G.W. as "Dirty Harry"

President Bush has refused to give up the fight to seat qualified jurists on the Bench despite the Democrats' strenuous efforts to keep them off. Daring the Democrats to employ their obstructionist tactics in this session as they have in the past, the president has resubmitted the names of twenty of thirty four candidates who were filibustered by the Democrats in recent sessions of Congress:

The Democrats' ability to stall certain White House picks for the federal bench was one of the most contentious issues of Bush's first term. During the past two years, despite the GOP majority in the Senate, Democrats used filibusters to prevent final votes from occurring on 10 of 34 of Bush's nominees to federal appeals courts.

"The president nominated highly qualified individuals to the federal courts during his first term, but the Senate failed to vote on many nominations," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said in a statement the White House issued Thursday. "Unfortunately, this only exacerbates the issue of judicial vacancies, compounds the backlog of cases and delays timely justice for the American people."

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist called for quick action and issued a statement that pressured Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., to support the president's nominees. Specter, a moderate Republican, recently won the backing of Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans to be their new chairman despite his statement that judges who oppose abortion would have a difficult time gaining Senate confirmation, given the opposition from Democrats.

"The president has decided to re-nominate many highly qualified and capable individuals to serve as federal judges," Frist said. "I look forward to working with Sen. Specter, other Judiciary Committee members and my colleagues to ensure quick action and up and down votes on these judicial nominees."

Democrats reacted with irritation. "I was extremely disappointed to learn today that the president intends to begin the new Congress by resubmitting extremist judicial nominees," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said in a statement. "Last Congress, Senate Democrats worked with the president to approve 204 judicial nominees, rejecting only 10 of the most extreme."

By "extreme", Senator Reid means that these judges would likely not rule as he would want them to. They may be squarely in the mainstream of public opinion but since their decisions may offend Senate liberals they are placed out on the "fringe" of our political culture.

In fact, however, these are men and women committed to interpreting the constitution and the law according to what it says and not according to the political fashion of the times, and that's what the Left finds so troublesome. Unable to get their agenda enacted through the legislature, the Left has over the last four decades resorted more and more frequently to the courts to impose their ideological preferences on the rest of society. A conservative court would jeopardize this strategy, which has worked so effectively for the Left, and must, in their view, be prevented at all costs.

Tom Daschle led the filibuster of judical nominees over the last four years and paid for it on November 2nd. There are a number of Senate Democrats from states that went strongly for Bush upon whom the lesson was not lost. They will be torn between their own political futures and blocking the president's appointments. George Bush, like "Dirty Harry", is telling the obstructionists to "Go ahead. Make my day."

Secular Religion

Is secularism a religion? David Klinghoffer thinks so:

For each element in the Judeo-Christian family of faiths, secularism has its counterpart: a strict ethical code, albeit focusing on health issues ("Thou shalt not smoke," etc.); the use of shame when individuals disregard ethical rules (e.g. fat people); a related promise of eternal life through medical advances; a creation story (Darwinian evolution); and so forth. All that's missing is a deity, but not every religion has one, as the case of Zen Buddhism attests.

All this would be fine-after all, America is a big country with plenty of room for every spiritual predilection-but for the tendency of secularists to use aggressive means in advancing their political agenda and spreading their faith.

Consider state education, where the secular church has ensured that its creation account alone be taught. According to the Discovery Institute, Ohio, Minnesota, and New Mexico are exceptions to this rule, now requiring students to know about scientific evidence critical of Darwinian evolution. Everywhere else, evangelism for this secular doctrine is a staple of 10th-grade biology class.

The prejudice on behalf of the secular faith emanating from the media is likewise hard to ignore. HBO's Bill Maher, raised Catholic but later converted to a harsh secularism, is among the frankest of news and entertainment industry figures in his contempt for competing religions, notably Christianity. The host of Real Time with Bill Maher speaks of himself as "spreading the anti-gospel."

There's more at the link. Klinghoffer might also have mentioned that secularism has a de facto clergy comprised of university scientists, a dogmatic adherence to faith in naturalism and Reason, and a creed (e.g. The Secular Humanist Statement of Principles).

The Prophesied Messiah

Earlier this month, posted an article entitled Fighting Back in which he lamented what has become of Christmas.

I was so taken by his post that I thought it worthwhile to make a further contribution to the subject. To me, it's no exaggeration to state that the birth of Christ is the single most important event in the history of the world yet the celebration of it has deteriorated into something much, much less that what it should be. It seems that it has become more of a time where the true meaning has been displaced by a time of frenzy and greed and commercialism that inclines people to believe that the significance of the event is in the gifts they get or give and somehow this will make them whole. The true meaning of Christmas has been displaced with a sleight of hand that would make David Copperfield look like an amateur.

Sure, we can blame the liberals, the ACLU and their ilk for protesting a Nativity scene in front of a town hall, and all those with commercial interests that see only an opportunity for massive profits during the Christmas season, but the problem is actually much closer to home.

The problem is that too many people today simply don't understand, or appreciate, or believe what has actually occurred. I can't help but think that if they fully grasped the significance of the birth of Jesus Christ, things would be very much different. To acknowledge that Christmas celebrates the birth of the historical Jesus is one thing. Even atheists could accept that. To believe in all that the birth of Christ implies is a very different thing. This passage from chapter 2 of the book of Philippians sums it up for me:

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

There is substantial material presented in the Bible regarding the birth of Christ that should give any thinking person cause to pause and contemplate, especially during the Christmas season. I'd like to share some information that presents this special event from a different perspective - the first fulfillment of prophecy from the Old Testament that appears in the New Testament.

The prophecy is regarding the birth of Jesus Christ as given in the book of Isaiah chapter 7. Note that this was probably written about 650 BC.

Moreover the LORD spake again unto Ahaz, saying, Ask thee a sign of the LORD thy God; ask it either in the depth, or in the height above. But Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I tempt the LORD. And he said, Hear ye now, O house of David; Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will ye weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

And now, the fulfillment of this prophecy in Matthew chapter 1:

Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily. But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins. Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us. Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife: And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name JESUS.

So the take home message is: God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.(John 3:16).

And it appears this was all prophesied 650 years before it happened!

Merry Christmas,

P.S.If you're inclined to delve further into the subject of the fulfillment of the first prophecy in the New Testament, check out E.W. Bullenger's The Companion Bible, especially Appendix 103, page 147.

Anti-Inflammatory Drugs

Here's an article by Steve Milloy at Fox News with some hopeful news for those who find the quality of their lives much improved by anti-inflammatory drugs but who are concerned about recent reports of increased incidence of heart attack and stroke among those who use them:

The questions recently raised about whether Vioxx, Celebrex, Aleve and other anti-inflammatory medications pose some small heart attack or stroke risk to certain individuals should be answered as soon as possible.

In the meantime, however, it would seem that the great weight of data - gathered over years and even decades - evidencing the undisputed benefits and general safety of these drugs should have prevented any panic caused by the relative novelty, paucity and inconclusive nature of the data underlying the ongoing scare.

The clinical trials triggering the controversy are contradicted by many other studies which haven't reported any increased risk of heart attack and stroke; nor are the trials particularly impressive from a statistical viewpoint. The reported correlations are small and may, in fact, be artifacts caused by inappropriate study design.

