The State of Hate

We often hear that there's too much hatred in America, and indeed there no doubt is, but much of what's sometimes called "hatred" really trivializes the word. In any case, whatever the state of hate in America, it's strictly minor league compared to what can be found elsewhere in the world, even in civilized countries like, say, France.

Consider this piece from NRO:

Late last night a Parisian court finally announced its verdict in the Ilan Halimi murder trial, which I first wrote about over three years ago here. As I noted at the time, while The Independent in London headlined its piece on the murder "This anti-Semitic attack is terrifying" and Le Monde called it "the anti-Semitic crime of an era," other papers - notably The Guardian's sister paper The Observer in London - scrupulously avoided any mention of the fact that the victim was a Jew, and The New York Times was initially silent about the story.

Youssouf Fofana, leader of the gang that masterminded Halimi's kidnap, torture and murder, which was described by a leading police officer as the most brutal and sadistic in modern French history, was sentenced to life (with a minimum of 22 years). Of the 26 other defendants in the case, two were acquitted and the rest received sentences of between six months and 18 years. Fofana admitted in court that the plan was to "kill a Jew". Halimi, a 23 year-old shop clerk, was chosen at random.

At the end of 24 days of torture that left cuts and burn marks all over his body, including his eyes and throat, Halimi, who was handcuffed throughout his ordeal, was doused in alcohol and set alight. One of the young torturers told police his accomplices took turns to stub out cigarettes on Ilan's forehead and tongue while voicing hatred for Jews. They cut bits off his flesh, fingers and ears.

Fofana, who screamed "Allah Akbar!" (God is greatest) during the trial, has called on others to now murder Halimi's parents and other French Jews. Scores of police, some in full riot gear, took up posts around the Palais de Justice in central Paris as the verdict was read out last night.

The lawyer for Halimi family's immediately announced he would lodge an appeal against some of the lenient sentences the other gang members received.

Halimi's remains have been reburied at Jerusalem's Mount Herzl Cemetery after repeated threats by anti-Semites to attack his grave in France.

Nidra Poller, who was in the court for the verdict last night, writes from Paris that the strange timing of the verdict (after 10 pm on Friday when much of Paris had already departed for the "14th July" weekend, the biggest French holiday of the year, and also after the Jewish Sabbath had started when Halimi's friends and families, many of whom are observant Jews, had left the court) was probably no accident and designed to minimize media coverage. Indeed state-owned France 3 TV unashamedly admitted that the verdict was announced during the Sabbath in order to avoid incidents.

"Allah Akbar," indeed. If Allah is at all just Halimi's torturers will, in the world to come, yearn to be back in the French prisons.

There are haters in this country, to be sure, and doubtless there are some individuals capable of doing to other human beings what these savages did to Halimi, but thankfully it seems we still have a way to go before we've degenerated to the level of barbarity that some Muslims in France have achieved. Thankfully, such acts of pure evil are not yet in this country front page news.

RLC

Common Sense vs. the Ninth Circuit

The LA Times informs us of yet another assault on common sense by the liberal left. This time it centers around whether a pharmacist has the right not to carry abortifacients in his/her pharmacy:

Pharmacists are obliged to dispense the Plan B pill, even if they are personally opposed to the "morning after" contraceptive on religious grounds, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

In a case that could affect policy across the western U.S., a supermarket pharmacy owner in Olympia, Wash., failed in a bid to block 2007 regulations that required all Washington pharmacies to stock and dispense the pills.

Family-owned Ralph's Thriftway and two pharmacists employed elsewhere sued Washington state officials over the requirement. The plaintiffs asserted that their Christian beliefs prevented them from dispensing the pills, which can prevent implantation of a recently fertilized egg. They said that the new regulations would force them to choose between keeping their jobs and heeding their religious objections to a medication they regard as a form of abortion.

Ralph's owners, Stormans Inc., and pharmacists Rhonda Mesler and Margo Thelen sought protection under the 1st Amendment right to free exercise of religion and won a temporary injunction from the U.S. District Court in Seattle pending trial on the constitutionality of the regulations. That order prevented state officials from penalizing pharmacists who refused to dispense Plan B as long as they referred consumers to a nearby pharmacy where it was available.

On Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals lifted the injunction, saying the district court was wrong in issuing it based on an erroneous finding that the rules violated the free exercise of religion clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air offers this opinion. Unfortunately, Morrissey's opinion is so sensible that the jurists who sit on the 9th Circuit were sure to reject it:

There have been two different issues in the legal fight over Plan B. In one group, pharmacists not working for themselves - for instance, at chain pharmacies - objected to dispensing the pill and wanted job protection despite their refusal. Those cases hardly stand up to scrutiny. The owner of the pharmacy has the right to decide on his own inventory and what to sell, and the employees of that pharmacy either should follow that policy or find a job somewhere else if it offends them. It falls into the same category as a cashier who refuses to handle meat at the checkout counter because he's a vegetarian.

However, this is something else. The owners of the pharmacy do not want to stock the pills for their own reasons. Even apart from religious grounds, that still seems to be their decision in the marketplace. If they don't want to sell aspirin, or Ginsu knives, or inflatable life vests for swimming pools, that should be their decision, too. If their customers object to their policies, they will find other pharmacies to patronize. The government has a public interest in telling retailers what they cannot sell for safety reasons (like dynamite, as an example), but should not force business owners to sell something they do not want to sell.

How would Judge Sotomayor rule on this case? We may have an opportunity to find out since it seems that the pharmacists are going to appeal it as far as they can. We wish them luck.

RLC

Why?

Like many other Americans you may have wondered why in the world the Obama administration released back to Iran five terrorist operatives who had been captured in Iraq. You may have wondered why we would freed people who were implicated in the deaths of over four hundred Americans and countless civilian Iraqis to a government that is hip-deep in fomenting death and destruction in Lebanon and Israel, which refuses any concessions on its pursuit of nuclear weapons, and which is fresh off the rigging of an election and the murders of its citizens. What possible basis could there be for this shameful act of abasement and appeasement?

Andrew McCarthy offers a pretty good analysis of this question at National Review Online. His piece is compelling and not very flattering to Mr. Obama. McCarthy doesn't use these words, but he gives the impression that if we were being led by people who have no particular love for this country, no particular pride in either our history or our traditions - if we were being led by people who see the U.S. as the source of all the world's problems - they wouldn't govern much differently than Barack Obama and the congressional Democrats are governing today.

During the sixties leftist students demanded that AmeriKKKa be brought low. Those students have now risen to positions of power and influence and find themselves ideally situated to bring about the destruction they dreamt of in their youth.

Letting those who kill American soldiers go free, saddling the nation with so much debt that we collapse under the burden, nationalizing as much of the private sector as they can get their hands on, repeatedly apologizing to the entire world for vague historical shortcomings, and refusing to protect our national borders are all very perplexing policies, but they're not accidents or misjudgments. They're completely consistent with the belief that capitalism is evil and that America is the cause of most of the world's problems.

Read McCarthy's piece. It's worth the time.

RLC

A Little Late

Liberal talk show host Randi Rhodes says she has knowledge about Al Franken that leads her to believe that he'll make an awful U.S. Senator, but she refused to broadcast this information during the election campaign, leaving it instead to Franken's Republican opponent, Norm Coleman, to disclose.

Now she comes out, after Franken has been certified for the Senate, and says that he's a very bad choice for the job. Can you imagine any liberal who had information about George Bush in 2004 that would have changed people's minds about voting for him and not shouting it from the housetops? They were so desperate for any dirt they could find on Bush that people like Dan Rather were making stuff up.

Now Rhodes expects us to think that she had some noble motive for not discrediting Al Franken when she had the chance? Isn't it more likely that she knew she'd incur the wrath of her fellow liberals if she diminished Franken's chances against Coleman? Isn't it more likely that rather than put her country first she put her popularity and career first?

Anyway, courtesy of Radio Equalizer, here's her statement on the ascendancy of Mr. Franken to the Senate:

This is a little bit like watching a house burn down and then, after the place is reduced to ashes, calling the fire company. Thanks for waiting until after the election to tell the people of Minnesota they made an absurd choice for senator, Randi. What good does it do to tell everyone now?

