A Glimpse at the Future

Let's grab a glimpse of the future that the Islamists envision for our children:

Three teenage Christian girls were beheaded and a fourth was seriously wounded in a savage attack on Saturday by unidentified assailants in the Indonesian province of Central Sulawesi.

The girls were among a group of students from a private Christian high school who were ambushed while walking through a cocoa plantation in Poso Kota subdistrict on their way to class, police Major Riky Naldo said.

Naldo said the heads of the three dead victims were found several kilometres from their bodies.

[Since 2002] there has been a series of bomb attacks and assassinations of Christians. These included a blast at a market in Poso, a predominantly Christian town, that killed 22 people in May.

Christian leaders have repeatedly accused the authorities in Jakarta of not doing enough to find the perpetrators and bring them to justice.

Perhaps the authorities have no idea who the perpetrators might be. Let's try to help them narrow down the suspects. Let's ask where the perpetrators might most likely be found. Should the authorities look in a:

a. convent of nuns

b. monastery

c. missionary clinic

d. mosque

If you answered a, b, or c you get the Norman Y. Maneta award for dopey adherence to political correctness, named after our current Secretary of Transportation. The award is so named for Mr. Maneta's unswerving fidelity to such bedrock principles of left-wing ideology as that octagenarians in wheel chairs should be searched every bit as thoroughly for bombs before being permitted to board an airplane as sullen, twenty-something Arab males. To do otherwise, Mr. Maneta believes, is to betray an intolerable ethnic bias.

Heaven forgive us if we're guilty of thinking that we're far more likely to be blown out of the sky, or have our torsos relieved of our heads, by young Arab males than by elderly Anglo-Saxon women. It just reveals how ingrained our racism is that we can't seem to shake the thought that a young Muslim Arab is a far greater threat to our well-being than is a feeble great-grandmother.

1776

I recently finished David McCullough's wonderful, if slightly mistitled, 1776. I say wonderful because once I got about a third of the way into it I didn't want to put it down. McCullough is a masterful writer and the story he tells is full of fascinating anecdotes and detail that seize the reader's attention and cause him to regret arriving at the last page of the book.

I say it is slightly mistitled because it's not really a story of the year 1776 so much as it is an account of the trials, travails, and tribulations of George Washington during those bleak twelve months.

McCullough tells a tale that one doesn't ordinarily read in popular accounts of Washington who is often portrayed as a man with near-perfect judgment and almost infinite wisdom. That his judgment was often excellent and that he was wise there is no doubt, but in the year 1776, the first year of the revolution, Washington made several serious mistakes and were it not for what McCullough refers to as miracles and the excessive caution of his adversary William Howe, the fledgling Continental army would probably have been destroyed at New York. Until the very end of the year the story of the war was a narrative of ignominious American retreats. As McCullough writes victories are not won by withdrawals no matter how well executed.

It is hard to imagine, although McCullough does a good job of describing it for us, the darkness of those months: the steady string of defeats, the abandonment by thousands of citizens who fled to the British, the demoralization and lack of training and discipline of the troops, the desertions, poor equipment, harsh living conditions, and the seeming indifference of the Continental Congress, and, not least, the utter despair that many, including Washington himself, must have felt. Yet, despite the fact that he didn't win a major engagement until late in the year when he caught the Hessians by surprise at Trenton, he never allowed himself to succumb to his forebodings and trepidations about the prospects for success, at least not for long. He learned from his errors, some of which were extremely costly in terms of lives lost, and he didn't permit the harshness of his critics nor the betrayals of friends to deter him. He truly was a great man.

As I was reading McCullough's narrative I thought of our current commander in chief. Like Washington, he has been pummeled, slandered, and ridiculed by his critics. He has faced dark days when success was anything but assured. He has had to bear up against a steady drumbeat of defeatism in the press. There must be times when he thinks that nobody cares about winning the war on terror but him, and yet he refuses to bend to the cavils of critics. Bush's situation is perhaps more like that of Lincoln than of Washington, but even so, some of the similarities with Washington are striking.

I recommend 1776 to anyone with an interest in American history and especially the history of the first year of the American revolution. There is much in it that we can apply to our own parlous times.

Make No Mistake

Lest anyone be uncertain concerning the aspirations of the radical Islamists, President Ahmadinejad of Iran dispels any misunderstanding. The following excerpts, made available by MEMRI, are from his recent speech at the World Without Zionism conference in Tehran. The conference was attended by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and hundreds of students:

"... They [ask]: 'Is it possible for us to witness a world without America and Zionism?' But you had best know that this slogan and this goal are attainable, and surely can be achieved ...."

"Very soon, this stain of disgrace [i.e. Israel ] will vanish from the center of the Islamic world - and this is attainable."

"Regrettably, 27 or 28 years ago... one of the countries of the first line [i.e. Egypt ] made this failure [of recognizing Israel ] - and we still hope that they will correct it."

"The issue of Palestine is by no means over, and will end only when all of Palestine will have a government belonging to the Palestinian people. The refugees must return to their homes, and there must be a government that has come to power by the will of the [Palestinian] people. And, of course those [i.e. the Jews] who came to this country from far away to plunder it have no right to decide anything for the [Palestinian] people."

"I hope that the Palestinians will maintain their wariness and intelligence, much as they have pursued their battles in the past 10 years. This will be a short period, and if we pass through it successfully, the process of the elimination of the Zionist regime will be smooth and simple."

