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.

Why the Mainline Church is Shrivelling

If ever an interlocutor ventures to wonder why the mainline churches of European provenience are in demographic free fall point him or her to this article by Mark Tooley in the Weekly Standard.

It is one thing to bow before others as we wash their feet in self abnegating humility. It is something else to bow behind others to plant a smooch on their caboose in abject self-contempt.

The following are the apologies and self-flagellations of American churchmen and women at a recent World Council of Churches conclave:

"Our leaders turned a deaf ear to the voices of church leaders throughout our nation and the world, entering into imperial projects that seek to dominate and control for the sake of our own national interests," lamented the apologetic Americans. "Nations have been demonized and God has been enlisted in national agendas that are nothing short of idolatrous."

After thanking the WCC for its "compassion" after 9/11 and Katrina, the U.S. delegates acknowledged ruefully that they are "citizens of a nation that has done much in these years to endanger the human family and to abuse the creation." In response to post-9/11 sympathy, they said, the United States "responded by seeking to reclaim a privileged and secure place in the world, raining down terror on the truly vulnerable among our global neighbors."

"We lament with special anguish the war in Iraq, launched in deception and violating global norms of justice and human rights," the letter implored. "We acknowledge with shame abuses carried out in our name . . . Lord have mercy."

The U.S. ecclesiastics are also distraught that America has "violated" the "rivers, oceans, lakes, rainforests and wetlands that sustain us" and allowed global warming to go "unchecked" while the earth "veers towards destruction." Indeed, the United States has denied "its complicity and rejects multilateral agreements aimed at reversing disastrous trends."

In the face of global poverty, the United States "clings to . . . possessions rather than shares." And at the same time, Hurricane Katrina "revealed to the world those left behind in our own nation by the rupture of our social contract." Naturally, America refuses to recognize its racism at home and the "racism that infects our policies around the world."

The U.S. delegation thanked the WCC for the "hospitality we don't deserve, for companionship we haven't earned, for an embrace we don't merit." Seeking God's forgiveness, they pleaded, "From a place seduced by the lure of empire we come to you in penitence, eager for grace, grace sufficient to transform spirits grown weary from the violence, degradation, and poverty our nation has sown . . ."

There is so much nonsense and self-loathing in the mea culpas of our church leaders that it would take a book to unravel it all. Suffice it to say that the only thing more ridiculous than a pompous, self-righteous Christian is a pompous, self-righteous Christian who attempts to present himself as the very opposite.

I Am the Way ....

This very interesting article by Robert Wuthnow in Christianity Today seems to suggest that Christian exclusivity is a fading belief even among some conservative Christians. Exclusivity is the word used to describe the belief, widely held among Christian conservatives, that only those who accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour will be granted eternal life. In other words, only Christians will go to heaven. Wuthnow writes:

Consider Jim and Nancy Parsons, co-pastors of a four hundred member Assemblies of God church in a large city on the East Coast.

Although they do not aggressively evangelize non Christians, the Parsons are quite clear that these people do not know God. Their interpretation of Jesus' saying about being the way, the truth, and the life is that this statement leaves open only two options: either Jesus was telling the truth or Jesus was a liar and, since the latter option strikes most people as unattractive, they argue that Jesus really meant it when he said that he was the only way to come to God. Thus, they have little interest in trying to understand the teachings of other religious traditions. They acknowledge that there are well meaning people who follow these traditions, but these people will not have eternal life unless they believe that Jesus died for their sins.

Wuthnow goes on to talk about the Reverend Jim Jimson and what he says about presenting the gospel to Jews or Muslims or Hindus. He is the pastor of a four hundred member Southern Baptist Church in a southern city.

...Mr. Jimson's exact words are worth considering ... carefully. After acknowledging that he would like his church to be doing more to reach out to people of other faiths, he says, "This is where we kind of get into the difficulties. There's a verse in the Bible where Jesus says, `I'm the way, the truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father, but by me,' which very much narrows things down, [especially] if you take it that he said those words and meant them just as straight as he said them. There's another one in Acts, and the reason I quote these verses is because like I said, I feel constrained if this really is the Word of God, then I'm constrained to take that perspective, if you will. Peter told some folks, `There's no other name given under heaven by which men might be saved.' Now if that's the case, if Jesus is the only way to God, then we need to reach out to people of other religious beliefs. I know this sounds ... " He trails off somewhat apologetically, saying to the interviewer, "I don't want to make you angry, I hope I'm not doing that."

