More on the Creationist Convention

Ronald Bailey at ReasonOnline continues his reporting on the Creationist Conference at Lynchburg, VA. The final session was a Young Earth Creationist (YEC) critique of Intelligent Design and a discussion of human evolution. Here's how Bailey reports the lecture on ID:

Science and scripture cannot contradict one another, and if they appear to do so, then there is something wrong with the science. God created the world in six 24-hour days, according to Georgia Purdom, an assistant professor of biology at Mount Vernon Nazarene University in Mount Vernon, OH. "It's what God said, and that's enough, and that's the way it has to be," said she. Purdom testified to the attendees of the 2005 Creation Mega-Conference that five years ago she "felt called to understand what I believe and why I believe it." Answering this call brought her to read Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (1996) by Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe. The book introduced her to the "intelligent design" movement.

Initially attracted to intelligent design theorizing, Purdom eventually found it unsatisfactory. Thus the question in her talk: "The Intelligent Design Movement: How Intelligent Is It?" Purdom rejects evolution because it is built on the notion that the process of natural selection relies on death, pain, suffering, and disease to produce our contemporary world. According to creationists, death did not enter the universe until Adam and Eve sinned (Genesis 3:19). "I couldn't believe it because it did not fit with the God I know; the God with whom I have a personal relationship," insisted Purdom. Intelligent designers share the same problem with evolutionists-both ignore Scripture.

Purdom explained that intelligent design was just "refurbished natural theology" of the sort made famous by Anglican divine William Paley in his Natural Theology; or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity (1802). Paley famously argued that if someone stumbled over a watch in a forest that he would immediately perceive that "the watch must have had a maker." Paley claimed that the complex mechanisms of organisms in the natural world point to the same conclusion. Purdom believes that both natural theology and intelligent design are fine as far as they go, but they don't go far enough. The problem is that nature is a general revelation while scripture is a special revelation and special revelation trumps general revelation.

Purdom sums up intelligent design as saying, "If it looks designed, it is designed." But still, how are intelligent design theorists going to determine if something is designed or not? "You can't just look at something and tell if it is designed," she says. This is where she still finds Behe valuable. In Darwin's Black Box, Behe explains the concept of "irreducible complexity" using the homely example of a mousetrap. A standard mousetrap is irreducibly complex because it will only catch mice if it has a board, a spring, a trigger and so forth. If any part is missing, it will catch no mice. The existence of irreducible complexity in organisms similarly points to an intelligent designer. Behe offers examples of several irreducibly complex biological systems such as the biochemistry of sight and the operation of the bacterial flagellum which must have the existence and coordinated action of many different proteins and other molecules or they will fail.

Purdom points especially to the complexity of the mammalian blood clotting cascade. We do know that genetic mutations disable blood clotting in people. For example, one version of hemophilia is caused by a lack of the blood-clotting Factor VIII, which is perhaps analogous to a mousetrap missing its spring. Purdom thinks that this is a knockdown argument against evolution, which is supposed to work by small gradual successive steps. If a new modification is not immediately functional, then it's gone. "Evolution doesn't believe in keeping leftovers," declares Purdom.

But is the mammalian blood clotting system irreducibly complex? While the work is far from complete, researchers are making progress in figuring out how that system came into existence over hundreds of millions of years. Strangely, Purdom rejects a well-known pathway for creating novel functions at the molecular level-gene duplication with subsequent modification of the redundant gene, which leads to new functions.

In any case, while accepting a good bit of the Intelligent Design movement's arguments, Purdom points out that Intelligent Design also allows for macroevolution-that is, new species can arise from earlier species. This a definite no-no since the Bible clearly states that God "created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, after their kind." If all creatures reproduce only their own "kind," then there is no way for evolution to produce new species.

However, according to Purdom, "the biggest problem is that Intelligent Design theory divorces Creator from Creation. They do not presume to pierce the veil of the Designer. They won't say 'who done it.'"

Purdom is also annoyed that ID advocates will not talk about the optimality of design. She pointed to a statement by ID godfather, Philip Johnson who recently said, "I suppose the Creator could have made it so that we would live forever and be bulletproof. Flawless design may not be his point."

In Purdom's creationist interpretation of Genesis, God made a perfect world in which Adam and Eve were the moral equivalent of immortal and bulletproof; however, it is now flawed due to Adam's sin. Even more horrifying to Purdom is the statement by Baylor University professor and Design Inference author William A. Dembski, "One looks at some biological structure and remarks, 'Gee, that sure looks evil.' Did it start out evil? Was that its function when a good and all-powerful God created it? Objects invented for good purposes are regularly co-opted and used for evil purposes."

Can Dembski be implying that God created evil in the world? Purdom replies that Christians know that "sin has broken this world, including all of nature." To illustrate evil in nature, Purdom offers the example of the nature documentary showing an idyllic scene of a "zebra grazing peacefully, and then a tiger leaps out and bites its head off." (Of course this documentary would have to be filmed in a zoo, since that's the only place in which African zebras are likely to encounter Asian tigers, but never mind.) The problem with ID theory, as Purdom sees it, is that it implies that God is the author of evil unless you have Biblical understanding of how evil came into the universe through Adam's fall. ID is flawed because it lacks "the Bible as a foundation and framework." Purdom ended her lecture with a Power Point slide illustrating the ultimate argument from authority: "God Said It, That Settles It."

Notice Purdom's criticism of ID: It's compatible with macroevolution and it's agnostic about who the intelligent designer is. It's ironic that many oppose ID being presented in public school science classes because they think it's just Creationism in scientific drag. The secular critics protest, wrongly, that ID'ers want to eliminate evolution and bring God into the schools, precisely what Creationists fault them for not wanting to do. Too bad Bailey chose not to point this out.

Also note Bailey's response to the claim that the blood clotting cascade is irreducibly complex: Scientists are making progress toward explaining how it could have evolved. Isn't it odd that this system is so intricate and exquisitely contrived that intelligent researchers can't figure out how it got put together, but they're nevertheless convinced that it was done by blind, undirected forces acting solely by chance?

World Class Chutzpah

We had to read this twice before we could believe what we were seeing:

Democratic Sen. John Kerry urged the White House on Friday to release "in their entirety" all documents and memos from Supreme Court nominee John Roberts' tenure in two Republican administrations.

"We cannot do our duty if either Judge Roberts or the Bush administration hides elements of his professional record," said the Massachusetts senator who was his party's presidential candidate last year.

This was Senator Kerry, of all people, demanding that all pertinent records be released so that the American people could assess what sort of man this John Roberts is who is asking to serve on the Supreme Court of the land. This is the self-same John Kerry who refused to release his military service records during the presidential campaign last summer so that voters could assess what sort of man it was who was asking to serve as their president. Now he suddenly thinks it appropriate to call on Roberts to do what he steadfastly refused to do.

Evidently, the senator is completely bereft of a sense of shame. Expecting others to do what one chooses not to do oneself is the very definition of hypocrite.

The article doesn't say whether the audience to whom the senator addressed this demand broke out in laughter, but we don't see how they could have held it in.

Deep Defense

Regarding the second attack on London's mass transit system Wretchard at Belmont Club makes this set of observations:

If the Economist is correct about the failure of the detonators to produce a high-order explosion two things can be inferred. First, the close-in defenses of London's public transportation system failed; after all the bombs were delivered to the trains and detonated, except that the detonations themselves were faulty. Second, the outer-ring of defenses, the anti-terrorist component that attacks the terrorist infrastructure, denies it havens, reduces its funding and makes it difficult to place competent bomb-makers in London has succeeded -- at least in this case. More details will clarify the situation as further news becomes available.

(Speculation alert) When faced with the suicide attack problem (Kamikazes) during the Second World War, US fleets adopted the concept of the layered defense around battlegroups, consisting of attacking enemy airfields, providing a radar picket on enemy lines of approach, creating a combat air patrol to intercept incoming Kamikazes and then presenting a succession of long, medium and short-range antiaircraft fire, before finally falling back on warship evasion, armor and damage control. Each component in the defense contributed its statistical share of the defense. The debate surrounding the prosecution of the war on terror can be conceptually split, though not very neatly, between those who advocate a layered defense with a forward-deployed component (coordination with 'friendly' Muslim countries, involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, etc), plus everything in between, and those who would rely primarily on terminal or close-in defenses (national IDs, CCTV cameras, border control, etc) in the homeland.

A small percentage of policy advocates believe that a complete reliance on nearly passive close-in defenses ("support the troops, bring the boys home", build bridges to Muslim communities, etc) would be adequate to protect the public against terrorism. Over the coming years, the value of every aspect of the defense will be highlighted by different incidents. Some attacks will be stopped by an alert security guard, others will be pre-empted in a land so distant the public will never even know that the attacks were mounted. But they are all needed. If any lives were saved in London today, it probably means that a deep defense makes a difference.

Defense in depth is such an obvious principle that it should be insisted upon by everyone, yet some on the current political landscape simply fail to comprehend its necessity. We are at war against kamikazis far deadlier than the Japanese pilots and our defense needs to be both long-range and close-in. To urge one without the other is astonishingly myopic. To depend upon one without the other would be folly.

