Another Baltimore Bus Assault

There's been yet another gang attack on bus passengers in Baltimore. Once again a pack of black teens has beaten two whites, apparently for the crime of being white.

The Maryland Transportation Authority took three days to release photos of the attackers and is not treating the attack as a hate crime but rather as "simply...a common assault."

Well, it seems that in Baltimore such assaults certainly are common. We return to a question we asked the other day about the Sarah Kreager beating: If seven white kids had beaten two black men for riding a bus how long would it take the authorities to release photos of the assailants and for the media to be screaming about the horrific bigotry that underlies such an atrocity?

There certainly is a double standard when it comes to interracial crime in our country, and until all such crimes are treated with the same social opprobrium bitterness and seething resentments are only going to increase. This is not how to produce racial harmony. Nor does it augur optimism for the future of race relations when a story like this can appear in the paper and everyone who reads it knows the race of both perpetrators and victims without having to be told anything more than that it was interracial.

Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin reports that the authorities are going to try as adults some of the thugs who beat Sarah Kreager. I wonder if Al Sharpton will organize a march to protest the injustice of it all.

One last thought. Maryland happens to be a difficult state in which to obtain a concealed weapon carry permit, but I wonder how long that will last as more people get fed up with living in fear.

RLC

Waterboarding Abu Zubaydah

For those interested in the controversy surrounding the resort to torture in general and waterboarding in particular an ABC interview with former CIA agent John Kiriakou may prove instructive. Kiriakou doesn't like it, he'd prefer we not do it, but nevertheless, not only does he claim it is effective but in some cases it's morally necessary (my gloss on his words).

According to Kiriakou waterboarding has been employed in only a handful of cases, one of which was that of Abu Zubaydah, a high ranking al Qaeda terrorist caught soon after 9/11. Zubaydah was subjected to the sensation of drowning for 35 seconds after which he told the interrogators everything he knew and the intell was used to prevent dozens of terrorist attacks and save perhaps hundreds of lives.

The question those who believe torture to be absolutely wrong have to be asked is why they think it wrong to subject a mass murderer to 35 seconds or less of physical discomfort, after which he is perfectly unharmed, in order to save his victims from being blown to bits. What moral calculus could possibly lead us to conclude that it is better to let perhaps hundreds of women and children be ripped apart by shrapnel than to induce a gag reflex in their would-be murderer for 35 seconds?

UPDATE: Ramirez weighs in on the waterboarding debate:

In point of fact, as Kiriakou explains in the interview, no water even enters the person's nose during waterboarding.

RLC

Design Matrix

How about this for a promo for a new book on Intelligent Design? The book is The Design Matrix: A Consilience of Clues by Mike Gene (a pseudonym) and it's getting a lot of publicity in ID circles. Check out the ad. It rocks.

RLC

Pope Benedict on Atheism

ABC News tells us that Pope Benedict XVI has released his second encyclical and in it he notes that modern atheism has:

...led to some of the "greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice" ever known to mankind.

This, it would seem, would be a no-brainer, yet many of the neo-atheists who have been publishing attacks against theism in general and Christianity in particular, appear oblivious to the fact.

A worldview that strips human beings of any inherent dignity or worth while at the same time also stripping away any grounds for objective moral obligation is bound to wind up promoting a might-makes-right ethic. And it's almost inevitable that a might-makes-right ethic will devolve ultimately into cruelty and tyranny. Yet the current batch of anti-theists simply fail to see this consequence of what they prescribe.

The papal encyclical, titled Saved by Hope, is described by ABC News as:

...a deeply theological exploration of Christian hope in the afterlife - that in the suffering and misery of daily life, Christianity provides the faithful with a "journey of hope" to the Kingdom of God.

Atheism, it should be clear to everyone who thinks about it for more than a couple of minutes, provides us with nothing better than a journey of despair to the Kingdom of hell, in this life as well as the next.

RLC

Kant For President

Suppose Immanuel Kant were alive today and ran for president. He'd probably be subjected to political advertising something like this from his opponent:

Pretty funny.