"Oh dear people, look at this global arena. By whom are we confronted? We must understand the depth of the disgrace imposed on us by the enemy, until our holy hatred expands continuously and strikes like a wave."

Mr. Bush's assessment of Iran as part of an axis of evil looks more trenchant with every passing week. Imagine that some unstable lunatic like Ahmadinejad gets his hands on a nuclear weapon. Does anyone seriously think that a man like this, so full of hatred, will decline to use it? This speech lends all the more urgency to attempts to put an end to Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons. And if diplomacy fails, which it almost surely will, the world, or at least a part of it, must be prepared to do whatever is necessary to keep such weapons out of Iran's arsenal.

Click on the link for more on the speech.

The Left Shouldn't Celebrate Yet

The media have been busy this week gleefully writing George Bush's political epitaph (see here, for example), but as Mark Twain might have put it, the funeral celebration is a bit premature.

To be sure, Mr. Bush has had a rocky couple of months what with Katrina, problems in Iraq, the unravelling of the Miers nomination, today's indictment of the Vice President's Chief of Staff, and a number of lesser travails. All of this has brought the president's media antagonists to the political graveyard to dance a conga around the tombstones in eager anticipation of the interment of the Bush presidency.

Nevertheless, it's not difficult to imagine this administration gathering itself up and rebounding from the present difficulties. Indeed, President Bush is well-positioned to execute a fourth quarter rally that could still place him among the greatest presidents of modern American history. Here's why and how:

The economy is growing steadily. Note that the Democrats rarely refer to the economy anymore by way of criticizing the president. Yet our economic health is the most crucial issue, as the Dems insisted in 1992, in determining which party will prevail in an election. If the Democrats could use our economic condition against Bush they would be doing it, but they can't so they aren't. If the economy continues to grow - and with gas prices falling to less extortionist levels there's reason for optimism in this regard - the public will forget the troubles of the last two or three months like one forgets a dream upon waking.

Iraq seems to be progressing steadily toward a historically unprecedented Arab democracy. Despite the steady drizzle of left-wing criticism and negativity, Bush's strategy in Iraq might well ultimately succeed. It's still unclear if it will, of course, but if it does, history will hail his effort, and that of our military, as an astonishing political, strategic, and human rights achievement, perhaps the greatest that any president or world leader ever accomplished. Success in Iraq will reverberate and ramify throughout the entire region and around the globe for generations. It's very difficult to overstate the significance and importance of such a consummation.

With the withdrawal of Harriet Miers the president has been given an unusual second chance to appoint someone of the very finest timber to the Supreme Court. Miers may have been a good appointment, but there was cause for serious skepticism. Mr. Bush can now name someone about whom there is no doubt. Another conservative justice in the mold of Antonin Scalia, as we were promised in the campaign, and the legal course of this country could be altered for the good for the next thirty to fifty years. Such a nomination would also unify the president's base and make him much more politically formidable.

Assuming there are no further indictments, the Scooter Libby affair will scarcely register on the historical record. On the other hand, it could serve, as did Katrina, as a prod to rouse the administration from complacency. There are signs that this is already happening. We're beginning to hear noises about getting the budget and our borders under control. Success breeds success. If the administration recovers its legislative momentum it may even try again to reform social security. If by 2008 just some of these things are happening, or at least appear to be under way, George Bush, to the everlasting chagrin of the portside media, will be regarded as surpassing even Ronald Reagan and FDR.

The ghoulish excesses of the liberal media are as premature as they are inappropriate. Too much still hangs in the balance for them to be indulging their hopes of a failed presidency just yet.

Monkeying With Probability

No doubt you've heard the venerable Darwinian dogma that given enough time and enough monkeys banging away randomly on a typewriter keyboard one of them would eventually produce Hamlet purely by chance.

The claim is designed to illustrate that even though life on earth is unimaginably improbable on the naturalistic hypothesis, it's not impossible. Given enough time and enough molecular combinations even the improbable becomes probable, and the probable becomes actual.

Unfortunately for this argument, however, its persuasiveness does not survive an actual look at the math.

Bill Dembski directs us to a decade-old site where the math is actually worked out. It happens that even if we hypothesize 17 billion galaxies, each containing 17 billion habitable planets, each planet with 17 billion monkeys each typing away and producing one line per second for 17 billion years, the chances of the phrase "To be or not to be, that is the question" not being included in the results are:

0.99999999999994657593795077819 6079485682838665648264132188104299 326596142975867879656916416973433628

In other words, even given parameters unimaginably more lenient than those which actually obtained in the real world, it's about 99.999999999995% sure that the monkeys would fail to produce just a single sentence of Hamlet by random pecking.

The Darwinian objects, however, that this extraordinary improbability assumes that the monkeys have to get the whole sequence right or else they have to start over as soon as they make a mistake. What if there is a mechanism, though, which conserves any letters that come up correctly so that if, say, a TO is typed by some monkey somewhere it's preserved until a BE is typed and then that's saved, etc? If so, the target sentence would appear in no time at all, relatively speaking. The rest of Hamlet would then eventually follow on in like fashion.

This is essentially the argument made by Richard Dawkins in the Blind Watchmaker, and it's intended to send the doubter scurrying away in abject embarrassment at having had the temerity to challenge scientific orthodoxy. The problem with it, though, is that it must assume the very thing that Intelligent Design has been asserting ever since its inception. It assumes that there is some goal toward which life is striving. It assumes that somehow life knows to preserve combinations that "work" until they can be incorporated into the sequence of letters. It assumes that nature has the ability to see a goal and to strive toward it. In other words, it assumes that nature is somehow programmed to produce life.