The Patriot Act

The sound we're not hearing is the tonsil-shredding shriek of outrage from civil libertarians and leftists following the House of Representatives' resounding reauthorization Thursday of the Patriot Act. Why the calm?

Is it because proponents of the Ashcroft is Satan school of political discourse realize that in the wake of 7/7 the American people are likely to look upon their protests as the outbursts of a mentally impaired child? Is it because it has become obvious even to its detractors that none of the horrors so stridently predicted to attend the Act have come to pass? Is it that the left cannot concentrate on more than one thing at a time, and their minds are already at maximum capacity with the Karl Rove contretemps and the John Roberts nomination?

Whatever the reason, the silence following this 257 - 171 vote is remarkable given the passionate outpouring of contempt for the measure when the Ashcroft justice department first implemented it in the wake of 9/11. Maybe it's beginning to dawn on some critics of the Act that the Islamists really are serious about wanting to destroy us, that the threat is imminent, and that the law has helped to stave them off.

Quick Lesson in Recent History

Australian Prime Minister John Howard gives a news reporter, who should be embarrassed but probably wasn't, a much needed history lesson. The question from the reporter was whether British policy in Iraq has made them a target for terrorists. Howard replied:

The first point of reference is that once a country allows its foreign policy to be determined by terrorism, it has given the game away, to use the venacular, and no Australian government that I lead will ever have policies determined by terrorism or terrorist threats, and no self respecting government of any political stripe in Australia would allow that to happen.

Can I remind you that the murder of 88 Australians in Bali took place before the operation in Iraq? And can I remind you that the 11th of September occured before the operation in Iraq? Can I also remind you that the very first occasion that bin Laden specifically referred to Australia was in the context of Australia's involvement in liberating the people of East Timor? Are people by implication suggesting that we shouldn't have done that? When a group claimed responsibility on the website for the attacks on the 7th of July, they talked about British policy not just in Iraq but in Afghanistan. Are people suggesting we shouldn't be in Afghanistan?

When Sergio DeMillo was murdered in Iraq, a brave man, a distinguished international diplomat, immensely respected for his work in the United Nations, when al Qaeda gloated about that, they referred specifically to the role that DeMillo had carried out in East Timor because he was the United Nations adminsitrator in East Timor. Now I don't know the minds of the terrorist. By definition you can't put yourself in the mind of a successful suicide bomber. I can only look at objective facts. And the objective facts are as I have cited.

The objective fact is that Australia was a terrorist target long before the operation in Iraq and indeed all the evidence, as distinct from the suppositions, suggest to me that this is about hatred of a way of life. This is about the perverted use of the principles of a great world religion that at its root preaches peace and cooperation, and I think we lose sight of the challenge we have if we allow ourselves to see these attacks in the context of particular circumstances rather than the abuse through a perverted ideology of people and their murder.

Lord, please send us more John Howards.

Thanks to Hugh Hewitt for the transcript.

Julian Robertson Speaks Out

From the link:

Specifically, he is very worried about a world that is sustained by American consumer spending which is in turn 1/4 sustained by a property bubble. He predicts that 20 million people could lose their homes once the property bubble bursts.

...

They have now consolidated power and money on the planet to the maximum extent possible. The planet's net liquidity, that is its net free cash flow is now a negative number. The planet is not simply sinking into a sea of red ink; it is already sunk. The people just don't realize it yet," he said.

Got Gold?

Stand and Deliver

Why does Sean Hannity think it's a good thing that Judge Roberts' views on Roe v. Wade are too ambiguous to provide his opponents with grist for their mill? Whenever he talks about it on the air Hannity seems to be saying that Roberts' foes will not be able to nail him for thinking Roe was poorly decided because there's no judicial ruling or writing in his past which makes it certain that he feels that way. The implication is that Roberts is free to fudge or even duck the question, and this elicits gloating from Mr. Principled Conservative who lectures us regularly on the need to be intellectually honest.

The worst thing Roberts could do in the hearings would be to sound weasely on the issues that the Dems will try to nail him on. Why not say, if he really believes it, that the Roe decision was an example of judicial overreach? Why not use the hearings to instruct his august inquisitors and the general public on exactly why he believes there is no constitutional warrant for a right to abortion? The people who are going to vote against him and those who are going to vote for him are going to do so regardless of what he says. Why does Hannity seem so gleeful that Roberts can, if he wants, temporize on the question?

Conservatives, or anyone for that matter, should stand up for what they believe and state honestly what their views are on past cases. If they can make strong arguments for their views then we'll all benefit from hearing them. If they can't mount good arguments then we should know that, too.

Sen. Schumer, as much as we hate to say it, is right on this one. The problem with Schumer is that he's such a hypocrite. He would never expect a Democrat nominee to explain his or her judicial philosophy. He'd be piously denouncing "litmus tests" and the impropriety of asking potential justices to prejudge cases which might come before them. Nor is he genuinely interested in hearing Judge Roberts' arguments. Schumer is more interested in twisting and distorting whatever he says to discredit and smear him.

Even so, Roberts should not waffle and Hannity shouldn't delight in the prospect that he could.

Creationists in Convention

Ronald Bailey at ReasonOnline has a slightly satirical report on the 2005 Creation Mega-Conference at Lynchburg, VA this week. Bailey is not a sympathizer, but there is much of interest in his report, including this succinct summary by John Whitcomb, co-author of the classic creationist work, Genesis Flood, of the difference between Special or Young-Earth Creationism, Intelligent Design and Progressive Creationism:

Whitcomb doesn't just take godless evolutionists to task; he is also critical of Christians who accept progressive creationism or intelligent design. Progressive creationism as represented by Dr. Hugh Ross fails because Ross accepts (1) the Big Bang; (2) that animals were supernaturally and periodically created over many millions of years; (3) that Adam's rebellion did not introduce death into the animal kingdom for the first time; and (4) that the Flood was local to Mesopotamia.

Whitcomb reproaches the leaders of the intelligent design movement for believing that evolutionism can be defeated without any reference to the Bible or the Creator of the World. He agrees with them that tax supported schools need to be purged of the errors of evolutionism, but he then rhetorically asks a very pointed question: "Are people believing in Christ their Lord and Savior as a result of hearing the message of intelligent design scholars?"

Creationists also differ from the other groups in denying the Big Bang, primarily because it conflicts with a literal reading of Genesis:

Why? Because Genesis explains that God created the waters and the Earth on the third day of Creation (Genesis 1:9) and THEN the sun, moon and stars on the fourth day of Creation (Genesis 1:16).

Nor could there have been vast stretches of prehistorical time, in the Creationist view, because this also conflicts with a literal rendering of Scripture:

Like Whitcomb, Ken Ham brooks no compromises and dismisses the soft-headed idea that "you can believe in millions of years so long as God was involved." Why not? Again because that implies that death and disease occurred before there was "sin." In Genesis, Adam and Eve and all the animals were vegetarians (Genesis 1:29-30) and there was no death or disease. God pronounced his Creation "very good." It was perfect. Then Adam and Eve sinned by eating the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (Genesis 3:6) thus introducing death and disease into the universe for the first time.

Bailey also reports on yesterday's discussions of cosmology, aspects of which pose serious problems for the young-earth view. Bailey relates the attempts of the speakers to come to grips with the problem of distant galaxies, for example. Bailey writes:

Dr. Jason Lisle took up the challenge distant starlight poses to young-earth creationism. Lisle has an astrophysics Ph.D from the University of Colorado in Boulder, where he apparently researched solar physics and black holes. "We are told that galaxies are so far away that it should have taken billions of years for their light to reach earth," notes Lisle. "We see these galaxies, so it is argued that the universe must be billions of years old."

Lisle declared that distant starlight "is the best argument against a young universe, but it is not a good argument against a young universe." Lisle noted that according to Genesis the stars were created on Day 4, after the land, seas and plants were created on Day 3. He affirmed his belief that God created the world in six 24-hour days. Nevertheless, Lisle admitted, "We do see galaxies that are many billions of light years away."

He hastened to warn his fellow creationists against adopting some overly facile and seductive "solutions" to the distant starlight problem. For example, Lisle warned against arguing that perhaps those stupendous cosmological distances aren't real. "Science does confirm that galaxies are that far away," he insists. But what about the idea that when God created the stars He created the beams of light emanating from them as though they had already traveled billions of light years across the universe so that they would reach the earth by Day 4 of Creation? In other words, the universe was created "mature" as though it had experienced history. This brings to mind the old conundrum: How do you know that you, your memories, and the whole universe with its "history" weren't called into existence just 5 minutes ago?

Lisle agrees that God could have created a mature universe, but he harbors reservations about that "solution." Why? Supernova 1987A. Lisle points out that the star that exploded into Supernova 1987A is 170,000 light years away. Since the universe is only 6000 years old that means that the light which appears to be a supernova is actually from an object that never existed depicting an event that never happened. Lisle declares, "God would not create little movies of things that never happened." However, I am wondering how Lisle knows for sure that the heavens are not just a divine planetarium projection on a gigantic crystal sphere enclosing the solar system? Never mind.