HT: No Left Turns

RLC

Sarah Kreager/Rosa Parks

How many of these attacks is going to take before we realize that we have a real problem in this country? In case you missed it last week here are the details:

As Sarah Kreager, 26, tried to sit down on a Baltimore City bus [last Tuesday], police say, a middle-schooler told her she couldn't. When she attempted to take another seat, a middle-schooler wouldn't let her. Finally, according to police, Kreager just sat down.

She was "immediately attacked" by nine students - three females and six males - from Robert Poole Middle School. They punched and kicked her at 2:59 p.m. at the intersection of 33rd Street and Chestnut Avenue, according to Maryland Transit Administration police.

Kreager was dragged off the bus and .... sustained "serious injuries" and had to be transported to the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center, according to a police report.

Kreager suffered two broken bones in her left eye socket, police said.

"She had eye muscles that were damaged," a police report states. "She had deep lacerations on the top of her head and another above her neck."

Two seats and the bus' rear glass were destroyed during the attack, police said.

The bus driver on the No. 27 line quickly called police, who responded and arrested the nine juveniles, said Jawauna Greene, an MTA police spokeswoman.

All nine suspects, ages 14 and 15, were arrested and charged with aggravated assault.

Their bus tickets - provided by the school - have been revoked. Greene said the investigation into the incident was ongoing and she didn't know whether the attack had anything to do with the victim's race.

The suspects in the incident are black. The victim is white.

Let's ask a couple of questions. Do you think that anyone would have expressed any reservations at all about making this a racially motivated incident if the woman had been black and her assailants white? For that matter, when was the last time you recall a black woman being severely beaten by a gang of white teenagers? When Rosa Parks made her historic stand for equality and just treatment by sitting in the "whites only" section of the bus outraged white racists didn't physically attack her. Accounts of whites being beaten or assaulted by blacks are, however, a regular feature of the daily police reports in our cities.

The fact is there is a deep pathology of violence and racism in the black community that for some reason is deemed impolite to mention. Yet it's there. That six boys would beat a young woman like this just for sitting down on the bus reveals something hideous about the world in which they are growing up, and that girls would join in is sickening beyond words.

How soon will it be until Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and the rest of the race hustlers demand justice for Ms Kreager? How long will it take before the Al Sharptons of the world express their outrage that this woman was savagely attacked (see her picture at the link) for no reason? How many editorials will the newspapers run condemning the dysfunctionality and bigotry in the black community underlying this attack and so many others like it? Here's our prediction: In a day or two this horrific episode will be totally forgotten by the media. Black racism and black on white crime simply are not regarded as newsworthy by the liberal media.

There are three reasons for this, I suspect. Some in the media, though they would never admit it, subliminally believe that you can't really expect much better of black people so there's no use campaigning against such behavior. The second reason is that liberals embrace a social/racial paradigm that sees all blacks as victims of the white oppressor. Crimes such as this one are jarring to that paradigm and the cognitive dissonance they unleash is best handled by forgetting about it or treating it as an aberration. The third reason is that liberals fear that by publicizing such atrocities they will only fuel white stereotypes of blacks and encourage a backlash of white racism that could undo much of the progress we've made in the last fifty years.

The first of these reasons is the bigotry of low expectations and is itself insidiously racist. It assumes that blacks simply can't be held to the same standard of behavior as others because they're inherently incapable of it. The second is an example of the absurd ideological blindness of liberals. When nine people are beating one young woman, who are the oppressors and who is the victim? The third reason is a legitimate fear and would be understandable if the media were equally concerned about the consequences of publicizing cases of white bigotry. The fact is they're not, indeed, they seem almost gleeful when they have the opportunity to do it, which itself points to an implicit assumption that whites somehow deserve black hostility, but blacks must never be made to look evil in the eyes of whites.

Maybe the day will come when the media will simply call savagery, thuggery, and moral depravity by its name, wherever it exists, and leave their ideological biases and motivations out of it, but we won't hold our breath waiting.

UPDATE: As predicted, this story has all but faded from view in the week since the beating happened. No Al Sharpton, no Jesse Jackson, no marches for justice, no introspectives on the virulence of racism in our society. I did read, though, that the perpetrators might be charged with a "hate crime." That's something, at least.

UPDATE: There's video of Sarah Kreager here. The news story contains statements like these:

"What took place was unacceptable and that has to be dealt with," said Mayor Sheila Dixon.

