Learning the Hard Way

Here are a couple of reports on how low our economy has sunk under the incompetent supervision of George W. Bush:

WASHINGTON - Jobs grew at a healthy clip in February, the government reported Friday, helping boost wages to their highest year-over-year increase in more than four years while encouraging more jobless people to reenter the labor force.

The stronger-than-predicted net increase of 243,000 jobs was the largest gain in any of the last 12 months except for November, when the economy was rebounding from the effects of Hurricane Katrina.

The report signaled that wage growth, which has lagged behind inflation even as the unemployment rate has tumbled, might finally be making a comeback. "The growth in most workers' wages is probably just about to catch up with inflation, resulting in the first inflation-adjusted wage gains in years," he said.

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks rose sharply on Tuesday, with the Dow and S&P 500 indexes hitting their highest in nearly five years as U.S. Treasury yields fell and record profit from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. boosted shares of financial companies.

The liberals have been telling us for years that those tax cuts wouldn't work but we obstinately refused to listen. Now we're learning the lesson the hard way and getting just what we deserve for not heeding the economic sages in the Defeatocrat party.

Thought Experiment

Steve Petermann at Telic Thoughts invites us to try a thought experiment:

Suppose there is an alternate universe where there is also a trial in Dover, PA. However, in this universe a few things are different. In this universe this is how evolution is currently taught in high school biology classes:

Evolution means change over time. Observation suggests that life has evolved with some form of common descent. It also suggests that change occurs because of mutations in the genome where the environment has some effect on what gets passed on from one generation to the next. Except for materials on fossils and genetics, that's it.

Now in Dover a majority of the school board members believe that this explanation of biotic emergence is scientifically inadequate. They claim that the best scientific explanation is that mutations occur strictly by chance, that they are unguided and purposeless. These board members are known as evangelical atheists and deists. They vote to include this additional level of explanation in high school biology classes. But some parents of students sue because they believe that this additional material does not belong in science class and is instead an attempt to smuggle atheism or deism into public schools. A trial ensues.

The plaintiffs offer expert witnesses who argue that the additional material is not scientific because it cannot be tested or falsified. They also challenge the defense experts claim to be able to scientifically detect what is unguided and purposeless in evolution. Then they call witnesses who testify that the board members who pushed for the new syllabus have often talked about how a knowledge of science naturally leads to atheism or deism.

The defense calls expert witnesses who claim to offer scientific evidence that unguidedness and purposelessness in evolution can be detected. They claim it offers the best scientific explanation available and therefore should be included in science classes. They also assert that the religious beliefs of board members are irrelevant to the issue.

Given that this universe has the same constitution as in ours, how should the judge rule?

Well, regardless of how he should rule, if he's Judge John Jones he would rule exactly opposite of the way he decided in the real Kitzmiller case, of course. He would find in favor of the school board since they're the defenders, in this hypothetical case, of materialist metaphysics.

But Petermann's point is well taken. The belief that the development of life is an unguided, purposeless process is no less "religious," and no more scientific, than is the contrary claim that life is the product of intelligent planning. Sooner or later even Judge Jones will realize this.

Lost Cause

Ralph Peters has returned from Baghdad and he's not happy. With the media. Here's what he says:

During a recent visit to Baghdad, I saw an enormous failure. On the part of our media. The reality in the streets, day after day, bore little resemblance to the sensational claims of civil war and disaster in the headlines.

No one with first-hand experience of Iraq would claim the country's in rosy condition, but the situation on the ground is considerably more promising than the American public has been led to believe. Lurid exaggerations and instant myths obscure real, if difficult, progress.

I left Baghdad more optimistic than I was before this visit. While cynicism, political bias and the pressure of a 24/7 news cycle accelerate a race to the bottom in reporting, there are good reasons to be soberly hopeful about Iraq's future.

Much could still go wrong. The Arab genius for failure could still spoil everything. We've made grave mistakes. Still, it's difficult to understand how any first-hand observer could declare that Iraq's been irrevocably "lost."

He then goes on to give eight examples of how "what everyone knows" about Iraq is false:

Consider just a few of the inaccuracies served up by the media:

Claims of civil war. In the wake of the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, a flurry of sectarian attacks inspired wild media claims of a collapse into civil war. It didn't happen. Driving and walking the streets of Baghdad, I found children playing and, in most neighborhoods, business as usual. Iraq can be deadly, but, more often, it's just dreary.

Iraqi disunity. Factional differences are real, but overblown in the reporting. Few Iraqis support calls for religious violence. After the Samarra bombing, only rogue militias and criminals responded to the demagogues' calls for vengeance. Iraqis refused to play along, staging an unrecognized triumph of passive resistance.

Expanding terrorism. On the contrary, foreign terrorists, such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, have lost ground. They've alienated Iraqis of every stripe. Iraqis regard the foreigners as murderers, wreckers and blasphemers, and they want them gone. The Samarra attack may, indeed, have been a tipping point--against the terrorists.

Hatred of the U.S. military. If anything surprised me in the streets of Baghdad, it was the surge in the popularity of U.S. troops among both Shias and Sunnis. In one slum, amid friendly adult waves, children and teenagers cheered a U.S. Army patrol as we passed. Instead of being viewed as occupiers, we're increasingly seen as impartial and well-intentioned.

The appeal of the religious militias. They're viewed as mafias. Iraqis want them disarmed and disbanded. Just ask the average citizen.

The failure of the Iraqi army. Instead, the past month saw a major milestone in the maturation of Iraq's military. During the mini-crisis that followed the Samarra bombing, the Iraqi army put over 100,000 soldiers into the country's streets. They defused budding confrontations and calmed the situation without killing a single civilian. And Iraqis were proud to have their own army protecting them. The Iraqi army's morale soared as a result of its success.

Reconstruction efforts have failed. Just not true. The American goal was never to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure in its entirety. Iraqis have to do that. Meanwhile, slum-dwellers utterly neglected by Saddam Hussein's regime are getting running water and sewage systems for the first time. The Baathist regime left the country in a desolate state while Saddam built palaces. The squalor has to be seen to be believed. But the hopeless now have hope.

The electricity system is worse than before the war. Untrue again. The condition of the electric grid under the old regime was appalling. Yet, despite insurgent attacks, the newly revamped system produced 5,300 megawatts last summer--a full thousand megawatts more than the peak under Saddam Hussein. Shortages continue because demand soared--newly free Iraqis went on a buying spree, filling their homes with air conditioners, appliances and the new national symbol, the satellite dish. Nonetheless, satellite photos taken during the hours of darkness show Baghdad as bright as Damascus.

Peters isn't naive. He recognizes that Iraq can still implode, but:

[T]he foreign media have become a destructive factor, extrapolating daily crises from minor incidents. Part of this is ignorance. Some of it is willful. None of it is helpful.

Read the rest of his essay at the link. The short version is: Iraq is a lost cause only to those who want it to be.

Pombo Bill

The House of Representatives last September passed a piece of legislation authored by Richard Pombo (R-CA) which would effectively gut the Endangered Species Act. It puts at risk the ability of the Federal government to protect threatened species of living things as well as habitat critical for the fluorishing of these organisms.

The bill is now in the Senate which must vote to pass it, or a compromise measure, in order for it to become law.

If you believe that allowing our wildlife and wild places to be extirpated and asphalted is irresponsible, profligate, and myopic, write or call your Senator to tell him or her so. You can find their e-mail, snail mail, and phone addresses here.

Political Sucker-Puncher

New York Times reports on Senator Feingold's dismay with his fellow Democrats:

Wisconsin Sen. Russell Feingold accused fellow Democrats on Tuesday of cowering rather than joining him on trying to censure President Bush over domestic spying. "Democrats run and hide" when the administration invokes the war on terrorism, Feingold told reporters.

Feingold introduced censure legislation Monday in the Senate but not a single Democrat has embraced it. Several have said they want to see the results of a Senate Intelligence Committee investigation before supporting any punitive legislation.

Republicans dismissed the proposal Tuesday as being more about Feingold's 2008 presidential aspirations than Bush's actions. On and off the Senate floor, they have dared Democrats to vote for the resolution.

"I'm amazed at Democrats ... cowering with this president's numbers so low," Feingold said. The latest AP-Ipsos poll on Bush, conducted last week, found just 37 percent of the 1,000 people surveyed approving his overall performance, the lowest of his presidency.

Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., tried to hold a vote Monday on Feingold's resolution but was blocked by Democrats. He said Tuesday that Feingold should withdraw the resolution because it has no support. "If the Democrats continue to say no to voting on their own censure resolution, then they ought to drop it and focus on our foreign policy in a positive way," Frist said in a statement.

Feingold's resolution condemns Bush's "unlawful authorization of wiretaps of Americans within the United States without obtaining the court orders required" by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Of course, his Democratic colleagues are not the only ones who have failed to display the courage of their convictions. Senator Feingold himself left the Senate chamber after introducing his resolution, leaving it to others to debate it for him. The Senator, evidently an accomplished political sucker-puncher, whacks the president with an allegation of criminal activity and then flees. Gutsy.

On Friendship

It is in the friendship of good men that feelings of affection and friendship exist in their highest and best form. -- Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics.