So what are possible creationist solutions to the distant starlight problem? First, Lisle suggests that perhaps the speed of light was not constant over time and that when God created the universe it was so much faster that it could travel across nearly 14 billion light years to arrive at the earth by Day 4 of Creation. He does acknowledge that if the speed of light had been significantly greater in the past, there would have been dramatic changes in the energy and mass of everything in the universe. Remember Einstein's famous equation E=mc2 (Energy = mass multiplied by speed of light squared).

Lisle also offers "gravitational time dilation" as a possible solution to the distant starlight problem. He claims that the Milky Way might really be the center of the universe and thus at the bottom of a deep universal gravity well. In which case time would pass much more slowly in our galaxy-perhaps only thousands of years elapsed on earth while billions of years of physical processes occur in the universe. Something like the above scenarios must have happened because according to Lisle, "We know from the Bible that the light got here in thousands of years."

The Young-Earth Creationists may be correct. It may be that everything sprung into being complete and with an apparent age of billions of years only a few thousand years ago. Or they may be wrong and the universe appears to be billions of years old because it really is. If the simplest explanation that fits the facts is the best then the YEC have some work to do if they're going to convince people, including other Christians, that their explanation for the vast size of the cosmos is more parsimonious and conforms better to the facts than does its competitors.

Outraged for Weeks at the Roberts Pick

Andrew Sullivan has this:

Jon Stewart's show got it right, according to an e-mailer:

Stewart: So after yesterday's announcement of Bush's pick for the Supreme Court, how is the left wing reacting?

Correspondent: Well, Jon, they're outraged over Bush's pick, and they have been for weeks."

It might have been Rush who said yesterday that the only way the Democrats wouldn't be outraged at whoever Bush picked would be if the nominee offered to perform a live partial-birth abortion during the judicial committee hearings to demonstrate his/her commitment to Roe v. Wade.

Watch China

Following on Bill's post below on the growing economic rift between China and the United States comes an article by Max Boot describing the seriousness of the conflict we find ourselves in with China, and will continue to find ourselves in, over the course of the next decade or two. It's important reading. Here's an excerpt:

[China] recognizes that it is practically impossible to challenge the U.S. on its own terms. No one else can afford to build mega-expensive weapons systems like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which will cost more than $200 billion to develop. "The way to extricate oneself from this predicament," the authors write, "is to develop a different approach."

Their different approaches include financial warfare (subverting banking systems and stock markets), drug warfare (attacking the fabric of society by flooding it with illicit drugs), psychological and media warfare (manipulating perceptions to break down enemy will), international law warfare (blocking enemy actions using multinational organizations), resource warfare (seizing control of vital natural resources), even ecological warfare (creating man-made earthquakes or other natural disasters).

Cols. Qiao and Wang write approvingly of Al Qaeda, Colombian drug lords and computer hackers who operate outside the "bandwidths understood by the American military." They envision a scenario in which a "network attack against the enemy" - clearly a red, white and blue enemy - would be carried out "so that the civilian electricity network, traffic dispatching network, financial transaction network, telephone communications network and mass media network are completely paralyzed," leading to "social panic, street riots and a political crisis." Only then would conventional military force be deployed "until the enemy is forced to sign a dishonorable peace treaty."

This isn't just loose talk. There are signs of this strategy being implemented.

The question we have about the U.S./Chinese conflict is that, aside from the dispute over Taiwan, it's hard to see how our interests are at odds. Conflict is usually born of competition for resources, especially land. There may be competition for oil between the two nations, but it doesn't seem that it is severe enough to drive China to initiate a war with us. There is an ideological contest between communism and capitalism, but China is moving toward a mixed economy that would appear to blunt the sharper edges of that rivalry. Moreover, the American market has been the main reason for China's economic success. Why would they wish to jeopardize that?

There may be something else in China's strategic thinking that is inducing them to prepare for war with the U.S. China aspires to be a world hegemon and sees the United States as the only obstacle - military, ideological, or economic - in their path. Thus, in their view, either they defer their dream of world dominance or they accept the inevitability of war with the United States. Perhaps they have opted for the latter.

The twenty first century looks like it may be even more bleak and less peaceful than the twentieth.

China Severs Peg To Dollar

To better understand the implications of this announcement today, one should consider the financial mechanics of the relationship between the US Dollar and the Chinese Yuan for the last decade.

China had pegged its currency, the Yuan, or RMB, or Renminbi (i.e. Peoples Currency), to the US Dollar at a rate of 8.2 yuan to 1 dollar so as the dollar strengthened, the yuan strengthened. When the dollar weakened the yuan weekend. This meant that the US could never gain a trade advantage over China because the two currencies were linked. But this linkage didn't happen simply by Chinese decree, there was a mechanism that made it so.

That mechanism was basically a manipulation of the two currencies so that if the dollar started to weaken against the yuan, China would purchase dollars with yuan. This would take dollars out of the market creating a demand for dollars and consequently increasing their value. At the same time, the yuan would experience the opposite affect and since more yuan were coming into the market, their value would decrease.

The other scenario is that if the dollar would increase in value against the yuan that was declining in value, China would sell dollars and buy up the yuan.

The net result in either case was that the "peg" would be maintained.

Today, China announced that they have discontinued this policy and, instead, have pegged the yuan to a "basket" of currencies. They haven't announced which currencies are in the basket but they certainly would include the dollar and the euro, and the yen.

There are three observations of particular importance about this development. First, if China has decided to make a change in policy, it is reasonable to assume that the previous arrangement no longer serves their purpose but one can only speculate as to what their ultimate objective is. Two, since the Yuan is now pegged to multiple currencies, the need for China to buy dollars to maintain the peg is diminished proportionally to the mix of the basket of currencies. And three, and most significantly, the need for China to be a buyer of US dollars could be practically eliminated all together.

Consider this:

However, the pressure on China to prop up the dollar will be greatly diminished. To maintain the peg against its new basket, Chinese monetary authorities will most likely now be buyers of those other currencies likely to be included in its basket, such as the Euro or Yen. Since its reserves are already disproportionately held in dollars, it will likely rebalance those reserves to more accurately mirror the basket to which the yuan will be pegged. Such a rebalancing will only exacerbate the dollar's decline. However, a declining dollar will not automatically require offsetting dollar buying by the Chinese as it has during the period of the yuan-dollar peg. As long as dollar weakness is offset by strength in others currencies in its basket, the peg can be maintained.

There's much more important information regarding the consequences of today's action at the link such as:

1. Higher consumer prices.

2. Higher interest rates.

3. Reduced profits for American companies, particularly those dependent on domestic consumption and consumer debt.

4. Lower stock prices, as earnings decline and multiples contract.

5. The busting of the housing bubble, as tighter credit standards and higher interest rates squeeze current home prices.

6. Rising unemployment, as higher interest rates and vanishing home equity slow consumer spending and reduce jobs dependant on that spending.

7. A severe recession as a result of all of the above.

8. Rising federal budget deficits, as recession reduces tax revenue, while higher interest rates and escalating outlays increase expenditures.

One can only wonder what congress was thinking as they threatened China to break the peg to the dollar or we would slap a 27% tariff on the goods we import from them. D'oh!

New Blog at Hearts and Minds

Friends of ours, Beth and Byron Borger, own and manage what is perhaps the best mom and pop bookstore around. Hearts and Minds, the apt name of their bookshop, sells books which will satisfy your mind, touch your heart, and nourish your soul. They're expanding now into the cyber-world and Byron has begun a blog designed to share his thoughts on books and bookselling.

His current post is a wistful look at the joys and difficulties that a Christian bookseller experiences in carrying books that some customers may think inappropriate for a store which promotes a strong Christian witness.

The books currently drawing an occasional critical comment are Steve Stockman's Walking On: The Spiritual Journey of U2 and, of course, J.K. Rowling's latest installment in the Harry Potter series. If you're a fan of either U2 or Harry Potter, which encompasses just about everybody, I guess, you should check out Byron's blog. I'm sure you'll find his ruminations interesting.

What It's All About

Lest there be any doubt as to what's driving the Karl Rove/Valerie Plame brouhaha, Skinner at Democratic Underground spells it out for us in the context of an urgent plea to his ideological co-belligerents to fight the Roberts nomination hammer and tong:

Some people have been arguing that the Roberts nomination is a "distraction" from the Karl Rove affair. This is simply wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. A nominee to the Supreme Court is not a "distraction" from anything. This is as serious as politics can get. The Supreme Court is losing a moderate voice, and the Bush Administration is trying to place an extreme right-wing ideologue in her place. This is a lifetime appointment, for a guy who is only 50 years old! He might be on the court for thirty years.

The effects of placing another conservative on the court are VASTLY MORE SERIOUS than anything that could happen because of this Rove situation. In Rove, we could cripple a GOP Administration for a couple years, tops. In Roberts, there is the potential to change the course of this nation for decades.