None of the clinical trials giving rise to the questions about Vioxx, Celebrex and Aleve were, after all, specifically designed to test whether the drugs posed a heart attack or stroke risk. The data on Vioxx came from a study of gastrointestinal effects; the Celebrex data came from a cancer prevention study; and the Alleve data came from an Alzheimer's prevention study.

If weak statistical correlations are to raise legitimate concerns about drugs that have been widely used for years without noticeable problems, those correlations should at least be produced by studies specifically designed to examine the precise health endpoints of concern. Results from well-designed studies would allow physicians and arthritis sufferers to choose whether to manage any clearly identified risks of effective drugs, rather than be told to be happy with "safe", but ineffective treatments such as acupuncture.

Those who have not yet reached the stage in life where arthritis makes even the simplest tasks a painful endurance test may find it hard to imagine how much of a difference these drugs can make in one's life. Let's hope that further tests show their risks to be minimal.

Dunderhead Watch

The task of keeping up with the stupefying stupidity of school administrators has become daunting this Christmas season, but we're still at it. Our latest exhibit is a Mr. Muscara, a principal at Hampton Junior High School (location unknown). Mr. Muscara distinguishes himself in a crowded field of dunderheads this season by making not only one ridiculous judgment but by following it up in quick succession with two or three more:

HAMPTON - A parent of a Hampton Academy Junior High School student says the principal of the school told his son to leave the school's holiday dance on Friday night because the boy was dressed in a Santa Claus costume, which was politically incorrect.

Michael Lafond said his son, Bryan, went to the dance dressed as Santa because it was a holiday party. "He asked if he could dress like Santa and we said yes," said Lafond. "We went to Brooks and purchased the outfit and everything."

Lafond said his wife dropped off Bryan at the school. "I went to the dance with my friend," said Bryan Lafond, who is in seventh grade. "He had an elf hat on and we thought it was pretty cool. Everyone loved the suit, but when I went by the principal, he asked why I was dressed like that."

Principal Fred Muscara said he told the boy he couldn't get into the dance because he was wearing the costume. "It was a holiday party," said Muscara. "It was not a Christmas party. There is a separation of church and state. We have a lot of students that go to Hampton Academy Junior High that have different religions. We have to be sensitive to that."

Viewpoint pauses to try to control our mirth and to wonder if this is the sort of man the Hampton school board really wants setting the academic tone at their school. Somone needs to instruct Mr. Muscara in the basics of Christian theology and how to distinguish religious symbols from cultural icons. The story continues:

Bryan said while Muscara didn't say he had to leave, he told Bryan if he wanted to go the dance he would have to change out of the suit and put on proper attire for the dance. Having nothing to change into, Bryan left the dance to try and find his mother.

"My wife was leaving the parking lot when she saw Bryan running out of the building," said Lafond. "He told her that the principal said it was politically incorrect to wear the Santa outfit."

"I saw him running out of the building crying," said Leslie Lafond, Bryan's mother. Lafond said while he disagrees with their reasoning he could almost understand it.

Perhaps Mr. Lafond is himself a graduate of Hampton Junior High. We can think of no other explanation for how one could almost understand Mr. Muscara's decision to turn away a 7th grade boy in a Santa suit. But it gets worse, or better, depending upon your point of view:

What [Mr. Lafond] couldn't understand was why his son was able to leave the dance. "One of reasons why we are so angry is that the school has a policy that says once you go to the dance you can't leave until it's over," said Lafond. "You can't leave school grounds unless they call a parent. If my wife wasn't there, my son would have been out roaming the streets."

Bryan's mother picked up her son and drove him home to change. Lafond said his wife had to persuade Bryan to go back to the dance.

"He was so embarrassed," said Lafond. "It wasn't like he was trying to pull a prank. He is just a good-natured kid getting into the holiday spirit who just happened to walk right by Scrooge."

Mr. Lafond is here erring on the side of kindness. Scrooge is not the character who comes immediately to our minds. Scrooge, despite his faults, was no dunce.

Muscara said he was unaware that Bryan left the dance. "I asked if he had something he could change into and he said he did," said Muscara.

Lafond said when his wife drove Bryan back to the dance, she complained to school officials. She said she also complained to several School Board members and Muscara. On Monday, Bryan's parents went before the School Board to voice their concerns.

"I don't want this to happen again," said Leslie. "It is unacceptable. When Bryan returned to the school, the principal said, 'What are you doing, trying to get me fired.' That is not a proper comment to make to a student."

Indeed. This man needs to spend some in-service time at a refresher course on professional ethics. The concern he expresses, however, should not be ill-founded given his maladroit handling of this situation from beginning to end and what it tells us about his competence to supervise children.

Superintendent James Gaylord told the School Board it would discuss the matter in non-public session because it involved a student and personnel. When contacted at her house Monday afternoon, Hampton School Board Chairman Nancy Serpis said she was concerned with what she heard. "We need to look at the whole situation," said Serpis.

This can be translated from school-board speak to "Mr. Muscara has demonstrated extremely poor judgment, and we're not yet sure how we're going to be able to pull his fat out of the fire."

Lafond said political correctness is getting out of control. "I don't get it," said Lafond, citing a PTA breakfast with Santa at the school a couple of weeks ago. "What's next? Are they going to get rid of Halloween because of paganism?" he asked. "The last time I checked, Christmas was the celebration of the birth of Christ and not Santa Claus," Leslie said. "I want them to make an apology to my son. My son was humiliated."

The story can be found here. It'd be a hoot if it weren't so sad.

Two Candid Admissions

Last week Viewpoint discussed the book by philosopher Victor Reppert titled C.S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea. Reppert examines the corrosive effect that metaphysical naturalism, if true, has on the status of Reason. Reppert's basic argument is an elaboration of an argument employed by C.S.Lewis, but Reppert expands it and addresses several objections raised by critics.

His contention is that if matter, energy, and physical forces like gravity are all there is then everything is ultimately reducible to material, non-rational particles. If so, our beliefs are just brain states that can be completely explained in terms of non-rational physical forces. But any belief that is fully explicable in terms of non-rational causes cannot itself be rationally grounded. Therefore, if materialism is true, none of our beliefs are rationally grounded, Reason itself is a non-rational illusion, and both truth and the reliability of scientific invetsigation are chimerical. Thus the materialist has no rational grounds for believing that materialism is true or that anything is true.

Whatever the eventual verdict on this argument and its several derivatives is, one of the things the author does which is hard to gainsay is show that the atheists' claim to intellectual superiority based upon the rationality of their beliefs is something of a self-delusion. It intimidates the unsophisticated and unsuspecting perhaps, like suddenly encountering a bloated puffer fish, but there's nothing there to be particularly fearful of.

