Another Media Fantasist

The Washington Times reveals the rich fantasy life, while noting the execrable behavior, of CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. During a discussion on media and democracy, Mr. Jordan apparently told the audience that "he knew of 12 journalists who had not only been killed by U.S. troops in Iraq, but they had in fact been targeted..."

Jordan has made similar accusations on previous occasions. According to the Times:

In November, as reported in the London Guardian, Mr. Jordan had said, "The reality is that at least 10 journalists have been killed by the U.S. military, and according to reports I believe to be true journalists have been arrested and tortured by U.S. forces." This is very serious stuff, if true. Yet aside from Mr. Jordan's occasional comments, there's no evidence to support it.

The MSM has chosen to completely ignore Mr. Jordan's irresponsible allegation, realizing, no doubt, that any claim this bizarre should probably be supported with at least some evidence, a minimal requirement Mr. Jordan has completely disdained. An unsubstantiated charge of this magnitude sounds like another Dan Rather scandal in the making, and Big Media doesn't want to be the catalyst for destroying the credibility of yet another major news institution.

Since the MSM won't do their job one must turn to alternative media for the details. Luckily, Hugh Hewitt and Ed Morrissey are on the case. Between the two of them all the sordid details can be pieced together.

The director of CNN News evidently thought he could get away with slandering American troops without anyone noticing. The American public should demand that he come forward with evidence for his libels or else be fired (and sued) for lying about our troops.

American Hero

This photo at Release the Hounds and the accompanying explanation are worth seeing and reading. Why doesn't the MSM run stuff like this?

A Picture of Evil, A Portrait of Heroism

This account from Omar at Iraq the Model shows how despicable are the savages our troops are working to extirpate in Iraq:

I strongly believe that terrorists are cowards but the cowardice you're going to see in this story is just exceptional. The suicide attack that was performed on an election center in one of Baghdad's districts (Baghdad Al-Jadeedah) last Sunday was performed using a kidnapped "Down Syndrome" patient. Eye witnesses said that (and I'm quoting one of my colleagues; a dentist who lives there) "the poor victim was so scared when ordered to walk to the searching point and began to walk back to the terrorists. In response, the criminals pressed the button and blew up the poor victim almost half way between their position and the voting center's entrance".

I couldn't believe the news until I met another guy from that neighborhood who knows the family of the victim. The guy was reported missing 5 days prior to elections' day and the family were distributing posters that specified his descriptions and asking anyone who finds him to contact them.

When a relative of mine (who has a mental handicap due to an Rh conflict at birth) told me a month ago that a group of men in a car tried to kidnap him as he was standing in front of the institution he periodically visits to get medicine and support waiting for his brother; I thought that he was imagining the whole story. He said that they tried to force him into the car telling him not to be afraid and that they're from the "mujahideen and not going to hurt him". My relative, despite his handicap was moved by his survival instinct and managed to run away.

After I heard the other story, I began to connect between the two stories and to consider my cousin's story as a true one that uncovered a new miserable war technique that can come only from the sickest minds.

What a huge difference there is between those who kidnap and use the mentally handicapped to perform their murders in cold blood and between the brave Iraqis who sacrificed their lives to protect their brethren. One story that is famous now in Iraq is about one brave Iraqi (A'adel Nasir) who saw a suspicious looking guy walking around a polling center in (Al- Hurriyah) district and soon the brave man realized that the suspicious guy was trying to commit a suicide attack; he ran towards him, wrestled with him and knocked him down causing the bomb carried by the terrorist to explode, sacrificing his own life and saving the lives of the people standing in line at the gate of the voting center. It turned out later that the terrorist carried a Sudanese identification. Now, the school that hosted the voting center on the 30th carries the name of A'adel Nasir, as the Iraqi minister of education announced today.

The pathetic terrorists are breaking one world record after another in cowardice and insanity and this tells how bankrupt they're getting.

The story of A'adel Nasir (I've seen his name rendered differently in different reports) is especially significant. Everyone knows that Americans and Brits have acted with extraordinary courage in Iraq, but the MSM seems to be convinced that Iraqi troops and police have been less than audacious in risking their own lives in the fight for their own freedom. Not only does the behavior of millions of Iraqis who braved death threats in order to vote explode this myth but so does the heroism of A'adel Nasir whose courage will be a model for young Iraqis to emulate for generations.

More Gators in the Moat

The talented Tom Graffagnino posts this clever piece of verse at Without Excuse Creations:

"More Gators in the Moat!"

or

("Piltdown! Man the Iv'ry Towers!")

The Supernaturalists are coming!

Egad! By land!...

....By sea and boat!

Piltdown! Man the Iv'ry Towers!

Quick! .....

More 'gators in the moat!

Don't they know our Theory's Fittest!?

How dare they challenge you and me!?

O my Gawd! Can you imagine!?

We shan't allow this Heresy!

Call the Bio-Bishop Council!

Convene the Cardinals from their perch!

Yo! Onward Evo-Soldiers!

We must defend Pope Darwin's Church!

Kids today know how we got here....

It took a while....

But they believe!

Magik Microbe straight to Shakespeare!

What more could "Lucky Mud" achieve!?

No! We mustn't give them access,

To our children made so bright.

Darwinistas! Man your stations!

No Debate!

Comrades, Unite!

Battle Cry: "From Scales to Feathers!"

Battle Hymn: "From Mud to Man!"

And the drumbeat in the background?....

Censorship!

Impose the Ban!

Rowdy Red-State Rabble-Rousers,

Knuckle-dragging Retro-Brains....

Keep your thinking in the Ghetto.

Hey, monkey!....

Mother Nature Reigns!

So, Battle Stations, Nature's Chosen!

Priests of Darwin, clean their clocks!

This ain't no monkey business....

Stand your ground, Ye Orthodox!

There!

The hoi-poloi's advancing!

Raise the drawbridge right away!

Sir, defending "Fortress Darwin",

Is the order of the day!

Sister "Lucy"! Man the Ramparts!

From high above, look down your nose,

On those attacking our assumptions.....

Who claim the case just isn't closed!

Don your helmet and your breastplate....

Our metaphysics they dislike.

The Naked Apes just keep-a-comin'...

Quick!.....

More fingers in the Dike!

Gird your loins, Ye Missing Linkers!

The Great Unwashed we shall defeat!

My! Their Wedge of Doubt grows sharper....

I'm not so sure that they'll retreat!

Yes! Defending Darwin's Castle's

Our Crusade.....and Sacred Cow.

Clarence Darrow wouldn't like it...

But some debates we can't allow!

We're entrenched in Naturalism...

We're locked in...Unbending, too.

"Liberal" Thought's not always healthy,

When we're beseiged like me and you!

So, ever "Onward Evo-Soldier"!

Fight the Fight!

And spread The Word!

Naturalism's Fundamental!

Keep the Faith, Ye Undeterred!

Very witty, and it makes an important point: Darwinism is a indeed a religion. It offers its votaries a creation myth (Life arose by chance in a primordial sea), an answer to the question of life's meaning (to perpetuate the species or at least one's genes), a ground for morality ("Right" is whatever conduces to survival), and an answer to the question of where we are going (When we die we return to the earth so that our matter may continue on as part of the great cycle of life).

Darwinism, by offering us an opportunity to "liberate the human spirit" from superstition and clerical oppression, affords us a vehicle for "salvation". It moreover maintains a priestly class of scientists and philosophers who pontificate on matters of doctrine, faith, and practice, and it proudly boasts a pantheon of saints who have gone on before. It embodies a worldview that encompasses every aspect of life. It cherishes its dogmas and orthodoxies, defending them assiduously against challenge from heretics, and traces its beginnings to the holy scriptures recorded by its founder in the Origin of Species.

Nancy Pearcey, in her book Total Truth, quotes philosopher and Darwinian Michael Ruse, who says that "I must admit that....the [critics of evolution] are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning and it is true of evolution still today."

She also quotes from historian Jacques Barzun who writes that the so-called warfare between science and religion should really be seen as the "warfare between two philosophies and perhaps two faiths." It's a dispute, he writes, "between believers in consciousness and believers in mechanical action; the believers in purpose and the believers in pure chance."

Precisely. The fundamental difference between Darwinism and Christianity is that Christianity traces the origin of the world and of life back to an intelligence whereas Darwinism traces it back to random, purposeless forces. Both Darwinism and Christianity are thus grounded in metaphysical faith commitments, and from those commitments flow all of their differences.

New ID Blog

The Discovery Institute has a new blog that focuses on media reporting and misreporting of the Darwinism/Intelligent Design debate. The news media in the U.S. seem to have rediscovered the controversy, but unfortunately, much of their coverage has been sloppy, inaccurate, and in several cases, overtly biased. Evolution News and Views aims to offer a corrective, and anyone interested in the issue should check it out.

