leases expired, rents came due; and represented, in Northern Europe, a seasonal turning point after which cold weather and snow might be normally expected.

It fell about the Martinmas-time, when the snow lay on the borders…
—-Old Song.

From Robert Chambers, The Book of Days, 1869:

St. Martin, the son of a Roman military tribune, was born at Sabaria, in Hungary, about 316. From his earliest infancy, he was remarkable for mildness of disposition; yet he was obliged to become a soldier, a profession most uncongenial to his natural character. After several years’ service, he retired into solitude, from whence he was withdrawn, by being elected bishop of Tours, in the year 374.

The zeal and piety he displayed in this office were most exemplary. He converted the whole of his diocese to Christianity, overthrowing the ancient pagan temples, and erecting churches in their stead. From the great success of his pious endeavours, Martin has been styled the Apostle of the Gauls; and, being the first confessor to whom the Latin Church offered public prayers, he is distinguished as the father of that church. In remembrance of his original profession, he is also frequently denominated the Soldier Saint.

The principal legend, connected with St. Martin, forms the subject of our illustration, which represents the saint, when a soldier, dividing his cloak with a poor naked beggar, whom he found perishing with cold at the gate of Amiens. This cloak, being most miraculously preserved, long formed one of the holiest and most valued relics of France; when war was declared, it was carried before the French monarchs, as a sacred banner, and never failed to assure a certain victory. The oratory in which this cloak or cape—in French, chape—was preserved, acquired, in consequence, the name of chapelle, the person intrusted with its care being termed chapelain: and thus, according to Collin de Plancy, our English words chapel and chaplain are derived. The canons of St. Martin of Tours and St. Gratian had a lawsuit, for sixty years, about a sleeve of this cloak, each claiming it as their property. The Count Larochefoucalt, at last, put an end to the proceedings, by sacrilegiously committing the contested relic to the flames.

Another legend of St. Martin is connected with one of those literary curiosities termed a palindrome. Martin, having occasion to visit Rome, set out to perform the journey thither on foot. Satan, meeting him on the way, taunted the holy man for not using a conveyance more suitable to a bishop. In an instant the saint changed the Old Serpent into a mule, and jumping on its back, trotted comfortably along. Whenever the transformed demon slackened pace, Martin, by making the sign of the cross, urged it to full speed. At last, Satan utterly defeated, exclaimed:

Signa, te Signa: temere me tangis et angis:
Roma tibi subito motibus ibit amor.’

In English—

‘Cross, cross thyself: thou plaguest and vexest me without necessity;
for, owing to my exertions, thou wilt soon reach Rome, the object of thy wishes.’

The singularity of this distich, consists in its being palindromical—that is, the same, whether read backwards or forwards. Angis, the last word of the first line, when read backwards, forming signet, and the other words admitting of being reversed, in a similar manner.

The festival of St. Martin, happening at that season when the new wines of the year are drawn from the lees and tasted, when cattle are killed for winter food, and fat geese are in their prime, is held as a feast-day over most parts of Christendom. On the ancient clog almanacs, the day is marked by the figure of a goose; our bird of Michaelmas being, on the continent, sacrificed at Martinmas. In Scotland and the north of England, a fat ox is called a mart, clearly from Martinmas, the usual time when beeves are killed for winter use. In ‘Tusser’s Husbandry, we read:

When Easter comes, who knows not then,
That veal and bacon is the man?
And Martilmass beef doth bear good tack,
When country folic do dainties lack.’

Barnaby Googe’s translation of Neogeorgus, shews us how Martinmas was kept in Germany, towards the latter part of the fifteenth century

‘To belly chear, yet once again,
Doth Martin more incline,
Whom all the people worshippeth With roasted geese and wine.
Both all the day long, and the night, Now each man open makes
His vessels all, and of the must, Oft times, the last he takes,
Which holy Martin afterwards Alloweth to be wine,
Therefore they him, unto the skies, Extol with praise divine.’