When the interviewer reassures him that she really wants to know what he thinks, he continues, "I'm not apologizing, but at the same time I want to be ..." He searches for the right words: "Yes, then I'm constrained to say there's one way to God and, boy, this sounds ... " Again he breaks off. She reassures him again. "Okay," he says. "I just don't want to sound arrogant, because it's not me who's come up with this. If I'm going to be faithful, then I'm constrained to say, then other folks have missed it. I don't want to make it sound like I've come up with this, or I found the way or something."

Mr. Jimson, like an awful lot of other Christian leaders, sounds very much like he doesn't really believe this, but he's caught in a bind. Either he endorses it or he has to reject the authority of the Bible.

The Christian church seems to be experiencing a crisis of faith. Many, if not most, Christians find it very difficult to comprehend how a loving God could be an exclusionary God, and so they either don't think about it, or they say things like "no one knows how God will handle unbelievers," or they struggle to reconcile their inclusive yearnings with what the Bible teaches about salvation, particularly the verse quoted above (John 14:6).

It may indeed be that there is no salvation outside the Christian faith, but to use Jn.14:6 to support that view seems a weak strategy. On the face of it there's no compelling exegetical reason to assume that that verse can carry the weight that exclusivist Christians lay on its shoulders. It could be, in fact, that these folks are interpreting Jesus words in light of their a priori commitment to exclusivism. It could be that the verse has nothing at all to do with declaring Christianity the only way to God, but should rather be seen as a declaration by Jesus that it is only through what He is about to do on the cross that eternal life is possible for anyone who receives it.

Perhaps the verse doesn't mean that one must know and appropriate the significance of Jesus' sacrifice, but rather that it is that sacrifice that paid the debt incurred by our sin. If this is so, then there's no logical impediment, based on this verse alone, to believing that at least some of those who never heard the gospel or who heard it but didn't appreciate its truth might nevertheless be granted eternal life.

There may be other passages which preclude this interpretation, but John 14:6 is too ambiguous to be among them. The anguish apparent in the pastors' response to Wuthnow's interviewer seems unnecessary.

Avoiding Auto Abuse

For those of you who don't have AOL (which is probably most of you) the folks there ran an article last week which may be of some interest to those interested in the care and nurture of their automobiles. It's titled Five Things to Never Do to Your Car. In short the five no-nos are:

1. Never wash your car in the sun.

2. Never pressure wash the car's engine.

3. Never overload the charging system with heavy duty audio systems.

4. Never use "universal fit" tires.

5. Never tow a car w/automatic transmission with the drive wheels on the ground.

To find out why these are bad for your vehicle check out the link.

Payback For What?!

Mohammed Reza Taheriazar, the driver of an SUV that plowed into a group of pedestrians at UNC-Chapel Hill on Friday, told police it was retribution for the treatment of Muslims around the world, according to ABC News.

Well, let's see. Which Muslims might these be on whose behalf Mr. Taheriazar sought retribution? Were these the millions of Indonesian tsunami victims that are alive today because Americans, at great cost to themselves, came to their aid? Perhaps he had in mind the victims of the recent earthquake in Pakistan whose misery has been mitigated through American aid. Maybe he wished to avenge the treatment of the Kuwaitis rescued by Americans in Operation Desert Storm or Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo who owe their lives to American intervention. Maybe Mr. Taheriazar is distraught over the 25 million Muslims liberated by Americans from Taliban oppression in Afghanistan or the 25 million more who were liberated from the most demonic killer since Stalin in Iraq, despite the steep price in American blood and treasure. Or it could be the millions of Muslims languishing in places like Syria and Iran who despise their leaders both secular and religious, and who look to America as their hope and ideal, whose plight has so touched Mr. Taheriazar's heart. Maybe it's the suffering of the Palestinians, whom the Israelis would have probably long ago exterminated were it not for the restraining hand of the United States upon their shoulder, that compelled him to attempt murder on the UNC campus. Maybe Mr. Taheriazar is angry at America because the millions of dollars we give to the Palestinian people each year keeps going to maintain the corrupt lifestyles of their leaders.

Who knows? It's really hard to say precisely what Mr. Taheriazar's grievance with America might be, of course, because he's both a lunatic and a Muslim and for neither do grievances need be grounded in any objective reality. Unfortunately, too many Muslims seem determined to do all they can to convince a world eager to believe that the majority of Muslims really are non-violent that, in fact, to be a Muslim is to be a lunatic.

UPDATE: The Muslim Students' Association at UNC has disavowed and condemned Taheriazar's act. We are glad to see Muslims in this country rejecting violence. It's reassuring.