Conservative Inconsistency

Andrew Sullivan, who, by the way, is largely shutting down his blog for a couple of months, relays to conservatives this question from a friend:

WHY NOT AN ANTI-ABORTION AMENDMENT? Here's an interesting question, posed by my friend Jon Rauch. The Senate Republicans have vowed to push their anti-gay marriage amendment, even though it won't stand a chance of getting the necessary 67 votes. The point is political and rhetorical. They are trying to build momentum, raise money, and keep the cause of banning same-sex unions alive. So why not push an anti-abortion amendment instead? They have one such amendment on hand. Both proposed amendments are allegedly against judicial meddling. Both will fail. But one deals with a much graver issue, by the religious right's reckoning - an immense loss of human life, rather than the grave evil of two human beings committing to one another for life. So why this priority? Surely, abortion is a more important matter than same-sex marriage - even for the religious right. Or is it?

Good question. In fact, Viewpoint will go one better. Why should this be a matter of one or the other? Why shouldn't conservatives be arguing for both amendments? If the marriage amendment is necessary to protect marriage, and it may well be, surely an anti-abortion amendment is necessary to protect the lives of unborn children and is long overdue. It doubtless would not have been possible to get such an amendment through congress before now and may not be possible to get one passed even now, but shouldn't the arguments for it at least be raised?

That some conservatives have gone on record calling for the marriage amendment, but none appear to be interested in a constitutional corrective for Roe v. Wade, a decision many believe to be a clear case of judicial overreach that has resulted in the sacrifice of millions of lives, seems at best a little inconsistent.

The Democratic Definition of Freedom

The Democrats have vowed to fight President Bush's Social Security reform proposals with every weapon at their disposal. The President wishes to give people control over a portion of their retirement, and the Democrats are opposed. A number of commentators have noted the irony of liberals insisting that people have a constitutional right to choose whether their unborn children live or die while at the same time refusing them the right to choose how to invest for their retirement (or, for that matter, where to send their children to school if indeed they should choose to have them).

For the freedom-loving folks in the Democratic party freedom to choose extends little further than whether or not to terminate a pregnancy. For them, freedom's just another word for nothing left to choose.

Free At Last

After the Civil War there was a massive migration of blacks from the south to the cities of the north. They came looking for opportunities and a better life. There are signs that another African-American migration is taking place in our own day only this one is political, not geographical, and it is causing alarm in liberal precincts. Apparently, the Republican party is beginning to make serious inroads into a demographic group that Democrats have had locked up for sixty years, and if they are successful it would have serious consequences for the future of the party.

An article in the Los Angeles Times sounds the tocsin. Here are a few excerpts:

Black conservatives who supported President Bush in 2004 and gained new prominence within the Republican Party are launching a loosely knit movement that they hope will transform the role African Americans play in national politics.

The effort will be visible today at the Crenshaw Christian Center, one of Los Angeles' biggest black churches, headed by televangelist Frederick K.C. Price. More than 100 African American ministers are to gather in the first of several regional summits to build support for banning same-sex marriage - a signature issue that drew socially conservative blacks to the Republican column last year.

Before the meeting, one prominent minister plans to unveil a "Black Contract With America on Moral Values," a call for Bible-based action by government and churches to promote conservative priorities. It is patterned loosely on the "Contract With America" that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich used 10 years ago to inaugurate an era of GOP dominance in Congress.

A separate group with ties to Gingrich will announce a similar "Mayflower Compact for Black America" later this month in Washington, which includes plans to organize in key states ahead of the 2006 and 2008 elections. And at the end of the month, the Heritage Foundation will cosponsor a gathering of black conservatives in Washington designed to counter dominance of the "America-hating black liberal leadership" and to focus African American voters on moral issues.

"I am frightened by what is happening," said Rep. Major R. Owens, an 11-term Democratic congressman from New York who has been conferring with colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus. "Our party is in grave danger. This Republican movement is going to expand exponentially unless we do something."

Failure to respond to the GOP investment in black communities, he said, could allow Republicans to add five percentage points to the 11% they received among African American voters nationwide in 2004.

Republican officials, such as outgoing party chairman Ed Gillespie, have said they think the percentage could rise to 30 in the next presidential election - a prediction that even some GOP strategists called overly optimistic.

Even if it rises 5 percentage points, Owens said, "the Democratic Party will be paralyzed."

Owens said the GOP strategy of courting church leadership was on target. "The churches are the last institutions alive and breathing in some of these neighborhoods, and people look to them for leadership," he said.

African-Americans are evidently tired of being snookered by Democratic leaders, both black and white. They are at last beginning to realize that liberal policies since the 1960s have often been counterproductive at best and dysgenic at worst.

Now comes a Republican president who may have done more for black racial esteem than all the liberal multicultural/diversity/ethnic/racial pride celebrations of the last three decades put together. He has actually elevated blacks to some of the most prominent positions of his administration, something no Democrat ever did. He also understands that what is good for America is good for African-Americans, and has steadily worked to improve the economy, create jobs, and set a positive moral tone for the country. Moreover, he has steadfastly refused to do what is standard practice for many Democrat politicians - he has refused to pander to blacks, or to treat them as if they just can't be expected to manage their own lives.

To many liberals blacks are the white man's burden, and African-Americans may finally be growing resentful of the implicit racism of this patronizing attitude. Perhaps they are tired of their indenture to the Democratic bosses and have become a field ripe for a conservative harvest. If so, a significant African-American defection would quite likely signal the demise of the Democratic party.

The Litmus Test

John Podhoretz asks an intriguing question:

When you heard about the stunning success of the Iraqi elections, were you thrilled? Did you see it as a triumph for democracy and for the armed forces of the United States that have sacrificed and suffered and fought so valiantly over the past 18 months to get Iraq to this moment? Or did you momentarily feel an onrush of disappointment because you knew, you just knew, that this was going to redound to the credit of George W. Bush?

There are literally millions of Americans who are unhappy today because millions of Iraqis went to the polls yesterday. And why? Because this isn't just a success for Bush. It's a huge win. It's a colossal vindication. And [the Left] knows it. And it's killing them.

This really is a kind of litmus test for the quality of our character, isn't it? Were we genuinely glad for the Iraqi people, or at least relieved, that things went well for them and their country on Sunday, or did we feel indifference or even somewhat of a letdown that there wasn't more chaos and carnage? If it was the latter then we need to have a serious conversation with ourselves about the state of our soul.

For an example of someone who stands in urgent need of just such self-examination read the piece at Good News From Iraq is up, and, as usual, it's packed.

Those who were surprised at the enthusiastic turn out at the polls last Sunday could not have been following Chrenkoff's fortnightly posts. If they had been, January 30th would have been no surprise at all.

Re-Vote

In the wake of November 2nd our inbox was clogged with e-mails from TruthOut.org updating us every hour on the "crisis" in Ohio and the "evidence" that Republicans had been up to election day hanky-panky. About Washington state, however, where there are genuine indications of fraud in the gubernatorial balloting, TruthOut has had almost nothing to say. Doubtless that's because the tentative winner in that election was a Democrat and because the evidence of voter fraud points directly at Democrats as the culprits.

National Review Online notes that:

[I]n King County alone, there are 3,700 unaccounted-for ballots or voters. Some precincts have more ballots than voters, for a total of 2,900 "extra" ballots. Other precincts have more voters than ballots, for a total of 800 "extra" voters. These mystery voter-less ballots and ballot-less votes obviously are enough in themselves to put [Democrat Christine] Gregoire's 129-vote margin in serious doubt.

Other irregularities abound. The Seattle Times has reported that 129 felons voted in King and Pierce counties. At least 348 provisional ballots - which are supposed to be closely inspected to see if they are legitimate - were directly fed into machines and counted in King County. Some 55,000 optical-scan ballots (ballots on which the voter marks a bubble) in King County were "enhanced" so that the voters' supposed intent could be determined, with no uniform standard governing the process. Roughly 500 voters used the address of the King County Administration building as their home address.

We're convinced that TruthOut and its friends in the MSM, like Keith Olberman at MSNBC, who were so sure that there was perfidy afoot in Ohio on November 2nd, will join with the editors of National Review in calling for a re-vote in Washington. It is the Left, after all, which was incensed in 2000 because they had incorrectly persuaded themselves that the winner in Florida had stolen that states' election, and it was the Left which was outraged in 2004 at what they had mistakenly assumed were voting irregularities in Ohio which favored the winner.

We're confident that their tardiness in joining the ranks of those demanding a re-vote in Washington has nothing to do with ideological hypocrisy, as some have alleged, and is, on the contrary, due merely to their getting their legal teams together to insure that justice will be done. Or something like that. At any rate, they'll be out there demanding a re-vote soon, you can count on it.