I had occasion recently to reflect upon what I thought to be the ingredients of friendship. I ventured that friendship requires that two people share an affection for each other based upon similar values and interests, mutual esteem, and shared experience. To the extent that two persons hold common intellectual, moral, and spiritual values and are bonded by similar personality traits and shared experiences in life, to that extent their friendship will be deep. The less they share in common, either in terms of values, personality, or experience, the more superficial will be any relationship between them.

Atleast that's what I think. There are many other opinions on the matter much more profound and compelling than mine. Of those that I'm aware of, the loveliest expression of the nature of friendship is found in Augustine's Confessions. Augustine, describing his grief at the death of a dear companion, writes of his friends that:

All kinds of things rejoiced my soul in their company - to talk and laugh and do each other kindnesses; read pleasant books together, pass from lightest jesting to talk of the deepest things and back again; differ without rancour, as a man might differ with himself, and when most rarely when dissension arose find our normal agreement all the sweeter for it; teach each other or learn from each other; be impatient for the return of the absent, and welcome them with joy on their home-coming; these and such like things, proceeding from our hearts as we gave affection and received it back, and shown by face, by voice, by the eyes, and a thousand other pleasing ways, kindled a flame which fused our very souls and of many made us one.

This is what men value in friends, and value so much that our conscience judges them guilty if they do not meet friendship with friendship, expecting nothing from their friend save such evidences of his affection. -- Confessions Book IV: viii, ix

Beautifully put.

What Was She Thinking?

Democrats can't win no matter how hard they try. Every time they assay to land a whopping insult on the presidential kisser they just wind up making themselves look laughable. The latest exhibit is this photo of Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan trying to call attention to the president's inadequacies on the Senate floor.

No doubt Michigan Republicans are archiving this shot for use in future campaign ads.

Al-Qaeda on the Run

Maybe Tim Russert should interview Oliver Poole, the reporter who penned the following article in Britain's Telegraph. Given that it contains some positive developments in the war against al-Qaeda, however, Mr. Russert would probably not be interested.

Insurgent groups in one of Iraq's most violent provinces claim that they have purged the region of three quarters of al-Qa'eda's supporters after forming an alliance to force out the foreign fighters. If true, it would mark a significant victory in the fight against Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of al-Qa'eda in Iraq, and could partly explain the considerable drop in suicide bombings in Iraq recently.

Considerable drop in suicide bombings? We thought the country was going all to pieces.

"We have killed a number of the Arabs, including Saudis, Egyptians, Syrians, Kuwaitis and Jordanians," said an insurgent representative in the western province of Anbar. The claims were partly supported by the defence ministry, which said it had evidence that Zarqawi and his followers were fleeing Anbar to cities and mountains near the Iranian border.

Iran? Why Iran? Iran wouldn't harbor terrorists would it? The left will soon be snorting that this claim is just disinformation put out by Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld, the Satanic trinity, to create a pretext for war with Iran.

It is this move that is believed to have prompted a statement a fortnight ago from the insurgent groups in the central city of Hawija that they were declaring war on al-Qae'da. It is being interpreted by intelligence experts as a response to an unwanted influx of foreign fighters seeking refuge. Iraq's Sunni Muslim insurgents had originally welcomed al-Qa'eda into the country, seeing it as a powerful ally in its fight against the American occupation.

But relations became strained when insurgents supported calls for Sunnis to vote in last December's election, a move they saw as essential to break the Shia hold on government but which al-Qa'eda viewed as a form of collaboration. It became an outright split when a wave of bombings killed scores of people in Anbar resulting in a spate of tit-for-tat killings.

In reaction, the insurgent groups formed their own anti-al-Qa'eda militia, the Anbar Revolutionaries. The group has a core membership of 100 people, all of whom had relatives killed by al-Qa'eda. It is led by Ahmed Ftaikhan, a former Saddam-era military intelligence officer. It claims to have killed 20 foreign fighters and 33 Iraqi sympathisers. Many more are said to have fled. The United States has confirmed that six of Zarqawi's deputies were killed in Ramadi.

Osama al-Jadaan, a tribal chief, has claimed that with the support of the Iraqi army his supporters have captured hundreds of foreign fighters, and has sought to prevent jihadis entering the country from Syria.

So the insurgency has had it with al-Qaeda and is cleaning them out, or claiming to. Of course, this will make it much more difficult for the malcontents to fight against the coalition and more likely that they'll eventually start laying down their arms. It's going to be messy there for a long time, but the trend lines, despite what we hear from the defeatist media, are pointing in the right direction. Iraqi security forces are gaining in numbers, competency, and operational experience. Attempts to build a government continue. The people want peace. But it would all fall apart if we were to pull out too soon and leave a vacuum that the most ruthless would fill.

The nay-sayers, having had their hopes of a civil war dashed in recent weeks, are now promoting the case that the administration's incompetence and bull-headedness made the situation much more difficult to manage than it needed to be, and perhaps they're right, but how do we know? How can we say for certain that had we sent in more troops to keep the peace after toppling Saddam that the results would have been significantly different from what they are? I tend to believe that we should have used more troops, but whether they would have prevented the insurgency or not, who knows?

An Evil Twin?

Here's an interesting wrinkle in the case of presidential advisor Claude Allen who has been charged with fraud in a scheme to steal goods from a Target store in Gaithersburg, MD: Allen has an identical twin. Michelle Malkin wonders why the left thinks that's funny.

We take no position, of course, on the significance of this development with respect to Allen's (Claude) guilt or innocence. We just thought you might like to know about it.

Senator Quixote

Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI), often portrayed as a serious voice along the left-most aisle of the Senate chamber, has made himself look more like a ridiculous Don Quixote tilting at windmills with his attempt yesterday to curry favor among the MoveOn crowd. Feingold introduced a resolution into the Senate calling for censure of President Bush on the grounds that the president has broken the law by directing the National Security Agency to listen in on phone calls made by suspected terrorists to people in this country who may be accomplices.

Feingold claims that Bush did not follow the protocols established to govern such eavesdroppings and therefore deserves censure. This is absurd, of course, but absurdity does not have much deterrent effect upon the Ahabs on the left obsessed with their pursuit of Moby George.

It is absurd because 1) It's not at all clear that the president lacks the authority to do what he has done; 2) In any case, his actions were taken to protect the American people, not to benefit himself in any way; 3) He hasn't done anything that everyone of his predecessors both themselves approved of and carried out without complaint from the Democrats; 4) Senate leaders of both parties were kept apprised of the existence and findings of the program.

Feingold, the only Senator to oppose the Patriot act in 2001, left the chamber immediately after introducing his proposal, not even sticking around to debate its merits. Presumably he was in a rush to leap astride his steed and search out further villainous windmills in Washington to impale upon his sturdy lance. Or perhaps he left in order to spare himself the embarrassment of watching his fellow Democrats moonwalking away from his risible resolution.

Know Them By Their Fruits

I was reminded of Matthew 7:21-23 when I read this story of people who call themselves Christians but who demonstrate at funerals of dead soldiers in the most vile and despicable ways, exploiting the grief of bereaved families in order to make a hateful socio-theological statement:

Five women sang and danced as they held up signs saying "thank God for dead soldiers" at the funeral of an army sergeant who was killed by an Iraqi bomb. For them, it was the perfect way to spread God's word: America was being punished for tolerating homosexuality.

For the hundreds of flag waving bikers who came to this small town in Michigan Saturday to shield the soldier's family, it was disgusting. The fringe group of fire and brimstone Baptists from Kansas has been courting controversy for more than 15 years, traveling the country with their hateful signs and slogans.

Pastor Fred helps said he and his congregants are targeting the funerals because God's way of punishing an "evil nation" of "fags and fag enablers" is to "pick off its children."

"I don't have any sympathy for these parents. They're all going to hell," Phelps said. "The family's in pain because they haven't obeyed the Lord God."

The Westboro Baptist Church first gained national notoriety when they picked the funeral of Matthew Shepard, a Wyoming student who was murdered in 1998 for being gay. In Flushing, Michigan they turned their leather-clad backs to the five women and held flags and tarps up so that mourners walking past wouldn't see the signs saying "God hates fags," "fag vets" and "America is doomed."

Many found it hard to hide their anger when Margie Phelps, the daughter of Westboro's founder, called out "All this for little old us? Oh, you shouldn't have. I feel so special," before she started singing "the Pope, the Pope, the Pope is on fire. He don't get no water let the heretics burn" in front of a Catholic church.

Jesus says in the passage in the gospel of Matthew mentioned above that:

You will know them by their fruits. Not everyone who says to me, "Lord, Lord" will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, "Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name cast out demons, and in your name perform many miracles?" And then I will declare to them, "I never knew you. Depart from me you who practice lawlessness."

Perhaps the worst photo of the Westboro haters appeared in our local paper. It was of a child holding up a sign at the funeral of a young man who was killed in Iraq. The sign had the words THANK GOD FOR IEDs.

Christ also has a word for people who would put children up to that sort of evil. He said: "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believes in me to stumble, it is better for him that a millstone be hung around his neck, and that he be drowned in the depth of the sea." (Matt. 18:6).