Such a teleological aspect in nature is precisely what the Darwinian vigorously denies. There is no need to introduce purpose, he avers, since natural selection acting with no conscious purpose selects combinations on the basis of their survival value and thus acts as if it were intelligent. But again this answer won't work. The reason is that natural selection acts only on reproducing populations of organisms. What needs to be explained is how information far more complex than our target sentence (a strand of genetic material, for example) emerged before it developed the ability to replicate itself and thus be subject to the pressures of natural selection.

We suppose that technically speaking it could have happened, just as it's possible that a blind-folded man might select a single marked atom out of all the atoms of the universe just by luck, but it takes faith far greater than the size of a mustard seed to believe that it actually did happen in the few million years between the time the earth cooled sufficiently to allow bio-molecules to form and the appearance of the first living organisms. Of course, when one is a priori committed to the notion that only mechanistic, unintelligent forces were at work in the production of life, then one is constrained to accept the most outlandish and implausible of stories.

It took an intelligent writer to produce Hamlet. There is no basis for believing that any conceivable combination of chance, luck, and blind, impersonal force could accomplish it. Likewise, neither is there any basis for believing that blind, impersonal forces built DNA. The conviction that such mechanisms did indeed accidentally achieve this astonishing miracle is an article of faith that only true believers in the church of Materialism can convince themselves to embrace.

Lawyers

Pete Schramm, who is himself a lawyer, posts a joke at No Left Turns that some of you will think funny:

One afternoon a wealthy lawyer was riding in his limousine when he saw two men along the roadside eating grass. Disturbed, he ordered his driver to stop and he got out to investigate. He asked one man, "Why are you eating grass?" We don't have any money for food," the poor man replied. "We have to eat grass." "Well, then, you can come with me to my house and I'll feed you," the lawyer said. "But, sir! I have a wife and two children with me. They are over there, under that tree" "Bring them along," the lawyer replied. Turning to the other poor man he stated, "You come with us also." The second man, in a pitiful voice then said, "But sir, I also have a wife and SIX children with me!" "Bring them all, as well," the lawyer answered. They all entered the car, which was no easy task, even for a car as large as the limousine was. Once underway, one of the poor fellows turned to the lawyer and said, "Sir, you are too kind. Thank you for taking all of us with you." The lawyer replied, "Glad to do it. You'll really love my place -- the grass is almost a foot high."

My apologies to those of my friends (maybe they're now former friends) who are lawyers.

A Virtual Shoo-In

Here's John Fund's take on the Miers' imbroglio:

I believe it is almost inevitable that Ms. Miers will withdraw or be defeated. Should that happen, it is important President Bush understand how it really happened. While he acted out of sincerity, the nomination was quickly perceived by many as merely a means to a desired end: getting another vote for his views on the court. While some conservatives backed her because they honestly believed she would rule independently with an understanding of the limited role of judges envisioned by the Founders, that message was drowned out by accusations of cronyism and mediocrity.

The president also was let down by seven senators in his own party who in May agreed to scuttle plans to end judicial filibusters blocking nominees from ever getting a vote. It wouldn't have been unreasonable for him to think the Senate wasn't in a position to confirm a nominee with a long paper trail.

But he may soon have a chance for a fresh start and no choice but to have a fight over substance. When Douglas Ginsburg asked to have his nomination to the Supreme Court pulled in 1987 after allegations he had used marijuana, Ronald Reagan won unanimous confirmation in a Democratic Senate for Anthony Kennedy, then a judge with a decade-long conservative track record on a federal appellate court. Similarly, Mr. Bush recovered quickly from losing Linda Chavez as his nominee for Labor Secretary and Mr. Kerik as Secretary of Homeland Security. The damage to his relations with his conservative base would blow over quickly if Mr. Bush were to quickly name a well-qualified nominee who was not a sphinx when it came to judicial philosophy. Perhaps this time he might even expand the talent pool to include--gasp--men.

Pace Mr. Fund We have a somewhat different take on Ms Miers' prospects. If she doesn't withdraw, her persistence will set the stage for some novel political irony. She will be broadly disliked for quite different reasons by both Democrats and Republicans, but most of them will reluctantly feel compelled to vote to confirm her. Miers will likely be given a pass by many Democrats who will give her every benefit of the doubt since she's probably the best nominee, from their point of view, they can hope to see. If she's rejected, whoever comes after her is going to be far stronger, more ideologically conservative, and much more impressive than she, and far more difficult to oppose.

Republicans, for their part, will be unenthusiastic about Miers but also reluctant to vote against their president's pick, and indeed most of the current opposition to her is coming from columnists and bloggers, not senators.

Unless she's a disaster in the hearings, which she may be, Ms Miers will probably be confirmed by a comfortable margin, unless defections by Republicans, unlikely as they are, bring her down. In other words, nobody in the Senate will want her as a SCOTUS justice, but almost everyone in the Senate will feel constrained to vote for her.

Veto the Torture Bill, Mr. President

Congressional negotiators are currently haggling over an amendment to a military spending bill which would prohibit torture of anyone in American custody. This sounds good, but we're not enthusiastic.