Reppert quotes two well-known intellectuals, one a leading materialist scientist and the other a philosopher, who inadvertantly reveal that whatever role reason plays in their professional lives, it has little to do with their ultimate commitments and that some of Reason's most eminent proponents are perfectly willing to abandon it when it suits their purpose. The first passage is from Richard Lewontin:

Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community of unsubstantiated just-so stories [in evolutionary biology] because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material causes, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who believes in God can believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that Miracles may happen. (1997)

This is an extraordinary expression of dogmatic faith in naturalism, and it's not just non-rational, it's anti-rational. To see how, Reppert asks us to imagine the reaction of a materialist to a similar claim made by a Biblical theist:

Our willingness to accept biblical teachings that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between faith and unbelief. We take the side of Scripture in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the existence of unsubstantiated just so stories in Scripture, because we have a prior commitment to Scripture's inerrancy. It is not that the methods and institutions of biblical study somehow compel us to accept only interpretations which are in accordance with the Bible's inerrancy, but on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to biblical inerrancy to create a method of biblical study that [produces explanations that are consistent with inerrancy, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, our commitment to inerrancy is absolute, for we cannot allow doubt to get its foot in the door. For anyone doubting the Word of God in any respect will end up doubting it in all respects.

Any Christian who wrote something like this would be laughed to scorn by skeptics, including, no doubt, Lewontin himself, yet a scientist of his stature writes almost exactly this, and his colleagues merely nod sagely and think nothing of it.

The second quote is from philosopher Thomas Nagel and his book The Last Word:

In speaking of the fear of religion, I don't mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper - namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God, and naturally, hope that I'm right about my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that. (1997)

And Freudians accuse believers of engaging in irrational wish-fulfillment. Nagel's atheism is based upon a hope that there is no God, which is itself based upon a subjective preference for a Godless universe. The point here is that neither Lewontin nor Nagel is ultimately basing his anti-theism on anything rational. Even if the evidence went against them they would not yield in their adamantine refusal to accept the existence of God. Their ultimate commitments are founded primarily upon an aesthetic predilection for one kind of reality as opposed to another. The much vaunted role of Reason in the rejection by atheists of belief in God is shown, in these two men at least, to be quite irrelevant.

Suspicious Minds

There's a good retrospective on Rwanda at The Fourth Rail. It examines the failure of the U.N. and the Clinton administration to do anything at all to stop the slaughter of 800,000 Tutsis and draws a parallel or two with our situation in Iraq.

Meanwhile, Belmont Club raises some pointed questions about how an AP photographer who captured the execution of Iraqi election workers in Baghdad found himself in just the right spot to catch it all on film:

It was the surely the most amazing of coincidences that placed an Associated Press photographer in a position to openly photograph an execution, where we are reliably informed, no less than 30 armed men were firing guns and hurling hand grenades....

There may be a perfectly plausible explanation for everything, but for the record let me wonder:

How the Associated Press photographer happened to be at the attack site at the time. Was it on his route to home or work?

How he photographed the execution sequence in the midst of an attack by 30 persons from the middle of the major road.

It is astonishing, now that Wretchard calls our attention to the matter, that this intrepid photographer was in just the right place, at the right time, with camera ready for action. It's also remarkable that he evidently stood tall amidst the gunfire to get the angle he did, when the normal human tendency would've been to call as little attention to oneself as possible. How did the photographer know that the killers weren't just grabbing people at random to be murdered? Why did he think that he would not be a target? He's either very brave and lucky, or he was tipped off. We wonder if anyone is questioning him about this.

Chrenkoff's Good News From Iraq

Don't miss the 16th installment of Arthur Chrenkoff's Good News From Iraq. The scale of ungoing work in Iraq is staggering and Chrenkoff's summaries of what we have accomplished there are extremely gratifying. Yet none of this ever makes it's way onto our evening news. All we ever hear about is the violence, and even that is amplified by the media megaphone to seem far more consequential than it really is. The MSM tunnel vision about developments in Iraq irritates this clergyman:

It takes a lot to get a man of God annoyed and Louis Sako, the Chaldean Archbishop of Kirkuk, is a very frustrated man these days: "It is not all death and destruction," says the Archbishop. "Much is positive in Iraq today... Universities are operating, schools are open, people go out onto the streets normally... Where there's a kidnapping or a homicide the news gets out immediately, and this causes fear among the people... Those who commit such violence are resisting against Iraqis who want to build their country."

It's not just the terrorists who, according to His Eminence, are creating problems for Iraq: "[January] will be a starting point for a new Iraq... [Yet] Western newspapers and broadcasters are simply peddling propaganda and misinformation... Iraqis are happy to be having elections and are looking forward to them because they will be useful for national unity... Perhaps not everything will go exactly to plan, but, with time, things will improve. Finally Iraqis will be given the chance to choose. Why is there so much noise and debate coming out from the West when before, under Saddam, there were no free elections, but no one said a thing?"

The good news encompasses every aspect of Iraqi life: economic, social, political, and military. Here are just a couple of items related to the security situation:

A recent internet posting, apparently authored by an insurgent commander Abu Ahmed al-Baghdadi, while boasting of recent attacks throughout Iraq, paints a worrying picture of the insurgency:

"The new message opens with a plea for advice from Palestinian and Chechen militants as well as Osama bin Laden supporters in Afghanistan and Pakistan. 'We face many problems,' it reads in Arabic, 'and need your military guidance since you have more experience.'"

"The problems, the message says, are the result of losing the insurgent safe haven of Fallujah to U.S. troops. It says the insurgency was hampered as checkpoints and raids spread 'to every city and road.' Communications broke down as insurgents were forced to spread out through the country."

"The arrest of some of their military experts, more 'spies willing to help the enemy,' and a dwindling supply of arms also added to the organizational breakdown, it reads." According to military analyst Tony Cordesman, "This particular memo asks for strategic advice, but it makes it very clear in the text that what they really want are volunteers, money and more munitions."

In other recent security successes: the arrest of over 100 suspected insurgents in Baghdad ("Among the 104 detainees, most were Iraqis but some were from Syria and other Arab countries... Nine of the total had escaped from Fallujah"); a seizure of a senior insurgency commander in the Anbar province; detaining 38 insurgent suspects in a raid near Kirkuk; the arrest of one of Al Zarqawi's top commanders in Mosul; the capture of five foreign fighters who escaped from Fallujah and were preparing attacks around Basra; the arrest of 116 suspects in a sweep southwest of Baghdad; the arrest of 57 suspects throughout Mosul and Ad Dawr, the town where Saddam was captured last year; rounding up 32 suspects and uncovering a stockpile of more than 500 artillery rounds by Iraqi and Coalition troops south of Baghdad; rounding up another 24 suspected insurgents in an operation around Tal Afar; and the arrest of 210 suspects in a week-long sweep through the so called "triangle of death".

There is so much more at Chrenkoff's site, and it's an excellent antidote to the incessant pessimism, negativism, and defeatism of the MSM. We say this not to minimize tragedies like the recent suicide bombing of the mess hall in Mosul, but to bring perspective to the overall trajectory of the task we have undertaken in the Middle East. That trajectory is leading to success and the horrors of Mosul will not deflect it, any more than the enormous losses at Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge altered the outcome of that conflict. The only thing that can prevent us from achieving the democratization of Iraq and radically altering the political landscape of the Middle East is a lack of will.