A Disintegrating Tyranny

There is a remarkable article in the U.K. Times Online concerning the political and social disintegration currently underway in North Korea. Not every member of the axis of evil needs to be confronted militarily. Some of them, evidently, are rotting from within and will, with luck, topple at the first strong wind.

Thanks to Little Green Footballs for the tip.

The Continuing ID Conflict

The culture wars continue. We were reminded by this article in the Wall Street Journal of a quote from Darwinian biologist Richard Lewontin:

It's not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

The WSJ article says this:

The question of whether Intelligent Design (ID) may be presented to public-school students alongside neo-Darwinian evolution has roiled parents and teachers in various communities lately. Whether ID may be presented to adult scientific professionals is another question altogether but also controversial. It is now roiling the government-supported Smithsonian Institution, where one scientist has had his career all but ruined over it.

The scientist is Richard Sternberg, a research associate at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington. The holder of two Ph.D.s in biology, Mr. Sternberg was until recently the managing editor of a nominally independent journal published at the museum, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, where he exercised final editorial authority. The August issue included typical articles on taxonomical topics--e.g., on a new species of hermit crab. It also included an atypical article, "The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories." Here was trouble.

The offending review-essay was written by Stephen Meyer, who holds a Cambridge University doctorate in the philosophy of biology. In the article, he cites biologists and paleontologists critical of certain aspects of Darwinism--mainstream scientists at places like the University of Chicago, Yale, Cambridge and Oxford. Mr. Meyer gathers the threads of their comments to make his own case. He points, for example, to the Cambrian explosion 530 million years ago, when between 19 and 34 animal phyla (body plans) sprang into existence. He argues that, relying on only the Darwinian mechanism, there was not enough time for the necessary genetic "information" to be generated. ID, he believes, offers a better explanation.

Meanwhile, the chairman of the Zoology Department, Jonathan Coddington, called Mr. Sternberg's supervisor. According to Mr. Sternberg's OSC complaint: "First, he asked whether Sternberg was a religious fundamentalist. She told him no. Coddington then asked if Sternberg was affiliated with or belonged to any religious organization. . . . He then asked where Sternberg stood politically; . . . he asked, 'Is he a right-winger? What is his political affiliation?' " The supervisor (who did not return my phone messages) recounted the conversation to Mr. Sternberg, who also quotes her observing: "There are Christians here, but they keep their heads down."

In October, as the OSC complaint recounts, Mr. Coddington told Mr. Sternberg to give up his office and turn in his keys to the departmental floor, thus denying him access to the specimen collections he needs. Mr. Sternberg was also assigned to the close oversight of a curator with whom he had professional disagreements unrelated to evolution. "I'm going to be straightforward with you," said Mr. Coddington, according to the complaint. "Yes, you are being singled out." Neither Mr. Coddington nor Mr. Sues returned repeated phone messages asking for their version of events.

Mr. Sternberg begged a friendly curator for alternative research space, and he still works at the museum. But many colleagues now ignore him when he greets them in the hall, and his office sits empty as "unclaimed space." Old colleagues at other institutions now refuse to work with him on publication projects, citing the Meyer episode. The Biological Society of Washington released a vaguely ecclesiastical statement regretting its association with the article. It did not address its arguments but denied its orthodoxy, citing a resolution of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that defined ID as, by its very nature, unscientific.

It may or may not be, but surely the matter can be debated on scientific grounds, responded to with argument instead of invective and stigma. Note the circularity: Critics of ID have long argued that the theory was unscientific because it had not been put forward in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Now that it has, they argue that it shouldn't have been because it's unscientific. They banish certain ideas from certain venues as if by holy writ, and brand heretics too.

Materialists certainly take Lewontin's words seriously. Any scientist in the church of naturalism who gives succor to the opposition is henceforth anathema. Like a gaggle of middle-school girls shunning one of their number who has transgressed some social protocol, Sternberg's co-workers studiously avoid acknowledging him when they pass in the halls. Is there anything more childish? They probably giggle among themselves in the break-room at how cleverly they execute their indignant snubs.

The alleged complaint against Sternberg is that he used his position as editor of a journal that deals primarily with taxonomy to permit an article on a subject that was not related to taxonomy. This, however, is ludicrous. Science journals like Science and Scientific American, though their mission is to address matters of science, sometimes run articles on foreign, social, or economic policy and no editors are ostracized from the community and have their careers threatened for it.

Another charge against Dr. Sternberg was that Meyer's paper was not original and simply re-worked some of his earlier published material and that featuring it damaged the reputation of the journal. This is an odd reason to punish the editor, though. How can you damage the reputation of a publication that no one ever heard of prior to this incident? Indeed, if anything, Sternberg should be rewarded for garnering publicity for the journal that it never would have gotten otherwise no matter how many papers it published on wildly popular topics like the discovery of a new subspecies of midge in New Jersey marshlands.

Sternberg's real crime, of course, was that the article he ran was critical of Darwinism as an explanatory model for how novel morphological patterns arise in nature. If the paper had been favorable to Darwinism it would have passed completely unremarked by the inquisitors at the Smithsonian no matter how modest its scientific quality might have been. As it was, Sternberg allowed a paper into his journal that dared to question the adequacy of Darwinian theory, so he must be cast out like the academic leper he so obviously must be.

Darwinism is a religion which brooks no challenges, and heretics need be punished severely. Maybe their bodies are no longer burned at the stake, but their careers are. It's unfortunate that middle-schoolers in adult bodies have that kind of authority.

Dispatches From the Democrat Left

California Senator Barbara Boxer, according to this article, is being touted on liberal blogs as the Democrats' best hope for the presidency in 2008. We don't know whether this is simply evidence of the woeful state of the Democratic party, or evidence that God looks out for Republicans, or a premonition that God has decided to punish America, or all three.

Meanwhile, George Soros, 74 year-old billionaire money bags of the Democratic party, who spent $26 million in last year's campaign against George Bush, said his effort was undermined by the candidate he supported.

"Kerry did not, actually, offer a credible and coherent alternative,'' Soros, said yesterday in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. ``That had a lot to do with Bush being re-elected.''

The Kerry campaign "tried to emphasize his role as a Vietnam War hero and downplay his role as an anti-Vietnam War hero, which he was,'' said Soros. "Had he admitted, owned up to it, I think actually the outcome could have been different.''

In other words, in Mr. Soros' opinion, Kerry lost because he wasn't far enough to the Left. He should've portrayed himself as more of a radical anti-war protestor. He should've hugged Michael Moore more often. That would've swung those red state voters into his column, yessiree.

Maybe in 2008 Mr. Soros can persuade George McGovern to run, or Barbara Boxer.

Actually, rank and file Democrats probably would like to tell Mr. Soros to just shut up, but unfortunately for them you can't easily shut up a $26 million dollar sugar daddy.

Mice Brains

The following is excerpted from a National Geographic article which discusses research being done to blend human traits with those of other animals:

Scientists have begun blurring the line between human and animal by producing chimeras-a hybrid creature that's part human, part animal.

Chinese scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University in 2003 successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs. The embryos were reportedly the first human-animal chimeras successfully created. They were allowed to develop for several days in a laboratory dish before the scientists destroyed the embryos to harvest their stem cells.

In Minnesota last year researchers at the Mayo Clinic created pigs with human blood flowing through their bodies.

And at Stanford University in California an experiment might be done later this year to create mice with human brains.

Well, why not. They've evidently already put mouse brains in humans. At least that seems to be the most plausible explanation for the demands (see here and here) emanating from the political Left that we pull out now from Iraq.

Historic Day for Both Iraq and U.S.

Expressions of joy from a sampling of Iraqi bloggers: See here, here, here, here, and here.

Today has been a historic day not only for Iraq but also for the United States. No one knows what the future holds, of course, and things could certainly turn bad, but days like this make one awfully proud to be an American. What our country has done in Iraq is the sort of thing many Americans grew up believing was typical of the American people. This might be the grandest day in our history since the Marshall Plan era c.1950. If someone can think of a day that beats it, let us know because we can't think of one.

UPDATE: Ok. Maybe the day the Berlin wall was torn down has to be pretty high up on the list as well.

Winners and Losers

Today's WINNERS:

1) The Iraqi people

2) All who desire peace and freedom in the Middle East

3) George W. Bush

4) Neo-Conservatives

Today's LOSERS:

1) Islamo-fascist terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere

2) Tyrants in Syria and Iran

3) The Michael Moore/Ted Kennedy wing of the Democratic party

More on the Shroud

FoxNews.com has a story about the Shroud of Turin, which many believe to be the actual burial cloth of Christ. Radiocarbon dating tests run in the 1980s seemed to place the cloth in the medieval period, but more recently that analysis has been questioned. Now a chemist who worked on testing of the Shroud of Turin says new tests on the fiber indicates the cloth could be as much as 3,000 years old:

The analysis, by a scientist who was on [a] 1978 team that was allowed to study tiny pieces of the cloth, indicates the shroud is far older than the initial findings suggesting it was probably from medieval times, and will likely be seized on by those who believe it wrapped the body of Jesus after his crucifixion.