The McCain amendment to the spending bill says this: "No individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment." The amendment passed the senate 90 to 9 a couple of days ago, but it shouldn't have.

President Bush has threatened to veto the legislation and we hope he does, not because we don't think people suspected of terrorism should be given some protections from abusive treatment, but because this bill is so vaguely worded that it has the potential to severely cripple us in the fight against those who wish to destroy us.

For example, what exactly constitutes "degrading treatment"? Is it imprisonment? Solitary confinement? Ridicule? Being yelled at? Unless the word "degrading" is clearly defined almost anything done to a detainee could be interpreted, and will be interpreted by ACLU lawyers, as degrading, and our courts and military will be bogged down for years trying to get clarification on what is permitted and what isn't.

The same criticism could be levelled at the use of words like "cruel" or "inhumane." Where is the line between cruel and not-cruel? Is giving detainees institutional food cruel? What about the use of fake menstrual blood, or the use of deception in general? Does cruelty depend upon motive or is it merely a function of the act itself? If an interrogator uses methods which might be deemed cruel because he has reason to believe that the detainee has information about a terrorist attempt to blow up the Lincoln Tunnel in New York, would that be prohibited? If so, why? These and other questions need to be answered before the president should affix his signature to such a bill.

This is one of those pieces of legislation that politicians vote for in order to look good by appearing to be doing good. They're no doubt hoping that Bush will save them from their fecklessness and veto this charade.

The Palestine Hotel Attack

Readers interested in learning about how the attack on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad was thwarted should visit The Fourth Rail. As always, Bill Roggio has good analysis and helpful satellite photos of the area.

Dumb and Dumber

I know. It's not nice to laugh at people nor is it polite to call them stupid, but what else can you do when you read something like this:

Amherst Regional High School will stop using the term 'freshman' to refer to ninth-grade students because the term is not inclusive enough for some members of the faculty there, according to the Concord Monitor.

Students in ninth grade will now be referred to as .... "ninth-graders" in all official documents and morning announcements.

ARHS Assistant Principal Marta Guevara, who pushed for the change, said the decision to move away from 'freshman' came about after a production of the The Vagina Monologues two years ago.

Guevara said the school wants to make students "aware of the possible misogynistic, oppressive or non-inclusive language."

As absurd as Ms Guevara proudly makes herself sound this is even worse:

A columnist for the Naples Daily News in Florida says the University of Miami should ditch the Hurricanes nickname because it's insensitive to folks in storm-ravaged areas.

"Hurricanes is no longer an appropriate nickname for a sports team....Even the threat of a hurricane can bring hysteria and fear," writes Tom Hanson. "The NCAA can complain about Seminoles, Utes and Illini, but how many people need to die or become homeless before someone calls Miami's moniker out of line?"

"Hurricanes should be taken seriously. They shouldn't be cheered."

Taken seriously is exactly what Mr. Hanson cannot be. We'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt and think that perhaps he was writing a parody of liberalism or political correctness, but a visit to the full editorial doesn't add much weight to that hypothesis. He appears to be writing a parody, to be sure, but it is entirely unintentional.

Laughing With Al

If you're under ten years old here's an uproarious example of lefty humor for you. It'll have you rolling on the floor trembling in fits of laughter. How could one man be so funny, you'll want to know.

Go to the Drudge Report and click on the Al Franken video skit.

This is an ideological as well as an emotional maturity litmus test. If you're over ten and you laugh then you've self-identified as a leftist who has a long way to go before you're grown up.

Get Whitey

Mike adams at Front Page Mag fills us in on the latest results from the Can't We All Just Get Along front. It seems that the good people of North Carolina are subsidizing calls for their own extermination. As you read the following article just imagine a white person saying about blacks what Dr. Kambon says about whites:

Columnist Jon Sanders of the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh, NC, has written a blog entry that....demonstrates how the diversity movement is bringing people together in the great state of North Carolina.

Sanders' recent blog directs readers to C-SPAN online, where they can click on the recent archives and scroll down until they find the "Black Media Forum on the Image of Black Americans in Mainstream Media." This was a program presented on October 14th at Howard University. Dr. Kamau Kambon makes his appearance about three hours into the four-hour event.

Dr. Kambon's closing remarks - given about twenty minutes before the program's conclusion - are chilling:

"And then finally I want to say that we need one idea, and we're not thinking about a solution to the problem. We're thinking about all these other things, but we're not dealing with a solution to the problem. And we have to start to think about a solution to the problem so that these young brothers and sisters who are here now, who are 15, 16, or 17, are not here 25 years later talking about these same problems.

Now how do I know that the white people know that we are going to come up with a solution to the problem? I know it because they have retina scans, they have what they call racial profiling, DNA banks, and they're monitoring our people to try to prevent the one person from coming up with the one idea. And the one idea is, how we are going to exterminate white people because that in my estimation is the only conclusion I have come to. We have to exterminate white people off the face of the planet to solve this problem.

Now I don't care whether you clap or not, but I'm saying to you that we need to solve this problem because they are going to kill us. And I will leave on that. So we just have to just set up our own system and stop playing and get very serious and not be diverted from coming up with a solution to the problem and the problem on the planet is white people."

Dr. Kambon also said that "white people want to kill you ... because that is part of their plan" and that "the only n**ger on the planet is the white man and the white woman, and our people are not n**gers, they are imitation n**gers."

