Tort Reform

I recently received a notice from my employer informing me that insurance premiums are going up. It stated that:

Several factors driving these increases include: 1) aging baby boomers; 2) direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising; 3) expensive new technology that increases providers' costs; and 4) growing litigation against doctors and hospitals.

Which of these factors could politicians who care about their constituents most easily do something about? Certainly, they could institute tort reform to curb the litigation explosion, but every time tort reform is proposed it is defeated by the trial lawyers and their lackeys in Congress.

Why is that? Which political party is most vigorously opposed to tort reform? Paradoxically, it's the party of the working man. Which party's current candidates for the presidency are both opposed to tort reform? Same answer. Which party is running a candidate for vice-president who is a trial lawyer who made his millions suing medical practitioners on the basis of junk science? Same answer.

If the Democrats win in November we can expect that litigation against doctors, drug companies, and hospitals will continue apace, and your and my insurance premiums will continue to rise. The Democratic party receives fat contributions from trial lawyer associations, and they're not about to do anything to upset their donors.

Who benefits from a lawsuit-intoxicated society? A few plaintiffs, to be sure, but the big winners are the trial lawyers who will continue to rake in their obscene fees at the expense of the rest of us out of whose pockets they ultimately come. The people are the losers. We lose by having to pay higher prices for drugs, services and goods, and we lose because those who provide those things are forced out of business or out of the area by the fear of legal judgments that they could never pay.

There really are four elements to this fleecing of the American citizen: There are avaricious and dopey plaintiffs like the woman who spilled a McDonald's coffee in her lap; there are unprincipled lawyers who, like professional assassins and prostitutes, hire themselves out to whoever can pay their fee; there are otiose jurors who are torn away from watching Oprah and the soaps long enough to listen to the facts of the case, render justice, and then return home in time to catch Jerry Springer reruns; and finally there are liberal judges who love nothing more than an opportunity to redistribute wealth even if it means killing the geese who are laying the golden eggs.

The legal system needs to be purged of the symbiotic coupling of greed and stupidity that currently pollutes it. It needs to be changed so that those who do have a legitimate case can get redress, but also so that those who don't, can't. We mustn't count on the Democrats, however, to come to the aid of the common man on this one, not as long as their buddies in the law firms stand to lose a couple of payments on their yachts if reform ever becomes a reality.

Help is on the way. Indeed.

More Best Movie Lists

Evangelical Outpost has a list gleaned from the National Catholic Register of the top ten "pro-Catholic" movies and the top ten "anti-Catholic" films. Here's the list:

The top 10 Top 10 "Pro-Catholic Movies" (as determined by an online poll of more than a 1,000 participants) include:

1. The Passion of the Christ (2004)

2. The Sound of Music (1985)

3. A Man For All Seasons (1966)

4. The Song of Bernadette (1943)

5. It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

6. The Ten Commandments (1956)

7. The Scarlet and the Black (1983)

8. Jesus of Nazareth (1977)

9. Schindler's List (1993)

10. The Bells of St Mary's (1945)

The ten most "anti-Catholic" movies, as chosen by a panel of judges, include:

1. The Order (2003)

2. The Magdalene Sisters (2002)

3. Sister Mary Explains it All (2001)

4. Chocolat (2000)

5. Stigmata (1999)

6. Dogma (1999)

7. Elizabeth (1998)

8. The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)

9. Priest (1994)

10. Agnes of God (1985)

It's been a long time since we've seen Sound of Music and Wonderful Life so maybe we're forgetting something, but Viewpoint wonders why they're on the list of top ten "pro-Catholic" films, but The Mission and Romero aren't.

Reply to a Friend

Yesterday Viewpoint posted an e-mail sent in reaction to a post of August 15th which compared two quotes, one from Ronald Reagan and one from John Kerry and added an editorial comment. My friend's reaction to this post falls victim to several fallacies. He writes, for instance that:

I suppose you presume that [your readers are] upper middle class...[and don't] believe in allowing the government to do justice, help the poor, build roads, pay teachers, enforce EPA guidelines, prosecute criminals, fund research on public health, wage wars, and all the other good stuff government sometimes does (and sometimes does well). Are there really people out there that don't appreciate the proper use of legitimate taxes?

Of course government does some things which are necessary and good. No one denies that. But to assume that we should just trust government always to do what is necessary and good, to always use our money wisely, is just wrong-headed. It doesn't follow that because government does some things with our tax dollars that we value, therefore everything, or even most things, it does with our money is good and valuable. The founding fathers of this nation had a healthy skepticism about placing power in the hands of fallible, sinful human beings and we do well to follow their example.

The answer to the question he asks at the end of the quoted section, of course, is that there probably are very few people who don't appreciate the proper use of taxes, but the question is beside the point. The relevant question is: What is the proper use of taxes and how do we restrict politicians to using the power to tax properly? Much of what government spends our money on is wasteful and counterproductive. From 1968 to 1996 the federal government spent 6 trillion dollars on the war against poverty and only made the problem worse (To understand the reasons why this is so read The Tragedy of American Compassion by Marvin Olasky which you can order here).

This is unconscionable, but my friend seems to suggest that because one opposes such inept, immoral exercises in futility which, though no doubt helping some, have devastated the families and lives of millions and wasted trillions of dollars, that one must be some sort of selfish, niggardly penny-pincher who lacks empathy for the poor. He writes:

Why this regular gripping about taxes and government? Are you really opposed to food stamps, a verifiably helpful and cost-effective government aid program? Do you think that the government ought not to be involved in any disaster relief? Can you imagine how those below the poverty line hoping for a small assistance grant for job training or allowance for heat take your attack?