RLC

What Happened in Honduras?

Mona Charen brings us up to speed on the goings on in Honduras and also why Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is a serious no-goodnik:

The U.S. State Department called the events in Honduras an "attempted coup," and demanded that Mr. Zelaya be returned to power in order to facilitate the "restoration of democratic order."

There was an attempted coup in Honduras, but it was Zelaya who initiated it, not his opponents. As the invaluable Mary Anastasia O'Grady reported in the Wall Street Journal, Zelaya, a Hugo Chavez acolyte, was attempting to ape his mentor by rewriting Honduras' constitution. Under Honduran law, however, the president cannot call a referendum on the constitution on his own authority. O'Grady explains: "While Honduran law allows for a constitutional rewrite ... A constituent assembly can only be called through a national referendum approved by its Congress.

But Mr. Zelaya declared the vote on his own and had Mr. Chavez ship him the necessary ballots from Venezuela. The Supreme Court ruled his referendum unconstitutional, and it instructed the military not to carry out the logistics of the vote as it normally would do." The attorney general of Honduras, as well as the nation's Supreme Court, had declared the referendum illegal.

Zelaya attempted an end run. O'Grady writes: "Calculating that some critical mass of Hondurans would take his side, the president decided he would run the referendum himself. So on Thursday he led a mob that broke into the military installation where the ballots from Venezuela were being stored and then had his supporters distribute them in defiance of the Supreme Court's order."

He also fired those military people who would not violate the Supreme Court's order and distribute the ballots. Anyway, Charen has more helpful information on the sort of democracy Mr. Zelaya had in mind for Honduras at the link where she also describes the tyranny Hugo Chavez is imposing in Venezuela.

Meanwhile the Obama administration has cut off military aid to the new Honduran government and is demanding that Zelaya be reinstated. One can only shake one's head at where our new loyalties seem to lie.

RLC

Coyne's Confusion

Earlier this year we posted a five part response to Jerry Coyne's essay in The New Republic in which he argued that science and religion are incompatible. The core of our case was that Coyne's argument was essentially confused and irrational.

Now Martin Cothran at Evolution News and Views wittily, and perhaps more succinctly, makes the same point.

The Darwinian materialists really are at loose ends trying to make the case for a purely materialist worldview without admitting that their materialism is really a mere philosophical preference that no one should feel intellectually compelled to accept.

Check out either our response or Cothran's essay to get a sense of the confusion and embarrassing self-contradictions employed by those anxious to convince us that religious belief is epistemically illegitimate.

RLC

Ecological Benefits

Ecological benefits of global warming keep coming to light even though the articles that mention them rarely draw the conclusion that, biologically speaking, global climate change is not only not new, it's also not necessarily a bad thing to have happen.

Here's another example from New Scientist:

"Teeming with life" may not be the description that springs to mind when thinking of the Arctic Ocean, but that could soon change as global warming removes the region's icy lid. A study of what the Arctic looked like just before dinosaurs were wiped off the planet has provided a glimpse of what could be to come within decades.

Ice-free summers and icy winters are precisely what glaciologists fear could happen in the Arctic within decades. Over the past few years, wind pattern and warm temperatures have been gradually thinning Arctic sea ice, making it less and less likely to survive the summer. Some believe the Arctic could be ice-free during the summer as soon as 2030.

The researchers say that the sheer number of diatoms locked in the mud suggests that when the dinosaurs roamed the Earth the Arctic Ocean was biologically very rich during the summer, on a par with the most productive regions of the Southern Ocean today. Since diatoms are at the very bottom of the food chain, waters rich in diatoms can support a lot of larger life forms as well.

"On the basis of our findings, we can say that it is likely that a future Arctic Ocean free of summer sea ice will also be highly productive," says Kemp. Arctic fauna today is limited by the region's harsh conditions. The ocean is home to very few species of fish - such as the Arctic cod - which in turn support seals, whales and polar bears.

While more diatoms during the summer does not mean that larger animals will spontaneously appear in the Arctic over the coming decades, it could give species that currently live further south an incentive to move into the region by providing them with food. The most likely scenario is one in which larger species migrate to the Arctic in the summer to feed on the enriched summer food chain, then move back south during the dark winters.