The people at Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas will some day have a lot to answer for, not the least of which is the unChrist-like image of Christianity that they have presented to a world eager to believe the worst of Christians. Pastor Phelps is an answer to their prayers.

Stanching the Flow

Omar at Iraq the Model tells us that:

Sheikh Usama said today that the "Nakhwa" 4,000 man-strong tribal force he's supervising has succeeded in capturing yet another 169 infiltrators coming mostly from the Jordanian borders during the past week.

The sheikh also spoke of disbanding 9 terror groups working with Zaraqawi's al-Qaeda in Iraq and confirmed that the recently captured infiltrators were mostly non-Iraqi Arabs with some Iraqis guiding them in and providing logistics and that they brought weapons, explosives and sophisticated maps with them with a selection of targets pointed on those maps.

"Our main problem is the vast size of Anbar as well as having shared borders with 3 countries; Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria and recently we have that more and more infiltrators are coming through the borders with Jordan rather than the other two countries...We have rid about 90% of the province of Zaraqwi's criminal thugs and we are coordinating our work with the ministries of defense and interior and we had several meetings with Iraqi officials as well as General Casey. Now we believe Zarqawi had escaped to Salahiddin province and we are cooperating with the tribes of Salahiddin to find out where this criminal is hiding."

Our question is what happens to all these infiltrators once they're captured. Are they returned to Jordan? Are they turned over to the coalition authorities? Are they sent on their way to their assignation with seventy two virgins? What?

Iran Prepares For War

Iran is convinced that the West lacks the will to block its production of nuclear weapons but is nevertheless preparing for a half-hearted gesture in that direction:

Iran's leaders have built a secret underground emergency command centre in Teheran as they prepare for a confrontation with the West over their illicit nuclear programme, the Sunday Telegraph has been told. The complex of rooms and offices beneath the Abbas Abad district in the north of the capital is designed to serve as a bolthole and headquarters for the country's rulers as military tensions mount.

The recently completed command centre is connected by tunnels to other government compounds near the Mossala prayer ground, one of the city's most important religious sites. Offices of the state security forces, the energy department and the Organisation of Islamic Culture and Communications are all located in the same area.

The construction of the complex is part of the regime's plan to move more of its operations beneath ground. The Revolutionary Guard has overseen the development of subterranean chambers and tunnels - some more than half a mile long and an estimated 35ft high and wide - at sites across the country for research and development work on nuclear and rocket programmes.

The opposition National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) learnt about the complex from its contacts within the regime. The same network revealed in 2002 that Iran had been operating a secret nuclear programme for 18 years. The underground strategy is partly designed to hide activities from satellite view and international inspections but also reflects a growing belief in Teheran that its showdown with the international community could end in air strikes by America or Israel. "Iran's leaders are clearly preparing for a confrontation by going underground," said Alireza Jafarzadeh, the NCRI official who made the 2002 announcement.

As the United Nations Security Council prepares to discuss Iran's nuclear operations this week, Teheran has been stepping up plans for confrontation. Its chief delegate on nuclear talks last week threatened that Iran would inflict "harm and pain" on America if censured by the Security Council.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the hardline president who has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map", also said that the West would "suffer" if it tried to thwart Iran's nuclear ambitions. As the war of words intensified, President George W Bush said that Teheran represents a "grave national security concern" for America.

In Iraq, which Mr Ahmadinejad hopes will develop into a fellow Shia Islamic state, Iran is already using its proxy militia to attack British and American forces, often with Iranian-made bombs and weapons. As tensions grow, Teheran could order Hizbollah - the Lebanese-based terror faction that it created and arms - to attack targets in Israel.

The regime is also reviewing its contingency plans to attack tankers and American naval forces in the Persian Gulf and to mine the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 15 million barrels of oil (about 20 per cent of world production) passes each day. Any action in the Gulf would send oil prices soaring - a weapon that Iran has often threatened to wield.

The Pentagon's strategic planning is focused on the danger that Iran might try to mine the strait and deploy explosive-packed suicide boats against its warships. In May, American vessels in the Gulf will take part in the Arabian Gauntlet training exercise that deals with clearing mines from the strait, which has a navigable channel just two miles wide.

The naval wing of the Revolutionary Guard has in recent years practised "swarming" raids, using its flotilla of small rapid-attack boats to simulate assaults on commercial vessels and United States warships, according to Ken Timmerman, an American expert on Iran.

The Pentagon is particularly sensitive to the dangers of such attacks after al-Qaeda hit the USS Cole off the Yemen with a suicide boat in 2000, killing 17 American sailors. Last month the White House listed two foiled al-Qaeda plots to attack ships in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.

US intelligence believes that if Iranian nuclear facilities were attacked by either America or Israel, then Teheran would respond by trying to close the Strait of Hormuz with naval forces, mines and anti-ship cruise missiles. "When these systems become fully operational, they will significantly enhance Iran's defensive capabilities and ability to deny access to the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz," Michael Maples, the director of the Defence Intelligence Agency testified before the Senate armed services committee last month.

A senior American intelligence officer said that the US navy would be able to reopen the strait but that it would be militarily costly. Hamid Reza Zakeri, a former Iranian intelligence officer, recently told Mr Timmerman that the Iranian navy's Strategic Studies Centre has produced an updated battle plan for the strait.

Its most devastating options would be to use its long-range Shahab-3 missiles to attack Israeli or American bases in the region or to deploy suicide bombers in Western cities under its strategy of "asymmetric" response. "The price to the West for standing up to Iran is clear," Gen Moshe Ya'alon, the former Israeli defence chief said last month in Washington. "It includes terror attacks, economic hardship... and consequences resulting from fluctuations in Iranian oil production. Indeed, the regime believes that the West - including Israel - is afraid to deal with it."

Indeed, the West should be afraid to deal with Iran, but then courage is the doing of that which one is afraid of doing. Attacking, and destroying, Iran's nuclear program and replacing its government and fearsome tasks, fraught with all manner of peril, and should be our next-to-last resort.

The last resort is letting the mullahs and Ahmadinejad have the weapons they seek.

Bad Advice

Professor of Anthropology Chris Toumey has some advice for his colleagues:

Our discipline of anthropology ought to take the intelligent design agenda seriously, and should actively oppose it, for two reasons: First, it is wrong for our public schools to mislead students. Secondly, intelligent design is a prominent feature of the so-called culture wars. Each victory for intelligent design in the classroom or the courtroom makes it easier to discredit the accounts of human origins that we generate in anthropology, along with the methods and concepts that guide our work.

I thought scientists opposed hypotheses because they believed them to be false, or because they lack the explanatory power of the favored hypothesis, not because they discredit their own position.

In any event, Mr. Toumey goes on to list four themes that anthropologists should stress in debating ID proponents. All four of them are irrelevant to Intelligent Design. For anti-IDers to employ any of them would be as smart as picking up a rattlesnake by the tail:

Gaps Argument: The core of intelligent design theory is the belief that, because we do not know the entire natural history of a complex phenomenon, it must be a miracle. This is too goofy to be either science or science education.

This is precisely wrong. ID is not predicated on what we don't know, it's based on what we do know. What we do know is that specified complexity (information), such as we find in living things, is not generated by blind, purposeless processes or random chance. It's generated by intelligent minds.

Are All Creators Equal? Intelligent design advocates pretend not to identify the Intelligent Designer, but use a wink and a nod to point to the conservative Christian portrait of the Judeo-Christian creator. Let there be a price to pay for being too cute. Just as the creationist effort to authenticate Noah's Flood makes the Babylonian hero Utnapishtem and the Sumerian Ziusudra just as real as the Biblical Noah, so the intelligent design effort to steer people to a creator god makes Kali, Allah and other non-Christian gods just as valid as the Christian god.

This is as dumb as saying that evolution advocates pretend not to be driven by atheistic materialism, but we know they are, so evolution is false. The designer may be the God of the Bible, many ID advocates believe that it is, but ID itself doesn't lead to that conclusion. For all we know the designer could well be an inhabitant of some other universe in the multiverse that physicists speculate about. If there can be other worlds why is it so difficult to accept that one of those worlds could contain beings capable of creating this world?

Evidence of Incompetent Design: The supposed proof of intelligent design consists of biological structures or behavior that work perfectly, or nearly perfectly. In other words, a simplistic biological functionalism. The counterproof includes vestigial structures that don't work anymore, or that put a creature at a disadvantage, plus anything else in anatomy or behavior which is not perfect.

This is an argument, such as it is, against belief that the designer is the omnipotent, omniscient God of the Bible. It has nothing at all to do with ID. After all, even an incompetent designer is still a designer. Parenthetically, even if the designer of this world didn't get everything right, it still turned in a pretty impressive performance.

Question the Single Alternative Science: Advocates of intelligent design say they want to broaden the public school science curriculum by adding "alternatives to evolution." Challenge them also to take the next logical step and add alternatives to astronomy and chemistry, and see whether conservative Christian parents are willing to include astrology and alchemy in their children's science courses.