I'd say, pick on somebody your own size, and let the children who are forced to live below poverty line alone. Let the handicapped elderly alone; stopping complaining about our modest help to the emaciated in the third world. Because, finally, that is who this... critique is aimed at.

In other words, because some government programs may be useful and good we should just shut up and fund whatever the government decides to do next, trusting Big Brother to always know what's best. We should all be "good Germans", do as we're told, and like it. No one is suggesting that we not help those who are in difficult straits. The question is how best to do it, and simply raising everyone's taxes and throwing the money at the problem has not shown itself to be a particularly effective approach to the problem.

The second, related, error my friend makes is in assuming that because people resent paying excessive taxes to a wasteful bureaucracy that therefore they resent paying any tax at all. No one but anarchists on the left and a few on the libertarian fringe thinks that we can simply end all taxation. No one resents paying his fair share, but what citizens consider their fair share and what a burgeoning government thinks is their fair share can be two different things.

Few people mind having their money go to programs that actually help those who need it, but they want this to be done as efficiently and fairly as possible. In the days before welfare reform something like 27 cents out of every welfare tax dollar actually went to the people who needed it, and even when it did it often was not used in ways that would bring relief to children.

The power to tax, however, is just one of government's prerogatives upon which citizens need to keep a wary eye. Another way government can have a corrosive, deleterious effect upon the lives of its citizens is through its attempts to "help" improve society by issuing mandates and regulations that small municipalities and businesses have to meet, but which make the goods and services they provide increasingly burdensome.

Consider just three examples from the dozens cited in Philip Howard's The Death of Common Sense (It can be ordered here) and the thousands that doubtless could be found.

In 1988 Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity agreed with the city of New York to purchase two fire-gutted buildings in order to turn them into temporary shelters for sixty four homeless men. The shelter would've had a kitchen a lounge, a dorm area, etc. The only problem was that the Missionaries of Charity, in addition to their vows of poverty, refuse to use modern conveniences. There would be no dishwashers, laundry facilities, etc. All of this would be done by hand. For two years the city bureaucracy held up the transfer of the property while they held hearings filled out forms and so on. Finally, after two years they were given permission to start their renovation only to be told every new or renovated building in the city requires an elevator. The Sisters said that they would never use it, it would cost $100,000, but the law was clear, they couldn't use the building unless they installed the elevator. The Sisters politely declined and withdrew their plans. Who was "helped" by this stupidity?

Upper New York State has a tradition of bed and breakfast tourist lodgings managed by families in old farmhouses. Fire codes were imposed, however, which required enclosed "fire stairs" and other renovations that were prohibitively expensive to comply with, causing many of these charming businesses to close. The tourists went to one-story motels and the families who ran the bed and breakfasts went out of business.

A restaurant in the northeast lacked handicapped access, but employees were assigned to help disabled patrons into the building whenever needed. Nevertheless, even though no one was inconvenienced or denied service at the eatery, OSHA demanded that they make their building wheel-chair accessible which the owners simply could not afford to do. Thus they were forced to close, putting all their employees out of work and denying their patrons, abled and disabled, a place to dine.

Extrapolate these horror stories about government "helpfulness" across the nation and over the thirty four years since 1970 and you get some idea of why Ronald Reagan said that the most feared words in America are "We're from the government and we're here to help you," and why John Kerry's assurance that government help is "on the way" should make us a little suspicious, if not uneasy.

It's a neat polemical trick to suggest that one is insufficiently concerned with the elderly, poor, and unfortunate because he is skeptical of government's ability to engineer and manage programs to help these people. It's easy to point to some of the good things expansive government has accomplished and conclude that therefore government always does good. The fact is, however, that government can more easily do harm than do good, but unless citizens are skeptical of its motives and abilities the harm it does will never be diminished.

Are All Killings Morally Equal?

A former student asks how those who are both pro-life on abortion and who also advocate capital punishment can reconcile these two views. It would seem, she suggests, that to revere life would lead one to oppose all killing of human beings and that it is inconsistent to oppose abortion but not state-sponsored execution.

I think the answer is that those who are pro-life, or more precisely, those who are strongly pro-life, believe that no one has the moral right to deliberately kill an innocent person. If an unborn child is, in fact, an innocent person, which they believe it is (although its personhood is debated by philosophers), then it is morally wrong to deliberately kill it.

Nevertheless, although life is precious, its preservation is not an absolute. Killing in self-defense or in defense of others is morally permissible because the individual who constitutes a threat against you or another is not himself innocent. Killing in war, assuming the conflict meets the criteria of a just war, is morally permissible under certain prescribed circumstances because the war is a form of self-defense or defense of others. Likewise, a convicted murderer is not an innocent person and is thus not protected by the moral presumption against killing innocents.

To oppose capital punishment on the grounds that it is inconsistent with placing a high value on life is, I think, a confusion. The more serious the crime the more serious the punishment must be. A society that truly values life would surely make murder one of the most serious offenses an individual could commit and therefore the crime would merit the most serious punishment.