Why scientists should "fear" that ice-free summers will be typical of Arctic summers within twenty years is not made clear by the article. It seems to me that the appearance of a nutrient-rich habitat for wildlife is something that biologists would rather welcome, but I suppose there are the politics to consider. Not only is there a risk of incurring their colleagues' censure if scientists wax too enthusiastic about the advantages wrought by climate change, but all the global warming Chicken Littles will be implicitly rebuked, and President Obama will never get his energy bills passed.

RLC

American Racism

Those who say that racism is no longer a problem in this country are simply burying their head in the sand. They choose to ignore the evidence that racism in America is as virulent as ever.

For example, Drudge recently linked to a gut-wrenching story of a group of about fifty white kids attacking and beating a black man and his wife and two children, along with a couple of their friends, at a Fourth of July fireworks celebration in Akron, Ohio.

The police are investigating but have so far declined to call this a hate crime even though the young thugs were yelling "this is a white world" and "this is our world" as they beat their victims with kicks and punches.

Surely there's something rotten in a society that turns out young men so prone to hatred and violence. What are these kids' parents teaching them, or as is probably the case, did they actually learn their hatred and racism from their parents?

What more reason the police need to make this a hate crime is hard to say, and, in fact, the reluctance of the police to file that charge strongly suggests that there may be some bigotry among the Akron authorities as well. It seems that some races are more protected than others in this country.

All of that is quite true and it tells us something ugly about our culture. The only thing in the preceding that's not true is the racial identities of the perpetrators and victims in this report, which were reversed, but you probably suspected that.

RLC

Facing the Tyrants

I know that DEBKAfile doesn't enjoy a reputation for utter reliability so I offer the following with that caveat. Nevertheless, according to reports at DEBKAfilethere have been between 5000 to 6000 Iranians arrested since the massive protests of two weeks ago. Other sources put the figure at roughly half that. Even so, a number of those arrested have made televised "confessions" and appear to have been tortured.

Mir Hossein Mousavi, the man who seemed to have actually won the disputed election that precipitated the mass demonstrations, may be brought to trial according to the DEBKAfile post:

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, driven by a thirst for revenge, is preparing a wave of show trials, public confessions and executions to crush the opposition which dared to refute the legitimacy of his election. The West, especially the Obama administration, hoping the bloody crackdown was over, can forget about re-engaging Tehran in talks on the nuclear controversy any time soon, when Mir Hossein Mousavi and the reformist ex-president Mohammed Khatami are denounced for "acting as America's fifth column."

Hossein Shariatmadari, writing in the conservative Kayhan daily Saturday, July 4, said Mousavi must be put on trial as a "US agent" who committed "horrible crimes and treason." The writer is a close adviser to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and must be presumed to represent his boss's views.

Whether Mousavi is actually executed or not, it's almost certain that many others will be. The current regime was born in mass executions of their enemies and can't afford to allow the protests to continue to challenge their legitimacy.

President Obama needs to rethink his unwillingness to use force to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. He has gotten no help at the G-8 summit in Italy from the Russians, who are up to their eyeballs in complicity with the Iranian weapons development program, or anyone else, and without Russian pressure there's little the West can do to stop Tehran without using military means.

When the executions start in Tehran there should be a total blockade of oil and other goods to Iran, and if that fails to stop the mullahs then there should be a reprise of shock and awe on the nuclear weapons facilities in the country. The Iranians are a nation of sophisticated, civilized people ruled by an elite of Islamic Neanderthals. The world cannot afford to allow the Neanderthals access to the most fearsome weapons in history.

RLC

Stay Classy, Mr. President

One wonders what will transpire between the President and First Lady when she sees this photo of her husband, Mr. Sarkozy, and an unidentified passerby at a G-8 photo-op:

Ogler in Chief

And you thought that this sort of thing ended when the Clintons left Washington.

UPDATE: ABC News has posted the entire video sequence here, and it appears to exculpate the president. The photo above merely catches him turning to assist the woman behind him down the steps.

At least the video absolves our president. France's president, not so much.