Ah. So hounding Karl Rove is all about crippling the Bush administration. It's not about justice. It's not about protecting the identity of covert CIA agents. It's not about doing what's right or best for the country. It's just ugly political street-fighting. Kneecap the administration so they can't function for a couple of years, and they'll be so discredited that the Democrats will be able to reclaim their rightful grip on the levers of power in 2008.

The amazing thing about this is that millions of Americans in the Democratic party think it perfectly acceptable and indeed cheer it on. Sad.

Replying to Ann Coulter

Powerline responds to Ann Coulter whose concerns about the Roberts nomination were highlighted in our previous post:

Less reasonable, it seems to me, is Ann Coulter's complaint reported by Drudge that Roberts may not really be a conservative. Coulter cites the Souter debacle. But Souter was an unknown from New Hampshire whose conservatism was vouched for by John Sununu (conservative, but a politician, not an active lawyer) and Warren Rudman (not even a conservative). Roberts has been a player in Washington legal circles, including actively conservative ones, for more than two decades. And he has worked side-by-side with many of the leading conservative lawyers in D.C. in one or more Republican administrations. To my knowledge, none has a bad word to say about him. The fact that fair-minded liberals also respect him shouldn't be considered a negative.

Roberts may not be as conservative as a few who reportedly were on Bush's list. And a longer track record as a judge would have been nice. But it's unfair to suggest that Roberts is or will be anything like Souter. A comparison to Rehnquist would be far more apt. Indeed, while Coulter contends that "stealth" nominees "never" work out, I don't recall Rehnquist, plucked by Nixon from the Justice Department, having a more substantial track record than Roberts can point to.

Despite Coulter's misgivings the response among conservatives to Roberts' nomination remains predominately positive and the response among the left remains predominately, if not uniformly, negative. These are good signs.

Conservative Dissent

Despite our earlier report on the pleasure conservatives were taking in the John Roberts nomination, the approval is not unanimous. Ann Coulter, for one, is skeptical. According to Matt Drudge Coulter will be releasing the following statement:

"We don't know much about John Roberts. Stealth nominees have never turned out to be a pleasant surprise for conservatives. Never. Not ever... Oh, yeah...we know he's argued cases before the supreme court. big deal; so has Larry Flynt's attorney."

So declares conservative columnist Ann Coulter in a new dispatch set for release.

Coulter declares: It means nothing that Roberts wrote briefs arguing for the repeal of Roe v. Wade when he worked for Republican administrations. He was arguing on behalf of his client, the United States of America. Roberts has specifically disassociated himself from those cases, dropping a footnote to a 1994 law review article that said:

"In the interest of full disclosure, the author would like to point out that as Deputy Solicitor General for a portion of the 1992-93 Term, he was involved in many of the cases discussed below. In the interest of even fuller disclosure, he would also like to point out that his views as a commentator on those cases do not necessarily reflect his views as an advocate for his former client, the United States."

This would have been the legal equivalent, after O.J.'s acquittal, of Johnnie Cochran saying, "hey, I never said the guy was innocent. I was just doing my job."

And it makes no difference that conservatives in the White House are assuring us Roberts can be trusted. We got the exact same assurances from officials working for the last president Bush about David Hackett Souter. I believe their exact words were, "Read our lips; Souter's a reliable conservative."

From the theater of the absurd category, the Republican National Committee's "talking points" on Roberts provide this little tidbit:

"In the 1995 case of Barry v. Little, Judge Roberts argued-free of charge-before the D.C. Court of Appeals on behalf of a class of the neediest welfare recipients, challenging a termination of benefits under the District's Public Assistance Act of 1982."

I'm glad to hear the man has a steady work record, but how did this make it to the top of his resume?

Finally, lets ponder the fact that Roberts has gone through 50 years on this planet without ever saying anything controversial. That's just unnatural.

If a smart and accomplished person goes this long without expressing an opinion, they'd better be pursuing the Miss America title.

That sounds like Ann. No doubt that when the port side web sites pick up her comments their paranoia will kick in and they'll immediately shift into conspiracy mode. They'll soon be surmising that Karl Rove has had Coulter raise these objections in a deliberate ploy to make liberals think that Roberts must be too moderate for conservative tastes. If conservatives don't like him, the reasoning will go, then he must be okay, and the libs will be gulled into softening their opposition to him.

Thus, they'll be exhorting each other, they must not be fooled. They must be wise as serpents and gentle as pit bulls. They must not allow Rove to make fools of them yet again. It'll be fun to watch.

Only Fools Believe

Michael Barone issues a caution to anyone who would put any confidence in Joseph Wilson or any of the other witch-hunters who are afoot today seeking to throw Karl Rove on the flaming pyre:

In September 2003, Wilson said, "It's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs." He wrote a book called "The Politics of Truth," which got rave reviews from the mainstream press, and he became a foreign policy adviser to John Kerry's campaign.

But Wilson ... lied. His Times article said he had been sent by the CIA at the request of Vice President Dick Cheney. But Cheney denies he made any such request, and former CIA Director George Tenet said the trip was initiated inside the agency.

Wilson's article said George W. Bush lied in his 2003 State of the Union Address when he said that British intelligence reported that Iraq had sought to buy uranium in Africa. But Wilson's mission covered only one country, and the British government has stood by its report.

Moreover, the report that Wilson sent the CIA said that Iraq had sought to buy uranium in Niger in 1998, unsuccessfully; agency analysts concluded, not unreasonably, that this strengthened rather than weakened the case against Saddam.

Wilson denied repeatedly that his wife had played any part in his assignment to Niger. But the Senate Intelligence Committee, in a report subscribed to by members of both parties, said she had suggested his name.

In other words, Mr. Wilson is estranged from the truth and seems willing to say anything he deems necessary to hurt the Bush administration. Whatever testimony he might offer in the matter of his wife's status as a CIA agent and whether she was or was not deliberately outed is testimony which only a fool or a left-wing true believer could place any credence in.

The President's Pick

Conservatives are breathing a collective sigh of relief at the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court. They wanted a brilliant originalist, and from all reports they seem to have gotten one. NRO is delighted, Hugh Hewitt thinks POTUS has hit "a home run" with SCOTUS, and Powerline is "Over the moon."

Meanwhile, the Democrats are in a difficult fix. Maybe two dozen or so of the hardest lefties among them will want to fight it out on the Senate floor, but a substantial minority of the Democrat caucus will likely lack the stomach to go to the mat opposing a candidate so highly qualified and highly esteemed by his colleagues. The special interests which comprise their base, however, will be demanding they do just that. Harry Reid may find himself trying to herd cats on this one, but if he makes only a perfunctory effort before conceding that this is not a nominee who meets the "extraordinary circumstance" test, he'll get drawn and quartered by People For the American Way, NARAL, and MoveOn.org.

Given Roberts' credentials it's certainly hard to see the Dems invoking or sustaining a filibuster. They may try it, but it'll probably not survive a cloture vote, and if it does the Republicans in the Senate will almost certainly call for a change in the rules on filibusters (the Constitutional option) and amass the simple majority necessary to prevail.

The Dems appear to be in a no-win situation. Unless there is some sort of shocking revelation in the Senate hearings that disqualifies Roberts, they have to decide how best to minimize their losses. It would seem that the last thing they would want to do, given the almost inevitable outcome of this nomination, is to lose the ability to filibuster future nominees, and the surest way to do that is to filibuster this one.

They must feel like Wile E. Coyote being foiled again by the Bush Road Runner.

Chrenkoff's 31st Installment

Arthur Chrenkoff's 31st edition of Good News From Iraq is up. It's a much-needed counterbalance to the relentless reportage of suicide bombings we get from the elite media. If one listened only to the evening news one would think that the only thing that's going on in Iraq is bombings and carnage.

The truth is far otherwise, however, and Chrenkoff's site is a good place to go to hear it.

Reducing Crime

BeliefNet has an article whose authors contend that abortion has significantly cut crime in the U.S. and elsewhere. Toward the end of their essay they write the following:

What sort of woman was most likely to take advantage of Roe v. Wade? Very often she was unmarried or in her teens or poor, and sometimes all three. What sort of future might her child have had? One study has shown that the typical child who went unborn in the earliest years of legalized abortion would have been 50 percent more likely than average to live in poverty; he would have also been 60 percent more likely to grow up with just one parent. These two factors-childhood poverty and a single-parent household-are among the strongest predictors that a child will have a criminal future. Growing up in a single-parent home roughly doubles a child's propensity to commit crime. So does having a teenage mother. Another study has shown that low maternal education is the single most powerful factor leading to criminality.

In other words, the very factors that drove millions of American women to have an abortion also seemed to predict that their children, had they been born, would have led unhappy and possibly criminal lives.

To be sure, the legalization of abortion in the United States had myriad consequences. Infanticide fell dramatically. So did shotgun marriages, as well as the number of babies put up for adoption (which has led to the boom in the adoption of foreign babies). Conceptions rose by nearly 30 percent, but births actually fell by 6 percent, indicating that many women were using abortion as a method of birth control, a crude and drastic sort of insurance policy.