To decline to execute a convicted murderer on the grounds that his life is too precious to forfeit is to implicitly deny that any crime is so wicked that it merits ultimate punishment. It is to implicitly affirm that the loss of the victim's life was not so serious an offense that it is worth taking that of his killer. In other words, we're claiming that we believe life is too precious to sacrifice, but our behavior is actually demonstrating the opposite. Our unwillingness to execute a convicted murderer is a tacit acknowledgement that we don't value the life of the victim enough to make ending it a crime punishable by the most severe penalty.

We would be outraged if courts began to punish rapists by merely fining them, as is done in some Muslim countries. We would insist that this is manifestly unjust. A fine is not commensurate with the crime of violence against the victim. The law, we would argue, is devaluing women by, in effect, establishing that they aren't worth incarcerating their attackers over. It would be ludicrous to say, on one hand, that we believe women are valuable as human beings and then, on the other, treat rape as a misdemeanor. Rape is a serious offense and anything less than a serious penalty for it sends the message that women aren't valued by the society in which they live.

It really is much the same with murder. The refusal to execute a murderer actually devalues the life of his victim. Just as the promiscuous use of the death penalty would cheapen human life, so, too, would its abolition.

There may be other reasons for not executing certain types of criminals, but the argument from a consistent reverence for life seems to me to be one which, paradoxical as it may sound at first, actually cuts in favor of capital punishment.

From the Mail

The following is from a friend in response to this post of August 15, the offending part of which is here:

The scariest words in the English language are "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help." -- Ronald Reagan

"Help is on the way." -- John Kerry

When politicians talk about "helping" it's time to hide your wallets.

My friend writes:

I've been away a bit and haven't kept up with your daily postings. Good stuff! But I feel I must comment on your post of 8-15 suggesting that it is bad for the government to help. Of course your quote from former President Reagan speaks volumes, capturing as it does the whole neo-con view, which you obviously promote here, and it's claim that it is somehow bad for the government to help people. Or, that "helping" equals taking from your wallet (stealing, is it?) Well. I suppose you presume that the "you" is an upper middle class reader, who doesn't believe in allowing the government to do justice, help the poor, build roads, pay teachers, enforce EPA guidelines, prosecute criminals, fund research on public health, wage wars, and all the other good stuff government sometimes does (and sometimes does well). Are there really people out there that don't appreciate the proper use of legitimate taxes?

If one, however, believes that it is a good thing, in principle, that the government administers funds for the public good (a proposition I have previous maintained in this column to be a Biblical one) then this assumption of Reagan and Cleary that the government is stealing from your wallet, and you'd better look out, is cyncial and just dead wrong. I think you should renounce this odd claim. (And, while your at it, renounce the cheesy partisan dig, as if to imply that the Bush administration doesn't want to help anybody. Was it wrong for him to fly to Florida yesterday to offer help to the storm victims there? Doesn't he claim to want to help the people of Iraq?)

And, further, if the reader is actually one who has been seriously helped--beyond the common assistance of good school books, nice roads, safe traffic lights, well-trained police, pure water (more or less) and due process when necessary--of the reader really is economically poor, and has received food stamps, then the claim is worse than theoretically inadequate, it is offensive.

You are a man that desires to love neighbor and you want our public order to be normed by justice. Why this regular gripping about taxes and government? Are you really opposed to food stamps, a verifiably helpful and cost-effective government aid program? Do you think that the government ought not to be involved in any disaster relief? Can you imagine how those below the poverty line hoping for a small assistance grant for job training or allowance for heat take your attack?

I'd say, pick on somebody your own size, and let the children who are forced to live below poverty line alone. Let the handicapped elderly alone; stopping complaining about our modest help to the emaciated in the third world. Because, finally, that is who this "priceless" critique is aimed at. I sincerely ask you to reconsider.

I'll post an apologia tonight.

Loathing Bush

Victor David Hanson has an excellent piece at NRO titled On Loathing Bush. Hanson argues that there are rational reasons why millions of people won't vote for Bush in November, but the impetus which will drive many to push the lever for Kerry has nothing to do with reasons or rationality but pure irrational hatred. The phenomenom that Hanson then addresses is the genesis of that hatred. It derives, he writes, not so much from what Bush does but because of who he is.

He argues that there are four characteristics of the President that make him loathsome in the eyes of the left: He's perceived as a southern conservative; he's a Christian; he sees the world in black and white, good and evil; and he has spurned his aristocratic, northeastern heritage and disdains the elite culture indigenous to that part of the country. Some of these may seem implausible bases for hatred, perhaps, until one reads Hanson's reasoning behind them.

The most salient of the above sources of the left's pathological animus toward George Bush, in Viewpoint's opinion, is his Christianity. Hanson says this about Bush's religion:

Bush's Christianity seems evangelical and literal. It comes across as disturbing to liberals of the country who see religion as a mere social formality at best, useful for weddings and funerals, perhaps comforting at Christmas and Easter of course, but otherwise a potential threat to the full expression of lifestyle "choices."

American politicos like their candidates to be Episcopalian, Unitarian, or Congregationalist, perhaps even mainstream but quiet Methodists or Presbyterians. Baptists of the southern flavor, or anything not found in a New England township, reflect a real belief in the literalness of the Bible - primordial ideas that religion is not a social necessity but a fire-and-brimstone path to eternal salvation.