This tactic is an indicator of the paucity of good arguments available to ID's opponents. Neither astrology nor alchemy are live options in the physical sciences. In the biological sciences, however, there are two alternatives: Either the information which fills the biosphere is the product solely of material forces or it is, at least in part, the product of intelligent agency. There are no other options, and both of these are live.

In the physical sciences there are also two options: Either the parameters, constants, forces and other properties of the physico-chemical universe are the product of purely naturalistic coincidence or they are the product of intentional engineering. There are no other options besides these, both of which are live. Throwing other creation myths, alchemy, or astrology into the mix is simply an attempt to blow smoke in peoples' eyes so that they won't see the real alternatives with which we are confronted in this debate.

Teach students the facts about the fine-tuned structure of the universe and then ask them which they think it is, chance or intelligence, that is responsible for the phenomena. Show them the computer generated videos of protein synthesis such as are found in the video The Mystery of Life's Origin and ask students whether they think this process is solely the result of chance and natural forces or whether they think it required some intelligent agency.

The vast majority of young people will agree that to believe that it's just a matter of chance and physics takes more faith than what they can muster. That's why secularists don't want students to know that there actually are alternatives to the materialist orthodoxy. They know that their metaphysics requires a superhuman exertion of will on the part of young people to believe it.

Here's a prediction I might have made before, but I'll reiterate: Because the evidence of intentional design is so strong in both the physical and biological world, as time goes on, materialists will increasingly encourage science teachers to down-play in their classes the wonders with which they seek to dazzle their students. The more teachers fill their students' minds with the fantastic truths of nature, the materialists will implicitly argue, the harder it will be to keep the young ones from wandering off the materialist plantation.

Of course, if they are ever successful in "sanitizing" science, it will mark the beginning of the end of scientific investigation and discovery because fewer students will be inspired to study it.

Twenty One Great Reads

A friend recently asked me to list my five favorite novels. I couldn't do it because, although I'm not much of a novel reader, I've read too many that have either moved me, instructed me, challenged me, or just entertained me to limit myself to only five. Instead, I gave him a list of twenty one, and I still had to leave some out that I should have included.

Herewith is the list, in no particular order, with a sentence or two of explanation:

The Gulag Archipelago (Aleksander Solzhenitsyn): a powerful indictment of the Soviet state and, by implication, it's leftist apologists in the West.

The Stranger (Albert Camus): Camus' mesmerizing vision of the post-modern nihilistic man for whom nothing really matters.

The Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoyevsky): A powerful tale of innocence and faith, evil and skepticism. The chapter titled The Grand Inquisitor is a stand-alone classic.

1984 (George Orwell): Orwell's j'accuse of the totalitarian state.

Bonfire of the Vanities (Tom Wolfe): Wolfe is an excellent writer and deft social satirist. His image of the "social x-ray," the anorexic dowagers of the Manhatten social elite, has been imprinted indelibly on my mind.

Uncle Tom's Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe): A wonderful narrative of the misery and horrors of slavery. Every high school student should read it, but sadly few do.

Roots (Alex Haley): This book inspired me to begin a study of my own family's history, a pursuit which has led me overseas and which has been sometimes exciting and always satisfying.

To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee): A warm tale of family and moral heroism in the face of the banality of evil.

Angela's Ashes (Frank McCourt): A delightful account, full of humor and pathos, of one man's struggle to rise out of the grinding poverty of his childhood in 1950's Ireland and make something of his life here in America.

Complete Short Stories of Flannery O'Connor (Flannery O'Connor): Not a single work, of course, but I have to include this ouvre because O'Connor is just wizard with words, and her ability to skewer liberal pieties appeals to anyone cynical about the doctrine of the inherent goodness of human beings.

Moby Dick (Herman Melville): Melville captures the self-destructive nature of human vengeance, pride and obsessiveness and along the way offers a fairly complete course in whaling and cetology.

Billy Budd (Herman Melville): A marvelous work of human psychology. A good and innocent man is put to death and Melville almost has you thinking that it was the right thing to do.

Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkein): A tour de force of the imagination. It is astounding that one man could have conjured up this fabulous tale. Tolkein is in a class with Homer.

In the Heart of the Sea (Nathaniel Philbrick): This is not a novel, but it reads like one. It's actually a true story of amazing human endurance and survival at sea in the 19th century.

Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck): Classic tale of the dislocations and misery of Oklahomans during the depression-era "dust-bowl."

Les Miserables (Victor Hugo): Perhaps my very favorite novel. Hugo weaves so many threads through this story that you're tempted to focus on just a few, but then, in a stroke of literary brilliance, he ties them all together at the end. Read the unabridged version.

Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens): Another great writer tells an epic narrative of altruism and love. The image of Madame DeFarge knitting while victims of the terror are losing their heads is unforgettable.

I Am Charlotte Simmons (Tom Wolfe): A sleazy, lubricious story of big time university basketball and campus life served up in masterful prose. I haven't read all of Wolfe's works but of what I've read, this is, in my opinion, his best. It's not for children, but it is must reading for every parent sending his/her child off to college.

A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry) : A tragic and compelling tale of growing up poor in India in the fifties. Powerful.

The DaVinci Code (Dan Brown): A page turner of a novel full, unfortunately, of theological axe-grinding and historical flummery. Despite Brown's anti-Catholic, anti-Christian agenda, his book was an exciting read.

The Great Divorce (C.S. Lewis): Lewis packs more deep theological insight and wisdom about human nature into this little volume than one might think possible. Your view of hell, and heaven, will never be the same after you've read it.

Self-Destructive Paranoia

The New York Times has a fascinating article by Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor, based on their new book titled Cobra II, which highlights the strategic thinking in Baghdad prior to the war, and how Saddam's fear of internal coup made defending his country virtually impossible. It also raises the very important point that even Saddam's military leaders thought Iraq had WMD until just a few months before the war started, and that they were stunned to learn that "the cupboard was bare." Some of them even said that after Saddam told them that there were no weapons they still found Colin Powell's case at the U.N. persuasive and thought that maybe the U.S. knew more than they themselves did.

It is a terrible irony that Saddam's attempts to remove all traces of earlier WMD programs, so as not to give weapons inspectors reason to believe that the programs were still ongoing, actually caused the U.S. to think that he was trying to hide those very programs. Saddam tried to deny having the weapons without actually allowing inspectors to prove he didn't have them because he didn't want to appear weak. His ambiguity left the U.S. with no choice but to assume that he did indeed have them.

Those who were so quick to accuse George Bush of lying to get us into war in those days should be chastened by this revelation, but, of course, they won't be.

Another Mass Murderer is Dead

The Serbian Saddam has died. There's a brief sketch of Slobodan Milosevic and what made him infamous here. A more detailed picture can be found by going here and following the links.

Milosevic, Saddam, and their ilk in Rwanda were the last of the twentieth century's mass murderers. As long as the civilized world has the power to stop such men it is a moral disgrace to refuse to do so. This is why "Bush's war" in Iraq was the right thing to do even were there no reason to believe that Saddam had WMD. It was as right for the U.S. to unseat Saddam as it was to stop Milosevic, as it was right for the U.S. to enter the war in Europe against the Nazis.

To stand by and let mass murder take place when one has the power to stop it is to be either complicit in the crime of genocide or to be craven in the face of it. In either case, it is a shameful stain on a nation's honor.

Yet much of the left is outraged that the United States employs military might against tyrants around the world when other measures fail. It's not that they object to force itself, mind, because throughout the twentieth century they never uttered a peep when the Soviets used it to keep their satellites in line. Rather they recoil from American use of force because they loathe this country and its values and do not wish to see either its power or its honor increase vis a vis the rest of the world.

A strong, dynamic and just U.S. is a reproach on all they believe and all they have given their life to convince others of. It's a reproach that they cannot bear, and it's one reason why they are not dismayed by American setbacks or when Americans betray their own principles, as at Abu Ghraib. Rather many on the left revel in these meager confirmations of their basest suspicions. It's really quite pathetic.

Look at Life From Both Sides Now

Academics and media types often give the impression that those who would like some mention of alternatives to evolution taught in their high schools are backwater rubes so far out of the cultural mainstream as to be flopping like beached fish on the riverbank.

A recent Zogby poll, however, gives us some insight into the question of who it is, exactly, who's floundering on the fringes of the "mainstream":

In response to a question as to whether biology teachers should teach Darwin's theory of evolution, but also the scientific evidence against it, 69% of respondents said yes.

If asked whether biology teachers should teach only Darwin's theory of evolution and the scientific evidence that supports it, only 21% said yes.

By more than three to one, according to Zogby, voters say that biology teachers should teach Darwin's theory of evolution, but also the scientific evidence against it. Approximately seven in ten (69%) side with this view. In contrast, one in five (21%) feels that Biology teachers should teach only Darwin's theory of evolution and the scientific evidence that supports it. One in ten is not sure.

When asked whether they strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, or strongly disagree with the following statement: "When Darwin's theory of evolution is taught in school, students should also be able to learn about scientific evidence that points to an intelligent design of life" the pollsters got this result:

Strongly agree 51%

Somewhat agree 26%

Somewhat disagree 6%

Strongly disagree 13%

Not sure 4%

In other words, three-fourths of respondents (77%) agree that when Darwin's theory of evolution is taught in school, students should also be able to learn about scientific evidence that points to an intelligent design of life. Furthermore, a majority (51%) agrees strongly. In comparison, one in five (19%) disagrees with the statement.