Perhaps the most dramatic effect of legalized abortion, however, and one that would take years to reveal itself, was its impact on crime. In the early 1990s, just as the first cohort of children born after Roe v. Wade was hitting its late teen years-the years during which young men enter their criminal prime-the rate of crime began to fall. What this cohort was missing, of course, were the children who stood the greatest chance of becoming criminals. And the crime rate continued to fall as an entire generation came of age minus the children whose mothers had not wanted to bring a child into the world. Legalized abortion led to less unwantedness; unwantedness leads to high crime; legalized abortion, therefore, led to less crime.

How, then, can we tell if the abortion-crime link is a case of causality rather than simply correlation?

One way to test the effect of abortion on crime would be to measure crime data in the five states where abortion was made legal before the Supreme Court extended abortion rights to the rest of the country. In New York, California, Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii, a woman had been able to obtain a legal abortion for at least two years before Roe v. Wade. And indeed, those early-legalizing states saw crime begin to fall earlier than the other 45 states and the District of Columbia. Between 1988 and 1994, violent crime in the early-legalizing states fell 13 percent compared to the other states; between 1994 and 1997, their murder rates fell 23 percent more than those of the other states.

But what if those early legalizers simply got lucky? What else might we look for in the data to establish an abortion-crime link?

One factor to look for would be a correlation between each state's abortion rate and its crime rate. Sure enough, the states with the highest abortion rates in the 1970s experienced the greatest crime drops in the 1990s, while states with low abortion rates experienced smaller crime drops. (This correlation exists even when controlling for a variety of factors that influence crime: a state's level of incarceration, number of police, and its economic situation.) Since 1985, states with high abortion rates have experienced a roughly 30 percent drop in crime relative to low-abortion states. (New York City had high abortion rates and lay within an early-legalizing state, a pair of facts that further dampen the claim that innovative policing caused the crime drop.) Moreover, there was no link between a given state's abortion rate and its crime rate before the late 1980s-when the first cohort affected by legalized abortion was reaching its criminal prime-which is yet another indication that Roe v. Wade was indeed the event that tipped the crime scale.

There are even more correlations, positive and negative, that shore up the abortion-crime link. In states with high abortion rates, the entire decline in crime was among the post-Roe cohort as opposed to older criminals....

To be sure, the authors, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, are not using this one sociological consequence of abortion on demand as a justification for Roe v. Wade. At least I don't think they are. Such an argument would, after all, work just as well for infanticide since if killing the unborn children of poor, unwed mothers-to-be reduces crime then why not permit the killing of their born children as well, if the mother consents?

The authors, in fact, point out that:

To discover that abortion was one of the greatest crime-lowering factors in American history is, needless to say, jarring. It feels less Darwinian than Swiftian; it calls to mind a long ago dart attributed to G. K. Chesterton: when there aren't enough hats to go around, the problem isn't solved by lopping off some heads...Indeed, there are plenty of people who consider abortion itself to be a violent crime.

What the authors are doing, it seems, is calling attention to one very interesting consequence among the many that abortion has had in our society, and in so doing present a tough question to law and order utilitarians who may be moderately pro-life: Does a great societal good ever justify the employment of an evil means, and if so, how much good must accrue and how much evil is tolerable?

Media Dishonesty in the Plame Affair

Andrew McCarthy constructs a devastating indictment of liberal media duplicity and mendacity in the Valerie Plame case. After reading his story at NRO we wonder how the portside media can even mention this case without feeling acute self-loathing and humiliation.

Perhaps those are sensations which require a trace residuum of integrity in order to experience.

McCarthy's essay is a must-read for anyone with any interest at all in this tempest in a teapot.

Waving the Wand

Here's a good example of what Norman Macbeth once referred to as "waving the wand" in evolutionary biology. Rather than explain what cannot plausibly be explained in naturalistic terms the materialist simply says that nature just waved its magic wand and, poof, there you have it:

Natural selection is simply about genes replicating themselves down the generations. Genes that build bodies that do what's needed - seeing, running, digesting, mating - get replicated; and those that don't, don't. Helena Cronin -- Time

Well, gee, that sounds easy enough. How do we explain the amazing complexity and organization of living things? Our genes just program the construction of a body that does stuff. Start with a little DNA and before you know it you have nervous systems and immune systems and everything else. No problem.

Cronin makes genes sound like clever little engineers instead of just a bunch of mindless nucleic acids all strung together. No matter how hard materialists try to scrub suggestions of intelligence and purpose from their descriptions of living things they just can't seem to pull it off. Wonder why.

Cal Thomas' Good Idea

Cal Thomas makes a fine suggestion: The President should use the coming nominations of Supreme Court Justices to teach the American people about the Constitution, not only what it says but the distinction between and the significance of conservative and liberal philosophies of interpretation.

We are woefully ignorant of what this document says on a wide range of matters and a couple of speeches elucidating some of the basics would be an excellent use of the President's pulpit. An explanation of why it is important for the Supreme Court to stick to interpreting the Constitution and avoid rewriting it would also be beneficial.

Unfortunately, we have long thought President Bush should be regularly repairing to this pulpit to instruct the American people on the progress being made in Iraq and to give a rationale for his immigration non-policy, but educating the public on his thinking is not, evidently, a presidential priority.

This is too bad. He's squandering some wonderful opportunities.

The Left's Alternative Narrative

Victor Davis Hanson examines what he calls the alternative narrative of the Left about the current war on terror and concludes that on every point the account is wrong. After outlining what the Left believes about the war he writes that the argument that it is Arab poverty or our secularism which motivates the jihad against the West is just incongruent with the facts:

That is the dominant narrative of the Western Left and at times it finds its way into mainstream Democratic-party thinking. Yet every element of it is false. Prior to 9/11, the United States had given an aggregate of over $50 billion to Egypt, and had allotted about the same amount of aid to Israel as to its frontline enemies. We had helped to save Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Kuwait, and Afghanistan, and received little if any thanks for bombing Christian Europeans to finish in a matter of weeks what all the crack-pot jihadists had not done by flocking to the Balkans in a decade.

Long before Afghanistan and Iraq, bin Laden declared war on America in 1998, citing the U.N. embargo of Iraq and troops in Saudi Arabia; when those were no longer issues, he did not cease, but continued his murdering. He harbored a deep-seated contempt for Western values, even though he was eaten within by uncontrolled envy and felt empowered by years of appeasement after a series of attacks on our embassies, bases, ships, and buildings, both here and abroad.

Iraqi intelligence was involved with the first World Trade Center bombing, and its operatives met on occasion with those who were involved in al Qaeda operations. Every terrorist from Abu Abbas and Abu Nidal to Abdul Yasin and Abu al-Zarqawi found Baghdad the most hospitable place in the Middle East, which explains why a plan to assassinate George Bush Sr. was hatched from such a miasma.

Neither bin Laden nor his lieutenants are poor, but like the Hamas suicide bombers, Mohammed Atta, or the murderer of Daniel Pearl they are usually middle class and educated - and are more likely to hate the West, it seems, the more they wanted to be part of it. The profile of the London bombers, when known, will prove the same.

The poor in South America or Africa are not murdering civilians in North America or Europe. The jihadists are not bombing Chinese for either their godless secularism or suppression of Muslim minorities. Indeed, bin Laden harbored more hatred for an America that stopped the Balkan holocaust of Muslims than for Slobodan Milosevic who started it.

We've maintained here at Viewpoint that the two primary reasons we are under assault from Islamic terrorism is our support for Israel and Muslim fury forged in the crucible of religious jealousy. The Islamists believe themselves to be favored by God but all the empirical evidence tells them otherwise. This they cannot abide. They hate us because our success is a powerful challenge to their deepest religious convictions. They must destroy us in order to vindicate their religion.

This seems so obvious that one wonders why it is that the Left persists in imputing other motivations to the jihadis. Hanson offers three reasons:

This version of events brings spiritual calm for millions of troubled though affluent and blessed Westerners. There are three sacraments to their postmodern thinking, besides the primordial fear that so often leads to appeasement.

Our first hindrance is moral equivalence. For the hard Left there is no absolute right and wrong since amorality is defined arbitrarily and only by those in power.

Taking back Fallujah from beheaders and terrorists is no different from bombing the London subway since civilians may die in either case. The deliberate rather than accidental targeting of noncombatants makes little difference, especially since the underdog in Fallujah is not to be judged by the same standard as the overdogs in London and New York. A half-dozen roughed up prisoners in Guantanamo are the same as the Nazi death camps or the Gulag.

Our second shackle is utopian pacifism - 'war never solved anything' and 'violence only begets violence.' Thus it makes no sense to resort to violence, since reason and conflict resolution can convince even a bin Laden to come to the table. That most evil has ended tragically and most good has resumed through armed struggle - whether in Germany, Japan, and Italy or Panama, Belgrade, and Kabul - is irrelevant. Apparently on some past day, sophisticated Westerners, in their infinite wisdom and morality, transcended age-old human nature, and as a reward were given a pass from the smelly, dirty old world of the past six millennia.