A genial saint, like Martin, might naturally be expected to become popular in England; and there are no less than seven churches in London and Westminster, alone, dedicated to him. There is certainly more than a resemblance between the Vinalia of the Romans, and the Martinalia of the medieval period. Indeed, an old ecclesiastical calendar, quoted by Brand, expressly states under 11th November: ‘The Vinalia, a feast of the ancients, removed to this day. Bacchus in the figure of Martin.’ And thus, probably, it happened, that the beggars were taken from St. Martin, and placed under the protection of St. Giles; while the former became the patron saint of publicans, tavern-keepers, and other ‘dispensers of good eating and drinking. In the hall of the Vintners’ Company of London, paintings and statues of St. Martin and Bacchus reign amicably together side by side.

On the inauguration, as lord mayor, of Sir Samuel Dashwood, an honoured vintner, in 1702, the company had a grand processional pageant, the most conspicuous figure in which was their patron saint, Martin, arrayed, cap-Ã -pie, in a magnificent suit of polished armour; wearing a costly scarlet cloak, and mounted on a richly plumed and caparisoned white charger: two esquires, in rich liveries, walking at each side. Twenty satyrs danced before him, beating tambours, and preceded by ten halberdiers, with rural music. Ten Roman lictors, wearing silver helmets, and carrying axes and fasces, gave an air of classical dignity to the procession, and, with the satyrs, sustained the bacchanalian idea of the affair.

A multitude of beggars, ‘howling most lamentably,’ followed the warlike saint, till the procession stopped in St. Paul’s Churchyard. Then Martin, or his representative at least, drawing his sword, cut his rich scarlet cloak in many pieces, which he distributed among the beggars. This ceremony being duly and gravely performed, the lamentable howlings ceased, and the procession resumed its course to Guildhall, where Queen Anne graciously condescended to dine with the new lord mayor.

Linn and Ari Armstrong, at the Grand Junction Free Press, issue a rejoinder to Alan Greenspan, John McCain, and Barack Obama on behalf of Ayn Rand and the Free Market.

Ayn Rand recognized a common pattern in the growth of political power: The enemies of liberty blame the free market for economic problems caused by government interference, then use those problems as a pretext for yet more political controls. Much of Rand’s prescient novel “Atlas Shrugged” revolves around that cycle.

Now Rand’s critics sound exactly like the villains of Atlas. They wouldn’t attack her if they didn’t recognize her as a barrier to their grand central plans.

Recently Alan Greenspan fueled the Rand hunt. In an Oct. 23 statement to a Congressional committee, Greenspan said he had “found a flaw” in his ideology of “free, competitive markets.”

There’s just one problem with Greenspan’s statement: He practiced no such ideology. For two decades, Greenspan served as chairman of the Federal Reserve, a central planning agency tasked with manipulating the money supply. Greenspan’s flaw is that he long ago abandoned the ideology of liberty.

Two decades before becoming a central planner, Greenspan, while still in association with Rand, warned of the dangers of the Federal Reserve. In a 1966 article, Greenspan noted that, in the late 20s, the “Federal Reserves pumped excessive reserves into American banks.” This “spilled over into the stock market — triggering a fantastic speculative boom.” Sound familiar? Greenspan became the monster he once warned against.

Today’s crisis centers around risky home loans. But were these loans made on a free market? No. Instead, they were encouraged, and in some cases mandated, by the federal government.

Both major candidates for president followed that stock line. While John McCain also blamed unspecified “corruption in Washington,” he emphasized the “greed and mismanagement of Wall Street.”

Barack Obama blamed greed and deregulation, despite the fact that nobody can point to the repeal of a regulation that could have caused the crisis. By contrast, the mechanisms by which government controls caused the crisis are clear.

Henry Blogett draws a grim pictures of the Times’ unhappy situation.

Specifically, the company must deliver $400 million to lenders in May of 2009, six months from now. The company has only $46 million of cash on hand, and its operations will likely begin consuming this meager balance this quarter or next. The company has been shut out of the commercial paper market, but has a $366 million short-term credit line remaining that it entered into several years ago, when the industry was strong. It has not yet drawn this cash down, and given the current environment and the trends at the company, we would not take for granted that it will be able to do so.

The New York Times is in discussions with its lenders about the May payment, and management thinks it will be able to work something out (“We expect that we will be able to manage our debt and credit obligations as they mature.” Note the use of the word “manage” as opposed to “meet.”)

So sad. Maybe they can sell the paper to Murdoch.

Read the whole thing.