An official at North Carolina State University claims that Dr. Kambon - once a visiting professor being paid by the taxpayers of North Carolina - is no longer affiliated with the university. But, if that is true, why is he still listed on the university's Africana Studies faculty page?

After you visit that site, I bet you'll have the same question. And, like me, I hope you'll write the Africana Studies Department demanding an answer. And while you're at it, ask them why they hired a genocidal racist in the first place.

And while we're asking the Africana Studies Department (whatever that is) why they would hire a genocidal racist who promotes Hitlerian "final solutions", they might also be asked what sort of country they think this will be when Dr. Kambon's dream of exterminating all whites is realized. We wonder what Dr. Kambon's vision of a white-less America might be. Sudan, perhaps? Somalia? Liberia? Zimbabwe? New Orleans? If reading is part of Dr. Kambon's skill set, he might lay hold of a copy of Animal Farm to gain some insight into what happens when societies do the sort of thing he recommends. Unfortunately, the lessons of that book would doubtless find the mind of such a colossal dunce as Dr. Kambon impenetrable.

UPDATE: According to Brit Hume, Dr. Kambon is, ironically enough, an opponent of the death penalty.

For links to the sites to which Adams refers go to the link at the top of this post.

Thinking About College?

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) has released a book titled Choosing the Right College: The Whole Truth about America's Top Schools. The book can be ordered free by following this link to NewsMax.com.

NewsMax itself has "delved into Choosing the Right College to find the best schools for conservatives - campuses where a core curriculum requires a rigorous exposure to the great thinkers who have shaped our political, religious and cultural heritage, and where the atmosphere for learning is nurtured by genuine intellectual freedom, tolerance and tradition."

Here's their list:

1. University of Chicago

2. Hillsdale College

3. Christendom College

4. Wheaton College

5. Thomas Aquinas College

6. Baylor University

7. Catholic University of America

8. Grove City College

9. University of Dallas

10. Washington and Lee

The article discusses each of these schools and explains why they were selected.

Who Will Defend Excellence?

George Will has been one of Harriet Miers' most eloquent critics and his current essay on the matter is perhaps his best. The whole argument is elegantly written and tightly reasoned but perhaps the highlight is the second half of the essay:

As Miers' confirmation hearings draw near, her advocates will make an argument that is always false but that they, especially, must make, considering the unusual nature of their nominee. The argument is that it is somehow inappropriate for senators to ask a nominee -- a nominee for a lifetime position making unappealable decisions of enormous social impact -- searching questions about specific Supreme Court decisions and the principles of constitutional law that these decisions have propelled into America's present, and future.

To that argument, the obvious and sufficient refutation is: Why, then, have hearings? What, then, remains of the Senate's constitutional role in consenting to nominees?

It is not merely permissible, it is imperative that senators give Miers ample opportunity to refute skeptics by demonstrating her analytic powers and jurisprudential inclinations by discussing recent cases concerning, for example, the scope of federal power under the commerce clause, the compatibility of the First Amendment with campaign regulations, and privacy -- including Roe v. Wade.

Can Miers' confirmation be blocked? It is easy to get a senatorial majority to take a stand in defense of this or that concrete interest, but it is surpassingly difficult to get a majority anywhere to rise in defense of mere excellence.

Still, Miers must begin with 22 Democratic votes against her. Surely no Democrat can retain a shred of self-respect if, having voted against John Roberts, he or she then declares Miers fit for the court. All Democrats who so declare will forfeit a right and an issue -- their right to criticize the administration's cronyism.

And Democrats, with their zest for gender politics, need this reminder: To give a woman a seat on a crowded bus because she is a woman is gallantry. To give a woman a seat on the Supreme Court because she is a woman is a dereliction of senatorial duty. It also is an affront to mature feminism, which may bridle at gallantry but should recoil from condescension.

As for Republicans, any who vote for Miers will thereafter be ineligible to argue that it is important to elect Republicans because they are conscientious conservers of the judicial branch's invaluable dignity. Finally, any Republican senator who supinely acquiesces in President Bush's reckless abuse of presidential discretion -- or who does not recognize the Miers nomination as such -- can never be considered presidential material.

The line about it being easy to cobble together a senate majority on behalf of a concrete interest but "surpassingly difficult to get a majority anywhere to rise in defense of mere excellence" is a classic.

Meanwhile, Peter Schramm at No Left Turns offers his reasons for believing that Miers will not go through with the hearings:

I now have an opinion on what will happen with Harriet Miers: She will withdraw her nomination before the start of the Judiciary Committee hearings. This opinion is not based on the latest George Will column that explains why she cannot be defended, nor is it based on my discovery of the tacky Harriet Miers's Blog. My opinion is based on overhearing private conversations (i.e., reading between the lines in press reports), getting a sense of her declining fortunes from Senators and staffers who have been inclined to support her, and my visit to the local watering hole last night.

Even overlooking the congenital anti-Bush bias in the MSM, press reports make clear that the more would-be-defenders of Miers get to know her (visits to their offices, reading responses to written questions, etc.), the less they like her. This is supported by private, off-the-record opinions I get a whiff of now and then indicating that almost everyone who has had dealings with her during the last few weeks has come to regret that she has been nominated. And, if she doesn't withdraw, this negative opinion will come to a peak during the Judiciary Committee hearings, to everyone's huge embarrassment. Since neither political interest nor honor will not allow this to happen, she will not make it to the scheduled hearings.

