Deep Defense

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

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

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

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

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

The Patriot Act

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

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

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

Quick Lesson in Recent History

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

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

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

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

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

Lord, please send us more John Howards.

Thanks to Hugh Hewitt for the transcript.

Julian Robertson Speaks Out

From the link:

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

...

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

Got Gold?

Stand and Deliver

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

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

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

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

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

Creationists in Convention

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Outraged for Weeks at the Roberts Pick

Andrew Sullivan has this:

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

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

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

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

Watch China

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

China Severs Peg To Dollar

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Consider this:

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

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

1. Higher consumer prices.

2. Higher interest rates.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Blog at Hearts and Minds

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

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

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

What It's All About

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

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

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

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

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

Replying to Ann Coulter

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

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

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

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

Conservative Dissent

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Only Fools Believe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The President's Pick

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

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

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

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

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

Chrenkoff's 31st Installment

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

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

Reducing Crime

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The authors, in fact, point out that:

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

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

Media Dishonesty in the Plame Affair

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

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

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

Waving the Wand

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

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

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

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

Cal Thomas' Good Idea

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

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

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

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