"Clearly, this is one incident in a population of 80,000 students. Things happen. It is a tragedy, as I said. It casts a light that I would rather not be cast on the school system," said Baltimore City Schools CEO Dr. Andres Alonso.

School leaders say they plan to talk to students and remind them to be courteous when they are on city buses.

This belies an astonishingly cavalier attitude toward an act of sheer savagery. This was not merely an "unacceptable" failure to be "courteous" or a "thing that just happened." Those who make such statements are downplaying the fact that there's a deep problem in their community that goes far beyond a mere lack of civility. The problem is a culture of violence perpetrated by kids who have only a rudimentary sense of human sympathy compounded by racism, and until people start naming the problem and calling the community to account, as has been done with white racism for the last fifty years, it will never go away.

RLC

NR Goes For Mitt

National Review, perhaps the premier conservative journal in the U.S., has been hard on Mike Huckabee's fiscal liberalism the last couple of weeks, and has now decided to endorse Mitt Romney. They make an excellent case as to why Romney is the most viable conservative in the field. It's hard to disagree with any of this:

Rudolph Giuliani did extraordinary work as mayor of New York and was inspirational on 9/11. But he and Mike Huckabee would pull apart the [conservative] coalition from opposite ends: Giuliani alienating the social conservatives, and Huckabee the economic (and foreign-policy) conservatives. A Republican party that abandoned either limited government or moral standards would be much diminished in the service it could give the country.

Two other major candidates would be able to keep the coalition together, but have drawbacks of their own. John McCain is not as conservative as Romney. He sponsored and still champions a campaign-finance law that impinged on fundamental rights of political speech; he voted against the Bush tax cuts; he supported this year's amnesty bill, although he now says he understands the need to control the border before doing anything else.

Fred Thompson is as conservative as Romney, and has distinguished himself with serious proposals on Social Security, immigration, and defense. But Thompson has never run any large enterprise - and he has not run his campaign well, either. Conservatives were excited this spring to hear that he might enter the race, but have been disappointed by the reality. He has been fading in crucial early states. He has not yet passed the threshold test of establishing for voters that he truly wants to be president.

Romney is an intelligent, articulate, and accomplished former businessman and governor. At a time when voters yearn for competence and have soured on Washington because too often the Bush administration has not demonstrated it, Romney offers proven executive skill. He has demonstrated it in everything he has done in his professional life, and his tightly organized, disciplined campaign is no exception. He himself has shown impressive focus and energy.

It is true that he has less foreign-policy experience than Thompson and (especially) McCain, but he has more executive experience than both. Since almost all of the candidates have the same foreign-policy principles, what matters most is which candidate has the skills to execute that vision.

Read the rest at the link. It will be interesting to see whether socially and fiscally conservative evangelicals will vote for Romney in significant numbers or whether his Mormonism will prove too great an impediment for them to surmount.

I have been impressed with Huckabee and have felt somewhat reassured by his clarifications of his views on taxes and immigration, but I don't like the way he has sought to distance himself from the President. It seems too opportunistic, especially since Huck is the presidential candidate whose political convictions seem most like those of George Bush. I've also been impressed with Romney and agree with NR that he seems to be the most viable of those in the race who are both socially and fiscally conservative.

Fortunately, there's still much time to decide between these two men. Unfortunately, mostly for the reasons NR gives in its endorsement of Romney, I can't see supporting any of the other Republican candidates in the primary field. Nevertheless, every one of them is sturdier presidential timber than either Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or John Edwards.

RLC

Great Recruiting Ad

This ad for the National Guard makes even a superannuated tubby like me think about signing up:

HT: Evangelical Outpost

RLC

Journalistic Bad Odor

Journalists and other media people are often perplexed that they are held in low esteem by many Americans, and certainly many of them are fine professionals who deserve better. Nevertheless, it's decisions like the one to write and run pieces like this AP story that attaches to all of them such a bad odor.

Jeanne Assam is a brave woman who acted heroically to save dozens of lives at a church in Colorado Springs on Sunday and what thanks or respect does she get from our media? They go dumpster-diving into her past to dredge up whatever they can find to embarrass her and then publicize the story in newspapers all across the nation.