It could be argued that the last two reasons that Hanson gives for the unprecedented invective that has been directed at this man can really be conflated into the second, his religious faith. Bush's Christianity is the basis for his rejection of a jaded, effete culture. It's the reason why he tends to see things in terms of good and evil, two categories that have faded into desuetude in the increasing secularization of the last twenty five years. Bush's Christianity is also the well from which he derives his opposition to abortion and gay marriage. Indeed, there is no non-arbitrary reason to oppose either of these unless one's aversion flows from transcendent moral springs.

The left has always hated Christianity and Christians, but the American people have always been at least respectful or reverential toward the faith, if only out of a guilty conscience resulting from their own personal luke-warmness toward it. As long as the overwhelming majority of people were sympathetic to the church and the Christian religion its enemies have bided their time and masked their hostility. Popular sympathy, however, is passing away with the WW II generation, and the left is now emboldened to bare its teeth against its enemy. George Bush, being the most prominent representative of that which they detest, has therefore become the focal point of their loathing.

Winning Hearts and Minds for Islam

A must read on the Sudan crisis by Donna Hughes at NRO. Hughes gives an overview of the history and looks at an aspect of the genocide not much discussed by other sources - the Islamist terror against women and girls.

The widespread and systematic rape and sexual enslavement of women and girls in Darfur has been documented by Amnesty International in a report called "Rape as a Weapon of War: Sexual Violence and Its Consequences." As part of the campaign of ethnic cleansing, rapes are carried out in public, in front of family and community members. Those who resist or intervene are beaten and killed. Victims' arms and legs are broken to prevent escape. The intent is to impose terror on a village, and destroy the victims' and communities' integrity and identity. One rape victim was told by her attacker: "You, the black women, we will exterminate you, you have no God."

Additionally horrifying is the participation of Arab women in the atrocities. According to Amnesty International, Hakama - female traditional singers who praise male fighters - accompany the raiders and rapists. By singing and ululating, they provide encouragement and a song track to rape and pillage.

In western Sudan, many of the women and girls previously have been subjected to female genital cutting, including clitoridectomy and infibulation. These crude, mutilating practices of cutting away of genitalia leaves scars and inelastic tissues. Rape for these women is excruciatingly painful and can cause severe physical injuries.

There is also cultural meaning to these acts of violence: females' genitalia are considered "unclean," and by cutting them away, the girls are supposed to be made "clean" and their virginity and chastity preserved. The victims' own belief in these cultural norms causes them additional psychological trauma when they are raped.

Rape is a violation that destroys the whole of the person in the eyes of society. Sadly, the families of the victims often complete the devastation of these victims' lives by rejecting them. Fearing this, women who have been raped may avoid seeking help in refugee camps because they fear family or community members will discover their rapes.

We...need to take a sobering look at the atrocities in Sudan, past and present, and understand that this is Islamic fundamentalism in practice. It is a threat to all women, everywhere.

Just as world-wide totalitarian communism and fascism were threats to all people everywhere in the twentieth century so too is totalitarian Islamofascism an even greater threat in the twenty first. When will the fifty percent of the electorate that thinks the greatest enemy to peace in the world is George Bush wake from their inexplicable slumber and realize this?

Historic Undertaking in Iraq

Arthur Chrenkoff has part 8 of Good News From Iraq. He introduces this installment by saying:

The challenges still ahead in Iraq are considerable, but the media in its manic rush from one disaster to the next and from one "quagmire" to another rarely provides the context that would help us understand the situation. Having followed the mainstream media coverage, one can be forgiven for thinking that our task in Iraq is merely to return the country to its pre-war status quo. More often than not lost in reporting is the realization that Iraq has to recover not just from the violence and destruction of the last year and a half, but of the past 30 years. Iraq of March 2003 was not a normal, well-functioning state thrown into chaos and mayhem only by the arrival of the Coalition forces. In reality, the pre-invasion Iraq was a wreck of a country whose great potential of the 1950s and 1960s has been all but completely squandered for the sake of the aggrandizement of one man and the hegemony of his party. It's important to bear that in mind before rushing to criticize the Coalition authorities for failing to rebuild in a year what took three decades to destroy.

There's lots of good information here. For example:

In oil news, the Iraqi Oil Ministry announced that it plans to dig 2000 new oil wells and extend the existing oil pipelines by 3000 kilometers in 2005. In the meantime, the Iraqi authorities are planning to construct four new oil refineries in central and southern Iraq.

The media is missing this story completely. This is perhaps the greatest humanitarian undertaking in history, certainly since the Marshall Plan after WW II. One would think that the media would be cheering this effort on, but instead they act as if the only thing they want you to know about are the casualty statistics, and the only thing they want you to see are photos of rag-tag criminals and thugs strutting about with RPGs.

The news blackout will probably persist as long as the Democrats can't claim any credit for this historic accomplishment.

Undereducated Teachers

Here's a blurb which inadvertently, apparently, acknowledges a sad fact about the background knowledge of American teachers:

History teachers need an independent hotline to evaluate books and instructional materials on Islamic history, writes Sandra Stotsky on History News Network.

After September 11, it is clearly urgent to teach K-12 students about Islamic history and culture. It is also crucial for their teachers to have suitable instructional materials that do not inadvertently promote some person's or group's religious or political agenda.

Workshops for teachers confuse faith with history, she writes. One source given to teachers, The Arab World Studies Notebook, "claims not only that Muslims from Europe were the first to sail across the Atlantic and land in the New World, but also that they reached Canada where they intermarried with the Iroquois and Algonquin nations." It's not true, but few teachers know enough about Islamic history to evaluate the credibility of what they're given.