Four generations of indoctrination have not persuaded the vast majority of Americans that only one side of this issue should be presented in the classroom. This is one reason why this issue is not going to go away.

The elites who know what's best for us are alternately bemused, frustrated, and outraged that the masses seem unwilling to accept their word for it that materialist explanations for life are perfectly adequate and true. In their simple-minded way the common, unenlightened folk appear to think that if something looks designed that, heck, it just might be.

Wonder Why

The Chicago Tribune informs us that enrollment in Christian Colleges is on the rise:

Evangelical Christian colleges are attracting record numbers of applications this year in a trend that bodes well for an educational niche that was struggling to survive just a generation ago.

Applications have jumped between 8 percent and 10 percent at the 238 colleges that belong to the North American Association of Christian Admissions Professionals," Religion News Service reports. "More applications mean more students on campuses next fall ... and that's good news since 25 percent of those schools are barely breaking even financially. ... Enrollment has increased 70 percent since 1990, from 135,000 to 230,000, at the 102 evangelical schools belonging to the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities.

Parents are evidently awakening to the fact that one of the best moves they can make for the spiritual, moral, intellectual and political health of their child is to enroll him or her in a school that offers an overtly Christian environment. Many students are themselves arriving at the same conclusion.

Secular universities have, in many cases, become joyless, sterile places where the only relief from the stifling bleakness of the materialistic, anomic, politically correct atmosphere is the weekend party binge. That's scarcely the sort of ambience one is eager to fork over $30,000 a year to have his child immersed in.

The Mathematical Genius

Charles Edward White explains why three special numbers give powerful testimony to the existence of a mathematical genius behind the structure of the universe. The article will be of special interest to those with an interest in mathematics, but anyone who has had high school academic math courses and/or physics should be able to comprehend White's discussion.

By the way, it may be that White omitted from his essay the most impressive mathematical indicator of design, the Fibonacci sequence. You can read here why this particular series of numbers is so astounding.

David Berlinski, Part II

The second part of the interview with David Berlinski is up at Intelligent Design The Future. If you missed the first part you really should read it first. There's a link to it at IDF.

Let's Play...

Connect The Dots!

For one to understand what is taking place economically in America today one must attempt to connect the dots. They must follow different events and associate them in a way that leads to an explanation of what is happening. Here is an example of such an exercise.

The starting point is the realization that a minimum of 65,000 H-1B visas are granted annually for foreigners plus an indeterminate number of L-1 visas enabling foreigners to enter the U.S. to work. So it seems we have a policy of importing skilled labor and no policy regarding illegal immigrants (they can come as they please).

I've worked with people in the tech industry who are "visiting" the U.S. under such visas. These people are highly skilled and typically from India or China. Often their families still live overseas and they send most of the money they earn home for the family to live on and the rest gets put into various investments in their home country's markets. The same mechanism occurs within the Latino community.

It seems that the U.S. is importing labor at every level of the spectrum at the expense of citizens of the U.S.. Skilled and unskilled labor alike are welcome.

Why, one might ask would this be so? Let's connect the dots. First dot. All of these people put pressure on the prevailing wage rate to lower it or keep it from rising. An American software engineer will find it difficult to command a $50 per hour salary when someone from overseas will do the same job for $35 or less.

Second dot. Many illegal immigrants have found their way into less skilled jobs like construction. The American construction worker will find he can't compete for a job when the immigrant will do it for 40% or more less.

Third dot. Let's look at the cycle of events that causes inflation to be such a problem and for this example we will use oil. Let's say the cost of oil goes up due to a variety of reasons. First and foremost is that the value of the dollar is going down simply because we print so many of them. This price increase ripples through the economy because the cost of anything that is made from oil (which is almost everything) increases as does the cost to ship it from point of manufacture to point of delivery. These increased costs are passed on to the consumer and eventually impacts the cost of one's living expenses so they ask their employer for a raise to cover the costs.

Fourth dot. Historically, the employer had no choice but to comply with the employee demand because the expense of hiring a replacement would typically end up costing more.

Now that this event and others like it have just increased the costs of the employer, he reasonably concludes that he must raise the price of the goods or services that his company provides. And the cycle begins all over again. This is what causes inflation to "spiral" out of control.

So if I was a government bureaucrat charged with establishing policy that would enable my government to inflate it's currency and, at the same time, hide the evidence of doing so, or at least minimize the damage, what policy might I initiate to mitigate it?

Well, after much study, I would conclude I must break a link in the cycle of inflation that causes the nefarious beastie to manifest itself to the public in terms of ever increasing prices of goods and services. Since my employer is printing dollars at an ever increasing rate there isn't much I can do there. As I mentioned above, the increase of dollars is causing the cost of real assets like oil and services to increase in price. After all, can you blame OPEC for wanting more fiat dollars that we print with abandon for their real asset in the ground - oil? Of course not. To put things into perspective, a gallon of spring water cost $1. Fifty five gallons of spring water would be a barrel of spring water at $55. Given the investment costs to produce a barrel of oil compared to a barrel of spring water, oil is still a bargain.

Lastly, I can't do much about the increased cost of those assets trickling down throughout the economy causing prices in general to rise. Sheesh! If I don't find some way soon, I'll be fired and have to get a job where I contribute to the economy by being a productive individual! But wait...I've got it. I will let any and everyone into the U.S. and they will be willing to work for less than all those greedy American workers. So even though prices are rising, employers won't have to increase salaries as they did in the past which continues the virtuous cycle (spiral) of inflation. I've stopped it dead in its tracks! Surely I'll be promoted to a higher bureaucratic position of even more importance and influence...and higher pay rate. There is a God!

And here's the kicker. These people that I let into the U.S. will, for the most part, send their excess dollars, that would otherwise contribute to inflation by driving prices up, back home i.e. out of the U.S. so many of those dollars they earn won't be in the U.S. to cause prices to rise. What a genius!

But wait. There's only one problem. Such a plan will cause millions of Americans to find themselves unemployed, ruined, relegated to poverty with no hope. After a short deliberation I conclude...that's not my problem...that's their problem. I'm getting mine and after all, that's all I care about. Hah!

Here's an interesting article by Paul Craig Roberts. He was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration.

The United States is the first country in history to destroy the prospects and living standards of its labor force. It is amazing to watch freedom-loving libertarians and free-market economists serve as full time apologists for the dismantling of the ladders of upward mobility that made the America of old an opportunity society.

America has begun a polarization into rich and poor. The resulting political instability and social strife will be terrible.

It's really quite simple. I've maintained for a long time that one shouldn't listen to what they are told by our government and the news media but rather observe what they see going on around them and think for themselves. Only then will the truth be found.

Plantinga on ID

Philosopher Alvin Plantinga dispenses with Judge John Jones' reasoning in the Kitzmiller case as the pretensions of a lightweight (my assessment, not Plantinga's). Along the way he also argues that any attempt to disparage Intelligent Design as "not science" is doomed.

It's good stuff and, unlike a lot of Professor Plantinga's technical work, very accessible to the layman.

The Coming Collapse of China

Gordon Chang, author of The Coming Collapse of China, predicts a Chinese crackup. The only question seems to be whether it will occur before its clients, North Korea and Iran, lead us into a destructive war.

As China gets more prosperous, it is becoming less stable. Senior Beijing officials now face the dilemma of all reforming authoritarians: economic success endangers their continued control. As Harvard's Samuel Huntington has noted, sustained modernization is the enemy of one-party systems. Revolutions occur under many conditions, but especially when political institutions do not keep up with the social forces unleashed by economic change. And as history shows us, nothing irritates a rising social class like inflexible political institutions. The most interesting trend about protests in recent years is not that they are becoming more frequent, getting much larger, or growing more violent. The most interesting trend is that we are now seeing middle-class Chinese, the beneficiaries of the last quarter century of progress, taking to the streets.

Beijing's policies seem designed to widen the gap between the people and their government, thereby ensuring greater instability for the foreseeable future. Today there's unimaginable societal change at unheard of speed thanks in large part to government-sponsored economic growth and social engineering. Yet at the same time the Communist Party stands in the way of meaningful political change.

Because senior officials don't allow political change of substance, the authorities must resort to force to stop the spread of unrest. But the use of the coercive power of the state is only a short-term solution-force just makes protests even harder to control next time. The leadership will not, or cannot, come to terms with the causes of unrest.

Ultimately, the one-party system will be replaced by democratic institutions. The transition won't be easy, however. China will probably experience years of uncertainty, instability, and turbulence.

Swell. And the Democtrats will be doing all they can to insure that they are in charge during such a dangerous time. Let us pray.

Air-Head

The Daily Mail has this story:

A woman who was fined �200 after she was caught on camera applying make-up while driving at 32mph has defended her actions, saying she was preparing for a date. Donna Maddock, 22, from Mold in north Wales, was pictured on police video cameras with both hands off the steering wheel putting on her eye make-up.