The third restraint is multiculturalism, or the idea that all social practices are of equal merit. Who are we to generalize that the regimes and fundamentalist sects of the Middle East result in economic backwardness, intolerance of religious and ethnic minorities, gender apartheid, racism, homophobia, and patriarchy? Being different from the West is never being worse.

These tenets in various forms are not merely found in the womb of the universities, but filter down into our popular culture, grade schools, and national political discourse - and make it hard to fight a war against stealthy enemies who proclaim constant and shifting grievances. If at times these doctrines are proven bankrupt by the evidence it matters little, because such beliefs are near religious in nature - a secular creed that will brook no empirical challenge.

If the terrorists are motivated by a deep need to vindicate their religion, so, too, is the Left. To abandon the nostrums of relativism, pacifism, and multiculturalism is to admit that they have been wrong in their most deeply held convictions. This is a very difficult psychological step. Few people can accomplish it once they pass a certain age. This is why Thomas Kuhn claims that a paradigm shift occurs in science, not because large numbers of scientists change their minds but rather because the adherents to the old view eventually die off.

Unfortunately, the ideas of the Left, like the aspirations of Islamic extremism, show no signs of abating.

Cornelia Dean on ID

Cornelia Dean, a writer for Science Times, has a column on the Evolution - Intelligent Design controversy which was carried by our local paper last Sunday. It's mostly uncontroversial except for one minor technical malapropism, a bit of rhetorical overstatement, and a couple of unfortunate instances of philosophical flummery.

Ms Dean claims that "radiocarbon dating [shows] that Earth is billions of years old, not a few thousand years old, as some creationists would have it." This is a trivial point, but it casts doubt on the level of the writer's expertise. Radiocarbon dating shows no such thing, and is not used to date samples believed to be older than a few tens of thousands of years. Radiocarbon dating is useful in estimating the ages of anthropological artifacts and other relatively young carbon containing objects, but it would not be employed to determine the age of the earth since beyond thirty thousand years or so the levels of C-14 that it measures are just too low to accurately assess.

Ms Dean then goes on to aver that "Biologists cite research on microbes, or the eye, or the biology of the cell to shoot down arguments that life is so 'irreducibly complex' that only a supernatural force or agent could have called it into being, as intelligent designers would have it." She makes it seem as if biologists have adequately answered the ID challenges and that the matter is now settled, but that's hardly the case. It would have been more accurate to use the words "respond to" rather than "shoot down." That the arguments for irreducible complexity have been "shot down" is by no means clear. Just because one side's argument is responded to by the other side doesn't mean that the response is correct or convincing. Nor does it mean that there have been no counter-responses. The dispute still rages.

Later Ms Dean observes that, "Science looks to explain nature through nature...and its predictions can be tested by observation and experimentation. Scientists form hypotheses, devise ways to test them, analyze the data that they collect and then decide whether the results support or undermine their hypotheses."

This is indeed the standard version of the scientific method taught to middle school students, but it's too simplistic for use in this debate. Scientists accept theories for a number of reasons, some of which have nothing to do with testing of hypotheses and data collection. How would one test the hypothesis that there are other dimensions that we can't observe, or that there are other universes, or that this universe went through a period of rapid inflation in its early history just prior to the Big Bang, or that this world is ultimately reducible to unobservable strings? More to the point, how does one test the hypothesis that natural processes are wholly adequate to account for the emergence of life or the richness, complexity, diversity, and information content we find in living things?

None of these notions can be tested, at least not with the tools available to us at present, nevertheless they are each held by many, if not most, scientists working in the relevant disciplines. Theories which are embraced by scientists are not accepted so much because they can be tested but because they have what's called "explanatory power." The theory is attractive to the extent that it provides a more parsimonious and elegant explanation for phenomena than does its competitors.

In the case of ID, those who accept it do so because they believe that the best way to plausibly account for what we know about cosmology and biology is to posit an intentionality behind the phenomena we observe. They argue that a single intelligent agent is a more simple explanation for the structure of the cosmos and of living things than the existence of a near infinity of other universes, and a near infinity of planets like earth in this universe, and a near infinity of highly improbable chance combinations of amino acids in some prebiotic sea followed by a near infinite number of random mutations of the genetic material formed by those combinations.

Randomness and mechanistic force are simply inadequate as explanations for the exquisite fine-tuning of cosmic parameters and the libraries of information found in every living cell's DNA, to take just two of the many examples which could be cited. Indeed, the inadequacy of mechanistic forces as explanations for the structure of the universe is tacitly acknowledged by those scientists who maintain either that we have to accept the universe as a brute fact with no explanation for why it is the way it is, or that we have to look at it as just one possibility out of a near infinite number of worlds. Given the vast number of universes which exist, they reason, at least one would have to have the structure required to sustain living things, and our world happens to be that one.

In other words, the choice in cosmology is between intelligence as an explanation and no real explanation at all. The choice in biology is between intelligence as an explanation or a miracle perpetrated by blind, impersonal forces.

Ms Dean concludes with this:

That is the difficulty faced by advocates of creationism and intelligent design. It is possible to believe in evolution and believe in God. Plenty of biologists do. But their deity is not a creator or intelligent agent at work in the material world in ways that transcend nature and its laws. That would be a matter of faith, not science.

The fact that it's possible to believe in God and evolution at the same time is not, contrary to what she and other commentators have written, a difficulty for intelligent design at all. Indeed, it's possible to believe in ID and evolution at the same time. Intelligent Design theory is mute (or should be) on the question of whether evolution occurred and, if so, to what extent. Its primary claim is that however life came to be in the state we find it, it bears the impress of having been intelligently engineered and that its design is so complex and specified that random chance and impersonal physico-chemical forces are inadequate by themselves to explain it.

If there is a difficulty here it is in trying to understand what Dean means by a God who is "not a creator or intelligent agent at work in the material world in ways that transcend nature and its laws."

What sort of God does Dean say these biologists believe in? A God who is not a creator? A God who is not intelligent? A God which does not act in the world? A God which does not transcend nature? If this is the god of the biologists why bother believing in such an entity? What difference is there between this sort of god and no god at all? A god which does not create, is not intelligent, does not act, or does not transcend nature is scarcely a god worth the investment of an epistemic commitment.

Perhaps Ms Dean's words should be construed as claiming that the God of the biologists is an intelligent creator which acts in the world but which does not transcend nature and its laws. This is still a little confusing since any god worth the name will transcend nature, but let's put the most generous interpretation on her words and say that the god of the biologists is transcendent, but that he (or it) doesn't violate the laws of nature.

This raises the question of what it means to violate the laws of nature and the deeper question of what the laws of nature are. Laws of nature are simply generalizations about the way nature operates so far as we have observed. We know that the laws with which we are familiar are subject to deeper layers of law which manifest themselves only in the realm of the very small, the very large, the very hot or the very fast. In other words, a law of nature is not invariable. It is a function of prevailing conditions. It is a statement that predicts how nature will behave as long as the prevailing conditions don't change.

If, however, the will of God is one of those conditions then the way nature behaves could be subject to the mind of God. This does not entail a violation of any law, rather it involves a supercedence of the law, just as the laws of Newtonian mechanics are superceded by the laws of quantum mechanics and relativity on very small or very large scales. The pattern of events we observe would deviate from the usual pattern because the prevailing conditions would have been altered.

Newton's First Law of Motion can be taken as an example. The Law is sometimes stated this way: An object in motion will remain in motion, with constant velocity, unless acted upon by an outside force. The will of God can be seen as a kind of outside force which affects the behavior of the natural world. It transcends the laws of everyday physics, like the orders of a general might set aside the orders of a captain, but it does not violate them.

Karl Rove

National Review Online has an excellent series of articles, under the heading The Plame Affair, that tells anyone who cares to know the facts all they need to know about the Karl Rove/Valerie Plame business.

The Democrats' behavior in this matter has been a source of considerable amusement, inclined as they are to become rabid at the slightest scent of blood from a Bush administration official. Like a cat springing to the chase of the red dot from a laser pointer, they can't help themselves no matter how futile the pursuit. The prospect of bringing down a Bushie is irresistible. They're like hounds baying and howling as they pick up a whiff of their quarry, but the unbearably frustrating and dispiriting denouement for the libs will be that it'll all be for naught. All their energies, all their hopes, all their indignation and faux outrage seem always to go unrewarded.

In the end it will be as it always is, a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. Rove will prance away unscathed, as he should, and the Dems will be left pulling their hair out as they stumble even deeper into the dark labyrinths of madness.

Prior to the election Viewpoint initiated the Dreyfus award, given to individuals who best exemplified the spiral into insanity as portrayed by Inspector Clouseau's superior officer Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus in the old Peter Sellars/Pink Panther movies. Maybe we should bring the award back as there will be lots of potential recipients once the lefties realize that there's just no way they'll be able to collect Rove's scalp. A lot of the denizens of MoveOn.org and Democratic Underground are going to be twitching and blinking uncontrollably, just like Dreyfus in his strait jacket, when they realize that their attempts to avenge the "stolen" election of 2000 have been stymied by this truth: Rove did nothing illegal or unethical.

Surprise Pick For SCOTUS?