My second reason for thinking that she will withdraw is the sampling of the opinion of local citizens, culminating in last night's visit to the tavern....These are good, conservative, Republican folks, always giving Bush the benefit of the doubt; trusting Bush. Not this time. They have become convinced that this nomination is a huge mistake and their thoughtful conversation convinced me that they are right: the best thing Bush can do is to ask her to withdraw because she has no support. I was a bit surprised how deliberate and thoughtful their logic was; neither bitter nor vengeful, just the common sense of the subject. One man, a Marine, said this was like a bad love affair: the more you got to know Miers, the less you liked her. Very clarifying, I thought. It's over. Never mind the justice of the thing. It's over. Now the only thing left is for either Bush or Meirs to find a graceful way out.

Anecdotal, to be sure, but when staunch defenders of the President like No Left Turns, Michelle Malkin, and the Power Line guys are telling the Big Guy that he whiffed on this one the outcome looks very bleak indeed.

It's so unfortunate that this happened, particularly in light of the fact that it was so easily avoidable. The Miers nomination has done more to shake conservatives' confidence in the competence of the Bush administration than all their other putative misteps put together.

Lost Liberty Hotel

In case you haven't heard, matters seem to be moving along in Weare, NH, with plans to seize the property of Supreme Court Justice David Souter to convert it into a hotel (the Lost Liberty Hotel) consonant with the decision Kelo v. New London in which Justice Souter concurred and which allows municipalities to sieze property by eminent domain in order to give it to private companies for private use.

There will be an initiative on the March 14, 2006 Weare ballot in which voters can indicate to the Selectmen their desire to have the town government use eminent domain to seize 34 Cilley Hill Road (currently owned by Supreme Court Justice David Souter) for the purpose of a promoting economic development (a valid seizure according to Souter's vote in Kelo vs. City of New London).

Also, a list of over thirty interested developers has been narrowed to seven. They are seeking a developer who has experience building a similar type of structure and is enthusiastically supportive of the purpose of the project. The name of the developer is expected to be announced by mid-November.

They can use financial support so anyone who'd like to see this project come to fruition can go here to find out how they can contribute. It would be nice to see our judges and politicians forced to accept the same consequences of their rulings and laws that the rest of us must accept.

Why There's No Vaccine

Why don't we have a vaccine for the avian flu? Why will it take so long to produce enough tamiflu to mitigate the symptoms of a potential flu pandemic? Is it that the drug companies are failing us? The Wall Street Journal explains:

Our political leaders keep telling us to fear the avian flu, and in one sense they're right: We should all be scared to death about how much damage our political leaders will do responding to the avian flu.

Consider Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who declared this month that he hoped concern for "intellectual property" wouldn't "get into the way" of procuring widespread vaccines for a potential avian-flu outbreak. In other words, companies that make vaccines should abandon their patents at Mr. Annan's whim. This kind of hostility to property rights is precisely the reason we now have a shortage of vaccines and drugs to combat this potential pandemic.

Whatever the risk, some good will come out of this public alarm if we use it as an opportunity to understand why the U.S. is now so poorly armed to cope with a deadly flu outbreak. The reason is that our political class has spent the past 30 years driving the vaccine industry out of business with its own virus of over-regulation, price controls, litigation and intellectual-property abuse.

The U.S. today has only three large vaccine makers--down from 37 in the 1960s. This is the reason that, as recently as 2001, there was a shortage of eight of 11 critical childhood vaccines. It is also the reason the U.S. fell drastically short of flu vaccine a year ago, after a shut-down of one of two major flu-vaccine makers. And it is the reason only one company, Switzerland's Roche, is being counted on for a drug that would potentially protect against bird flu.

Despite these warning signals, Washington has done almost nothing. One problem is the Food and Drug Administration, which puts safety above developing rapid cures. Flu-vaccine makers face particular difficulties because they must effectively gain approval for a new product (for each new flu strain) every year. The vaccine is still grown in chicken eggs--a process that takes up to eight months. The industry has revolutionary new technologies--reverse genetics and mammalian cell culture--that would dramatically reduce the time and cost of development. Europe is moving toward products using these new techniques, but the FDA refuses to adapt and allow more rapid approval.

The feds have also done their best to remove any financial incentive--i.e., profit--for developing new vaccines. The Vaccines For Children program, a pet project of Hillary Clinton back in her First Lady days, has been especially destructive. The program now buys more than 50% of all private vaccines, and it uses this monopsony clout to drive prices down to commodity levels.

When one pharmaceutical company offered to sell a new pneumococcal vaccine to the government for $58 a dose, the Centers for Disease Control demanded a $10-a-dose discount. Politicians want companies to take all the risk of developing new vaccines, but they don't want the companies to make any money from taking those risks. Then the politicians profess surprise and dismay that there's a vaccine shortage.

Vaccine makers are also a favorite target of tort lawyers, who've spent 20 years trying to get around the 1986 Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP)--which was specifically designed to protect vaccine makers from liability abuse. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has been trying to update the VICP for several years, and Republicans did pass a liability provision as a rider to a homeland security bill in 2002. But three GOP Senators--Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe and Lincoln Chafee--created a media ruckus and demanded that it be killed. The Senators promised more debate on the subject, yet once the headlines vanished so did their interest.

The larger point is that if politicians want private industry to develop new cures and vaccines, they can't steal their patents or confiscate their hope of making money. Private companies developed the AIDS drugs that have extended millions of lives, but countries like Brazil want to force those companies to give the drugs away at cost.