Viewpoint asks why it is that teachers, especially history teachers, would have to know anything at all about Islamic history to know that Muslims were not the first to arrive in the New World or to ask for some corroborating evidence when told that Muslims intermarried with Indians.

It would seem that the only thing teachers would have to know in order to avoid falling for this fantasy would be simple, rudimentary American history. The fact that educators are susceptible to Muslim propaganda about something they should have learned themselves in elementary school is troubling.

Help!

The Evangelical Outpost relays this clever observation from Infinite Monkeys:

David from Infinite Monkeys posted this priceless contrast of quotations:

The scariest words in the English language are "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help." -- Ronald Reagan

"Help is on the way." -- John Kerry

When politicians talk about "helping" it's time to hide your wallets.

Need More To Worry About?

A report in The Guardian of England indicates that "the numbers of sufferers of brain diseases, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and motor neurone disease, have soared across the West in less than 20 years, scientists have discovered. In the late 1970s, there were around 3,000 deaths a year from these conditions in England and Wales. By the late 1990s, there were 10,000."

This is an incredible increase in just one generation. The Guardian goes on to say that:

The team stresses that its figures take account of the fact that people are living longer and it has also made allowances for the fact that diagnoses of such ailments have improved. It is comparing death rates, not numbers of cases, it says.

The causes were most likely to be chemicals, from car pollution to pesticides on crops and industrial chemicals used in almost every aspect of modern life, from processed food to packaging, from electrical goods to sofa covers, Pritchard said.

Food is also a major concern because it provides the most obvious explanation for the exclusion of Japan from many of these trends. Only when Japanese people move to the other countries do their disease rates increase.

You can read the whole article here. Thanks to The Drudge Report for the tip.

What's Ahead In Najaf

As he has throughout the Iraqi war, Wretchard at Belmont Club offers up interesting analysis of how coalition forces will likely proceed now that the cease-fire in Najaf has broken down. An excerpt:

It is what must not happen next that matters. The tactical problem facing coalition commanders is how to kill or capture Sadr's forces with Iraqi personnel while avoiding unnecessary deaths and damage to the Shrine. That rules out the textbook solution of leveling it with fires. Because of the subdivided interior of buildings and the fact that Sadr may have wired the Shrine with demolitions a direct assault will probably be excluded for the present. The problem with an assault is that once friendly forces are in contact, one is bound to support them and that imperative will compel the scene commander to order the fires he sought to avoid in the first place. Besieging forces have traditionally used time to weaken resistance without applying direct force. In this case time can also work against the investing forces because Sadr will attempt to run countersiege operations by organizing marches and cavalcades by his supporters to Najaf. Given enough time, he probably reckons that the international media and possibly the United Nations will ride to his rescue. (Heritage site, blah-blah).

Without knowing what the operational commanders will do next, one can still surmise that they will attempt to compress the effects of time by applying unrelenting pressure on the garrison using disturbances, sniping and probes. They would be justified in using nonlethal agents such as CS (tear gas) to stir the pot. Things may still go wrong. Janet Reno's assault on Waco resulted in starting an accidental conflagration that turned the Koresh compound into a charnel house. What is important is to avoid building up the pressure to a climax, to avoid precipitating a self-inflicted Gotterdammerung by Sadr. I suppose one could set up loudspeakers and blast out Koranic verses at levels the EPA would rule illegal, etc. The whole idea is to make a day into an eternity until the days all run together in a jumble.

One hopes that the coalition forces will not vacillate as we seem to have done in Fallujah which has become a festering sore. Once Sadr falls or is taken, the insurgency will have lost a key to whatever legitimacy it still might have with the Iraqi people (although see here and here for Iraqi opinion on al Sadr), and it's disintegration will be accelerated.

Lexicon Update

A couple of weeks ago Viewpoint noted that the Democrats have substantially revised the political lexicon and offered a few examples. Today we offer our readers a review and an update.

The Review:

Lie: Anything that turns out not to be true or might not be true, or which has not yet been proven to be true. Note that it is only a lie when a Republican, especially the president, says something which satisfies these criteria. When a Democrat does it, it's interpretive spin or personal narrative, or if, say, a meteorologist is wrong about a weather forecast that would be an honest mistake resulting from inadequate data.

Censorship: Any instance of someone expressing any manner of disagreement with what a liberal says. E.g. If people refuse to buy Dixie Chick CDs, that's censorship. If, on the other hand, a conservative speaker gets shouted down on a college campus that's a sign of a healthy exercise of first amendment rights.

Leadership: Securing permission from the French, no matter how much groveling it may take to get it, to defend ourselves from those who are determined to kill us.

Political Mainstream: Any current of opinion found on the left of the ideological spectrum. More specifically, any idea held by Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean, Michael Moore, or John Kerry.

Extremist: Anyone who opposes the mainstream idea that we should be able to kill unborn children for any reason whatsoever, or who rejects the mainstream view that the 2nd amendment is obsolete, or who is so far out of the mainstream as to believe that marriage should be between one man and one woman, or who flouts the mainstream by holding any traditional religious conviction.

Unilateral: Any action taken either by oneself or with any number of partners but which does not include France.

Hero: Anyone who applies for a Purple Heart after suffering a self-inflicted wound requiring a band-aid. Alternatively, anyone who is awarded a Silver Star for conduct which is in violation of the Geneva conventions and the United States' Military code.