The Mosul Attack

Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit directs us to this site maintained by a chaplain named Lewis who was involved in the recent attack on the dining hall and hospital in Mosul. His account is as riveting as it is heart-breaking. Our hearts go out to the victims of these criminal attacks. Here are a couple of excerpts:

"Ilena" (a made up name. She spoke very softly and had a thick accent so I couldn't really hear her) had been hit by a piece of shrapnel just above her left breast causing a classic sucking chest wound. The doctors said she had a hemothorax (I think that's what they called it) which basically meant her left lung was filling with blood and she was having a very hard time breathing. For the next 20 minutes I held her hand while a doctor made an incision in her left side, inserted most of his hand and some kind of medical instrument and then a tube to alleviate the pressure caused by the pooling blood. It was probably the most medieval procedure I have ever been privy to. In the end she was taken to ICU and will be OK.

"Mark" was put on a stretcher and laid along a wall. A small monitor on his hand would tell the nurses when he was dead. Even a cursory glance said it was inevitable. Mark had a head wound that left brain matter caked in his ear and all over the stretcher he was lying on. I knelt next to Mark and placed a hand on is chest. His heart was barely beating but it was beating so I put my face close to his ear to pray with him. If you've never smelled human brain matter it is something unforgettable. I had something of an internal struggle. He's practically dead so why stay? He probably can't hear anything! A prayer at that point seemed of little value. But I couldn't risk it. I prayed for Mark and led him in the sinners prayer as best I could. There are few things in this life that will make you feel more helpless.

Regardless of what some may say, these [the insurgents] are not stupid people. Any attack with casualties will naturally mean that eventually a very large number of care givers will be concentrated in one location. They took full advantage of that. In the middle of the mayhem the first mortar round hit about 100 to 200 meters away. Everyone started shouting to get the wounded into the hospital which is solid concrete and much safer than being in the open. Soon, the next mortar hit quite a bit closer than the first as they "walked" their rounds toward their intended target...us. Everyone began to rush toward the building. I stood at the door shoving as many people inside as I could. Just before heading in myself, the last one hit directly on top of the hospital. I was standing next to the building so was shielded from any flying shrapnel. In fact, the building, being built as a bunker took the hit with little effect. However, I couldn't have been more than 10 to 15 meters from the point of impact and brother did I feel the shock. That'll wake you up! I rushed inside to find doctors and nurses draped over patients, others on the floor or under something. I ducked low and quickly moved as far inside as I could.

As my assistant and I walked away at the end of the day I saw another chaplain and a soldier standing among the silent rows of black body bags. The soldier wanted to see his friend one more time. We slowly and as respectfully as possible unzipped the bag to reveal the face of a very young Private First Class. His friend stared for a few seconds then turned away and began to cry.

The last count was 25 dead, and around 45 wounded. Nevertheless, our cause is just and God is in control even when the crap is a yard deep. I'm where God wants me and wouldn't change that for anything, even if it means death. After all, "to die is gain".

A deliberate attack on a hospital, after having planned it for maximum casualties, is heinous. These are the sort of people whose "rights" the Left has been so concerned about protecting. When a young Marine, scared for his life, shot one he believed was feigning death in order to draw the Marine closer so as to kill him, the Left wanted to hang the kid from the nearest tree. Their reaction to attacks like the one in Mosul is essentially to demand that we pull out of Iraq and let the orcs butcher the entire population. God help the Iraqi people if the Left ever gets its way, and thank God for men in the service like Chaplain Lewis.

Low Wattage in High Places

In our Feedback Forum D.S. asks:

I wonder why it is OK for a Jewish superintendent to allow Hanukkah music at the Christmas pageants, but not for the majority of Christian staff and faculty to be allowed to listen to Christmas music with a Christian theme?

One answer to this question we came across in the news is that Hanukkah celebrates an historical event whereas Christmas is religious, and thus taboo. This answer speaks volumes about how school administrators view Christianity. It assumes that the birth of Jesus is ahistorical, i.e. that Jesus is really a figure of myth and legend and had no objective existence. How else is the reply to be understood? Christians don't celebrate "religion" on Christmas, they celebrate a birth, a religiously significant birth to be sure, but an historical event nonetheless.

Perhaps the superintendent in the news report meant to justify permitting Hanukkah music, but not traditional Christmas music in school assemblies, by reasoning that historical events can be celebrated but only if they have no religious significance. The difficulty with this interpretation is that, if it is indeed what the superintendent was thinking, it makes him look a little uninformed. Hanukkah is laden with religious significance. It is a celebration of the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem after the miraculous victory God granted the Macabees over the Syrians several centuries before Christ and is characterized by lighting the Menorah, a candelabrum used in Synagogues around the world during religious services.

One can only conclude that the people making these decisions and employing these justifications are exceptionally dim-witted or that they are deliberately privileging some religious observances over others. Or perhaps both.

The irony in allowing Hanukkah songs while excluding Christmas music, if considered dispassionately, is as much to be savored as is the dopiness of the rationale being offered for it. It seems that, deliberately or not, some public school administrators are turning Christmas into a Jewish holiday.

The AutoPen

Powerline posts this note from the father of a Marine in Iraq writing about the Don Rumsfeld/Autopen tempest in the MSM teapot:

If [our son] had been killed, we would have been first informed by a visit - in dress blues - from a condolence team typically consisting of two Marines and one Navy Chaplain. We know many families who've received that knock on the door. No letter is required. No words are required. A simple peek thru the view hole in the door and the sight of dress blue blouses, white covers and white gloves tells you all you ever need to know. A letter of condolence from the SecDef is, honestly, not even worth opening. Families are much more interested in hearing from the men who served with their son and from their families.

We share the constant knowledge and fear that it could be our door bell being rung. Sec. Rumsfeld doesn't know our son. He's a Lance Corporal. He directs a machine gun team. He is a vital link in the line that protects our way of life. He doesn't fight for his country, he doesn't fight for the SecDef, he doesn't even fight for his mom and dad. He fights for the guys on either side of him and for his team. He fights to secure his objective of the moment, which he may or may not understand or agree with. Sec Rumsfeld doesn't need to take time from his day to sign a form letter of condolence and he certainly doesn't need to take time to figure out what the LCpl was doing when he was killed or what kind of a man he was. His job is to make sure the LCpl didn't die in vain and that only as few LCpl's as possible will have to die to end this war in a successful manner.

Don't get me wrong, we would appreciate the condolence letter from the SecDef, as well as one from the White House and from our Senator and Representative, from the Mayor and Governor. But none would bring back our son. And they are all form letters, signatures be damned. A letter from his 1stSgt, from the men we know in his unit would be a treasure and a comfort.

I don't know what happens in other branches, or even other units. But in 2/4, I know the 1stSgt's personally contact the surviving family with letters, emails and phone calls of condolence.

By the way, we know families of fallen Marines who've been flown to sites where President Bush was speaking. He met with them privately after his event, never any press coverage, and the families have said that - after being given an agenda for their time with the President and being told that he's on a very tight schedule - Mr. Bush talked to every family member as long as they wanted to talk, never hurried anyone, cried with family, hugged everyone and they all felt like he had nothing else to do for the rest of the day but bring comfort to them. For that, George W. Bush has my eternal respect and gratitude. And there was NEVER one word of publicity surrounding any of these meetings with families. (I have pictures to dissuade doubters.)