The story they felt just had to be told about Assam was that she was fired from her previous job as a police officer. This, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with what she did last Sunday, but the media had the chance to reward a true hero with national humiliation and they jumped at the chance to do it. They spent paragraphs revealing the details of an event that Ms Assam must surely prefer not to have made public, but what is the reputation of a hero when a journalist who has never done anything as remotely praiseworthy as Ms Assam can show that she's just as flawed as the rest of us?

The story came out yesterday. Perhaps more responsible adults in editorial offices around the nation are even now hammering out columns condemning this contemptible piece of tripe solemnly revealed by Amy Forliti of the Associated Press. Perhaps they will call for media reporters to stop trying to tear down everyone who somehow manages to rise above the rest of us. Perhaps they will decry the gang-like behavior of journalists who prey on innocent victims by beating them senseless for nothing more offensive than having the temerity to do something they themselves have never done. Maybe these columns will be out within the next twenty-four hours. Or maybe they won't. We'll see.

RLC

Huck and Homosexuality

The Politico thinks that positions Mike Huckabee took on AIDS and homosexuality back in the early nineties make him an unattractive candidate today.

Huckabee argued that 1) the government was spending a disproportionate amount of money on AIDS research, 2) that AIDS carriers should be isolated from the general population and 3) that homosexuality was both aberrant and sinful.

I think a good public policy case could be made for both 1) and 2) although the idea of quarantining AIDS carriers was becoming less urgent by the early nineties as we were learning more about the virus. Still, there was enough uncertainty as to how the disease was being transmitted that Huckabee's position was not unreasonable at the time.

On the matter of homosexuality it is certainly true that it is aberrant and that every major religion represented in the United States has traditionally regarded it as sinful. The definition of aberrant is a deviation from the norm, and homoeroticism is not normal either in terms of the design of our bodies, its acceptance among the general population, or in terms of the percentage of people who consider themselves homosexual.

The only demographic in which a majority would be upset by Huckabee's judgment would be the secular elites in Hollywood and on University campuses and he is very unlikely to have much support among these folks in any event.

Depending on how Huckabee articulates these positions when he's asked about them by the media - which he certainly will be - his views could well make him even more attractive with groups that Republicans usually have a hard time reaching, blacks and Hispanics, both of which are predominately of the same opinion regarding homosexuality as is Huckabee. The worst thing he could do when asked to defend himself would be to waffle.

RLC

Petraeus Wins Another Convert

Michael Golfarb of The Weekly Standard remarks on an editorial in the Washington Post in which Pete Hegseth, executive director of Vets for Freedom, has coauthored an op-ed with Major General John Batiste.

Batiste is the formerly antiwar general who spoke out against Donald Rumsfeld, and who, until recently, was a Board Member of VoteVets.org (the antiwar MoveOn.org vets front group).

Goldfarb notes that in his Post column Batiste and Hegseth write that:

First, the United States must be successful in the fight against worldwide Islamic extremism. We have seen this ruthless enemy firsthand, and its global ambitions are undeniable. This struggle, the Long War, will probably take decades to prosecute. Failure is not an option.

Second, whether or not we like it, Iraq is central to that fight. We cannot walk away from our strategic interests in the region. Iraq cannot become a staging ground for Islamic extremism or be dominated by other powers in the region, such as Iran and Syria. A premature or precipitous withdrawal from Iraq, without the requisite stability and security, is likely to cause the violence there -- which has decreased substantially but is still present -- to cascade into an even larger humanitarian crisis.

Third, the counterinsurgency campaign led by Gen. David Petraeus is the correct approach in Iraq. It is showing promise of success and, if continued, will provide the Iraqi government the opportunities it desperately needs to stabilize its country.

Goldfarb comments:

There are two stories here: 1) A formerly anti-war general flips on supporting the war, and now believes Petraeus has the right strategy; and 2) Batiste has left VoteVets.org, and the antiwar movement, and joined up with the pro-troop, pro-surge, pro-victory Vets for Freedom.

The antiwar movement has lost one of its most powerful voices today, and it will be interesting to see whether they turn on one of their own, or come around to the view, supported by a preponderance of evidence, that the surge is working.