The Updates:

Quagmire: Any war not over in three days.

Negative campaigning: When Republicans cite their opponents' record in order to show the public where they stand on the issues.

Cowardice: When a Democrat (e.g. rep. Mark Alexander) switches parties to become a Republican. Not to be confused with a Republican switch to the Democrat party (e.g. Sen. Jim Jeffords) which is a move which requires courage.

Nuance: An admirable intellectual quality evinced by a Democratic presidential candidate who takes every conceivable side of an issue to the point that no one has any idea where he stands.

Desperate Men

Matt Drudge has a report that Senator Kerry is going to change his Cambodia adventure story from having occured on Christmas eve in 1968 to actually having taken place in January of 1969. Evidently, almost everything about this episode, which was "seared into his memory", was misremembered. PowerLine directs us to the Captain's Quarters for an excellent analysis of the impending revision. Look for further clarifications in the weeks ahead.

Viewpoint wonders how many stories the good senator from Massachussetts is going to have to revise and recant before his candidacy simply collapses under the weight of accumulated incoherence.

We also wonder how long this story can be ignored by the major media which has been playing a good game of "don't ask, don't tell" with it for almost a week now. They apparently think it would seriously damage Kerry so they don't want to come out with it until Kerry can cobble together some sort of semi-plausible response. Then the media will run the two together and hope that they can make it look as if Kerry's reply refuted the charges. Thus they'll make the whole matter look like a one day flash-in-the-pan story with no real substance to it. It's dishonest, but it might work.

A good example of the liberal media's adamant aversion to the the pursuit of truth in favor of the pursuit of political victory was Chris Matthews' Hardball show Thursday night. John O'Neill, the author of Unfit For Command was Matthews' guest and Matthews simply wouldn't let O'Neill present the evidence that Kerry's war record is not as distinguished as the senator and the Democrats would have us believe.

Each time O'Neill would try to explain why Kerry's highly touted medals and heroics were something less than meets the eye, Matthews would ask why, then, the Navy awarded them, and why nine or ten of his boatmates supported him. For Matthews, if two groups support you and only one opposes you then that settles the matter. The majority decides what's true.

Matthews' argument was silly. It boiled down to the conviction that the Navy wouldn't have awarded the medals if Kerry didn't deserve them. When O'Neill tried to explain why the Navy did award undeserved medals, Matthews simply replied that Kerry's boatmates support him. When O'Neill tried to show that his supporters are in a small minority, Matthews reverted back to the Navy's citations.

He obfuscated the issue by reciting the awards and what they were for and questioned how O'Neill could claim that these events, such as saving a man's life, didn't happen. He refused to acknowledge that it wasn't the events themselves which O'Neill was challenging but rather the circumstances surrounding the events. To Matthews it was all the same.

The Hardball host also trotted out the canard that the sailors who oppose Kerry weren't on his boat and therefore aren't as qualified to judge him as those who served in closer proximity. This, however, is like arguing that an outfielder is too far removed from the pitcher to be able to judge the pitcher's performance and character. The men who testify against Kerry are men who lived, ate, slept, and worked with him every day. They were eyewitnesses to the events for which Kerry received medals. The fact that they didn't serve on his boat is not significant.

Finally, Matthews took refuge in the absurd claim that whatever the facts of Kerry's service might be, he served in a combat zone and Bush didn't so that makes Kerry a better man than Bush. This sort of reasoning, of course, would also lead us to conclude that Lt. Calley is a better man than virtually anyone who never saw combat.

These kinds of arguments reveal more about the desperation of the Democrats than the weakness of their opponents' testimony. The Democrats can't answer the charges of Unfit For Command other than to employ ad hominem attacks against the motives and character of the witnesses and so their hope is to suppress the information to keep the larger public from finding out that their candidate is not the man he purports to be.

Latest Gallup

Kerry Spot at NRO has the most recent Gallup poll numbers. If they're accurate they aren't good news for the Kerry campaign. They show Bush moving ahead 50 - 47 among likely voters.

Bush has several tactical advantages going into the next several months and one possible pitfall (at least the Dems will see it that way. It's not clear that it really is a pitfall). Bush has the release of the book Unfit For Command coming up next week, he has the convention in about two weeks from which he will probably derive a modest boost, and he has a lot of ad material on Kerry that makes Kerry look very indecisive, even silly. If Bush does reasonably well in the debates he'll be holding all the cards. Kerry has no ammo left to shoot. He'll be on the defensive about his military fictions for the next month or so and will find it hard to regain the offensive momentum that he had coming out of his convention.

If Iraq continues to move toward stability and democracy, if oil prices moderate, and if there is no national emergency, three big but not improbable "ifs", Kerry will be bereft of a major issue.

His only hope for persuading the electorate to switch horses is a big win in the debates. He shouldn't be over-confident, however. Gore and his supporters thought he would wipe the floor with Bush in the 2000 debates, but it didn't work out that way. Bush has been fortunate in his opponents who seem almost psychologically unable to resist the temptation to "misunderestimate" him.

Paging Howard Dean

For many Democrats, the whole point of wedding themselves to John Kerry was the chance to oust the hated George Bush from the Oval Office, and the main reason for wanting Bush ousted, ostensibly, was the Iraq war. For these left/liberals Howard Dean was their first love, but they realized that Dean was too volatile to be elected so they abandoned Dean to elope with Kerry.