The solutions to getting more vaccines aren't complicated: Push the FDA for faster approvals, shield companies from tort robbery and get the government out of the business of buying routine vaccines. Politicians can't be held responsible for knowing when the next animal virus will strike the human race. But they will be responsible if their hostility to business leaves us unable to cope with its consequences.

Bureaucrats and politicians excel at two things: Wasting money on worthless projects and over-regulating businesses upon which our welfare depends. Other than these, the federal government, at least in its civilian sector, tends to be pretty incompetent.

Who'll Do the Test?

Michelle Starr of the York Daily Record, which has done some fine work reporting on the Dover ID trial, has written an interesting article on the testability of ID's claims. She writes:

Intelligent design and evolution proponents agree that a test on bacterial flagellum could show if it was or wasn't able to evolve, which could provide evidence to support intelligent design. But neither side wants to test it.

The test calls for a scientist to place a bacterial species lacking a flagellum under selective pressure and let it grow for 10,000 generations - roughly two years - to see if a flagellum or an equally complex system would be produced, according to testimony on Wednesday. A flagellum is a whip-like structure that can propel the bacteria.

Michael Behe, biochemistry professor at Lehigh University, testified in U.S. Middle District Court that he didn't know of anyone who had tested bacterial flagellum that way, including himself. During cross examination by plaintiffs' attorney Eric Rothschild, Behe said he hadn't completed the test because he has better ways to spend his time. He also said he already knows intelligent design is science. "It's well-tested from the inductive arguments," Behe said. "When we have found a purposeful arrangement of parts, we have always found this as designed."

Outside court, Dover school board members Alan Bonsell and Sheila Harkins said if anyone should perform the test, it should be the evolutionists. "Somebody could do that if they wanted to," Harkins said. "If somebody believes intelligent design is not science, certainly they have a means to prove it's not."

Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, said scientists - who widely accept evolution as the cornerstone of modern biology - aren't going to take two years on an expensive test to disprove something they don't consider science.

They wouldn't bother, she said. "This is not the first time creationists have tried to get scientists to do their work for them," Scott said.

This time around, even if the flagellum grew, Scott speculated that intelligent design proponents would say the test refuted the design of bacterial flagellum, not intelligent design. They could still point toward design of the immune system and blood-clotting cascade as evidence, Scott said.

Behe has testified that if evolutionists ran the test and it didn't work, they would provide a reason such as they didn't have the right bacteria, selective pressure or length of time. Evolution is harder to falsify than intelligent design, Behe said. He describes intelligent design as a fully testable, falsifiable scientific theory.

The design, he testified, is inferred from the purposeful arrangement of parts. During his time on the stand, he also testified about the concept of irreducible complexity, which means organisms are too complex to have evolved by natural selection or genetic mutation, so multiple systems had to arise simultaneously.

Scott said scientists couldn't disprove the purposeful arrangement of parts because too much could qualify. Anything outside of purposely arranged parts would be in state of chaos, she said. The purposeful arrangements of parts is quickly taking over as the essence of intelligent design from the idea of irreducible complexity, Scott said.

Bonsell and Harkins believe intelligent design qualifies as a testable and falsifiable scientific theory, and Bonsell said he was ready for it to be put to the test. "I'm all for scientific discovery and doing scientific experiments," Bonsell said. "They're the ones that are not."

I think Eugenie Scott is technically correct that the emergence of a flagellum wouldn't definitively falsify the ID position because many ID theorists assert that the design is front-loaded, i.e. it's programmed into biology at the Big Bang, or at the creation of life, so that bacteria could well be intelligently designed such that they would respond to certain selection pressures by developing a flagellum. Nevertheless, it would seem that Darwinian scientists would want to carry out the test if for no other reason than scientific curiosity.

Moreover, if such a structure were seen to emerge with no significant tinkering from the experimenter, it would be, for all practical purposes, the death knell for ID. It would be the biological version of the O.J. Simpson verdict: Technically his guilt was not proven, but everyone knows that he was guilty of the crime.

Likewise, and this is one reason that Darwinians are unlikely to actually attempt this test, if the experiment were to fail to produce a flagellum, logically the result would be meaningless, but psychologically it would give a big boost to ID among the masses. The Darwinians know that the chances of a flagellum evolving are vanishingly slim, and the chances of giving their ID opponents a propaganda coup if no flagellum appears are significant. Consequently, the test won't get done, or if it is done the public will not hear about it unless a flagellum were indeed to materialize. It's just easier, and less dangerous, to accuse ID of being untestable than to actually try to test it.

This leads to another reason that Darwinians won't conduct the test, of course, which is that doing so has a very serious drawback for the argument that has been consistently employed by the anti-ID folks. Simply by carrying out the test the experimenter would be demonstrating that the Darwinians' claim that ID is not testable, and therefore not science, is false. What an interesting predicament. The Darwinians argue vehemently that ID is not a scientific theory, but they dare not try to actually prove it is false because in so doing they undercut their argument that it's not science.

Chiefs and Indians

Tongue-Tied informs us of a marvelous specimen of liberal hyper-sensitivity and hypocrisy all wrapped into one.

It appears that the Kansas City Chiefs football team recently enjoyed a win over the Washington Redskins, but the Kansas City Star referred to the losing side only as "the Washington team". The Star's various accounts of the Chiefs' victory Sunday over Washington never used the word "Redskins." The paper piously declared that, "The Star's policy is not to use Washington's team name because it is a racial slur."