A year from now, if Iraq continues on its present trajectory, Bush could well be looking like a less eloquent version of Winston Churchill, and the Dems who so bitterly opposed him will be jumping off bridges.

RLC

Colorado Springs

Slapstick Politics has a lot of information on the tragic Colorado Springs shooting including some insight into how the shooter was stopped. It turns out that the killer "hated Christians." Anyone surprised? I wonder if he was a fan of Richard Dawkins and The God Delusion.

It also turns out that the woman who stopped him had a carry permit and her own firearm. She saved perhaps dozens of lives, which will certainly put the media in a quandary. They'll want to tout her heroism because she's a woman (and maybe even because she was indeed a hero), but they won't want to publicize the fact that she used a concealed firearm because that will make it harder to pass restrictive gun legislation.

Anyway, the next time someone goes on about the alleged crimes of Christianity ask them how far back in history one has to go to find an instance of a Christian shooting up a meeting of atheists and killing two teenage sisters.

UPDATE: Video of a press interview with the woman who shot the gunman can be seen here.

RLC

Waiting For Godot

We don't know much about fiscal policy and economics so we're easily led on these matters. In fact we've been wringing our hands for the last four or five years as one economic poobah after another has proclaimed the economy to be teetering on the brink of recession. Then we get all confused when the numbers come out for the most recent quarter and invariably they show an economy that's as robust and healthy as anyone could reasonably hope for.

For example, Larry Kudlow, writing at National Review Online, tells us that:

Americans are working. The 4.7 percent unemployment number remains at an historical low. On a three-month rolling basis, the U.S. economy has added over 100,000 jobs. Meanwhile, the household job count shows that an average of 303,000 jobs have been added in the last three months. This is noteworthy because it suggests that the job market is turning around.

Hours worked are growing more than 1-percent annually, while workers' wages are running 3.8 percent, a full percentage point ahead of inflation. As for this week's productivity report, it was nothing short of spectacular: the 6.3 percent productivity gain was the best in four years. A rise in productivity is good for growth. It's good for profits. And it's good for low inflation.

Speaking of inflation, business inflation is down from 3.5 percent just over a year ago to 1.5 percent today. Meanwhile, oil prices have retreated to $88. And, to top it all off, last night we received a tremendous new number showing household net wealth has headed even higher. It stands at a record $59 trillion dollars. That's more than seven percent above a year ago.

Another factoid worth considering is that mortgage refinancings are soaring at lower rates. Since June, they are up nearly 70 percent, while mortgage rates on 15 and 30-year loans are down nearly a 100 basis points. That is a very positive, very welcome development that ought to cushion the plunge in home sales, and maybe even prices.

This just doesn't sound to our untutored ear like the beginnings of a recession, but then we're not beset with Bush Derangement Syndrome. If we were, then facts like these wouldn't matter. BDS sufferers are convinced that the economy can't be good because Bush is stupid, or something like that. Anyway, the numbers look pretty good to us, and we're beginning to wonder if waiting for the recession isn't a bit like waiting for Godot in Samuel Beckett's play. The actors expect Godot's arrival at any minute but for some reason Godot never comes.

RLC

Broken Compass

Philip Pullman is an atheist/agnostic who writes children's books with anti-Christian themes. One of his books (The Northern Lights) has been made into a movie (The Golden Compass) which was released this past weekend and a number of groups are urging people not to take their children to see it.

A couple of high school-aged young men of my acquaintance saw the movie and said that the anti-theism was pretty blatant. The biggest concern many have about the film is that it will entice youngsters to read Pullman's books. For our part we think it'd be a fun idea to have a double feature. Take the (teenage) kids to see The Golden Compass and then follow it up with something that shows the logical outcome of man's attempt to kill God. We recommend Schindler's List as a suitable sequel and a vivid picture of what happens when anti-theism leaves the realm of fantasy and plays itself out in the real world.

Details can be found here.

RLC

Religious Candor

Chip Bok comments on all the scrutiny, superficial as it has been, of our candidates' religious beliefs:

Pretty funny.

RLC

Thought For A Sunday

Taken from An Humble, Affectionate, and Earnest Address to the Clergy by William Law.