Bottom line, we support Sec Rumsfeld. The people who are making a big deal about this have their heads up their collective a****. They need to have a serious priority check on what people in positions of responsibility should be doing with their time. They should also chat with some military families if they could figure out how to contact them.

Part of what's going on with Rumsfeld is this: The media knows they can't get Bush, as much as they'd like to, so they're trying to wound him by tearing to pieces anyone associated with the administration whom they think is vulnerable, whether the victim really deserves it or not. The media circles Rumsfeld like hyenas working a wounded bull, every so often sallying forth to take a nip at a haunch, hoping to bleed him until they can safely pounce. It's a manifestation of human depravity, we suppose, but they are liberal journalists, after all.

The other thing that's happening is that some in the Congress see Rumsfeld's problems with the media as an opportunity to promote themselves with the public. Nothing makes a man feel as self-important as denouncing someone of even greater importance than himself. To sucker punch a big guy publicly, especially when you know that he won't fight back, is cost-free for a politician. It allows him to preen and strut around the ring as if he's done something noble, and it requires neither courage nor wit.

Credit Card Craziness

Brother Bill passes along a link to this site which lists the following fascinating facts about the debt incurred by individual Americans:

It is estimated that, on average, 20% of Americans have "maxed out" their credit cards.

About 25% of adults in the United States have a history of credit problems.

Americans' average credit card debt is $8400 per household.

Roughly 24% of personal expenditures in the United States are made using bank credit cards, retail cards, and debit cards.

In the first quarter of 2002, total credit debt was $660 billion. Total credit card debt was approximately $60 billion.

Approximately 185 million American consumers have at least one credit card.

Of those 185 million consumers with credit cards, 1.3 million credit card holders declared bankruptcy in 2002.

Americans pay, on average, an 18.9% interest rate on credit cards.

The average household pays $83.33 in credit card interest per month.

On average, the typical credit card purchase is 112% higher than if using cash.

More than 40% of American families spend more than they earn. (Federal Reserve).

As of 1995, 92% of American family disposable income is spent on paying debts, up from 65% in 1975.

An $8,000 debt, at a rate of 18% interest, will take over 25 years to pay off and cost more than $24,000 in the long run.

The first step on the road to recovery from credit card addiction is to hold one's credit cards in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other....

Bull Market

The Christian Science Monitor reports on the recovering stock market and gives several reasons for being bullish on 2005 in this column:

After collapsing and floundering for about three years, the stock market is finishing 2004 with a solid 8 or 9 percent gain, following a gain of more than 25 percent last year. Some commentators are also optimistic that the elements are falling into place to make 2005 a positive year as well.

Since the market hit bottom on Oct. 9, 2002, it's added by some estimates about $3 trillion in value to investors' net worth. For example, an investment of $10,000 in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index on Oct. 10, 2002, would be worth $15,406 today.

1. There has been a new spurt of mergers and acquisitions, including a takeover battle for the wireless company Sprint. And software giant Oracle has swallowed People Soft for $10.3 billion. "The mergers are a favorable sign for stocks," says David Kotok, chief investment officer for Cumberland Advisors Inc. in Vineland, N.J. "It's also a sign that very low interest rates create terrific deals, and financing costs are low."

2. Investors seemed to be enthusiastic about President Bush's reelection. Since the end of October, when it became clearer Mr. Bush would win, the market has perked up. "I think it's because they view him as relatively light-handed as far as regulatory matters are concerned. He'll be retaining the tax cuts and pressing for tort reform and trying to privatize part of Social Security," says Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International. "All of that is considered pro-market."

3. There may be some changes in the economy that will benefit the market, including lower oil prices and a weaker US dollar, which permit US companies to compete better with foreign companies.

The article also cautions against excessive optimism, however, and gives several reasons why the rebound is still a little weaker than has historically been the case with recoveries. Nevertheless, the overall prognosis is good.

The Banality of Evil

The Fourth Rail offers an interesting picture of the defendants in the criminal trials of Saddam's henchmen taking place in Iraq:

The men were questioned in front of Iraqi judges, and the months in prison have not been kind to them. Aziz has been described as frail and thin; Chemical Ali "looked haggard and leaned on a cane." Even Saddam has not been immune to the rigors of prison. Saddam has become an ordinary man, with ordinary illnesses and pursuits....Saddam's henchmen, in a futile attempt to gain sympathy for their imprisonment, have gone on a faux hunger strike, and it was rumored that Saddam himself participated.

Prison does interesting things to those fallen from power, as Albert Speer, the Nazi Germany's Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production, expertly describes in his memoirs from Spandau prison. Men used to wielding power and influence in their nations are reduced to petty squabbles amongst themselves over latrine duty and other chores, status in the prison hierarchy, visitation rights, and other concerns. They also bear witness against each other in an attempt to gain the upper hand.

Tareq Aziz has turned on his former masters, and has given testimony on Saddam ordering murders, the payoffs to foreign governments, including France, to vote against Iraq war, and bribes to United Nations officials. Coupled with the audiotapes of Chemical Ali, this should make for an interesting and revealing trial, as former regime members scramble for their lives. Chemical Ali had much to say about his crimes.

"As soon as we complete the deportations we will start attacking them everywhere according to a systematic military plan," he says. "I will not attack them with chemicals just one day but I will continue to attack them with chemicals for 15 days."

Al-Majid even criticises his master for being too lenient when he orders that the families of Kurdish resistance leaders should not be harmed. "A message reaches me from that great man, the father [Saddam], saying 'Take good care of the families of the saboteurs...' Take good care of them? No, I will bury them with bulldozers."

Saddam's regime is compared to the Nazi Third Reich because it mirrored the Nazis in every aspect except for scale: Saddam's cult of personality; Sunni superiority; the Ba'athist party, whose members were above the law; a brutal police state; the mass murder of peoples via gassings, mass shootings and other means; ethnic cleansing; wars of conquests.

These are truly evil men, and their utter banality in their present condition, as Hannah Arendt reminded us about the Nazis, should not diminish our assessment of their evil. They deserve far worse than they are likely to get, a fact for which they should be exceedingly grateful.

More On the Christmas Wars

Here's a contrarian take on the cultural Christmas wars by Jeff Jarvis. He makes several interesting points, but he's stirred up a bit of reaction in the blogosphere. He writes, for instance, that:

Here in America, some people think a fight over a creche in the town square is a fight over religion. No, it's a fight for the sake of a fight. On the one hand, we do enforce separation of church and state -- to guarantee freedom of religion from government -- and so there is no divine right to put a creche in front of the city hall; I want to tell those folks, put it anywhere else. On the other hand, the bureaucrats who stop it as if they are standing between America and jihad are being just as ridiculous; a creche or a Christmas tree next to a menorah is harmless and is part of the diverse culture of America. Similarly, it's right for a school to prohibit proselytizing but it's silly to disallow an instrumental version of a Christmas ditty, as recently occurred in New Jersey. You want to slap both sides in these annual squabbles and just tell them to grow up and count their blessings.