Kerry wooed these starry-eyed lovers away from the hapless governor of Vermont by whispering into their ears that enticing sweet talk about Bush lying to us about WMD and leading us into an elective, unnecessary war in Iraq. Kerry seduced them by fueling their anti-Bush hysteria with all the right words and consummated the seduction at Boston.

Now the Democrats find themselves in an awful state. They have yielded themselves to Kerry only to wake up Tuesday morning to find that, on the most critical issue of the election, he has chosen to sidle up so close to the devil himself that his position is now indistinguishable from what Bush has been saying all along.

The sense of betrayal, one would think, must be surging through the Democrat rank and file like a stadium wave. Yet, if there is outrage out there, it's pretty hard to find. William F.Buckley writes about this in a column here. Buckley says:

The statement made on Monday by John Kerry is the climactic event in this matter. Sen. Kerry said that notwithstanding all that is known now, whatever have been the developments in the past year, if he had it to do again, he'd vote as he did: in favor of giving the president the power he requested, before going on to wage war in Iraq.

Buckley is emphasizing here an incredible admission by the Massachussetts senator. Kerry is evidently acknowledging that war with Iraq was justified even if there were no WMD there. His objections to what Bush did turn out to be little more than procedural quibbles. This must be causing rank and file Bush-haters to break out in hives. They hate Bush because of Iraq, and Kerry is telling them that he would vote to authorize war with Iraq again even if he knew Saddam had no WMD!

Perhaps equally as maddening for Democrats, one must assume, is what Kerry said about how long troops should remain in Iraq. Buckley writes:

[H]ere is how Kerry put it: "I believe if you do the kind of alliance-building that is available to us, that it is appropriate to have a goal of reducing our troops over that period of time. Obviously we have to see how events unfold." Indeed. How events unfold. What events?

Here is where Kerry underwrote the Iraq venture in terms extraordinarily comprehensive. "The measurement has to be, as I've said all along, the stability of Iraq, the ability to have the elections, and the training and transformation of the Iraqi security force itself." Get from your paper supplier the thinnest sheet in the inventory, and you won't succeed in wedging it between the Republican and the Democratic position on the nature of our strategic objectives in Iraq.

Liberals who were ecstatic about Kerry at the convention in Boston have no one to blame but themselves. They should have known that when a flip-flopper flips you never know which side he'll wind up on, and he definitely won't respect you in the morning.

Coulter and Old Faithful

Ann Coulter has a great column on the Swift Boat veteran controversy. Here are just a few of the highlights:

With the media playing their usual role as Truth Commissar for the now-dead Soviet Union, the Swiftees are having to purchase ad time in order to be heard. No Tim Russert interviews, no "Today" show appearances, no New York Times editorials or Vanity Fair hagiographies for these heretics against the liberal religion. The only way Swift Boat Veterans for Truth could get less attention would be to go on "Air America" radio.

If the 254 veterans against Kerry got one-tenth as much media coverage for calling Kerry a liar as Clown Joe Wilson did for calling Bush a liar, the veterans wouldn't need to buy ad time to get their message out. (Wilson, you'll recall, was a media darling for six or seven months before being exposed as a fantasist by Senate investigators.)

With their commitment to free speech and a robust exchange of ideas (i.e., "child pornography" and "sedition"), the Democratic National Committee is threatening to sue TV stations that run the Swift Boat Veterans' paid ads. Sue? Can you tell already that there are two lawyers at the top of the Democratic ticket? These are the same people who accuse John Ashcroft of shredding the Bill of Rights.

Ron Brownstein, Los Angeles Times reporter and Bill Clinton's favorite reporter, compared the Swift Boat Veterans' ad to a "snuff film." He claimed the veterans have "strong Republican ties." Apparently, before being permitted to engage in free speech against Democrats in this country you have to: (1) prove that you are not a Republican, (2) take a vow of poverty, and (3) purchase the right to speak in a TV ad. On the basis of Clown Wilson, Michael Moore, George Soros, Moveon.org, etc., etc., etc., I gather the requirements for engaging in free speech against a Republican are somewhat less rigorous. Hey! Maybe John Edwards is right: There really are two Americas!

O'Neill, the author of "Unfit for Command" and founder of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, can be heard on the Nixon tapes - unaware that he was being taped - telling Nixon that he came from a family of Democrats and voted for Hubert Humphrey in the prior election. Unlike Joe Wilson, Anita Hill or Richard Clarke, Woodward and Bernstein, et al., O'Neill has said he will take no royalties on his book but will donate all his profits to the Navy.

For a rather dramatic illustration of the power of the Swift Boat veterans' testimony go here.

As Coulter says the major media have pretty much ignored this issue so far, but they won't be able to ignore it much longer. Like a subterranean geyser, it's quickly reaching the point in the blogosphere and the conservative media where its temperature and pressure are about to reach critical levels. How will Kerry handle this story when the geyser erupts? Up to this point their response has been to try intimidation through lawsuit and character assassination.

Eventually, however, they'll have to respond to the charges themselves. If they can't, the danger for the Kerry campaign is, as Viewpoint has argued before, that a lot of the people who would otherwise vote for Kerry, but who don't particularly despise Bush, will be disillusioned and either switch to Nader or sit it out.