His intellectual faculties are, by the fall, in a much worse state than his natural animal appetites, and want a much greater self-denial. And when own will, own understanding, and own imagination have their natural strength indulged and gratified, and are made seemingly rich and honorable with the treasures acquired from a study of the belles lettres, they will just as much help poor fallen man to be like-minded with Christ, as the art of cookery, well and daily studied, will help a professor of the gospel to the spirit and practice of Christian abstinence. To know all this to be strictly the truth, no more need be known, than these two things: (1) that our salvation consists wholly in being saved from ourselves, or that which we are by nature; (2) that in the whole nature of things, nothing could be this salvation, or savior to us, but such an humility of God manifested in human nature, as is beyond all expression. Hence, the first unalterable term of this savior to fallen man, is this, "Except a man denies himself, forsakes all that he has, yea and his own life, he cannot be my disciple." And to show, that this is but the beginning, or ground of man's salvation, the savior adds, "Learn of me, for I am meek, and lowly of heart." What a light is here, for those that can bear, or love the light! Self is the whole evil of fallen nature; self-denial is our capacity of being saved; humility is our savior. This is every man's short lesson of life; and he that has well learned it, is scholar enough, and has had all the benefit of a most finished education. Then old Adam with all his ignorance is cast out of him; and when Christ's humility is learned, then he has the very mind of Christ, and that which brings him forth a son of God.

Blair Talks About Faith

Tony Blair talks about talking about God. In the course of the article on Blair, the writers say:

However, Mr Blair, who is now a Middle East peace envoy, has been attacked by commentators who say that religion should be separated from politics and by those who feel that many of his decisions betrayed the Christian community.

In other words, some of Mr. Blair's critics think that a politician should somehow separate his policy decisions, which are often moral - approaches to poverty, disaster relief, war, environmental protection, stem cell research, for example - from his deepest convictions about what grounds right and wrong. This would be humorous were the plea to separate the two not so pervasive and those who demand it not so strident.

As it is it's simply fatuous. One can no more separate one's beliefs from the grounds for those beliefs than one can separate one side of a coin from the other.

What those who advocate such a purge of religious values from the public square would do is reduce every public debate to a struggle for power to determine whose tastes, feelings and biases will prevail.

If one person says we should help the poor and another says we shouldn't, how do we decide who is right if we're not permitted to bring our deepest beliefs to bear upon the matter? Indeed, the only person who can answer the question is the religious man. The secularist can give no answer to the question why we should help the poor other than to say that it just seems right to him to do so.

It's not a very compelling reason, but that's really the best the secular man can do, poor chap.

RLC

D'Souza vs. Dennett

Dinesh D'Souza recently debated Daniel Dennett on the topic of whether God is a human artifact.

A blogger sympathetic to Dennett's views watched the debate and writes about his disappointment in the quality of Dennett's performance.

"And here's the weakness of the entire Atheist movement on display. Argument via ridicule only takes you so far, and only keeps the already converted entertained. Time and again I was disappointed not only by Dennett's inability to articulate the science, but in his inability to respond to D'Souza's very interesting thought experiments, analogies and use of example from the history of Philosophy itself. What a disappointment from such a well-trained professor of philosophy!"

D'Souza also shares some thoughts about the contest and offers video of it here.

RLC

The NIE

The recently released National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) made the claim that Iran gave up its ambitions to develop a nuclear weapon four years ago and primarily for this reason the document has drawn a lot of critical attention. Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton, for example, levels some pretty serious criticism of its alleged flaws in a column in the Washington Post, to which I refer readers interested in seeing why the document has generated so much skepticism.

Rush Limbaugh also points out that not only are the authors of the document politically hostile to the current administration but one of them was drawing exactly the opposite conclusions about iran only four months ago:

On July 11, 2007, roughly four or so months prior to the most recent NIE's publication, Deputy Director of Analysis Thomas Fingar, one of the three authors of the NIE, gave the following testimony before the House Armed Services Committee: 'Iran and North Korea are the states of most concern to us. The United States' concerns about Iran are shared by many nations, including many of Iran's neighbors. Iran is continuing to pursue uranium enrichment and has shown more interest in protracting negotiations and working to delay and diminish the impact of UNSC sanctions than in reaching an acceptable diplomatic solution. We assess that Tehran is determined to develop nuclear weapons -- despite its international obligations and international pressure. This is a grave concern to the other countries in the region whose security would be threatened should Iran acquire nuclear weapons.'

according to the Wall Street Journal, Thomas Fingar is one of the three officials who were responsible for crafting the latest NIE. The Journal cites 'an intelligence source' as describing Fingar and his two colleagues as 'hyper-partisan anti-Bush officials.'