She had wanted to look her best for a date with a man who has a girlfriend and child. She added that she couldn't see what all the fuss was about.

Oh. She was going on a date with a guy. Well, then, that's different. Ms Maddock is justifiably indignant that the British motor vehicle code does not exempt drivers from penalty who place other motorists at hazard when the offender has a sufficiently good reason - like putting on one's makeup in preparation for a date with a Lothario.

What's wrong with those Brits, anyway?

Your Lying Eyes

"Upon returning home from a year-long research trip to the Galapagos Islands, the esteemed English zoologist Dr. D. Richard finds his wife undergoing a process that looks remarkably similar to childbirth. Calling upon his maid for an explanation, the woman tells him that "Yer wife, sir, is hav'en a baby." Dr. Richard pauses to contemplate the possibility before deciding that the notion is preposterous. Examining the evidence inductively -- he is impotent, infertile, and has been away for over nine months -- the professor determines that while his wife may have the appearance of being pregnant it is impossible that she could be with child."

The naive Dr. Richard shares a lot in common with many contemporary critics of Intelligent Design. To understand why read the rest of the story at Evangelical Outpost.

Designer Finally Detected

This just in: Mike Gene at Telic Thoughts has detected the elusive Intelligent Designer, the identity of which ID critics have long demanded be revealed. Read all about it here.

Hollywood Anti-Americanism

Charles Krauthammer blasts both the movie Syriana and the ideological anti-Americanism of its Hollywood producers and writers. He opens his essay with this indictment:

Nothing tells you more about Hollywood than what it chooses to honor. Nominated for best foreign-language film is "Paradise Now," a sympathetic portrayal of two suicide bombers. Nominated for best picture is "Munich," a sympathetic portrayal of yesterday's fashion in barbarism: homicide terrorism.

But until you see "Syriana," nominated for best screenplay (and George Clooney, for best supporting actor) you have no idea how self-flagellation and self-loathing pass for complexity and moral seriousness in Hollywood.

He closes with this summation:

In my naivete, I used to think that Hollywood had achieved its nadir with Oliver Stone's "JFK," a film that taught a generation of Americans that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by the CIA and the FBI in collaboration with Lyndon Johnson. But at least it was for domestic consumption, an internal affair of only marginal interest to other countries. "Syriana," however, is meant for export, carrying the most vicious and pernicious mendacities about America to a receptive world.

Most liberalism is angst- and guilt-ridden, seeing moral equivalence everywhere. "Syriana" is of a different species entirely -- a pathological variety that burns with the certainty of its malign anti-Americanism. Osama bin Laden could not have scripted this film with more conviction.

In between his opening and his conclusion is perhaps some of Krauthammer's best writing. I'm reluctant to comment on a movie that I haven't seen, but to the extent that it portrays Americans in the manner Krauthammer alleges, Hollywood bears at least partial responsibilty for inciting Muslim anger against Americans. For this alone they deserve a complete boycott of their product.

Denotative Definition of <i>Moron</i>

I know it's not nice to say unkind things about people, but the individuals in this story go out of their way to invite it:

GOLD HILL, Ore. - A teen who pinched and twisted another boy's nipple while standing in line at a deli has been sentenced to four days in juvenile detention because he refused to write a letter that explained his actions. The 16-year-old, was convicted of offensive physical touching in July 2005, after the victim's parents complained to Gold Hill police. The Crater High School student paid a $67 fine and served three days of community service.

"I emptied trash cans, mowed lawns and shoveled gravel," the teen said.

But the teen's refusal to comply with the final piece of his sentence will cost him four days in detention. He was required to write the letter during four classes put on by Mediation Works, which operates the victim-offender program for Jackson County Community Justice.

Mary Miller, executive director of Mediation Works, said the purpose of the letter is to prepare teens to be accountable for their offenses.

"They don't have to apologize," she said. "But they are required to be accountable."

The offender is required to describe the act in detail, explain "thinking errors," "express empathy" and describe any resultant life changes.

Miller said the program is "often a very, very healing experience between the victim and youth offender."

The teen said he presented a rough draft of his letter in the third session. He said he balked when told he must also describe his "criminal thought processes."

He said that would imply malicious or criminal intent, and "none of that applied to my feelings or actions."

The teen said he had no criminal intent because he considered the victim to be a friend at the time of the incident - which he deemed horseplay. Including the language sought by Mediation Works, he said, would turn his prior court statements into lies.

"It was a matter of conscience," the teen said. "I figure the worst is already over."

Ken Chapman, a Community Justice juvenile probation supervisor, verified the teen's sentence.

"The judge found a willful violation of the court order," Chapman said.

The only person mentioned in this piece that sounds like he has an IQ above the retirement age is the twister. His "friend" and, by implication, his friend's parents sound more than a little weird, but the people involved in adjudicating this asinine saga, particularly Mary Miller and the unnamed judge, sound worse than weird, they sound like absolute imbeciles. How do such individuals rise to positions of responsibility in our society?

It's a good thing Curly, Moe and Larry are all deceased because otherwise the Oregon justice system would have them serving life sentences for their countless "thinking errors."

Another Step Closer

This report in the British Telegraph is illuminating. The Iranians have played the Europeans for fools and are so sure that the world will do nothing about their nuclear program that they're laughing out loud about it. They seem so absolutely confident that Allah is blessing their ambitions, and that he will defeat any measures the infidels take to derail them, that they have no fear of Western reprisal. Of course, they have good reason not to fear Europe which could not stop Iran even had they the spunk to try it:

The man who for two years led Iran's nuclear negotiations has laid out in unprecedented detail how the regime took advantage of talks with Britain, France and Germany to forge ahead with its secret atomic programme. In a speech to a closed meeting of leading Islamic clerics and academics, Hassan Rowhani, who headed talks with the so-called EU3 until last year, revealed how Teheran played for time and tried to dupe the West after its secret nuclear programme was uncovered by the Iranian opposition in 2002.

He boasted that while talks were taking place in Teheran, Iran was able to complete the installation of equipment for conversion of yellowcake - a key stage in the nuclear fuel process - at its Isfahan plant but at the same time convince European diplomats that nothing was afoot. "From the outset, the Americans kept telling the Europeans, 'The Iranians are lying and deceiving you and they have not told you everything.' The Europeans used to respond, 'We trust them'," he said.

Revelation of Mr Rowhani's remarks comes at an awkward moment for the Iranian government, ahead of a meeting tomorrow of the United Nations' atomic watchdog, which must make a fresh assessment of Iran's banned nuclear operations. The judgment of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is the final step before Iran's case is passed to the UN Security Council, where sanctions may be considered.

In his address to the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution, Mr Rowhani appears to have been seeking to rebut criticism from hardliners that he gave too much ground in talks with the European troika. The contents of the speech were published in a regime journal that circulates among the ruling elite.

He told his audience: "When we were negotiating with the Europeans in Teheran we were still installing some of the equipment at the Isfahan site. There was plenty of work to be done to complete the site and finish the work there. In reality, by creating a tame situation, we could finish Isfahan."

Mr Rowhani described the regime's quandary in September 2003 when the IAEA had demanded a "complete picture" of its nuclear activities. "The dilemma was if we offered a complete picture, the picture itself could lead us to the UN Security Council," he said. "And not providing a complete picture would also be a violation of the resolution and we could have been referred to the Security Council for not implementing the resolution."

In a separate development, the opposition National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) has obtained a copy of a confidential parliamentary report making clear that Iranian MPs were also kept in the dark on the nuclear programme, which was funded secretly, outside the normal budgetary process.

Mohammad Mohaddessin, the NCRI's foreign affairs chief, told the Sunday Telegraph: "Rowhani's remarks show that the mullahs wanted to deceive the international community from the onset of negotiations with EU3 - and that the mullahs were fully aware that if they were transparent, the regime's nuclear file would be referred to the UN immediately."

War is not the next step in this Kubuki dance, and we hope it's ultimately not needed, but we've just moved a another step closer to that awful prospect. As we've said before, the only thing worse than war with Iran would be allowing Iran to build nuclear weapons.

Out Into the Cold

Reading this story in last Saturday's Washington Post reminded me of the 1963 Ingmar Bergman film Winter Light, the cold, grey, depressing tale of a Swedish pastor whose faith had slipped away from him. It was sad to watch this clergyman, self-centered oaf that he was, going through the motions of worship when he no longer believed that what he was doing meant anything. Bergman's film is a fascinating account of a man who cannot cope with the silence of God in the face of the existential absurdity of life.

The WaPo article is also a poignant tale of one man's loss of faith. It's a bit slanted toward affirming his decision to leave Christianity behind him, and it would have been better had the writer, Neely Tucker, remained a little more neutral on the question of whether the man, author and professor of religious studies Bart Ehrman, was deceived when he was a Christian, or whether he is deceived now that he no longer is. Nevertheless, Tucker gives us an interesting glimpse into Mr. Ehrman's thinking. The essay begins with these words:

Bart Ehrman is a sermon, a parable, but of what? He's a best-selling author, a New Testament expert and perhaps a cautionary tale: the fundamentalist scholar who peered so hard into the origins of Christianity that he lost his faith altogether.

