Cornelia Dean on ID

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ms Dean concludes with this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Karl Rove

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

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

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

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

Surprise Pick For SCOTUS?

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

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

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

You can check out her biography here.

See No Evil

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

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

Republicans Want to Kill Us!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Failure of Multiculturalism

Perhaps the BBC is starting to get it.

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

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

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

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

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

Support For Terror Declining

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

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

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

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

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

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

Massacre at Sea

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NEA: No Education Agenda

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

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

1. [Defeated, no description]

2. Fighting Wal-Mart

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

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

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

6. Forming coalitions to "protect" Social Security

7. Explaining the difference between two different pension plans

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

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

10. Creating a workgroup on health care

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

12. [Defeated, no description]

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

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

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

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

Valiant "Minutemen"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Last One To Leave...

turn out the lights.

From the link:

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

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

Al-Qaida's Death Toll

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

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

Denmark Court Draws a Line

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks to Michelle Malkin for the tip.

Tax Cuts Work

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rescue of the Fourth Seal

Time magazine has an account of the rescue of the fourth Navy Seal in Afghanistan:

A crackle in the brush. That's the sound the Afghan herder recalls hearing as he walked alone through a pine forest last month. When he looked up, he saw an American commando, his legs and shoulder bloodied. The commando pointed his gun at the Afghan. "Maybe he thought I was a Taliban," says the shepherd, Gulab. "I remembered hearing that if an American sticks up his thumb, it is a friendly gesture. So that's what I did." To make sure the message was clear, Gulab lifted his tunic to show the American he wasn't hiding a weapon. He then propped up the wounded commando, and together the pair hobbled down the steep mountain trail to Sabari-Minah, a cluster of adobe-and-wood homes--crossing, for the time being, to safety.

The whole story can be read here.

God Doesn't Need God

When you're already God you don't need another one. Just ask rocker Liam Gallagher. On second thought maybe you better not. Just ask Bono.

Thanks to Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost for the tip.

Peace Prospects in Palestine

If only Israel would withdraw from the occupied territories we would have peace in the Middle East. That's what we're constantly told, but that's not how the major Palestinian players see things:

Hamas will not compromise on one inch of Greater Palestine, Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar told an Italian newspaper earlier this week. Speaking to the Corriere Della Sera newspaper, al-Zahar said Hamas would "definitely not" be prepared for coexistence with Israel should the IDF retreat to its 1967 borders.

"It can be a temporary solution, for a maximum of 5 to 10 years. But in the end Palestine must return to become Muslim, and in the long term Israel will disappear from the face of the earth."

Asked about Hamas's intentions to carry out terror attacks in coordination with the disengagement plan, al-Zahar said Hamas has already promised not to initiate violence, and that the group's actions would be in response to Israeli actions. "We won't disrupt the Israeli withdrawal, let them get out of here and go to hell," he said. "The problem will be afterwards, because in the hearts of every Palestinian, the liberation of Gaza must be accompanied by the liberation of Jerusalem and the West Bank."

The Israelis have three choices as far as the Palestinians are concerned. They can either leave Israel, commit suicide, or eventually fight for their lives against the Palestinians and other Arabs. The anti-semitic left in Europe and the U.S. demand they opt for choices one or two. As long as the Israelis are so inconsiderate as to decline those two alternatives there will not be peace anywhere in the Middle East, and, we will be daily reminded, it will be all the Israelis' fault.

Dar Al-Harb

MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute) has the text of an interview with a London cleric by the name of Al-Sibai. His thoughts illustrate the barbarism of modern Islam, at least as it is practiced by millions of Muslims around the world. Among other revealing nuggets Al-Sibai tells us this:

"Islamic history has no term for 'civilian' in the Western sense. This is a Western term. In our Islamic rules of war, one can be a 'combatant', a 'non-combatant', or 'protected by an agreement.' A person can be a combatant even if he does not carry a weapon. In other words, a person who came to wash and cook for the American soldiers in order to free them to fight - like the Nepalese - such a person is considered a combatant."

Elsewhere he says that, "There is no such term as 'civilians' in the modern Western sense. People are either of Dar Al-Harb or not."

That is, people are either in the House of Islam or they are in the House of War. Muslims see humanity as divided into two groups: Muslims and everyone else. All non-Muslims are infidels suitable for killing. This is conventional Muslim theology. To be sure, there are Muslims who do not fully embrace it, but they must downplay Islamic tradition in order not to.

It makes one wonder what's going to happen in Eurabia over the next decade or two as the teeming masses of unassimilated, uneducated Muslims continue to swell. It makes one wonder, too, what's going to happen in this country if the population of Muslims, seething with jealousy and resentment, continues to grow.

The Task of Radical Thought

This may help explain why a lot of people on the Left say and do the things they do:

"It is the task of radical thought, since the world is given to us unintelligibly, to make it more unintelligible, more enigmatic, more fabulous."

Jean Baudrillard, The Guardian, 3/14/2000

We always knew that leftist thought was unintelligible, but we never realized that it was purposely so.

LunaBrits

Breaking News! British Leftists have uncovered the identity of the London terrorists. It was obviously the work, as this article explains, of ... THE JEWS! How did we not see it?

Perhaps most incredible was the speed with which left-wing fascists and conspiracy nuts discovered "evidence" that the bombs were placed by Jews and not by Arab terrorists. Within hours of the bombings nearly every anarcho-fascist, communist, Palestinian, and neonazi web site on the planet was publishing a new conspiracy "theory" of the bombings. Most of these had long been promoting a similar conspiracy "theory" about the 9-11 bombings, which held that either the Bush Republicans or the Israeli Mossad had really knocked down the WTC towers while blaming the poor al-Qaeda Arabs for the crime.