"I cannot disprove that this cloth was the burial shroud that was used on Jesus," Raymond N. Rogers, a retired chemist from the University of California-operated Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, said in a telephone interview Friday from his home.

"The chemistry says it was a real shroud, the blood spots on it are real blood, and the technology that was used to make that piece of cloth was exactly what Pliny the Elder reported for his time," about 70 A.D., Rogers said, referring to the naturalist of ancient Roman times.

The American chemist said he decided to analyze the amount of vanillin, a chemical compound that is present in linen from the flax fibers used to weave it. Vanillin slowly disappears from the fiber over time at a calculated rate, he said.

Judging by those calculations, a medieval-age cloth should have had some 37 percent of its vanillin left by 1978, the year the threads were taken from the shroud, Rogers said. But there was virtually no vanillin left in the shroud, leading the chemist to calculate it could be far older than the radiocarbon testing indicated, possibly some 3,000 years old.

Asked why carbon-dating might have been off, Rogers contended that "the people who cut the sample didn't do a very good job of characterizing the samples," that is, taking samples from many areas of the cloth.

Apparently, however there's no chance of resolving the age discrepancy since secret alterations were made to the shroud which make it unsuitable for further analysis. You can read all about it at the link to FoxNews.com.

Pure Genius

Quick: Who is the man most responsible for having developed the World Wide Web? If you said Al Gore you get demerits.

Captain Ed Morrisey at Captain's Quarters has this very interesting piece of modern computer history. Ed writes:

The inventor of the World Wide Web received an award for outstanding achievement in science and technology for Britons, the London Telegraph reports this morning....Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who first engineered the architecture of HTML and created the first browser that launched the commercial Internet, received the first annual honor that promotes British achievement.

Morrisey quotes from the Telegraph article:

"Sir Tim, 49, who now lives and works in America, where he heads the World Wide Web Consortium, accepted his accolade by video link."

"In an interview with The Telegraph, he said he was "chuffed to bits" to win the first of what is intended to be an annual award."

"The internet had already been in existence for 20 years when Sir Tim, a physicist then working in Geneva, developed the web in 1991 as a way of enabling people to share information. Despite its huge impact, he was for many years largely unknown in his own country before he was knighted last year."

Time Magazine named him one of the 100 Most Important People Of The Century and tells us this about him, according to Captain Ed:

[H]e cobbled together a relatively easy-to-learn coding system - HTML (HyperText Mark-up Language) - that has come to be the lingua franca of the Web; it's the way Web-content creators put those little colored, underlined links in their text, add images and so on. He designed an addressing scheme that gave each Web page a unique location, or url (universal resource locator). And he hacked a set of rules that permitted these documents to be linked together on computers across the Internet. He called that set of rules HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol).

And on the seventh day, Berners-Lee cobbled together the World Wide Web's first (but not the last) browser, which allowed users anywhere to view his creation on their computer screen. In 1991 the World Wide Web debuted, instantly bringing order and clarity to the chaos that was cyberspace. From that moment on, the Web and the Internet grew as one, often at exponential rates. Within five years, the number of Internet users jumped from 600,000 to 40 million. At one point, it was doubling every 53 days.

According to Morrisey:

Berners-Lee heads the W3 Consortium, a non-profit that keeps the Internet open-source rather than allow software developers to Balkanize it with competing, exclusive standards. Berners-Lee never cashed in on his invention, either; he works at MIT, preferring academia for his contribution. No wonder he's "chuffed" at getting 28,000 pounds Sterling, although of course it's the honor that thrills him most."

The part that we found most intriguing, although it's commonplace in the history of science, especially in the computer field, is that Berners-Lee realized this world-changing achievement while still in his mid-thirties, and that he accomplished it essentially by himself. Amazing.

Euro-Weenies

Bill came across this withering attack on Euro-appeasers by Matthias Döpfner, Chief Executive of German publisher Axel Springer AG. The article was posted by Tom Heard at Heard Here. The post is a translation and so the style may in places seem just a bit uneven. The sentiments, however, translate with pellucid clarity:

Europe - Thy Name is Cowardice. Commentary by Mathias Döpfner

A few days ago Henryk M. Broder wrote in Welt am Sonntag, "Europe - your family name is appeasement." It's a phrase you can't get out of your head because it's so terribly true. Appeasement cost millions of Jews and non-Jews their lives as England and France, allies at the time, negotiated and hesitated too long before they noticed that Hitler had to be fought, not bound to agreements. Appeasement stabilized communism in the Soviet Union and East Germany in that part of Europe where inhuman, suppressive governments were glorified as the ideologically correct alternative to all other possibilities.

Appeasement crippled Europe when genocide ran rampant in Kosovo, and we Europeans debated and debated until the Americans came in and did our work for us. Rather than protecting democracy in the Middle East, European appeasement, camouflaged behind the fuzzy word "equidistance," now countenances suicide bombings in Israel by fundamentalist Palestinians. Appeasement generates a mentality that allows Europe to ignore 300,000 victims of Saddam's torture and murder machinery and, motivated by the self-righteousness of the peace-movement, to issue bad grades to George Bush.

A particularly grotesque form of appeasement is reacting to the escalating violence by Islamic fundamentalists in Holland and elsewhere by suggesting that we should really have a Muslim holiday in Germany.What else has to happen before the European public and its political leadership get it? There is a sort of crusade underway, an especially perfidious crusade consisting of systematic attacks by fanatic Muslims, focused on civilians and directed against our free, open Western societies. It is a conflict that will most likely last longer than the great military conflicts of the last century, a conflict conducted by an enemy that cannot be tamed by tolerance and accommodation but only spurred on by such gestures, which will be mistaken for signs of weakness.

Two recent American presidents had the courage needed for anti-appeasement: Reagan and Bush. Reagan ended the Cold War and Bush, supported only by the social democrat Blair acting on moral conviction, recognized the danger in the Islamic fight against democracy. His place in history will have to be evaluated after a number of years have passed. In the meantime, Europe sits back with charismatic self-confidence in the multicultural corner instead of defending liberal society's values and being an attractive center of power on the same playing field as the true great powers, America and China.

On the contrary, we Europeans present ourselves, in contrast to the intolerant, as world champions of tolerance, which even (Germany's Interior Minister) Otto Schily justifiably criticizes. Why? Because we're so moral? I fear it's more because we're so materialistic. For his policies, Bush risks the fall of the dollar, huge amounts of additional national debt and a massive and persistent burden on the American economy, because everything is at stake. While the alleged capitalistic robber barons in American know their priorities, we timidly defend our social welfare systems. Stay out of it! It could get expensive. We'd rather discuss the 35-hour workweek or our dental health plan coverage. Or listen to TV pastors preach about "reaching out to murderers."

These days, Europe reminds me of an elderly aunt who hides her last pieces of jewelry with shaking hands when she notices a robber has broken into a neighbor's house. Europe, thy name is cowardice.

It's nice to know that not all the opinion-makers in Europe are waving the white flag of surrender to the Islamo-fascists with one hand while giving Bush the finger with the other.

Pray For Iraq and the Iraqis

This article suggests that things are not going well for the orcs, Urukai and other minions of Sauron in Iraq:

To try to bolster public confidence, Iraqi officials Friday announced the arrests of three more purported lieutenants of Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, including his military adviser and chief of operations in Baghdad.

The arrested al-Zarqawi associates included Salah Suleiman al-Loheibi, the head of his group's Baghdad operation, who met with al-Zarqawi more than 40 times over three months, said Qassim Dawoud, a top security adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.

Dawoud said Ali Hamad Yassin al-Issawi, another associate, also was captured. Dawoud said the two arrests took place within the past several weeks.

Al-Zarqawi's military adviser, a 31-year-old Iraqi named Anad Mohammed Qais, 31, also was captured, said Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh.

"We are getting close to finishing off al-Zarqawi and we will get rid of him," Saleh said.

Despite Saleh's assurances, al-Zarqawi's group posted a new Web message Friday warning Iraqis they could get hit by shelling or other attacks if they approach polling stations, which it called "the centers of atheism and of vice."

"We have warned you, so don't blame us. You have only yourselves to blame," it said.

This is typical thug logic. If we kill you for exercising your right to vote then you can only blame yourself. You placed yourself in the spot where we just innocently happened to have a bomb. Very careless of you.