Then there are those in the so-called Parents Television Council who argue that any joke that mentions God is an attack on religion. That's just crap. Freedom of speech goes hand-in-hand with freedom of religion -- that's why they are both protected in the First Amendment -- and there's nothing with a joke about God. It's not a sign of a war on God.

And then there are those who say that America has been taken over by a red-state religious jihad because the other side won the election and because a bogus made the insulting presumption that some of us don't have moral values and because the afore-dismissed PTC manufactured complaints about pop culture the way Tootsie makes Rolls. The truth, as I proved, it that it is a phantom army of the few on the fringe.

I want to slap them all back to their senses. But I also want to slap the media who act as if all these alleged religious wars are real news, worthwhile stories, true trends. No, the truth is that once a year, we get the fake stories about wars over Christmas carols; whenever the PTC puts out another press release or the FCC another fine, we get the fake stories about religious outrage at indecency; whenever the right wins an election, we get the fake stories about the revolt of the religious conservatives. All these stories act as if America -- you, me, and your neighbors -- changed overnight into suburban Sunnis vs. Shiites.

There is no religious war in America. That ended more than two centuries ago. And now we enjoy the benefits of that struggle. We should be grateful for that and stop squandering it with squabbles.

If Jarvis is correct we wonder why it is that in many schools students get in more trouble for wearing a shirt with the words Jesus Loves You emblazoned across it than they do for using Jesus Christ as a profane exclamation.

For a much different point of view from Jarvis' see this column by Ralph Hallow in the Washington Times. Hallow starts off talking about how a Republican candidate for governor of New Jersey is going to lead a hymn sing at a New Jersey public school which has scrubbed all sacred music from its "Holiday" concert.

Mr. Lonegan has asked local residents of all religions to join him at 5 p.m. tomorrow "to sing and listen to" songs such as George Frederick Handel's "Messiah" and "Silent Night," which have been banned from schools, even in instrumental form, by the South Orange/Maplewood School District.

In a Dec. 6 statement, school board President Brian O'Leary said the ban [against sacred music] is intended "to balance the important roles that religion and music can and do play in our curriculum with a desire to avoid celebrating or appearing to celebrate a religious holiday."

Indeed. So the religious content of the music isn't the problem. It is joining the music to the holiday that we must be vigilant against. We may assume, then, that it would be alright with Mr. O'Leary for the orchestra to perform Handel's Messiah or Silent Night for the student body as long as it was at, say, the Homecoming dance.

The rest of the article discusses some other attempts to bleach any genuine significance out of the season. It's very much worth reading in toto.

Here in our little corner of the world our district superintendent has decreed that there will be no Santa Claus at the Christmas (oops, holiday) assembly nor any music which celebrates anything other than winter (Jingle Bells, Let it Snow). Hanukah music, we're told, is permitted, but nothing even faintly redolent of Christianity will be allowed. If this is true it certainly smacks of religious bigotry, but that is only bad, we are left to suppose, when bigotry is directed by a majority against a minority. Otherwise it's perfectly acceptable.

Nuke 'em

Much has been written about the Democrats' use of the filibuster to block President Bush's judicial nominees and of Republican options for preventing similar tactics in 2005. Robert Novak lays it all out and puts it in perspective in a column in the Chicago Sun-Times:

A scenario for an unspecified day in 2005: One of President Bush's judicial nominations is brought to the Senate floor. Majority Leader Bill Frist makes a point of order that only a simple majority is needed for confirmation. The point is upheld by the presiding officer, Vice President Dick Cheney. Democratic Leader Harry Reid challenges the ruling. Frist moves to table Reid's motion, ending debate. The motion is tabled, and the Senate proceeds to confirm the judicial nominee -- all in about 10 minutes.

This is the "nuclear option" that creates fear and loathing among Democrats and weak knees for some Republicans, including conservative opinion leaders. Ever since Frist publicly embraced the nuclear option, he has been accused of abusing the Senate's cherished tradition of extended debate. In truth, during six years as majority leader, Democrat Robert C. Byrd four times detonated the nuclear option to rewrite Senate rules.

Thus, Frist would set no precedent, would not contradict past Republican behavior and would not strip the GOP of protection as a future Senate minority. The question is whether Republican senators will flinch from the only maneuver open to confirm Bush's judges.

The unprecedented Democratic plan to filibuster judicial nominations that do not meet liberal specifications has exceeded all expectations. None of 10 filibustered Bush appellate court nominees has been confirmed, and another six are all designated filibuster victims. This is intended to have a chilling effect on Bush in filling Supreme Court vacancies.

All 16 of these nominees are dead under present procedures. Even with the net gain of four Republican senators in this year's elections, Frist falls short of the 60 votes needed to cut off debate. After early skepticism, I have come to agree with Frist's conclusion that the old-fashioned filibuster-breaker of round-the-clock sessions is a non-starter. Today's Republican senators lack the will to undergo this ordeal. They would have to maintain a heavy presence on the floor while a single Democrat could hold forth.

Frist drew a line in the sand Nov. 11 in addressing the conservative Federalist Society: "One way or another, the filibuster of judicial nominees must end." The way he indicated was a rules change -- the nuclear option.

That generated speculation that, when the new Senate convenes Jan. 4, the Republican leadership will propose a rules change. Reid, the Senate's reigning master of parliamentary tactics, has promised to "screw things up" by bringing the chamber's activities to a standstill. Frist would only tell me he wants "a full set of options, ready and available." However, Senate sources believe Frist will bide his time on opening day and wait to make a point of order to change the rules.

This is precisely what Byrd did as majority leader, as explained in an article by Martin Gold and Dimple Gupta to be published in the January issue of the Harvard Journal on Law and Public Policy. They write that Byrd "developed four precedents that allowed a simple majority to change Senate procedures governing debate without altering the text of any standing rule." In each case, Byrd successfully overcame dilatory tactics by the Republican minority.

It remains an open question whether Frist can mobilize Republicans as effectively as Byrd commanded Democrats to get even 51 votes. The ''New England Three'' of liberal Republican senators from Maine and Rhode Island may vote no. John McCain and Chuck Hagel have misgivings, with Hagel recalling the dark Republican days of the '70s when only a handful of Republican senators stood up against the Democratic tide.

Most worrisome to Frist is criticism from respected conservative voices -- George F. Will and the National Review -- that the nuclear option undermines a bulwark of limited government. But Republicans never employed the filibuster to block liberal judges. The failure to confirm Lyndon Johnson's nomination of Abe Fortas as chief justice was caused not by a Republican filibuster, but by inability to get a majority of votes in a heavily Democratic Senate. Using the filibuster to block judges is something new, and the Frist scenario looks like the only way to end it.

Our view is that the President has the right to have his nominees voted up or down. It is a circumvention of the rights of the people to have the nominees stonewalled simply because they are not pro-choice - which is, when we get right down to it, the sole reason why any of these nominees have been filibustered. We hope that Senator Frist and the Republicans will do whatever has to be done to prevent the minority from exercising a persistent veto over the majority. Otherwise, what use is there in being the majority party.