Under their new "theory", Israeli former Prime Minister and current Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had received "advanced warning" of the bombings, and had been advised to remain in his hotel. These "advanced warnings" prove that it was actually Israeli or Jewish agents who had planted the bombs in London in order to get the Brits angry at poor innocent Moslems.

Now as a matter of fact, Netanyahu did in fact receive a "warning", but it was from the British police and it was AFTER the bombs went off but before the full picture was clear, and the cops suggested to him that it would be prudent to stay in his hotel. Conspiracy nuts turned that into "evidence" that Israel was responsible for the bombings. There were in fact some reports that Israel had tipped off British Intelligence before the bombings that an al-Qaeda attack against London might be imminent, but that is not exactly the "proof" of nefarious conspiracy that the conspiracy nuts were seeking.

One interesting place to look for reactions to the atrocities in London is the British version of the "Indymedia" flagship web site of the anarcho-fascist movement. It was crawling with articles that insist that al-Qaeda is innocent of the bombings and being blamed for them because the conservatives need a patsy. Some postings claimed they were placed there by the CIA. Others went to lengths to clear al-Qaeda. Then there are the postings claiming that the bombings simply serve Blair's interest in silencing the Left and their Islamist allies, and insisting that Blair's people placed the bombs. And of course the postings blaming the bombings on the Jews or Israelis. John Pilger showed up on the site to blame Blair for the bombs: "They are 'Blair's bombs', and he ought not be allowed to evade culpability with yet another unctuous speech about 'our way of life', which his own rapacious violence in other countries has despoiled."

The UK Indymedia site even ran the raving article by San Francisco Dennis "Justin" Raimondo, editor of the neofascist pro-terror "antiwar.com" web site and columnist for Pravda. Raimondo had invented a "theory", crayoned into a self-published "book," claiming that Jews, and not al-Qaeda, knocked down the WTC on 9-11, this all on the basis of the fact that some Israeli moving men were picked up that day for visa violations and were found to have some dollar cash in a dirty sock.

Raimondo's UK Indymedia piece (also published on his own antiwar.com site) claims that the Israelis planted the London bombs. Raimondo's evidence? The same fraudulent claims about how Netanyahu supposedly got "advance warnings of the bombs". But one of the most bizarre developments was that no sooner did Raimondo's lunatic "theory" appear across the web than a vicious attack against Raimondo was launched on some of those same web pages by Swedish neonazi "Israel Shamir." It seems that Raimondo, who is an anti-Semite, published a piece calling "Shamir" an anti-Semite, which he is. Raimondo wrote, "Shamir caters to his deranged constituency of Jew-haters," and - somewhat mysteriously - Raimondo did not mean that as a compliment. Keeping these people apart is becoming such a burden!

In contrast, a nice critique of the Indymedia anarcho-fascists was published by the Freedom Institute of the Republic of Ireland, denouncing the Indymedia pro-terrorists. These Irish freedom fighters denounce the "anarchists" for violent rioting in Scotland against the G8 leaders meeting there, forcing police to divert manpower from London area just when they were needed there: "The regulars at the Institute for Autonomy, where most of the Indymedia UK inner circle hang out, are almost certainly unharmed, as they were engaging in recreational public disorder hundreds of miles away in Scotland and successfully diverting police resources from the capital. Well done compadres!"

The conspiracy "theory" about the Jews having placed the bombs spread through the internet, appears by now on every "Indymedia" web site, and has been repeated on such lunatic web sites as "The Simon", which wrote: "Considering the only Al Qaeda cell to ever be uncovered was a front for the Mossad, you'd think the perpetrators could at least come up with a clever new booga-booga name to grab headlines. Their arrogance is startling."

Meanwhile, George Galloway, Saddam Hussein's paid agent in British politics, issued a statement about the bombs this week. You will not be surprised to learn that the lesson he insists that Britain draw from the mass murders is that the "occupation" of Iraq must be ended and of course that Israel must be destroyed:

"We urge the government to remove people in this country from harms way, as the Spanish government acted to remove its people from harm, by ending the occupation of Iraq and by turning its full attention to the development of a real solution to the wider conflicts in the Middle East. Only then will the innocents here and abroad be able to enjoy a life free of the threat of needless violence."

Tariq Ali, a British Moslem leftist and pro-terror militant, wrote an article blaming the bombings on the West's mistreatment of Moslems. Reprinted widely, including on Counterpunch, it stated, "The principal cause of this violence is the violence that is being inflicted on the people of the Muslim world. The bombing of innocent people is equally barbaric in Baghdad, Jenin, Kabul as it is in New York, Madrid or London. And unless this is recognized the horrors will continue.... The real solution lies in immediately ending the occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. "

Counterpunch, always to be relied upon to support anti-Western terrorists even when they target Alexander Cockburn's own homeland, has already come out with at least one article that supports the terrorist bombers. It ran a piece by notorious British neonazi Gilad Atzmon, famous for his justifying the burning down of synagogues, and so openly anti-Semitic that large numbers of British leftists have been urging the Socialist Workers Party in the UK to cut all ties with him. Atzmon writes about the London bombings that the real lesson should be:

"It tells us that we must never again give our votes to war criminals. More than anything else it tells us that we have a moral duty. It is down to us to stop our governments. It is our duty to stand up and to demand the resignation of Blair who is responsible for the death of so many Iraqis and arguably now many Innocent Britons. We must remember that voting in a non-ethical politician makes us all into active shareholders in a criminal company.... It tells us that we must never again give our votes to war criminals."

This is interesting. The government is responsible for the crime because of its involvement in the war against Islamo-terrorism, but the Jews, who benefit from that war, actually carried out the attack. No wonder these folk are often referred to as LunaBrits.

Read the whole piece. You'll be amazed.