Despite their fears, millions of Iraqis will take to the polls in a few hours in what will be a historic election. Nothing like this has ever happened in the Arab world before. The terrorists among the Sunnis are doing everything they can to suppress the vote, knowing that a successful election will demonstrate the utter illegitimacy of their cause, and be a crucial nail in their coffin.

In what should be a lesson to the nay-sayers and Chicken Littles of the effete Euro-Left and the Michael Moore/Ted Kennedy wing of the Democrat party, many Sunnis are so hopeful and so trustful of American determination to persevere that they are prepared to brave threats to their lives in order to vote. It is only because they trust us to see things through until they can defend themselves that they are willing to risk everything to install democracy and freedom in this most uncongenial soil.

This is why demands to establish timetables for withdrawal or to start pulling out immediately are so nefarious. The Iraqi people are placing their lives and those of their children in our hands and saying that they are counting on us to continue the fight against the murderous butchers who would kill them all if we left. To betray them now as The Nation and Ted Kennedy and others on the Left have insisted we do would be a crime against humanity that would earn us the world's eternal opprobrium and contempt.

There are many brave people in Iraq. They need our prayers this weekend, and they need our resolve in the months and years ahead.

<i>Un</i>-Churchillian

According to an article in the Rocky Mountain News, Colorado University professor Ward Churchill displays an intellectual and moral obtuseness remarkable even by Left-wing professorial standards:

A University of Colorado professor has sparked controversy in New York over an essay he wrote that maintains that people killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were not innocent victims.

Students and faculty members at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., have been protesting a speaking appearance on Feb. 3 by Ward L. Churchill, chairman of the CU Ethnic Studies Department.

Churchill's essay argues that the Sept. 11 attacks were in retaliation for the Iraqi children killed in a 1991 U.S. bombing raid and by economic sanctions imposed on Iraq by the United Nations following the Persian Gulf War.

The essay contends the hijackers who crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11 were "combat teams," not terrorists.

It states: "The most that can honestly be said of those involved on Sept. 11 is that they finally responded in kind to some of what this country has dispensed to their people as a matter of course."

The essay maintains that the people killed inside the Pentagon were "military targets."

"As for those in the World Trade Center," the essay said, "well, really, let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break."

The essay goes on to describe the victims as "little Eichmanns," referring to Adolph Eichmann, who executed Adolph Hitler's plan to exterminate Jews during World War II.

"When you kill 500,000 children in order to impose your will on other countries, then you shouldn't be surprised when somebody responds in kind," Churchill said.

"If it's not comfortable, that's the point. It's not comfortable for the people on the other side, either."

The attacks on Sept. 11, he said, were "a natural and inevitable consequence of what happens as a result of business as usual in the United States. Wake up."

This essay is so sophomoric that we're reluctant to take it seriously. Surely, one suspects, the professor is baiting us, enticing us to think him a complete imbecile at which point he'll startle us with some surprising turnabout. Or, maybe, he just really is a complete imbecile.

In defiance of appearances, however, let's assume that he intends to be taken seriously. Where does he get the figure of 500,000 children killed in a U.S. bombing raid against Iraq in 1991? That's almost five times the total number of people killed by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Perhaps he's including in this figure the number of children who died during sanctions imposed by the United Nations. But if so, these were deaths caused by Saddam Hussein who used the money with which he was supposed to feed and care for his people to build palaces and to buy off the French and Kojo Anan. Why does Professor Churchill lay these tragic victims at America's feet? Churchill seems to think that it is America's fault that Hussein abused his people. This is typical of the Left to blame America for whatever evil there is in the world. It is also positively goofy.

We also wonder why the victims of the 9/11 attack deserve the epithet "little Eichmanns"? What was their crime? Being Americans? Being capitalist business men and women? Many of the victims, of course, were neither, but even if they all were American capitalists how does that make them legitimate targets of terrorism? This sort of slander against perfectly innocent and decent people is the toxic effluent of a mind that's been too often marinated in hallucinogenic cocktails at campus colloquies.

Maybe the looniest part of Professor Churchill's essay is his claim that 9/11 was a retaliation for American offenses against Iraq. We have been told ever since we began preparations for war against Saddam Hussein in 2003 that there was no connection between 9/11 and Iraq. We had been told that al Qaida despised the secular regime Hussein had established and didn't want anything to do with it. Now Professor Churchill wants us to believe that there is a direct link between U.S. (actually U.N.) policy in Iraq and the Saudis and other Arabs who made up the al Qaida hijacking teams.

We would be interested to see the evidence he has for this allegation, but we don't expect him to offer any. It is the Left's modus operandi to fervently assert whatever fits their view of how things are and not worry about whether there is actually any support for the assertion. In Leftist epistemology any claim that serves to dishonor the United States and its people is self-validating.

For more on Professor Churchill, including a charming photo, go here.

To Drink or Not to Drink

A study published last August by a team of researchers from Harvard claimed that consumption of sugar-sweetened soft drinks increases the risk of type 2 diabetes. The problem with the study is that it contradicts a 2003 study which found no link at all between sugared soft drink consumption and diabetes. Oddly enough one researcher helped author both studies.

So do soda drinkers have an elevated risk of diabetes or don't they? Steve Milloy at Fox News.com is on the case. He concludes his article with these reassuring words for all the soda addicts out there:

The Harvard researchers have yet to make a credible case that soda consumption increases the risk of type 2 diabetes - but I am becoming quite convinced that they don't really care about credibility in the first place.

Read the whole column at the link and be careful not to spill any of that coca cola on your keyboard.

The Senator's Plan

In a speech today before the Johns' Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC, Senator Edward M. Kennedy laid out what TruthOut.org unsurprisingly calls a realistic and responsible course for America's future in Iraq. The plan consists of five points:

First, the Iraqis need to disengage from the United States politically, and we from them. The Bush Administration can't continue to pull the strings in Iraq. We need to let them make their own decisions, reach their own consensus, and govern their own country. The first point in a new plan would be for the United Nations, not the United States, to provide assistance and advice on establishing a system of government and drafting a Constitution. An international meeting, led by the United Nations and the new Iraqi Government, should be convened immediately in Iraq or elsewhere in the Middle East to begin that process.

Of course disengagement is exactly what is occurring in Iraq as we have transitioned from a military government to a civilian interim government to a freely elected Iraqi government to be chosen this weekend. Senator Kennedy is simply saying that we should do what we are doing.

His insistence that the United Nations should take over, however, is a prescription for disaster. The U.N. has never successfully brokered or protected a peace unless it was backed by American arms. The U.N. is deeply mistrusted by those Iraqis who saw their oil wealth diverted into the pockets of it's officials and who remember how the U.N. pulled up stakes and ran when their headquarters were bombed in 2003. If the U.N. had its way Saddam would still be in power. It's not likely that the blue helmets would have the resolve to stand up to Zarqawi and his thugs for very long.

Second, for democracy to take root, the Iraqis need a clear signal that America has a clear exit strategy. The President should say immediately that America intends no long-term presence.

This is so vague as to be meaningless. What does the Senator mean by "long-term presence"? Five years? Fifty years? Does leaving Iraq preclude maintaining military bases or depots there? What if the new Iraqi government wants such bases? We are still in Europe and South Korea fifty years after the wars that brought us there. Our presence around the globe has kept the peace where war would have otherwise been likely. Why should we pull our military completely out of Iraq if our presence there can prevent civil conflict or foreign invasion. Why not let the Iraqis decide what our long term relationship will be?

Third, once the elections are behind us, we need to disengage [our] military, and negotiate a withdrawal. At least 12,000 American troops and probably more should leave immediately to send a signal about our intention. America's goal should be to complete the drawdown as early as possible in 2006.

This is another foolish proposal. We should not leave Iraq until Iraqis can provide for their own security. To do otherwise would be to condemn the Iraqi people to the vengeance of the Islamist terrorists and the avarice of its neighbors. It would betray Iraq and utterly destroy respect for America around the world.

Fourth, we need to conduct serious regional diplomacy with the Arab League and Iraq's neighbors to head off external intervention in Iraq or the large-scale revenge killing of any group.

This is not only foolish, it is a fantasy. Does Senator Kennedy really believe that the Arab League would lift a finger to stop Iran, Syria, or Turkey from invading Iraq? Where was the Arab League when Iraq invaded Kuwait? What forces can the Arab League deliver to Iraq should any of its neighbors choose to invade? How will the Arab League prevent al Qaida or Zarqawi from carrying out large scale revenge killings? Was anyone laughing when the Senator delivered this line in his speech?

Fifth, we need to train and equip an effective security force. The way to strengthen their allegiance is to give them a worthy cause to defend - a truly free, independent, and sovereign Iraq.