The Dover ID Debate

The Intelligent Design controversy at Dover School District in central Pennsylvania has taken a turn against the proponents of ID. The Discovery Institute, the foremost organization in the country promoting Intelligent Design, has come out with an statement critical of Dover's approach:

"While the Dover board is to be commended for trying to teach Darwinian theory in a more open-minded manner, this is the wrong way to go about it," said Dr. John G. West, associate director of Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture (CSC). "Dover's current policy has a number of problems, not the least of which is its lack of clarity. At one point, it appears to prohibit Dover schools from teaching anything about 'the origins of life.' At another point, it appears to both mandate as well as prohibit the teaching of the scientific theory of intelligent design. The policy's incoherence raises serious problems from the standpoint of constitutional law. Thus, the policy should be withdrawn and rewritten."

Apart from questions about its constitutionality, West expressed reservations about the Dover School Board's directive on public policy grounds.

"When we first read about the Dover policy, we publicly criticized it because according to published reports the intent was to mandate the teaching of intelligent design," explained West. "Although we think discussion of intelligent design should not be prohibited, we don't think intelligent design should be required in public schools.

"What should be required is full disclosure of the scientific evidence for and against Darwin's theory," added West, "which is the approach supported by the overwhelming majority of the public." See here for more on the Discovery Institute's recommendations on how evolution should be taught.

If the Discovery Institute is not behind Dover's board in their attempt to insert ID into the high school science curriculum, indeed, if they're actually recommending that the policy be withdrawn, it's hard to imagine a court ruling sympathetically when the case comes to trial.

There have always been two issues at play in this controversy. One is the nature of ID and its suitability for public school classrooms and the other is the strategy and motives of the Dover school board. Viewpoint has argued that these should be considered separately, but unfortunately few observers and commentators have done this. We believe Dover's intentions are appropriate and commendable, but they would have done well to have secured advice from people who have some experience with the scientific and philosophical issues involved before formulating their policy statement. This document suffers from a regrettable lack of precision and coherence and shows all the signs of having been patched together from recommendations by several disparate groups.

Whether the board will continue to stick to their plans to implement the new policy despite the Discovery Institute's recommendations remains to be seen, but whatever course they follow they would help themselves by revising the policy statement before embarking upon it.

Thanks to Byron Borger for drawing our attention to a couple of the above-cited articles.

Victor David Hanson on the Left

Victor Davis Hanson has a must-read column at National Review Online for anyone interested in the moral decline and increasing irrelevancy of the left both at home and in Europe. The temptation is to post the whole piece but for the sake of brevity we'll offer only a part of it:

So both here and abroad, the Western public believes that there is a double standard in the moral judgment of our left-leaning media, universities, and politicians - that we are not supposed to ask how Christians are treated in Muslim societies, only how free Islamists in Western mosques are to damn their hosts; or that we are to think beheading, suicide murdering, and car bombing moral equivalents to the sexual humiliation and roguery of Abu Ghraib - apparently because the former involves post-colonial victims and the latter privileged, exploitive Americans. Most sane people, however, privately disagree, and distinguish between a civilian's head rolling on the ground and a snap shot of an American guard pointing at the genitalia of her terrorist ward.

What is preached in the madrassas on the West Bank, in Pakistan, and throughout the Gulf is no different from the Nazi doctrine of racial hatred. What has changed, of course, is that unlike our grandfathers, we have lost the courage to speak out against it. In one of the strangest political transformations of our age, the fascist Islamic Right has grafted its cause onto that of the Left's boutique "multiculturalism," hoping to earn a pass for its hate by posing as the "other" and reaping the benefits of liberal guilt due to purported victimization. By any empirical standard, what various Palestinian cliques have done on the West Bank - suicide murdering, lynching without trial of their own people, teaching small children to hate and kill Jews - should have earned them all Hitlerian sobriquets rather than U.N. praise.

"Imperialism" and "hegemony" explain nothing about recent American intervention abroad - not when dictators such as Noriega, Milosevic, the Taliban, and Saddam Hussein were taken out by the U.S. military. There are no shahs and Your Excellencies in their places, but rather consensual governments whose only sin was that they came on the heels of American arms rather than U.N. collective snoozing. There really was no secret Afghan pipeline behind toppling the Taliban, nor a French-like oil concession to be had for the United States from the new Iraqi interim government.

Many of Michael Moore's heroic "Minutemen" of the Sunni Triangle are hired killers - hooded fascists in the pay of ex-Baathists and Saddamites, along with Islamic terrorists and jihadists who hate the very idea of democracy in the heart of the Arab world. The collective cursus honorum of these Saddamite holdovers during the last two decades - gassing the Kurds, committing atrocities against the Iranians, looting and pillaging in Kuwait, launching missiles into Israel and Saudi Arabia, slaughtering Shiites and again Kurds, and assassinating Western and U.N. aid workers - rank right up there with the work of the SS and KGB.

It won't do any longer to attribute American outrage over the U.N. to a vast right-wing conspiracy led by red-state senators and Fox News. All the standing ovations for Kofi Annan cannot hide the truth that the Oil-for-Food scandal exceeds Enron. Indeed, Ken Lay's malfeasance never involved the deaths of thousands, while cronies siphoned off food and supplies from a starving populace. The U.S. military does not tolerate mass rape and plunder among its troops, as is true of the U.N. peacekeepers throughout Africa.

There can be no serious U.N. moral sense as long as illiberal regimes - a Syria, Iran, or Cuba - vote in the General Assembly and the Security Council stymies solutions out of concern for an autocratic China that swallowed Tibet. Millions were slaughtered in Cambodia, Rwanda, and Darfur while New York bureaucrats either condemned Israel or damned anyone who censured their own inaction and corruption. Rather than faulting those who fault the U.N., leftists should lament the betrayal of the spirit of the liberal U.N. Charter by regimes that are neither democratic nor liberal but who seek legitimacy solely on their ability to win concessions and sympathy from guilt-ridden Westerners.

So it is also time to take a hard look at the heroes and villains of Hollywood, liberal Democrats, and the Euro elites. Many are as obsessed with damning the senile dictator of Chile as they are with excusing the unelected President for Life Fidel Castro. But let us be frank. A murderous Pinochet probably killed fewer of his own than did a mass-murdering Castro, and left Chile in better shape than contemporary Cuba is in. And the former is long gone, while the latter is still long in power.

This is great stuff and there's much, much more of it at the link. The left has made itself irrelevant because of its moral inanity, its proclivity for seeing evil only in the U.S. and its allies, and its alacrity in blaming America for all the world's ills. It has discredited itself by sacrificing truth on the altar of political advantage and by following, supporting, or defending a burgeoning array of mountebanks, charlatans, thugs, tyrants, and thieves. The left believes themselves to be ascending the slope of a new and glorious future when in fact their climb is leading them to the crest of the ash heap of history.

First Class Dunderheads

Readers will doubtless suppose that the following account is a fiction, a fabrication. No one, the reader will think, can be as blockheaded as the administrators in this school district must be. Yet it is true. This is not a fabrication. It pains us to post it because we believe that too often teachers and administrators are unfairly criticized, but there are some in the employ of our communities who are not criticized enough, and apparently the supervisors in this district are among them.