Once he was a seminarian and graduate of the Moody Bible Institute, a pillar of conservative Christianity. Its doctrine states that the Bible "is a divine revelation, the original autographs of which were verbally inspired by the Holy Spirit."

But after three decades of research into that divine revelation, Ehrman became an agnostic. What he found in the ancient papyri of the scriptorium was not the greatest story ever told, but the crumbling dust of his own faith.

The reader expects that what follows will be an argument so compelling that Ehrman's loss of faith is almost a matter of course. What emerges in the following excerpts, however, is more like DaVinci Code stuff.

"Sometimes Christian apologists say there are only three options to who Jesus was: a liar, a lunatic or the Lord," he tells a packed auditorium here at the University of North Carolina, where he chairs the department of religious studies. "But there could be a fourth option -- legend."

Ehrman's latest book, "Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why," has become one of the unlikeliest bestsellers of the year. A slender book of textual criticism, currently at No. 16 on the New York Times bestseller list, it casts doubt on any number of New Testament episodes that most Christians take as, well, gospel.

...as he paces back and forth across the stage [in front of his class], Ehrman ruthlessly pounces on the anomalies -- in this Gospel [John's], Jesus isn't born in Bethlehem, he doesn't tell any parables, he never casts out a demon, there's no last supper. "None of that is found in John!" The crucifixion stories are different -- in Mark, Jesus is terrified on the cross; in John, he's perfectly composed. Key dates are different. The resurrection stories are different. Ehrman reels them off, rapid-fire, shell bursts against the bulwark of tradition.

Why any of this should cast doubt on the reliability of the gospels is beyond me. It is perfectly conceivable that different authors chose to emphasize different aspects of the same events and the same history. It's almost as if Professor Ehrman is eager to find reasons for abandoning his faith and any hint that the gospels might have internal inconsistencies is seized upon as justification for pitching it aside.

"In Matthew, Mark and Luke, you find no trace of Jesus being divine," he says, his voice urgent. "In John, you do." He points out that in the other three books, it takes the disciples nearly half of Christ's ministry to learn who he is. John says no, no, everyone knew it from the beginning. "You shouldn't think something [is true] just because you believe it. You need reasons."

Nor should you base a belief on an argument from ignorance. Just because three gospel writers make no mention of Jesus' divinity proves nothing as to whether he was in fact divine. It was certainly a belief from the earliest days of the church that Jesus was divine, The gospel of John and the epistles of Paul and other New Testament writers are shot through with references to his divinity, and, contrary to what Ehrman says, there are indeed some indications of this belief in the synoptic writers.

For instance, Jesus was condemned to death because he arrogated to himself divine prerogatives (Mk. 14: 61-64) like accepting worship (Mat. 28:17) and the authority to forgive sins (Lk.7:48). These examples may not be conclusive, but they certainly rise to the level of "traces" of belief in Jesus' divinity.

The Bible simply wasn't error-free. The mistakes grew exponentially as he traced translations through the centuries. There are some 5,700 ancient Greek manuscripts that are the basis of the modern versions of the New Testament, and scholars have uncovered more than 200,000 differences in those texts.

Most of these are inconsequential errors in grammar or metaphor. But others are profound. The last 12 verses of the Gospel of Mark appear to have been added to the text years later -- and these are the only verses in that book that show Christ reappearing after his death.

Of course, most translations of the Bible note this later addition in Mark, and in any event it means nothing since all the other gospels discuss Christ's post-resurrection appearances. It's not clear what significance Professor Ehrman attaches to the fact that the oldest Marcan manuscripts omit it, but the overwhelming claim of the New Testament is that Jesus literally came back to life after being completely dead. If the New Testament is wrong about this Professor Ehrman needs to explain why. Perhaps he does in his books, but, if so, we hope his explanation goes beyond the standard question-begging argument that the miracle of the resurrection didn't happen because miracles are impossible.

Another critical passage is in 1 John, which explicitly sets out the Holy Trinity (the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit). It is a cornerstone of Christian theology, and this is the only place where it is spelled out in the entire Bible -- but it appears to have been added to the text centuries later, by an unknown scribe.

The claim that this is the only place where the doctrine of the trinity is spelled out is misleading. It sounds as if Professor Ehrman is telling us that this is the only place in the Bible where a reference to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can be found. Yet Jesus' words in the Great Commission (Mat. 28:19) clearly refer to them. Even so, doubts about whether God is an absolute unity or a tri-unity hardly seem to warrant a complete loss of faith in the reliability of the scriptures and of the existence of God.

[In] John Updike's novel of the fictional Rev. Clarence Arthur Wilmot, a Presbyterian minister, ...., [is] beset by doubt one afternoon in the rectory, [and] "felt the last particles of his faith leave him. The sensation was distinct -- a visceral surrender, a set of dark sparkling bubbles escaping upward . . . there was no God, nor should there be."

For Ehrman, the dark sparkling bubbles cascaded out of him while teaching a class at Rutgers University on "The Problem of Suffering in Biblical Traditions." It was the mid-1980s, the Ethiopian famine was in full swing. Starving infants, mass death. Ehrman came to believe that not only was there no evidence of Jesus being divine, but neither was there a God paying attention.

"I just began to lose it," Ehrman says now, in a conversation that stretches from late afternoon into the evening. "It wasn't for lack of trying. But I just couldn't believe there was a God in charge of this mess . . . It was so emotionally charged. This whole business of 'the Bible is your life, and anyone who doesn't believe it is going to roast in hell.'"

There is probably much more to Ehrman's slide from faith than what this newspaper article can plumb. Indeed, there has to be because otherwise we must conclude that Ehrman possesses a remarkable dearth of theological and philosophical sophistication for a university religion professor. Surely a scholar in religious studies understands that there are many views of salvation besides the one he adverts to above. Surely someone of his stature is aware that the existence of evil is, at very best, inconclusive as an argument against the existence of God.

Professor Ehrman seems to think that if he can no longer hold to a fundamentalist theology there must be no other options available to him and that he must consequently jettison even his belief in God. He sounds very much like a man who simply no longer wanted to believe and grasped whatever reasons lay readily to hand to justify his apostasy.

Bergman's movie about a pastor who embraces the cold, gloomy world of unbelief because, apparently, he can no longer feel God's presence and doesn't really want to believe in God anyway describes a man who seems very much like Bart Ehrman.

Speaking Truth to the Deaf and Blind

You must read this remarkable pair of exchanges that occured on al-Jazeera between Arab-American psychologist Wafa Sultan and a couple of Islamist sympathizers. Dr. Sultan is more than a match for her adversaries whom she reduces to mental pudding by the end of the programs. She is an amazingly brave and eloquent woman. If you have the time, you might also watch the video, the links to which are in the text of the transcript.

No doubt the Islamists are even now confirming the truth of her words by issuing fatwas demanding she be beheaded as a heretic and infidel. She may be a "secularist," but I suspect that she would appreciate our prayers.

<i>Causus Belli</i>

If the assessment of these new IEDs is correct Iran has given the United States yet another reason to launch an assault against it.

March 6, 2006 - U.S. military and intelligence officials tell ABC News that they have caught shipments of deadly new bombs at the Iran-Iraq border. They are a very nasty piece of business, capable of penetrating U.S. troops' strongest armor.

What the United States says links them to Iran are tell-tale manufacturing signatures - certain types of machine-shop welds and material indicating they are built by the same bomb factory.

"The signature is the same because they are exactly the same in production," says explosives expert Kevin Barry. "So it's the same make and model."

U.S. officials say roadside bomb attacks against American forces in Iraq have become much more deadly as more and more of the Iran-designed and Iran-produced bombs have been smuggled in from the country since last October.

"I think the evidence is strong that the Iranian government is making these IEDs, and the Iranian government is sending them across the border and they are killing U.S. troops once they get there," says Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism chief and an ABC News consultant. "I think it's very hard to escape the conclusion that, in all probability, the Iranian government is knowingly killing U.S. troops."

This would seem to offer the United States a causus belli. If it continues it's hard to imagine how we could avoid responding to the provocation. The Iranians are betting that Bush is too politically weak to initiate hostilities against them, and that he would, in any case, be reluctant to undertake military action without European allies giving us political cover.

This could be a case of holding correct premises but drawing from them an incorrect conclusion. Tehran may be doing precisely what Saddam did and the Democrats have consistently done with George Bush, i.e. "misunderestimate" him. Our guess is that when Bush thinks the military is ready he will not hesitate to bring the whole sky down around the Iranians' heads whether the Europeans and the Democrats are on board or not. Whether this would be wise or not is a completely different question.

David Berlinski

Intelligent Design the Future has part one of an interview with David Berlinski that is, for a reader of a certain humor, laugh-out-loud funny. Berlinski is a mathematician, agnostic, sympathetic to Intelligent Design, and disdainful of the Neo-Darwinian orthodoxy. It's his scorn for the Darwinian paradigm and its high priests that makes this interview literally hilarious (Well, at least for me). If Berlinski ever decides he no longer wants to be a mathematician he can have a very lucrative career as a stand-up comic.

Part one is here. I can hardly wait for part two.