Again, the Senator is simply saying that we need to do what the Bush administration is already doing and trying to make it sound as if he's proposing something novel.

Through this plan, a democratic and stable Iraq will emerge.

Actually, the Senator's plan, if acted upon by the U.S. would result in nothing but chaos and war. It would be an unmitigated calamity for the U.S. and the world. Kennedy's plan, to the extent that it does not simply restate Bush policy, consists of rhetorical bubbles, pretty to look at, perhaps, but fragile, insubstantial and doomed to burst. They are ungrounded in the realities of the Iraqi situation. Perhaps the Senator should stick to strategizing about how to take best advantage of the many fine restaurants and watering holes in Georgetown and leave international affairs to more qualified and thoughtful people.

Tortured Emoting

Jonathan Schell over at The Nation vents his moral outrage at the application of torture in Iraq and Afghanistan. He's disgusted by the purely pragmatic objections to torture voiced by some senators at the confirmation hearings for Alberto Gonzalez and strives for moral clarity on the issue:

More striking were the arguments against torture by those skeptical of the nomination. Two dominated. One was that torture hurts the image of the United States in the world. In the words of Senator Lindsey Graham, "I can tell you that it is a club that our enemies use, and we need to take that club out of their hand." Or in the words of Senator Herb Kohl, "winning the hearts and minds of the Arab world is vital to our success in the war on terror," and "Photographs that have come out of Abu Ghraib have undoubtedly hurt those efforts." The second argument was that enemy forces would torture US forces in retaliation. In Biden's words, "This is about the safety and security of American forces." Even Gonzales, who declined at every opportunity to repudiate the policies that had led to the torture, was ready to agree that Abu Ghraib had harmed the image of the United States.

But are these the fundamental reasons that torture is unacceptable? Can this nation now understand pain only if it is experienced by Americans or, through some chain of consequences, it rebounds upon the United States? Have all the people in the world but Americans become invisible to Americans? Torture is not wrong because someone else thinks it is wrong or because others, in retaliation for torture by Americans, may torture Americans. It is the torture that is wrong. Torture is wrong because it inflicts unspeakable pain upon the body of a fellow human being who is entirely at our mercy. The tortured person is bound and helpless. The torturer stands over him with his instruments. There is no question of "unilateral disarmament," because the victim bears no arms, lacking even the use of the two arms he was born with. The inequality is total. To abuse or kill a person in such a circumstance is as radical a denial of common humanity as is possible.

It is repugnant to learn that one's country's military forces are engaging in torture. It is worse to learn that the torture is widespread. It is worse still to learn that the torture was rationalized and sanctioned in long memorandums written by people at the highest level of the government. But worst of all would be ratification of this record by a vote to confirm one of its chief authors to the highest legal office in the executive branch of the government.

Let's set aside the question of whether the allegations of torture are true, or whether torture is ever justified, and under what circumstances, and focus on Schell's indignation.

The pragmatic approach to ethical considerations that he here deplores is largely a consequence of Left-wing assaults on the notion of objective truth abetted over the years in no small part by his own magazine. The Left has assiduously gnawed away at the concept of moral absolutes for decades now, placing in its stead a relativism that ultimately means that each state has the right to decide what is right or wrong for itself. Mr. Schell is evidently unhappy with the decision that he sees the United States as having made, but as a man of the Left he can hardly make claims like "torture is wrong" because it abuses someone who is in a position of inequality and is therefore a "radical denial of common humanity." Why, after all, is denying someone's "common humanity" wrong?

One is compelled to ask of Mr. Schell exactly what he bases his moral outrage upon. Is he just informing us in vivid prose that he happens to find torture personally distasteful? Is he simply emoting? If so why does he bother? Would he take up his pen to complain that some people enjoy eating dog food, or paint their house black and pink? How are moral judgments any different than judgments about other matters of taste?

Perhaps he does indeed believe, if only subliminally, that torture violates some objective moral standard to which we should all be subject, but if so, what is that standard? Where does it come from? Does Mr. Schell believe in a Divine moral law? Perhaps, although it's not likely given that he's a writer for The Nation. But if he holds no such belief then all his ranting against the use of torture is just so much juvenile foot-stamping. He has no grounds whatsoever for his complaint beyond the fact that his sensibilities are offended by seeing one man inflict pain upon another.

Mr. Schell assumes we have a moral obligation (to whom?) to treat others with dignity. Very well, but where does the obligation reside? Where does it come from? What is it based upon? What precisely is the reason why one who has power over another should not cause pain and suffering to the other? What does it mean to say that such behavior is "wrong"? What reason does Mr. Schell give us for why the United States should not adopt a "might makes right" ethic? He can't say that torture is wrong, whatever that means, because it doesn't work or that it might be used against us, etc, because that would imply that if it did work or won't be used against us it would be morally acceptable, and he's already argued that pragmatic justifications for torture are inadequate.

In other words, unless Mr. Schell embraces the Divine moral law, he has no grounds for his tantrum other than the fact that, like a child being forced to eat food he doesn't care for, Mr. Schell is being forced to witness behavior he doesn't find palatable. But if that's all that's going on here why should anyone pay any attention?

Needed: Human Shields

Jonathan Gurwitz, a writer for the San Antonio Express News, wonders whether those whose superabundant compassion for the poor and oppressed of Iraq led them to that country in 2003 to stand in solidarity with Iraqis threatened by American bombs will be doing the same thing on Sunday.

Will these valiant human shields, Gurwitz asks, be positioning themselves around polling places to guard innocent Iraqi voters from the attacks that are sure to come?

This is an excellent question. Will these intrepid advocates for peace be taking the shrapnel in their own bodies on Sunday, sacrificing their lives for the sake of the Iraqi people, or do they only care about Iraqis insofar as they are useful in propagandizing against the U.S.? Is their courage and compassion universal or reserved only for victims of American violence? Will they defy the terrorists as they so boldly did the American military, at least until the shooting started? Are they really concerned with protecting lives or are they just Leftist hypocrites? We'll know Sunday. Well, actually, I think we already know.

Ayn Rand at 100

To call Ayn Rand, the high priestess of the human will, a mere force of nature would to her have been an insult as well as a cliche. But how else to describe this extraordinary, maddening, and indestructible individual? Born a century ago this year into the flourishing bourgeoisie of glittering, doomed St. Petersburg, Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum was to triumph over revolution, civil war, Lenin's dictatorship, an impoverished immigrant existence, and bad reviews in the New York Times to become a strangely important figure in the history of American ideas.

Even the smaller details of Rand's life come with the sort of epic implausibility found in - oh, an Ayn Rand novel. On her first day of looking for work in Hollywood, who gives her a lift in his car? Cecil B. DeMille. Of course he does. Frank Lloyd Wright designs a house for her. Years later, when she's famous, the sage of selfishness, ensconced in her Murray Hill eyrie, a young fellow by the name of Alan Greenspan becomes a member of the slightly creepy set that sits at the great woman's feet. Apparently he went on to achieve some prominence in later life.

To Rand, none of this would really have mattered (well, the fame was nice). To her, an intensely Russian intellectual despite everything, it was ideas that counted. They were everything.

So begins a piece by Andrew Stuttaford commemorating the centennial of Ayn Rand's birth in the New York Sun.

As implausible as it may seem to many readers a case can be made that Rand was the most influential American of the twentieth century, and I think it entirely likely that she was the most influential female American of the last century. This is not entirely a good thing because many of Rand's ideas, idiosyncrasies, and infidelities were hardly worth being influenced by. Yet no one made the case for freedom, individualism, and capitalism as compellingly as she did. This is no doubt why her novel Atlas Shrugged, written in 1957, was rated by the Book-of-the-Month Club and the Library of Congress as the most influential book of the twentieth century (other than the Bible).

Readers not familiar with this eccentric, complicated, and brilliant woman will gain some insight by reading Stuttaford's column.

Senator Simpleton

Minneapolis' Star Tribune recaps the Democrats' unseemly assault on Condaleeza Rice's integrity, and from their story it would appear that the most egregious thug in the present round of character muggings was Minnesota's own senator, Mark Dayton:

Dayton said he is voting against Rice to protest what he labeled the administration's "lying" about Iraq.

"My vote against this nomination is my statement that this administration's lying must stop now," Dayton said on the Senate floor. "I don't like to impugn anyone's integrity, but I really don't like being lied to repeatedly, flagrantly, intentionally," he said. "It's wrong. It's undemocratic, it's un-American, and it's dangerous. And it is occurring far too frequently in this administration. And this Congress, this Senate must demand that it stop now."

Well, Senator, we don't like to impugn anyone's intelligence, but there is a vast difference, of which you are apparently unaware, between saying what you mistakenly believe to be the truth in order to persuade, and saying what you clearly know to be false in order to deceive. The latter is lying, the former is not.