On December 7th an announcement was made in a nearby elementary school (which, for reasons which will be explained later, will remain unnamed) to the effect that students will not be able to access books on hunting (!), Christmas, or Christianity from the school library. These books, some 35 to 40 titles, were going to be removed from the shelves.

One child at the school told her mother about the announcement, and the mother decided to check it out for herself. She called the elementary supervisor who explained to her that the books needed to be reviewed because they had religious content, and the district didn't want books in the library which were too evangelical. Besides, the supervisor went on, there was an imbalance between books partial to Christianity and those of other religions.

The mother asked which titles would be pulled and was refused an answer. She indicated that she would like to go to the school to find out, and was told not to do that. She went anyway, obtained a visitor's pass, and found the books piled on a table in the library. She began copying the titles, and was confronted by the building principal who asked her to desist and leave the building. The banned books included the "Touched By an Angel" books as well as Lisa Biemer's "Let's Roll", written in honor of her husband who died a hero on 9/11. No books involving mention of any religion other than Christianity were in the stack.

In the course of her discussion with the principal she was told that there can be no religious symbols in the school and that even the cross she wore on her necklace would not be permitted on a faculty member. Evidently, there was a fear that youngsters might be unduly influenced by a respected teacher's choice in jewelry to favor what that teacher implicitly favors, and that would be somehow unconstitutional. This suggests that these administrators would also object if teachers were overtly instructing their children not to hit or make fun of others, and not to cheat, lie, steal, exclude others from games, or be intolerant of their classmates because these behaviors are morally wrong. Surely the inculcation of moral values derived from a teacher's religious convictions is even more unacceptable to the district than wearing a piece of jewelry which may or may not express a teacher's endorsement of some vague religious belief. It would be interesting to discover how often teachers are admonished in this district for explicitly imposing their morality upon their students.

The mother was told by the principle that the hunting books were being pulled because a young boy might learn from them how to kill animals with a gun and then use that information to shoot people. This statement all by itself should be enough to promote this principle to dunderhead first class except that would seem too much like a Boy Scout award and Boy Scout literature is certainly next to be committed to the flames in this district.

A day or so later the superintendent called the mother's home and informed her husband that the books would be available to students but would not be displayed. Clever. Third through fifth graders would be able to read the books but only if they knew the secret procedure for accessing them. This reveals what the superintendent thinks of Christianity. He wishes to treat it like stores treat pornography.

The couple then called school board members to complain of the censorship and the religious discrimination in the district in which they pay taxes. The board members, being board members, were somewhat non-committal, reluctant to step on the administrative prerogatives of their staff. Even so, by Thursday evening the superintendent had called back to tell them that the books were going to be reshelved the next day and that he thought they should now halt their campaign. He was obviously concerned that the couple was on the verge of taking this story to the newspapers and local talk radio, and the thought of that kind of publicity evidently softened the district's stance.

Since the couple now had a promise from the superintendent that the books would not be removed, they decided it would be improper to go through with making their concerns public, and so Viewpoint is not divulging which district or district personnel were involved either. However, the only reason that the district relented was because they had been caught. If the announcement hadn't been made to the children last Tuesday, or if this mother/taxpayer had not decided that she was going to check the matter out for herself, the authorities would have removed the books and no one would have been the wiser. So, if the district is later found to have gone back on its word then such courtesies as the couple (and Viewpoint) are presently extending them will be set aside.

This whole episode raises the question of how many other schools in the district, or indeed in the state, have quietly purged their collections of any books which present any mention of Christianity (or hunting!). Is there a surreptitious effort among public school personnel in our local school districts to censor religious reading material? This is a question to which an answer would be easy to find simply by e-mailing or calling your school's librarian. If anyone does learn of other instances of this we invite you to let us know about it through our Feedback Forum.

The Mullahs' Dilemma, and Ours

Bill Roggio The Fourth Rail has a very perceptive piece of analysis of the increasingly likely conflict with Iran from the Iranians' point of view. It's based on an article written by a University of Tehran professor of political science who writes about how Iran would fight a military invader. Roggio replies by saying:

The Iranian military leadership is misguided if they believe they can out-maneuver, out-think, out-man or out-fight American forces in a conventional fight. One thing that should be clear is that America's military has no peer on the conventional battlefield. The American military's command, control, communications, information, weapons and technology are several levels of magnitude greater than Iranian capabilities. If the "certain weaknesses" the Iranians are referring to is the soft logistical chain, then they are not accounting for the U.S. military's adaptations to this problem. The Army has learned valuable lessons in Iraq, and is armoring supply vehicles and increasing the training of support personnel, many of whom also have combat experience in Iraq. And unlike Iran's military, American forces are seasoned combat veterans accustomed to the difficulties of war.

In reality, Iran's ability to strike back lies exclusively in guerrilla warfare, terrorist attacks and its missile technology. Iran's true threats lay in its unconventional assets: Hezbollah, ballistic missiles, and chemical and biological weapons arsenals. Iran's missiles would be able to strike American forces in the region, and tipped with chemical or biological agents, pose a great threat. Dr. Afrasiabi confirms that these unconventional forces are a key to Iran's strategy to counter an American military advance. Interestingly enough, Dr. Afrasiabi neglects to mention the potential of utilizing Hezbollah as an overseas proxy against American military and civilian installations, which should not be discounted. Nor does he mention unleashing al Qaeda personnel who have been sheltered in Iran. Perhaps this would be a tacit admission of Iran's complicity in global terrorism.

Roggio notes that the American military squeeze on Iran is having serious economic consequences and he concludes that the mullahs can't endure this situation indefinitely:

America's policy of containment is frightening the Iranian mullahs, and is forcing them to consider open confrontation with the United States military. Dr. Afrasiabi's analysis indicates that the Iranian military is planning to fight the last war (Lebanon, Iraq) but is not considering America's ability to adapt to weaknesses exposed in Iraq. Iran's advantages include the expected diplomatic pressure leveraged by the international community, Hezbollah operations overseas, a potential nuclear threat, and America's lack of forces at hand at the moment. Due to American military superiority, Iran would be reduced to fighting an unconventional war, much like the current insurgency in Iraq, but American forces have gained valuable combat experience in theater. Iran's ability to launch missiles undetected would not last forever, and the advent of armed unmanned aerial vehicles, which were not present in the First Gulf War, will reduce Iran's ability to launch at will. Any use of WMD will have serious consequences, and will be met in kind. No doubt an American campaign in Iran would be difficult and costly, but allowing Iran to become a nuclear power would have a chilling effect on reshaping the Middle East to reduce the threat of state sponsored terrorism.

Iran has an out - disavow support for Hezbollah, turn over al Qaeda sheltered in-country, and quit their nuclear program. The choice is up to the mullahs, but based on their past history of open defiance to America's presence in the Middle East, the likelihood of Iran backing down from a conflict is low.

The longer we are tied down in Iraq the more time Tehran has to put together a nuclear deterrent. This is one of the main reasons why Iran is working so hard to prevent Iraq from stabilizing. The mullahs prefer to see Iraq descend into chaos for several reasons but chief among them is that it will keep the United states occupied and deter them from getting involved in similar adventures in Iran.