Where Always is Heard a Discouraging Word

A friend points us to a column in the Boston Globe wherein Michael Kalin puts his finger on something worth noting: People like Jon Stewart are not the harmless chuckle-meisters they seem to be. Rather, by striking a pose of supercilious superiority to the hapless politicians who fall prey to their wit, they actually contribute to an unwillingness on the part of bright, sophisticated young people to enter the realm of politics. Stewart and others like him send the message that politics is for buffoons whose chief purpose is to provide sport for clever, intelligent people like himself. Kalin thinks the problem is most acute for Democrats since liberals dominate Stewart's audience and are most likely to absorb the message that politics is for chumps.

Kalin observes:

Stewart's daily dose of political parody characterized by asinine alliteration leads to a ''holier than art thou" attitude toward our national leaders. People who possess the wit, intelligence, and self-awareness of viewers of ''The Daily Show" would never choose to enter the political fray full of ''buffoons and idiots." Content to remain perched atop their Olympian ivory towers, these bright leaders head straight for the private sector.

Observers since the days of de Tocqueville have often remarked about America's unique dissociation between politicians and citizens of "outstanding character." Unfortunately, the rise of mass media and the domination of television news give Stewart's Menckenesque voice a much more powerful influence than critics in previous generations. As a result, a bright leader who may have become the Theodore Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson of today instead perceives politics as a supply of sophisticated entertainment, rather than a powerful source of social change.

Most important, this disturbing cultural phenomenon overwhelmingly affects potential leaders of the Democratic Party.

The type of folksy solemnity brandished by President Bush does not resonate with "The Daily Show" demographic. According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, only 2 percent of the show's audience identify themselves as conservatives. At a time when the Democrats desperately need inspired leadership, the show's self-conscious aloofness pervades the liberal punditry.

There's another aspect of this that Kalin doesn't touch upon but which might also be worth noting. People wonder why it is that pundits seem so quick to tear down those in public life. Why is it, folks wonder, that so much vitriolic criticism is heaped upon those in public office.

Perhaps part of the reason, at least, is psychological. The desire to tear others down is rooted in personal narcissism and pride. Pundits, or at least some of them, are supremely egotistical, they want people to think of them as intelligent, sophisticated and highly competent observers of the public scene. One way to subliminally communicate one's superiority to an audience is to persistently give the impression that the people they are reporting upon are blundering fools and that the reporter, were only he or she in the position of power currently occupied by the dolt being skewered, would do far better. They massage their own egos by cutting other people to pieces.

To find fault with another person is to tacitly assert one's own pre-eminence. It gratifies the same psychological need that causes people to make racist remarks or, for that matter, any sort of humiliating comment about another human being. By heaping reproach upon the other one elevates oneself to a loftier position vis a vis the one who is denigrated. There is a place for legitimate criticism, of course, but when the criticism is consistently unkind, unfounded, unfair or trivial we can't help but think that at least part of what motivates it is the satisfaction of one's own ego.

Soren Kierkegaard, the 19th century Danish philosopher, had a slightly different take. He imputed this phenomenon to envy. He wrote:

Every outstanding individual is always an object of envy. Human envy cannot endure the thought that a mere individual should amount to anything, let alone that he should be pre-eminent, and exercise genuine leadreship.

Among journalists and others in the communications culture are many, it seems, who cannot abide the fact that George Bush will go down in history, while they themselves will be historical ciphers. They think this affront to their ego a cosmic injustice, and thus, if they can't gain the recognition they are convinced they deserve, they'll seize every opportunity to destroy those, like the President, of more substantial achievement. That way society will esteem these insignificant scribes as worthy of note even as public contempt for the truly accomplished waxes and deepens.

Envy and egotism are very toxic and corrosive human traits but very common ones, alas, among those who report upon our public servants. They are also, as Dan Rather has discovered to his grief, quite self-destructive.

Rock On

What do Layne Staley, Keith Moon, Darrell Abbott, and Sid Vicious all have in common? They, and a host of others, are all rockers who died prematurely either by gunshot or drug overdose. Something called "Blender" lists them, in a feature on AOL, with 46 other performers from the music world who died before their time, occasionally by tragic accident but usually because of unfortunate lifestyle choices.

The Blender feature offers interesting, if sometimes vaguely tasteless, background on each of the fifty.

Of Pots and Kettles

Barbra Streisand takes President Bush to task on her blog for his various offenses against Hollywood liberalism. In the course of her excoriation of the President she implicitly derides him for being dumb, referring mockingly to the "arrogance of this 'C' student."

Her post, unfortunately, contains eleven misspelled words, including four in a single sentence, a rather distinctive intellectual achievement, we think. It makes us wonder what Babs' own college GPA was.

Drudge has the details.

Striving For the Silver

The satirical blog The Onion has the scoop. You read it there first:

WASHINGTON, DC-In a press conference on the steps of the Capitol Monday, Congressional Democrats announced that, despite the scandals plaguing the Republican Party and widespread calls for change in Washington, their party will remain true to its hopeless direction.

"We are entirely capable of bungling this opportunity to regain control of the House and Senate and the trust of the American people," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said to scattered applause. "It will take some doing, but we're in this for the long and pointless haul."

"We can lose this," Reid added. "All it takes is a little lack of backbone."

Despite plummeting poll numbers for the G.O.P nationwide and an upcoming election in which all House seats and 33 Senate seats are up for contention, Democrats pledged to maintain their party's sheepish resignation.

"In times like these, when the American public is palpably dismayed with the political status quo, it is crucial that Democrats remain unfocused and defer to the larger, smarter, and better-equipped Republican machine," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said. "If we play our cards right, we will be intimidated to the point of total paralysis."

Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT) cited the Bush Administration's bungled response to Hurricane Katrina as a model for Democrats. "Grandmothers drowning in nursing homes, families losing everything, communities torn apart-and the ruling party just sat and watched," Lieberman said. "I'm here to promise that we Democrats will find a way to let you down just like that."

According to Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), Democrats are not willing to sacrifice their core values-indecision, incoherence, and disorganization-for the sake of short-term electoral gain. "Don't lose faithlessness, Democrats," Kennedy said. "The next election is ours to lose. To those who say we can't, I say: Remember Michael Dukakis. Remember Al Gore. Remember John Kerry."

Kennedy said that, even if the Democrats were to regain the upper hand in the midterm elections, they would still need to agree on a platform and chart a legislative agenda-an obstacle he called "insurmountable."

"Universal health care, the war in Iraq, civil liberties, a living wage, gun control-we're not even close to a consensus within our own ranks," Kennedy said. "And even if we were, we wouldn't know how to implement that consensus."

"Some rising stars with leadership potential like [Sen. Barack] Obama (D-IL) and [New York State Attorney General Eliot] Spitzer have emerged, but don't worry: We've still got some infight left in us," Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said. "Over the last decade, we've found a reliably losing formula, and we're sticking with it."

Dean reminded Democratic candidates to "stay on our unclear message, maintain a defensive, reactive posture, and keep an elitist distance from voters."

Political consultant and Democratic operative James Carville said that, if properly disseminated, the message of hopelessness could be the Democrats' most effective in more than a decade.

"For the first time in a long time, we're really connecting with the American people, who are also feeling hopeless," Carville said. "If we can harness that and run on it in '06, I believe we can finish a strong second."

Unfortunately for the Dems, when all you have to offer people is negativism and mendacity the best you can hope for is the silver. But, hey, second place isn't bad, or at least it wouldn't be if the elections were the Olympics.

The India Deal

Matt Cooper has a good backgrounder on the nuclear ("nucular," if you're president Bush) deal just closed with India. It still has to be approved by Congress, but it's hard to imagine the Democrats mustering the strength to stop it.

Cooper quotes Bush: "Our Congress has got to understand that it's in our economic interests that India have a civilian nuclear power industry to help take the pressure off the global demand for energy....And so I'm trying to think differently, not to stay stuck in the past," says Bush.

India currently uses a lot of the world's oil and burns a particularly dirty species of coal. Helping them to use nuclear power as an alternative will eventually reduce world demand for oil and clean the air. It will also increase the Indian standard of living and open up markets for American goods, if we're still producing anything twenty years from now. The deal will also help cement relations with the world's largest Democracy and a looming power in that part of the world. If China starts flexing its muscles and casting a covetous eye beyond its borders it'll be good to have friends in the region.

All in all, it sounds like yet another success for an administration that Senator Harry Reid recently declared will be remembered only for its incompetency and not for any achievements.

That Senator Reid. He's such a caution.

Where'd They Go?

Those readers who may be interested in understanding the mysterious case of the missing WMD will want to read this interview with Ryan Mauro, who, at the age of 19, is something of a prodigy on this subject. Don't be deceived by his youth. The fellow has an amazing grasp of the relevant intelligence on the question of what happened to the Iraqi weapons and weapons program.

The one sentence summary: The Bush administration was absolutely correct to claim that Iraq had a working WMD program prior to our invasion in 2003. Anyone who seeks to tar Bush with the claim that he lied about WMD is, if Mr. Mauro is to be believed, either ignorant of the evidence or doesn't care what the evidence shows.