If the honorable gentleman from Minnesota has proof that Ms Rice was lying in 2003 then he should produce it. If he does not have such proof, then he's ripping someone's character and reputation to shreds for nothing more than cheap political points with Democratic voters back home. Either that or perhaps he's just a simpleton and doesn't understand the distinction elucidated in the previous paragraph, in which case we should just politely avert our eyes from his embarrassing performance.

The distinction between believing what is an almost universal consensus and telling the president and the public what you know is not true is not lost on all Democrats in the senate.

Dianne Feinstein, for example, said that Rice "should not be blamed for wrong and bad" intelligence that influenced the administration in deciding to go to war and convinced 78 senators to vote in favor of military action.

Rice is a "remarkable woman," said Feinstein, asserting that "she can be a strong and effective voice" for the United States."

Unfortunately, Senator Dayton was probably playing video games on his cell phone during Senator Feinstein's remarks.

Summers <i>Agonistes</i>

Lawrence Summers is an outspoken former Treasury secretary and current president of Harvard University who made news recently at an economics conference for having ventured the heretical opinion that women are not generally found in the top tier of the mathematical sciences because the female genome simply doesn't churn out mathematical geniuses at the rate that the male genome does.

Well, this was a completely uncontroversial comment as far as the yokels out here in JesusLand were concerned, but in the Northeast, where there are certain taboos which cultured liberals simply do not violate, one might have thought that the Harvard president had called for the establishment of a campus chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. One of his listeners, a faint-hearted MIT biology professor by the name of Nancy Hopkins, reported that she had to leave the room, so close was she to collapsing in a swoon, an admission that probably didn't earn her any style points with feminists.

President Summers, like Galileo, was hauled before an Inquisition of "Progressive Opinion" and forced to abjectly recant his heresy and to promise never, ever to transgress the bounds of acceptable liberal opinion again. If he had said that women were smarter than men, a male eyebrow or two might have been raised, but the world would scarcely have taken notice. As it was, he didn't get the catechism quite right and was forced to meekly offer profuse and ignominious apologies for having violated the orthodoxies of political correctness. And this at a premier American university, no less, where one might presume that unpopular minority opinions might be cherished.

Caught up in the mob hysteria surrounding the event, few media commentators could be bothered to wonder whether Summers was, in fact, right about what he said, but then truth does not occupy a very lofty perch on the liberal totem pole. Thankfully, however, Judith Kleinfeld has come forward with the pertinent scholarship which, it turns out, supports what everybody knew but no one, least of all president Summers, would say, which is that he was essentially correct.

Viewpoint sides with Stephen Pinker on this one. When Pinker, the Harvard psychologist who argues that significant innate differences exist between men and women, was asked by The Harvard Crimson whether Mr. Summers's remarks were within the pale of legitimate academic discourse, he said, "Good grief, shouldn't everything be within the pale of legitimate academic discourse, as long as it is presented with some degree of academic rigor?"

Perpetual Infancy

Political activists on the secular Left have a systemic problem. In order to remain Progressive they must constantly push all social and moral boundaries back and overturn whatever traditions they may encounter in their quest for perpetual change. Like early 19th century pioneers who, when they stopped moving westward, ceased to be pioneers and became settlers, Progressives must continually drive Leftward lest they cease to be Progressives and be absorbed into the status quo.

What this means in practice is that no achievement, no amount of change, can ever satisfy them. For example:

Once abortion on demand was securely entrenched as the law of the land, the Left turned its guns on preserving the right to have a partial birth abortion. Once the right to partial birth abortion is secured, the struggle will then focus on legalizing infanticide and euthanasia for the elderly.

Once prayer was removed from public schools the next step was to banish Christmas as well. As soon as that is accomplished the very mention of the word God will be proscribed from our schools, unless used as an imprecation or expletive, in which case it'll be okay.

Once obscene language restrictions were relaxed on television broadcasts then the struggle began to get them abolished altogether.

As soon as society began to show tolerance and acceptance for gays as people the movement to redefine marriage so that gays can marry was initiated. Once gays win the right to marry, prohibitions against polygamy and other forms of polyamory will come under assault.

As environmental pollution was reduced to minimal levels by legislation a push began to eliminate it altogether, regardless of the enormous cost and the relatively marginal benefits.

If people are paying 50% of their income in taxes Progressives insist they be required to pay 60%. Once the tax rates are raised to 60%, the Left will demand that they be raised to 70%. Likewise with the minimum wage.

If implied sexuality in movies has yielded to more explicit scenes, then the filmmaker should be free to make those scenes as sexually vivid as he wishes.

If the voting franchise is extended to all citizens, then it needs to be extended to non-citizens and illegal aliens as well.

If the voting franchise is lowered to age 18, then it should be lowered to age 16.

If 18 is the age of legal majority, then it should be lowered further so that sex with minors violates no laws.

If the U.S. defeats Iraq in a few weeks worth of combat, it's not to be considered a victory as long as there's looting and economic chaos. Once looting and disorder are placed under control there still is no success until there's an interim government. Once there's an interim government in place, the American effort is still not to regarded as successful until there democratic elections. But elections will be said to be meaningless as long as there's an active insurgency in the Sunni triangle.

The appetite for change is voracious and insatiable. The horizon is always receding. No achievement is ever sufficient. There is no goal or end-point to which we can strive. Once one objective is achieved the ultimate goal is pushed further back in a never-ending dystopic quest for the Progressive paradise. Government must grow ever larger and control ever more of our individual lives. Personal freedom, except insofar as it is freedom to indulge our appetites, must be hemmed in and constrained by a crushing mountain of rules, laws, and regulations.

The Left can never stop and say we've come far enough. Like locusts, they must keep devouring everything in their path, they must keep pressing on in search of new fields to ruin. Like bicyclists, to halt is to lose their balance. To stop is to lose their grip on the meaning of their existence. The animating force of the Left, at least the secular Left, is a neurotic impulse to destroy what has been built by others.

This is why so much of twentieth century Leftism devolved into nihilism, and it is why so many contemporary Leftists offer nothing constructive as solutions to the problems we face today. Their only answer is to tear down or wear away the principles, institutions, and beliefs of earlier generations.

George Santayana once said that "When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement; and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual." It is distressing that perpetual infancy is so appealing to so many in Europe and the U.S.

Inaugural Fallout

An Iranian blog posts this tidbit of news. Apparently the President's speech was boffo, if not in some sectors of the American media and the salons of effete Europe, then at least everywhere that matters:

Reports from across Iran are stating about the massive welcoming of President George W. Bush's inaugural speech and his promise of helping to bring down the last outposts of tyranny.

Millions of Iranians have been reported as having stayed home, on Thursday night which is their usual W.end and outgoing night, in order to see or hear the Presidential speech and the comments made by the Los Angeles based Iranian satellite TV and radio networks, such as, NITV or KRSI.

The speech and its package of hope have been, since late yesterday night and this morning, the main topics of most Iranians' conversations during their familial and friendly gatherings, in the collective taxis and buses, as well as, among groups of young Iranians who gather outside the cities on the Fridays.

Many were seen showing the " V " sign or their raised fists. Talks were focused on steps that need to be taken in order to use the first time ever favorable International condition.

Many Iranians, who were looking for the World's super power firm moral support and financial aid to credible secularist opposition groups, are now becoming sure that Mr. Bush's agenda is indeed to help them to gain Freedom, Secularity and Democracy. They do believe correctly that such way will avoid an unnecessary US invasion or military strike against Iranian facilities which will help the Mullahcracy to consolidate its illegitimate and unpopular power, while causing heavy financial damages and human causalities.

What had always been missing in order to create a wide scale Iranian democratic revolution, such as what happened in Georgia, was till now a firm and noticeable World pressure on the Islamic regime and a trustable Opposition Council with a correct agenda.

Various reports from underground groups are stating that Iranians will be increasing the Civil Disobedience Movement by making more strikes and demos in the days ahead.

It appears that the sourpuss mullahs of Iran are sitting atop a boiling pot trying to keep the lid on. Our President didn't do much to make their task easier. God bless him.

Is Villanova a <i>Catholic </i>School?

A popular teacher at Villanova University, a professor of Islamic studies, dies in 2003 and the University seeks to memorialize her life by dedicating a new section of their library to her. Nothing odd about that except that Villanova is putatively a Catholic University. And the teacher, one Mine Ener, died in jail. By her own hand. She was in jail because she'd killed her daughter by slashing her throat with a knife. The daughter was a Down's Syndrome child.

Even so, the University officials say, Dr. Ener made many valuable contributions to the life of the school and was much loved by her students. She was suffering from post-partum depression, which, as everyone knows, makes women want to kill their babies, and so her tragic end shouldn't detract from the good that she did.