RLC

Economic Tsunami

I have a quirk that manifests itself just about every time I go to the beach. As I sit there in my chair gazing out over the ocean I can't help imagining what a one hundred foot tsunami would look like as it rose up just off the coast. I picture with a shudder how much death, damage, and devastation such an unimaginably powerful wave would cause to the entire coastline. I think a lot of people might be starting to experience similar fantasies right now about our economy.

Whether you think the trend illustrated by the graph below is good or bad will depend upon your point of view, of course, but I wonder if it's not an indication that a significant number of people are emerging from their hope-and-change trance and starting to realize that the current administration's policies are generating an economic tsunami.

The wave crest of a tsunami may not be particularly high at first, but as it approaches the shore it suddenly rises to enormous heights and wipes out everything in its path. People standing on the beach of our economy are seeing the surf suddenly rush out to sea. The ocean is beginning to swell and rise to alarming proportions in the distance, and many, especially among political independents, are gathering up their children and preparing to flee.

The green line represents those who think the President is doing a good job. The red line represents those who think he's not:

When people consider the cumulative effect another "stimulus" bill, higher taxes, the cap and trade energy bill, nationalized health care, and astronomical deficits and debt will have on their personal finances they begin to feel genuine fear for their future and that of their children. I suspect the above trend lines reflect that growing fear.

The really bad news for White House political strategists is this: Eventually the media may tire of playing the Washington Generals to Barack Obama's Harlem Globetrotters, and when they do these numbers will get much, much worse for the President.

If the media starts reporting the consequences of our debt and extraordinary spending binges voters will start fleeing the beach in panicked thousands as the tsunami looms high over their heads, and then that red line will shoot right off the top of the chart.

RLC

Spiritual Alcoholics

Mark Galli at Christianity Today writes that it's been a tough couple of months for evangelical Christians:

We discovered that Carrie Prejean, Miss California, sudden heroine in the gay marriage debate, posed nude for the cameras to kick-start her modeling career.

Then there were the Gosselins, a seemingly devout couple who were sacrificially raising a "ginormous" family on reality TV for all to see their Christian witness. They have decided to divorce. They mouthed the usual mantra, about doing it for the sake of the kids-and the hearts of the devout nationwide sank in despair.

This week we're squirming over South Carolina Governor, and active Christian, Mark Sanford. Every day we discover more sordid details of his extra-marital affair, with Sanford himself revealing, well, just way too much information. Do we really need to know how many times he kissed his paramour, and where they met, and which meetings resulted in "crossing the line" and so forth? Now he's trying to spiritually justify staying in office. It feels so narcissistic and self-serving.

It's discouraging to see Christians who could have been models of our faith become merely examples of what G. K. Chesterton called the one doctrine subject to empirical proof: original sin.

There is something in the evangelical psyche that denies this reality. Yes, we're a movement that preaches repentance and confession of sin as a chief means of grace. But after conversion, our holiness heritage kicks in. We preach, teach, and live "discipleship," "obedience," and "following" Jesus. We're deathly afraid of cheap grace. We assume that with sufficient exhortation and moral effort, our sins will become smaller than a widow's mite and our righteousness larger than life.

This is coupled with the long-standing evangelical myth that there should be something different about the Christian. A look. An attitude. A lifestyle. Something noticeable, something that causes the unbeliever to pause and wonder, "What does that person have?" Because it is such an integral part of our evangelistic method, we spend enormous amounts of psychic energy trying exude that something.

After rightly suggesting that the flaws of Jon and Kate reflect our movement's flaws, she says that we must do things differently: Find new role models, practice forgiveness better, and take marriage vows more seriously. Do, do, do. Then she concludes, "Then, and only then, will Christians have something to offer the world." The problem, of course, is that there is no empirical evidence to suggest that Christians will actually do these things consistently. Not private Christians. Not public Christians-it's only a matter of months, maybe days (!) before another scandal will be revealed in the press.

Such moral exhortations are no doubt needed, but we must never believe that "then and only then" will we Christians have something "to offer the world." What we offer the world is not ourselves or our moral example or our spiritual integrity. What we offer the world is our broken lives, saying, "We are sinners saved by grace." What we offer the world is Jesus Christ and him crucified.