Confirm Them, one of the top blogs specializing in judicial appointments, speculates that the nominee to replace Sandra Day O'Connor will surprise everyone (except those who have read their post or who read the journal First Things).

Confirm Them says that they think the pick will be Mary Ann Glendon of Harvard Law. Glendon would be a great selection except she's 66 yrs old and may not have the longevity on the Court that most conservatives are hoping the next Justice will have.

Even so, it'd be fun to see how the Democrats handle a Glendon nomination, and it'd be very interesting to see how the Jim Wallis wing of the Christian left would react to it.

You can check out her biography here.

See No Evil

No relationship between Saddam and bin Laden, you say? That's not what ABC News was telling us five years ago. To see what this major news source had to say on the matter of Saddam's support for terrorists, particularly bin Laden, go here and follow the link to ABC News video.

It is more than a little strange that everybody in the world seemed to know that Saddam was in bed with the worst killers of the decade up until George Bush used that knowledge as one of the reasons for launching OIF. Then a lot of folks on the Left suddenly contracted amnesia and took up the chant, Bush lied, people died. Apparently, a lie is when a conservative utters something that a liberal believes up until the conservative says it. At that point it becomes a lie.

Republicans Want to Kill Us!

CNN's Paul Begala actually seems to insist in a speech that Republicans want to kill Americans. Either that or the poor mope just can't get his pronouns and antecedents to agree:

"I was driving past the Pentagon when that plane hit" on Sept. 11, 2001. "I had friends on that plane; this is deadly serious to me," Begala said.

"They want to kill me and my children if they can. But if they just kill me and not my children, they want my children to be comforted -- that while they didn't protect me because they cut my taxes, my children won't have to pay any money on the money they inherit," Begala said. "That is bulls*** national defense, and we should say that."

Like so many of his ideological compatriots, his anti-Bush animosity has driven him to incoherent ranting like a man suffering from malarial delirium. Somebody should rush some cold compresses to his fevered brow.

Maybe, however, Begala is just muttering nonsense, as is his habit. Perhaps he doesn't really believe what his words affirm. Of course, if that's the case, then like so many of his ideological compatriots, Begala must hold in very low esteem the commandment against bearing false witness.

Parenthetically, why is it that when there is a tragedy of some sort people feel the need to somehow make it all about themselves? So Begala was driving past the Pentagon on 9/11, does that give him some special insight or make him worthy of a merit badge? After the events of that day people could sometimes be heard declaiming that they knew someone who was killed in the WTT and then to go on to speak as if that circumstance gave their opinions on the matter some special weight or conferred upon their person some special distinction. They sought to identify themselves with the victims, perhaps so that the cachet of victimhood would attach to themselves and they would be entitled to our compassion.

The attempt, however, to elevate or promote oneself by drawing attention to some irrelevant and tenuous connection to events or people who really do deserve our sympathies is nothing more than a crass expression of personal vanity. Begala's example is far from unique but no less off-putting for that.

The Failure of Multiculturalism

Perhaps the BBC is starting to get it.

The radicalisation of some younger members of Britain's 1.5 million-strong Muslim community has led to often heated debate. Now questions are being asked about whether British-style multi-culturalism is succeeding or failing. British politicians are not only having to review domestic security. They are being forced to think again about the mix of liberal policies pursued by successive governments since the 1960s - collectively known as multi-culturalism.

Multiculturalism was designed to bring different communities together, but its critics argue it has only served to keep them apart.

How could it not? When people concentrate their energies on the things that make them different from each other - language, customs, religion, history - it can't help but drive wedges between them. A nation cannot survive if its people view the world in terms of us and them. People need to focus on the things that they share in common, the things that unite them and make them citizens, if they wish to maintain a viable society.

Theodore Roosevelt said over eighty years ago that, "The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans, or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality." Today we could add a couple more groups to Teddy's list, but it would only reinforce his point.

This is why multiculturalism is such a corrosive sociological phenomenon. Emphasizing differences by celebrating them is the surest way to erect barriers and to dissolve the bonds which glue a diverse people together as a nation. Indeed, that's perhaps the chief reason why the Left so enthusiastically pushes it.

Support For Terror Declining

This Washington Post story by Robin Wright tells us that support among Muslims worldwide is down for Osama and up for democracy:

"Most Muslim publics are expressing less support for terrorism than in the past. Confidence in Osama bin Laden has declined markedly in some countries, and fewer believe suicide bombings that target civilians are justified in the defense of Islam," the poll concluded.

The results, which also reveal widespread support for democracy, show how profoundly opinions have changed in parts of the Muslim world since Pew took similar surveys in recent years. The poll attributed the difference in attitudes toward extremism to both the terrorist attacks in Muslim nations and the passage of time since the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The new poll also found that growing majorities or pluralities of Muslims now say that democracy can work in their countries and is not just a Western ideology. Support for democracy was in the 80 percent range in Indonesia, Jordan, Lebanon and Morocco. It was selected by 43 percent in Pakistan and 48 percent in Turkey -- the largest blocks of respondents in both countries because significant numbers were unsure.

"They are not just paying lip service. They are saying they specifically want a fair judiciary, freedom of expression and more than one party in elections. It wasn't just a vague concept," Kohut said. "U.S. and Western ideas about democracy have been globalized and are in the Muslim world."

They still don't like George Bush or the United States all that much, nor will they until the U.S. abandons its support for the existence of Israel and gets out of Saudi Arabia altogether, but it's hard to escape the conclusion that were it not for the President's policies these trends in the Islamic world would both be tracking in their opposite directions. Bush, whether they like him or not, is giving oppressed people around the globe a genuine hope for a better life.

Massacre at Sea

Humberto Fontova observes the anniversary of the massacre of innocent civilians seeking to flee Fidel Castro's workers' paradise by recounting the horror:

In the predawn darkness of July 13, 1994, 72 desperate Cubans - old and young, male and female - sneaked aboard a decrepit but seaworthy tugboat in Havana harbor and set off for the U.S. and the prospect of freedom. A few miles into the turbulent sea, 30-year-old Maria Garcia felt someone tugging her sleeve. She looked down and it was her 10-year-old son, Juan. "Mami, look!" and he pointed behind them toward shore. "What's those lights?"

"Looks like a boat following us, son," she stuttered while stroking his hair. "Calm down, mi hijo (my son). Try to sleep. When you wake up, we'll be with our cousins in a free country. Don't worry." In fact, Maria suspected the lights belonged to Castro patrol boats coming out to intercept them.

In seconds the patrol boats were alongside the tug and - WHACK!! - with its steel prow, the closest patrol boat rammed the back of the tug. People were knocked around the deck like bowling pins. But it looked like an accident, right? Rough seas and all. Could happen to anyone, right?

Hey, WATCH IT!" a man yelled as he rubbed the lump on his forehead. "We have women and children aboard!" Women held up their squalling children to get the point across. If they'd only known.

This gave the gallant Castroites nice targets for their water cannon. WHOOSH! The water cannon was zeroed and the trigger yanked. The water blast shot into the tug, swept the deck and mowed the escapees down, slamming some against bulkheads, blowing others off the deck into the five-foot waves.

"MI HIJO! MI HIJO!" Maria screamed as the water jet slammed into her, ripping half the clothes off her body and ripping Juan's arm from her grasp. "JUANITO! JUANITO!" She fumbled frantically around her, still blinded by the water blast. Juan had gone spinning across the deck and now clung desperately to the tug's railing 10 feet behind Maria as huge waves lapped his legs.

WHACK! Another of the steel patrol boats turned sharply and rammed the tug from the other side. Then - CRACK! another from the front! WHACK! The one from behind slammed them again. The tug was surrounded. It was obvious now: The ramming was NO accident. And in Cuba you don't do something like this without strict orders from WAY above.

"We have women and children aboard!" The men yelled. "We'll turn around! OKAY?!!"

WHACK! the Castroites answered the plea by ramming them again. And this time the blow from the steel prow was followed by a sharp snapping sound from the wooden tug. In seconds the tug started coming apart and sinking. Muffled yells and cries came from below. Turns out the women and children who had scrambled into the hold for safety after the first whack had in fact scrambled into a watery tomb.

With the boat coming apart and the water rushed in around them, some got death grips on their children and managed to scramble or swim out. But not all. The roar from the water cannons and the din from the boat engines muffled most of the screams, but all around people were screaming, coughing, gagging and sinking.

Fortunately, a Greek freighter bound for Havana had happened upon the scene of slaughter and sped to the rescue. NOW one of the Castro boats threw out some life preservers on ropes and started hauling people in, pretending they'd been doing it all along.

Maria Garcia lost her son, Juanito, her husband, brother, sister, two uncles and three cousins in the maritime massacre. In all, 43 people drowned, 11 of them children. Carlos Anaya was 3 when he drowned, Yisel Alvarez 4. Helen Martinez was 6 months old.

"I Hate The Sea" is the title of a gut-gripping underground essay by Cuban dissident Rafael Contreras. It's about some young men Rafael met on the beach near Havana. They stared out to sea, cursed it and spit into it. "It incarcerates us," they fumed, "worse than jail bars."