Well, perhaps not, but we thought infanticide and suicide were frowned on by Catholics, and so we were a little surprised that Villanova had chosen to honor this woman by naming part of the library after her, as opposed, say, to establishing some sort of endowment for troubled mothers.

It's too bad that the guy who tried a couple of decades ago to assassinate the pope wasn't on the Villanova faculty. They would've named the football stadium after him.

Ugly American

American troops are charged with committing yet another savage atrocity against the Iraqi people. This one will turn your stomach as you read the Washington Post's dramatic telling of American cruelty and brutality. Many more instances of this sort of thing and Americans will be ashamed to show their faces anywhere in the world, at least that's what the Post presumably thinks. Why else would they print it?

See Tim Blair for line by line deconstruction of the Post's article. In fact, you can read the Post's whole piece just by going to Blair's site and reading his analysis.

Thanks to Power Line for the tip. As Hindrocket at Power Line says, if this story is true, American troops must be about the best behaved occupation troops in history. They're certainly better behaved than the Iraqi whose home they entered.

UPDATE: Little Green Footballs has uncovered more material on this story that the WaPo columnist, for reasons that aren't clear, chose not to use. Perhaps she felt that although unmasking American soldiers' barbarism is a desideratum of liberal journalism, one can have too much of a good thing. In any event, as a public service, LGF is publicizing this sordid evidence. The stories of how American troops have turned young Iraqi men into radical jihadis is tragic, but our readers are urged to read it for their edification nonetheless.

Ambushing a President, Destroying a Nation

The premier journal of far-left opinion in this country, The Nation, offers insight into the Left's current strategy to ambush a president and extinguish American influence in the world. They urge that:

[F]or the sake of Iraq's future and the safety of our young men and women, the United States must begin an orderly withdrawal, coordinated with stepped-up US and international economic assistance. We recognize that further violence and internal fighting among Iraqis may follow, but to believe that a continuing US military presence can prevent this is naïve or disingenuous; it will, rather, contribute to the instability. The best long-term outcome is for Iraqis to regain control of their own country and sort out their own future.

This is a solution that could only be advanced for the purposes of discrediting the president, destroying American credibility around the world, and devastating American morale here at home.

As soon as the United States announced an intent to withdraw, the Left would raise deafening howls of derision at the American failure to defeat a rag-tag band of insurgents, and excoriate the president for getting us involved there in the first place. If George Bush were to follow The Nation's advice he would succeed in humiliating both himself and the country, and no one would participate in that humiliation more gleefully than the good folks at The Nation.

If we were to begin to withdraw now, the al Zarqawis of the region would commence a nightmarish purge of all those who collaborated with the coalition that would result in the brutal murders of many thousands of Iraqis. Our withdrawal would constitute an unconscionable betrayal of trust that disturbs the editors of The Nation not at all.

Moreover, Iraq would be plunged into civil war as the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds all vied to fill the power vacuum left by our withdrawal. Such a war would result in the deaths of tens of thousands more from violence and pestilence. Iran, Turkey, and perhaps Syria which have all long lusted after the Iraqi oil-wealth and the sweeter pleasures of revenge for the Iran/Iraq war of the eighties would doubtless seize the opportunity to grab what they can while a weak, debilitated Iraq thrashes about in the throes of civil strife.

As the conflict widened, even more carnage would result. Any more hopeful view is naive, and The Nation's cavalier remark that "the best long-term outcome is for Iraqis to regain control of their own country and sort out their own future," is simply reprehensible. The best way to regain control of their own country and sort out their own future is at the ballot box and in democratic debate. This may not happen if we stay, but it will surely not happen if we leave.

Once we withdrew Americans and Iraqis alike would ask what was the point of the sacrifice made by our troops and their people? A withdrawal would shatter our confidence in ourselves, and destroy the confidence of the world in our resolve. It would be generations before Americans would ever be able to muster the will to help anyone in any way. Withdrawal would vindicate Osama bin Laden who attacked us on 9/11 because he was convinced that as soon as the fight got tough we'd pull out just like we did in Lebanon and just like we did in Somalia. Not only would bin Laden be seen as an infallible prophet of Islamo-fascism, but radical Islamists all over the world would redouble their efforts to destroy us, convinced that we were low-hanging fruit delivered into their hands by a vengeful Allah.

Further, an American retreat from Iraq would make an attack on Israel virtually inevitable. The Arab world would be rightly convinced that we had lost our appetite for conflict. They would sense weakness and exploit it, assured that we would betray Israel like we betrayed the Iraqis. And what of Taiwan and South Korea? A withdrawal from Iraq would be an invitation for China to invade Taiwan and for North Korea to attack the South. An irresolute, defeated, humiliated America would be expected to do little more than complain in the U.N.

The United States abandoned the Cubans at the Bay of Pigs, we abandoned the Vietnamese in the 1970s, we abandoned the Kurds in the early '90s, we stood by and did nothing while a million or so Africans were slaughtered in Rwanda, and now The Nation urges us to add to this record of shame with yet another ignominious act of treachery.

Their proposal is a recipe, in effect, for Europeanizing the United States. We need to keep in mind that the first consideration of any Leftist when he or she offers a policy proposal is not whether it is the right thing, or the best thing, to do, but rather whether it is the course of action most likely to disgrace the United States. The paramount goal of the Left is to emasculate and cripple America. Seen through this interpretive lens their proposal makes perfect sense.

Banning Christianity

Free Republic has this report from Canada on what happens when a Catholic bishop stands up for the traditional teaching of the Church on matters of sexuality:

TORONTO, January 19, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In an editorial appearing on the website of the homosexual activist group, "Equal Marriage," members of the lobbyist organization, EGALE, (Equality for Gays and Lesbians Everywhere) have revealed their intention to make illegal the public practice of Christianity or teaching of Christian moral doctrine.

Bishop Fred Henry, in his recent pastoral letter on homosexuality, openly recognized that the purpose of the "gay marriage" push is the destruction of the traditional family and of any religious opposition. Bishop Henry wrote, "The goal (of changing the definition of marriage) is to acquire a powerful psychological weapon to change society's rejection of homosexual activity and lifestyle into gradual, even if reluctant, acceptance."

The authors of the EGALE editorial, Kevin Bourassa and Joe Varnell, in an enraged attack on Henry, admitted that the purpose behind the move to approve Gay "marriage" is the suppression of traditional Christianity. They wrote, "We predict that gay marriage will indeed result in the growth of acceptance of homosexuality now underway, as Henry fears. But marriage equality will also contribute to the abandonment of toxic religions, liberating society from the prejudice and hatred that has polluted culture for too long."

Bourassa and Varnell, apparently oblivious to the irony, indulge in a tirade of abuse, calling Bishop Henry a "religious extremist," "bigot," and "bishop of bigotry," and calling his preaching "toxic and prejudiced." They conclude with what has become one of the most common anti-Catholic slurs. "It's good to remember that bishops like him supported Hitler."

The group's assessment has been endorsed, albeit in more measured terms, in an editorial in the Toronto Star, Canada's most widely circulated newspaper, that said Henry had "disgrac(ed) his office and the Catholic church."

The Star editorial said, "This is a stand the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops should promptly distance itself from. So should leading individual Catholic prelates."

The Star editorialist, however, seems unaware that Bishop Henry has thus far stood alone in his defence of Catholic teaching on human sexuality. While the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops organization, has said that each bishop is free to say what he wants in his own diocese, no public endorsement or support has so far come to Henry from the heads of any of Canada's remaining 71 dioceses and eparchies.

While a few Ontario bishops have published altered versions of a generic pastoral letter encouraging their flock to ask MPs to uphold the traditional definition of marriage, unlike Henry, the bishops have all so far conspicuously avoided any mention of Catholic teaching on homosexual activity, its sinfulness and its harm to both the persons engaged in it and to the general society.

To send a note of support to Bishop Henry bishopfh@rcdiocese-calgary.ab.ca

Much of the anti-Christian bigotry in evidence in the last election campaign is due to the fact that Christians, in the main, oppose both abortion on demand and gay marriage. Proponents of these practices realize that Christians are the only serious political threat they face. Except for politically insignificant Orthodox Jews and Muslims, no one else who opposes the right to kill unborn babies, or to marry members of the same sex, can adduce any substantive reason for their opposition other than that it offends them somehow.

Offended sensibilities, however, invariably collapse like wheat in a wind storm in arguments between antagonists who assume, as a point of departure, the value of individual rights. It is only those who believe that the behaviors in question offend the will of God who have any non-subjective grounds for resisting them, and their resistance frequently incurs the hatred of those who embrace the behavior. Let's hope that it does not get worse.