What's even more strange about the NIE is the reaction to it by Bush's political opponents. They're alleging that somehow this report discredits Bush's Iran policy, but how is that so? What exactly is Bush's Iran policy? It's to muster international pressure to insure that Iran does not pursue nuclear weapons. His opponents say that this is now pointless because Iran's not pursuing nukes. They then go on to add that now we can stop the "saber-rattling" and use diplomacy. Well, when has Bush rattled any sabers over Iran? And if Iran is not pursuing nukes what do we need diplomacy for? The call for diplomacy seems bizarre coming from people who believe that there's nothing to negotiate with Iran about.

Even if Bush's diplomacy did involve saber-rattling, why is that bad? Surely diplomacy with Iran without the credible threat of force is useless. What incentive does Iran have to behave itself unless it fears punishment? This question brings us to another interesting point about the NIE.

In their eagerness to use this report against Bush his political detractors have overlooked the fact that if the report is to be believed Iran gave up its nuclear program in 2003. There was no U.S./Iranian diplomacy taking place in 2003. The only thing that took place in 2003 was that we invaded Iraq and deposed Saddam Hussein in less than a week. That sent shock waves through the axis of evil and if Iran dropped its nuclear ambitions that year then there's every reason to believe that they did so because they didn't want to be next.

If the NIE is right in recent years Iraq and Afghanistan have been liberated from tyranny, and Libya, North Korea, and Iran have all stepped down their march toward nuclear weapons. That's a pretty good legacy, perhaps unprecedented, for whatever administration supervised it, but don't expect the left to give Bush credit. They're more likely to argue that it was out of fear of a diplomatic offensive from future president Hillary Clinton that moved these wise leaders to capitulate to her years in advance than they are to acknowledge that George W. Bush is responsible for a truly remarkable and historic achievement.

RLC

Let a Thousand Questions Bloom

So much has been made of Mitt Romney's Mormonism that he felt it necessary yesterday to give a speech about it. Mike Huckabee, too, has had to explain his beliefs to journalists who seem discombobulated by the fact that convictions that have been commonly held by intelligent Americans for two thousand years are still held by some today.

I think these inquiries into the faith commitments of the candidates for leadership of the free world are a good thing. We should know what resources these people draw upon to help them through difficult times and to shape their view of the world, and I would enjoy hearing the media ask Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton exactly what are their views of the person and nature of Jesus Christ.

Unfortunately, I don't think this is going to happen. The point of the media asking Romney and Huckabee about their faith, I suspect, is to embarrass them among the elites. If they can make them look like religious "extremists" or exotic rubes they may undermine their appeal with a group of voters to whom they might otherwise be attractive. On the other hand, they don't want to undermine the Democrat candidates' appeal among the great unwashed so they won't risk asking them a question that might make them look unsympathetic to the superstitions of the masses.

On a related matter, the protestations of those who complain that we shouldn't care about a person's religion or that the constitution prohibits religious tests for the office of the presidency are getting tiresome. I doubt very much if those who insist we shouldn't delve into a person's deepest beliefs would still say that if a Wahhabist Muslim was running for president. I think the religion-is-irrelevant crowd would be falling all over themselves to demand that such a candidate clarify his religious views ad infinitum. And they should.

Also, while it is true that the constitution prohibits a religious test for the office of president that proscription is a legal limitation. A person cannot be legally prevented from being elected president just because of his religion, but that doesn't mean that voters can't or shouldn't base their vote upon what a candidate believes.

In the case of Mitt Romney, who I happen to like, no one argues that he should be barred from running because he's a Mormon, but it doesn't follow that his beliefs should therefore be considered irrelevant by the voters.

RLC