Yet mankind has always been drawn to the sea. For most of us the sea soothes, attracts, infatuates. The most expensive real estate always faces the sea. "Water is everywhere a protection," writes anthropologist Lionel Tiger, trying to explain the lure, "like a moat. As a species we love it."

Yet Cubans now hate it. Che was right. The Cuban Revolution indeed created a "New Man" - but one more psychologically crippled than even Che imagined. In Cuba, Castro and Che's totalitarian dream gave rise to a psychic cripple beyond the imagination of even Orwell or Huxley: the first specimens in the history of the species to actually hate the sea.

So what's the alternative if you can't flee Cuba? Well, in 1986 Cuba's suicide rate reached 24 per thousand - making it double Latin America's average, making it triple Cuba's pre-Castro rate, making Cuban women the most suicidal in the world, and making death by suicide the primary cause of death for Cubans aged 15-48.

At that point the Cuban government ceased publishing the statistics on the self-slaughter. The figures became state secrets. The implications horrified even the government.

Yet all we hear about Cuba is about the horrors at Gitmo, where the criminals and terrorists are behind bars. On the rest of the island these run the country.

I wonder how Noam Chomsky, the good folks at The Nation, and sundry other pro-Castro apologists observed this special day.

NEA: No Education Agenda

Captain's Quarters reports on the National Education Association's agenda for its July 7th assembly. The agenda, Captain Ed notes, "lists all the new action items under consideration and the action taken on each. How long does one have to read down the list before the NEA actually addresses an issue having directly to do with educating students? The first item? Third? Fifth? How about ... fifteenth?"

Here's what comes ahead of education at the National Education Association:

1. [Defeated, no description]

2. Fighting Wal-Mart

3. Investigating the positions of financial firms regarding Social Security privatization

4. Adding "multiethnic" and "other" as options on ethnicity questions

5. Celebrating the 40th anniversary of the NEA and ATA

6. Forming coalitions to "protect" Social Security

7. Explaining the difference between two different pension plans

8. Requesting an article for their newsletter on "health problems from exposure to fragrance chemicals".

9. Getting outside funding to allow 25 more people to attent the EPA Tools for Schools Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) Symposium

10. Creating a workgroup on health care

11. Sponsoring "political training" for Congressional candidates friendly to NEA priorities (see above!)

12. [Defeated, no description]

13. Opposing "billionaire Eli Broad and any other entities to remove elected school boards from cities"

14. Repealing the Social Security offset and explaining the differences between states' approach to Social Security for teachers who move

Five of the top 20 have to do with Social Security politics. Only two items in the top 30 have anything directly to do with educating children. As Michelle Malkin points out, however, they made room during their efforts to demand a withdrawal from Iraq (number 61), oppose CAFTA, (number 63), and support the boycott of Gallo Wines (number 47).

No doubt the items which were defeated were motions to support some policy or other favored by the Bush administration. One reason education is in trouble in this country is that the people and organizations into whose hands it has been entrusted are too concerned with advancing a liberal political and social agenda and only secondarily concerned with maximizing educational excellence.

Valiant "Minutemen"

Michael Moore's "Minutemen" strike another heroic blow for freedom from the tyranny of the infidels:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A car bomb exploded next to U.S. troops handing out candy and toys, killing 18 children and teenagers Wednesday. Parents heard the shattering explosion and raced out to the discover the worst - children's mangled, bloodied bodies strewn on the street.

Up to 27 people were killed by the blast in the Shiite Muslim neighborhood, including an American soldier. At least 70 people were injured, a newborn and three U.S. soldiers among them.

Children's slippers lay piled near the blast crater not far from a crumbled child's bicycle as blood pooled in the street.

Twelve of the dead were 13 or younger and six were between 14 and 17, said police Lt. Mohammed Jassim Jabr. Among the wounded was 4-day-old Miriam Jabber, cut slightly by flying glass and debris.

"There were some American troops blocking the highway when a U.S. Humvee came near a gathering of children," said Karim Shukir, 42. The troops began handing out candy and smiley-face key chains.

"Suddenly, a speeding car bomb ... struck both the Humvee and the children," Shukir said.

Muslim terrorists have shown themselves to be the lowest form of sentient life that crawls upon the earth. Deliberately blowing children to smithereens while they collect candy from U.S. troops is a new nadir, even for Islamists, even after Beslan. This is a horrifying glimpse of the world we will inherit if we yield one inch to the twisted fanatics who wish to impose their sick, perverted theology upon all of us.

Last One To Leave...

turn out the lights.

From the link:

A chilling fear quietly rose like an ominous cloud above every attendee at the conference. Every American in that room knew that everything Lamm enumerated was proceeding methodically, quietly, darkly, yet pervasively across the United States today. Every discussion is being suppressed. Over 100 languages are ripping the foundation of our educational system and national cohesiveness. Barbaric cultures that practice female genital mutilation are growing as we celebrate 'diversity.' American jobs are vanishing into the Third World as corporations create a Third World in America - take note of California and other states - to date, ten million illegal aliens and growing fast. It is reminiscent of George Orwell's book "1984." In that story, three slogans are engraved in the Ministry of Truth building: "War is peace," "Freedom is slavery," and "Ignorance is strength."

What struck me about this article was that I have maintained for years the belief that if there were to be a conspiracy to destroy this once great nation, the conspirators could construct no better scheme, no strategy with a higher probability of success, than what has been unfolding before our very eyes.

Al-Qaida's Death Toll

Winds of War guys Bill Roggio and Marvin Hutchins have put together a presentation which dramatically illustrates the war we are in with al-Qaida. It's very much worth a visit, but we wish the Bush administration were putting out this type of information rather than leaving it to private citizens.

It sometimes seems as if the White House would be just as happy if the whole country just forgot about the fact that we are in the midst of a conflict that threatens the survival of our nation, culture, and children. This is not Grenada, Kosovo, Bosnia, or Haiti. In this war everything is at stake, but you wouldn't know it the way the administration only seems to talk about it when they have to.

Denmark Court Draws a Line

A Danish pizzeria owner is going to jail for supporting the U.S. Here's the story:

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) - A Danish pizzeria owner was jailed Tuesday for refusing to serve French and German tourists in protesting their countries' opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq. A Danish court found Aage Bjerre guilty of discrimination and fined him $900. Bjerre refused to pay, and will now serve an eight-day sentence.

"I'm doing it to show my sympathy with the United States. It shows how seriously I mean it," he told The Associated Press by telephone. "But one should also remember that eight days is a small price to pay when American soldiers go to Iraq and risk their limbs and lives."

In February 2003, before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Bjerre posted two signs barring Germans and French from his pizzeria on Denmark's western island of Fanoe. His refusal to serve them drew criticism in this Scandinavian country, where the government supported the war while its citizens were split.

The 46-year-old received hundreds of fan letters from the United States, but had to sell the pizzeria after repeated vandalism and a large drop in sales. He is bringing a photograph of President Bush and Laura Bush, as well as an American flag, to decorate the walls of his prison cell: "I think that will brighten up the room," he said.

Even in Denmark where almost anything goes there are apparently politically correct limits to how one may express one's political sympathies.

Here's where you can go to help Mr. Bjerre.

Thanks to Michelle Malkin for the tip.

Tax Cuts Work

Back when President Bush pushed his tax cuts through Congress we were constantly treated to derisive commentary from his opponents that this was foolish and would only exacerbate the deficit. Well, according to this article in the New York Times, like so many other dire predictions made by Democrats, this one seems to be exactly the opposite of what's happening.

For the first time since President Bush took office, an unexpected leap in tax revenue is about to shrink the federal budget deficit this year, by nearly $100 billion. On Wednesday, White House officials plan to announce that the deficit for the 2005 fiscal year, which ends in September, will be far smaller than the $427 billion they estimated in February.

The big surprise has been in tax revenue, which is running nearly 15 percent higher than in 2004. Corporate tax revenue has soared about 40 percent, after languishing for four years, and individual tax revenue is up as well. Most of the increase in individual tax receipts appears to have come from higher stock market gains and the business income of relatively wealthy taxpayers. The biggest jump was not from taxes withheld from salaries but from quarterly payments on investment gains and business earnings, which were up 20 percent this year.

The tax cuts stimulated economic growth, just as Mr. Bush predicted, and economic growth yields higher tax revenues. Why this is a surprise to anyone is beyond us, but apparently liberal economists don't learn much from history. The same phenomena of increased tax revenues attended John Kennedy's tax cuts in the early sixties and Ronald Reagan's cuts in the '80s.

There are still sourpusses on the Left, however, who refuse to acknowledge the efficacy of cutting taxes:

Democrats, expecting the Republicans to trumpet the good news, said on Tuesday that the long-term fiscal outlook remained almost as grim as before.

Yes, Social Security and Medicare are still threats to our economic well-being down the road. If only the Democrats had a suggestion or two as to how to solve these problems instead of simply whining and stamping their feet at attempts by Republicans to actually do something about them.

See here for more grousing from the NYT's Paul Krugman.