All of this is true, but too many of Christianity's detractors draw from these sad truths precisely the wrong conclusion. They occasionally think they're making some devastating criticism of Christianity by pointing out that too many Christians are no better in their personal lives than those outside the faith. That's a charge that cannot and should not be denied, but the question it should prompt is: So what follows from that? Does it invalidate Christianity that Christians are flawed human beings like everyone else? Christians don't (or at least shouldn't) claim to be better people than those outside the Faith. They claim only to have a reason to think that some behavior is wrong and to have a motive to strive to improve it. Secular man has neither.

It has been noted that a church is like an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. The pews are filled with people wrestling with demons of one sort or another, and a single moment of weakness can toss any of them off the wagon and back into their own personal agonies. It happens to all of us amid the stresses and strains of work and family life. For the critic to point at us and say, "See, Christians are no better than anyone else so Christianity is false and has nothing to offer," is like pointing at an alcoholic fighting to stay sober who nevertheless succumbs and takes a drink, and saying, "See, AA members are no better than a drunk in the street, so AA is worthless."

Christianity is not something people are urged to consider because it makes its followers perfect. Christians urge others to consider the Gospel because they believe the Gospel is true; they believe that it offers grace and forgiveness to people who very much need it; it offers a basis for moral behavior in a world that has no grounds for saying that anyone is obligated to act one way rather than another; it holds up a mirror to our faces and makes us aware of our faults and flaws; it gives life meaning and hope that no secular worldview can offer; and it helps people to be better than they would otherwise have been. It does not promise that if you become a Christian you'll be a moral exemplar.

Every person, Christian or not, is wrestling with at least one "addiction" in their life. It could be alcohol or drugs, sex or power, anger or lying, unkindness or selfishness, money or pride, hypocrisy or self-righteousness. Everyone, Christian or non-Christian, has something in his or her life that, like the alcoholic, may be defeated for a time but from which he or she is never completely freed. Christian faith gives people the resources to help them wage the life-long struggle with that addiction, but, like AA, it doesn't deliver them from it. It offers them forgiveness and acceptance, not total deliverance, not in this life. Christ, Christians believe, helps us be better people than we would have been had we not been Christians.

It's very disappointing and sad to see anyone fail to remain "on the wagon," but it's a little odd of the critics to fault the wagon just because the people riding it are, to borrow a phrase from Nietzsche, human, all too human.

RLC

Five Cups a Day

Here's a piece from Science News that may prove very helpful for people concerned about Alzheimers:

When aged mice bred to develop symptoms of Alzheimer's disease were given caffeine - the equivalent of five cups of coffee a day - their memory impairment was reversed, report University of South Florida researchers at the Florida Alzheimer's Disease Research Center.

Back-to-back studies published online July 6 in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, show caffeine significantly decreased abnormal levels of the protein linked to Alzheimer's disease, both in the brains and in the blood of mice exhibiting symptoms of the disease. Both studies build upon previous research by the Florida ADRC group showing that caffeine in early adulthood prevented the onset of memory problems in mice bred to develop Alzheimer's symptoms in old age.

Five cups is a lot of coffee for some people. In fact that much caffeine would probably kill you, but at least you'd remember why you were dying.

Maybe it's time to invest in coffee stocks.

RLC

Neo-Con Vindication

Dan Calabrese argues that 2009 is the year of vindication of neo-conservative ideals. In a way he's right. Here's how he opens his essay:

Regardless of whether the current Iranian regime survives the uprising it provoked with its sham election, the events in Tehran are the latest affirmation of a pretty darn happy fact:

The first year of the post-Bush era is turning out to be a triumphant one for neoconservatism.

It is deliciously ironic that a doctrine America supposedly rejected, even though few really knew what it was, has emerged as a set of principles no one seriously questions as the world evolves to prove its wisdom. Indeed, in order to escape the political firestorm that nearly engulfed him this week, President Obama had to finally give in and talk like a neocon.

So what is neo-conservatism and how is it being vindicated in Iran? Read the rest of Calabrese's argument at the link.