Truth Will Out

The response of the Kerry campaign to the accusations made by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth has not been to respond to the charges themselves but rather to threaten television stations who run their ads with a lawsuit for libel. Henry and Erika Holzer have an excellent piece at FrontPage magazine.com which dissects Kerry's initial strategy for dealing with the SBVT and shows how the claim that the SBVT members are not telling the truth collapses under the weight of common sense. They also explain how the threat of libel is as hollow as their candidate's resume. The Holzers close their essay with this:

Kerry, as a public official, has a constitutionally required burden of proof in a libel case to produce evidence showing that the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth witnesses either knew their statements were false, or recklessly disregarded knowledge of falsity. Kerry's lawyers must realize their client can never satisfy this burden of proof.

For these reasons, and others, the democrat lawyers' threatening letter to TV station managers was an unconscionable attempt to protect their candidate from the damning truths spoken by Vietnam veterans who have earned the right to exercise their First Amendment freedom of speech.

To their credit, TV stations in some marketplaces have refused to surrender to the bullying tactics of Kerry's lawyers. This presents the democrat party and the Kerry campaign with two choices: put up or shut up.

They can slink off the field for having threatened TV stations with a baseless libel lawsuit, or, despite how they eventually hedge their threat, they can actually sue those TV stations that aren't intimidated.

The latter course would be utter disaster-and Kerry's lawyers have to know this. Kerry would no longer be able to hide behind spin masters. He would have to file a written complaint. Sworn depositions (including Kerry's) would have to be taken. He would have to respond to requests for factual admissions. He would have to answer written interrogatories. He would have to produce documents.

There would have to be a trial. That means sworn testimony, cross examination, documentary evidence-all in front of a jury, reporters, perhaps even TV cameras. Once all that happened, America would know who told the truth-and who lied.

Indeed. Of course all of this controversy over his military service might be stopped dead in its tracks if Kerry would do what the Democrats insisted that George Bush do, which is to release his service records. Kerry, however, refuses to do this. One particularly clever explanation for his refusal to release the records is that he anticipated long ago that his VietNam service would be an issue and has decided to sit on his records while his political opponents dig themselves into a deep pit. Then, at the climactic moment, he will release the records which will vindicate Kerry and bury his enemies under an avalanche of public scorn and ridicule.

It's possible, in the same sense that Martians are possible, but there are two things working against the strategy. First, the Republicans aren't cooperating. No one in that party has embraced the SBVT ads or the vets themselves. On the contrary, they've somewhat distanced themselves from them.

Second, the records must vindicate Kerry in order for the strategy to work, and it's hard to believe that Kerry wouldn't have released them years ago if they truly did confirm his claims. It's also hard to believe that over two hundred men would be lying about this, would be subjecting themselves to the Democrat slime machine, when they have no real motive for doing so other than to defend their own honor and to set the record straight.

The Fox News Sunday panel all agreed that this would be a non-issue by Labor Day. Viewpoint is not so sure. It's a story, as journalists like to say, that has legs, and the legs are going to get stronger when Unfit For Command is released next week.

Anybody But Bush

Bill Gertz is a Washington Times correspondent well connected to the defense and intelligence people in D.C. His most recent column discusses intelligence information that suggests that the next terrorist attack will be triggered by a message from Osama bin Laden and will consist of a wave of assassinations beginning, perhaps, in Yemen or Saudi Arabia and spreading across the United States. It is believed that the terrorists have in mind as targets political and business figures whose murders would rock the American economy and the coming election. According to one official, "The goal of the next attack is twofold: to damage the U.S. economy and to undermine the U.S. election," the official said. "The view of al Qaeda is 'anybody but Bush.' "

So, if this official's analysis is correct, al Qaeda sees the re-election of George Bush as the worst possible outcome for them. Any serious citizen of this country, i.e. anyone who realizes that we are in a fight to the death with an implacable enemy, should view al Qaeda's hope of swinging the election toward John Kerry as the strongest conceivable reason to vote for George Bush.

Just Do It

Omar at Iraq the Model gives some interesting anecdotal evidence as to how Iraqis view the fighting in Najaf and Sadr City. In short, they despise Muqtada al Sadr and will be happy to see the end of him. What they do not want to see is another round of indecisive fighting that returns them to the status quo ante. Omar and his friends want to see a resolution to this, and no doubt our Marines do, too:

It seems that it's time at last! I hope they get Muqtada this time and also all his deputies. People here are not only disgusted and upset with this gang but also most of them showed extreme anger and some of them went as far as condemning Islam and even the Mahdi himself!! I don't agree of course with that, as Muqtada has nothing to do with Islam.

A She'at taxi driver told me, " Why are we doing this!? Why among all religions we commit such horrible crimes?? If this is Islam then s**t on it and on Mahdi himself, we don't want this! They went as far as attacking peaceful churches and I really don't understand why! This is not the Islam we were raised to believe in, the Islam of peace and tolerance. I wish I could see this idiot dead."

One of my colleagues; a She'at who used to sympathize greatly with Islamist whether She'at or Sunni, told me today that he is shocked with what the Mahdi army is doing, " When he revolted the 1st time and they called him an outlaw we didn't like it. How can they call a cleric who's the son of Iraq's most respectable Ayetullah, an outlaw. Now I cannot and I do not want to defend him. He's a criminal and so are all his followers. They have killed civilians, policemen, destroyed a gas station in Sadr city, and are threatening to burn down the oil pipelines now! Why and for what!?"

Check out his posts for both Wednesday and Tuesday. There's lots of insight into the Iraqi people's attitude toward all this on them.