RLC

As California Goes, So Goes the Nation

Kevin Hassett at Bloomberg.com declares that California's economic nightmare will kill Obamanomics. Everything that's wrong with California is writ large in the federal government. When people see how that once great and prosperous state is turning itself into an economic basket case unable to pay its bills and without any light at the end of the fiscal tunnel, they'll finally, one hopes, come to see that Obama and his team have been almost criminally reckless in driving up our national debt and insuring economic hard times in this country for generations to come.

Here are some excerpts from Hassett's column:

With California mired in a budget crisis, largely the result of a political impasse that makes spending cuts and tax increases impossible, Controller John Chiang said the state planned to issue $3.3 billion in IOU's in July alone. Instead of cash, those who do business with California will get slips of paper.

The California morass has Democrats in Washington trembling. The reason is simple. If Obama's health-care plan passes, then we may well end up paying for it with federal slips of paper worth less than California's. Obama has bet everything on passing health care this year. The publicity surrounding the California debt fiasco almost assures his resounding defeat.

California has engaged in an orgy of spending, but, compared with our federal government, its legislators should feel chaste. The California deficit this year is now north of $26 billion. The U.S. federal deficit will be, according to the latest numbers, almost 70 times larger.

The federal picture is so bleak because the Obama administration is the most fiscally irresponsible in the history of the U.S. I would imagine that he would be the intergalactic champion as well, if we could gather the data on deficits on other worlds. Obama has taken George W. Bush's inattention to deficits and elevated it to an art form.

Nobody believes that [Obama's] unprecedented expansion of the welfare state will lead to enough economic growth. Nobody believes that it will pay for itself. Everyone understands that higher spending today begets higher spending tomorrow. That means that his economic strategy simply doesn't add up.

As bad as the California legislature has been over the years, it has never entered a fiscal crisis like the one that we face today and then doubled down with a massive spending increase. In the end, when times got tough, patriotic and sensible Californians of both parties stood up and began acting like adults.

With the price tag of Obama-care likely to exceed $1 trillion, moderate Democrats face a simple choice. They can jump off the cliff with the president, or they can stay true to the principles that they have espoused throughout their careers.

Perhaps there are two things for which we may hope: First, that moderate Senate Democrats will join Republicans to stop the runaway train that is Obamanomics, and, second, that voters in 2010 and 2012 will realize that the man and the party they thought were wizards of competence are in fact quite the opposite. By 2010 we will be clinging to the edge of the cliff with one hand. It'll still be possible to pull ourselves back up to safety by undoing some of the president's reckless excesses. But if in the meantime either Cap and Trade or Obama's health care plan become law our children will grow up in a country very much poorer than the one in which our parents grew up.

RLC

Generation Gap

Perhaps few events in recent years have defined the generation gap in our society more vividly than has the death of Michael Jackson. On the one hand are the boomers who enjoyed Jackson's music as he was growing up, but who were put off by his weirdness, his drug use, his self-mutilation, his crotch-groping, and his fondness for little boys.

On the other hand are the generation Xers who don't care about his weirdness, his drugs, his self-mutilation, and his fondness for little boys. All those things are rendered irrelevant to them by his ability to sing, dance and put on a great show. Having no gods and few heroes, a lot of younger people deify celebrities, and Jackson was nothing if not a celebrity. He was, in fact, an entertainment genius in an age when entertainment is all that gives meaning to so many lives. Consequently, his death has been mourned in many precincts as though it were a matter of cosmic importance.

It's sad that the emptiness and shallowness of modern life is such that when Jackson died many young people felt that a piece of them died with him. Like many gifted individuals he was a troubled wreck of a human being. His premature death is to be lamented, but he was not a god, he was not a role model, and he was not admirable, except for his talent as a performer. He was, in fact, a literal man-child for whom we should pray and feel pity. The encomiums and eulogies running 24/7 on our grief-stricken media notwithstanding, he was not someone who merited either shrines or adulation.

The significance of Jackson's life and death lies in their reinforcement of this lesson: Neither great fame, nor great wealth, nor great talent can bring happiness or meaning to life. Neither can identification with and idolization of those who have achieved these things.

RLC

If the Founders Were Modern Democrats

No Taxation Without Reading the Legislation:

Glenn McCoy

RLC

Winning the War on Drugs

One of many wars being fought beneath the media radar is the war against the Colombian drug cartels. Evidently, that war is going fairly well judging by this report on Strategy Page:

Last year, cocaine production fell by 28 percent in Colombia. In addition, security forces seized and destroyed a record 200 tons of the stuff. The main causes for this decline are a drop in demand from the 17 million cocaine users world-wide. Another side-effect of the global recession. But the cocaine gangs are also being driven out of business by the security forces. Many are moving operations to Peru (where production was up 4 percent last year, to 302 tons) and Bolivia (up 9 percent to 113 tons). Last year, Peru and Bolivia together produced about as much cocaine as Colombia.

The president of Bolivia is a former coca farmer (although he only backs the traditional chewing of the coca leaves, which has a mild narcotic effect). In Peru, the most productive coca growing areas are controlled by Shining Path, a vicious leftist movement that was almost wiped out in the 1990s, but is now making a comeback via cocaine profits.

As more Colombian cocaine operations move to Peru and Bolivia, the ones remaining in Colombia come under greater pressure from the security forces, and a population glad to see the drug trade move somewhere else, or just disappear. The reason for the many recent defeats of the drug gangs and leftist rebels has been better trained and equipped military and police units.

Not only is the war going well but Colombians themselves are prospering despite the current economic climate:

The leftist rebel group FARC's allies in the United States and Europe have tried to paint the government as the bad guys in all this, but that has had no effect on Colombians, who are safer and more prosperous than they have been in decades. Violent deaths have declined sharply in the last six years, and the economy is booming. The global recession caused a less than one percent dip in GDP during the first quarter of the year, and that's apparently as bad as it's going to get.

Sounds like Columbia is both safer and more prosperous than most major cities in the U.S. It might be a nice place to which to flee from the economic devastation about to be visited upon our once prosperous land by people who think that the best way for a nation to heal our economic woes is to emulate third world countries by burying our woes under a mountain of taxes and debt.

RLC

Eye Evolution

You've probably heard the Darwinian explanation for the evolution of vision - how a few light-sensitive cells underwent some mutational changes which were then preserved by natural selection and after a wave of Mother Nature's wand, some pixie dust, and a couple hundred million years out came the mammalian eye.

Actually, the story is not nearly as simple as the Darwinians would have us believe and the complexity of it does not count in favor of naturalistic theories of the origin of vision.

Cornelius Hunter has some details over at Darwin's God.

Meanwhile, one of the major objections leveled by critics against the truth of intelligent design over the years has to do with an alleged puzzle related to the structure of the eye. It's been argued that the cluster of nerves situated in front of the retina, blocking light to a part of the retina and creating a blind spot where the nerves pass through the retina to join the optic nerve, is evidence that the eye is not designed intelligently. Why, it is asked, would an intelligent designer make the eye in such a way as to produce a blind spot? Why not tuck these tissues behind the retina so that nothing interferes with our vision? That's how a rational engineer would do it, or so we've been told.

It turns out, however, that the way these tiny structures are arranged is in fact a very clever solution to certain problems regarding the health and efficient functioning of the eye, and that when all the reasons for the arrangement are understood the eye emerges as a wonder of intelligent organization and design (See here for a less technical account of why the eye's anatomy is completely compatible with the theory that it was intelligently designed.).

Anyone today who uses the allegedly poor design of the retina as an argument against intelligent design is simply revealing that he doesn't really know much.

RLC

Integrity

Over at National Review Online Guy Benson has dug up a series of candidate Obama's campaign ads critical of John McCain's proposal to tax employer provided insurance benefits as income. Obama's ads declared this to be an intolerable imposition that the taxpayers could not afford and should not be required to bear. Now it appears he very well might impose such a tax himself. Here's one of the ads:

Benson has other ads at the link. Mr. Obama is a deft practitioner of the old political two-step: Criticize your opponent during the campaign for planning to do the very thing you will do once he's out of the way. This is what qualifies one as a political genius nowadays, but there are other, perhaps more accurate, names for it.

RLC