Well, then, what about the Chiefs? The paper explained that, "the Chiefs were actually named for former Mayor H. Roe Bartle -- known as The Chief -- who was key in getting the team to come to Kansas City in the 1960s." The name has nothing to do with degrading ethnic insults.

Tongue-Tied is amazed: "A racial slur? I thought 'Redskins' conveyed an heroic image! Why else would a sports team have adopted it? I don't think they meant to portray themselves as primitive morons, do you? Or is it a slur to portray someone as heroic these days? I guess it is in certain loony Left circles."

As a reader of Tongue-Tied notes, the Kansas City Star's ridiculous rationale for refusing to say "Redskins" but having no problem with "Chiefs" is nonsense. If it were true that the name has nothing to do with Indi.., er, Native-Americans, why would the Chiefs' helmets have an arrowhead on them, and why would they be playing in Arrowhead Stadium?

Maybe Mayor Bartle, aka The Chief, also walked about with an arrow wrapped around his head.

A Training Ground For Terrorists

The Fourth Rail's Bill Roggio addresses the criticism that the United States has made Iraq a training ground for foreign terrorists. The claim, according to Roggio, is doubtless correct but also trivial (Our word, not his):

Al Qaeda is pushing fighters into the country, and some of those who leave will impart their knowledge to others and potentially conduct attacks against their home countries. But al Qaeda has been doing this in other countries; in Chechnya, Bosnia, Kosovo, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Afghanistan and a host of countries throughout the world. Absent Iraq, the jihadis would enter these countries for their training.

Proponents of the Iraq War believe the establishment of democracy in the heart of the Middle East and the accompanying ideological defeat for al Qaeda, the drawing in of senior al Qaeda operatives into the country, the high casualty rates among foreign terrorists, the valuable combat experience and intelligence gained by U.S. forces, the establishment of an Iraqi intelligence agency and security forces hostile to al Qaeda's operations, the exposure of al Qaeda networks outside Iraq, the pressure placed on Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran, and other benefits far outweigh the negative of potential bleedback by the terrorists fleeing Iraq.

In the course of explaining why the claim that Iraq is a terrorist training ground is of very little moment Roggio mentions that over half of the foreign terrorists who have come to Iraq to fight so far this year have been killed or captured:

In an October 20th press briefing, Major General Rick Lynch reports that 376 foreign fighters had been captured this year, and over 400 killed. The foreigners come from countries that are outside the reach of U.S. forces. With an estimated 150 terrorists entering the country monthly, well over half of the year's total have been killed or captured, an exceedingly high attrition rate. General Lynch also points out that al Qaeda in Iraq's leadership is often of foreign origin. al Qaeda is not in the habit of putting green recruits into leadership positions.

There's much more at the link, including a graphic which breaks down the captured terrorists by nation from whence they came.

Republican Hypocrisy

Freshman Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) recently introduced an amendment to the budget resolution which would have taken money from an incredible piece of pork, a 220 million dollar bridge in Alaska that connects the mainland to an island with a population of about fifty people, and used that money to rebuild a bridge in Louisianna that was damaged by Katrina. The Alaskan bridge, often referred to as the bridge to nowhere, is just a wallet-stuffer for Alaskan workers. The money could have reduced the amount that taxpayers will otherwise be handing over to Louisianna by almost a quarter of a billion dollars.

It's the kind of legislation on which Republicans campaign for office. It's the sort of thing we vote for Republicans to support. The Senate vote was Thursday. It was defeated 85 to 15. Only fifteen senators had enough character to vote on behalf of the American taxpayer and against a spectacular waste. The rest of them voted to squander our money on a bridge that will service no more than a few people a day.

The roll call on the vote can be found here.

The fifteen heroes are: Allard (R-CO), Allen (R-VA) [Our early favorite for '08], Bayh (D-IN), Burr (R-NC), Coburn (R-OK), Conrad (D-ND), DeMint (R-SC), DeWine (R-OH) [Partial redemption for joining the gang of 14], Feingold (D-WI), Graham (R-SC) [Partial redemption for joining the gang of 14], Kyl (R-AZ), Landrieu (D-LA) [We were surprised, too, until we remembered that Louisianna gets the money], Sessions (R-AL), Sununu (R-NH), and Vitter (R-LA). Eleven Republicans and four Democrats.

Noticebly missing from the list are such stalwart Republican opponents of governmental profligacy as John McCain, Rick Santorum (This is Santorum's second offense against principle. His first was endorsing Arlen Specter in his primary race against Pat Toomey), Bill Frist, and, well, the vast majority of the Republican caucus. One expects Democrats to vote for fleecing the public, but it's an outrage that people who advertise themselves as fiscal conservatives have done it. Santorum is in a tough race in '06 in Pennsylvania. He upset a lot of his base with his endorsement of Specter. This vote may have alienated many of them. It certainly has made me consider withholding my vote for the office of senator on election day. Too bad Toomey won't challenge Santorum in the primary.

To make matters worse this amendment was just one of several that Coburn introduced that would have stripped another $500,000 from a sculpture park in Washington, $200,000 from a proposed animal shelter in Rhode Island, and another $200,000 from a parking lot in Omaha, Nebraska, and redirect these monies to disaster relief. Those proposals also lost by similar margins.

The Grich has the pathetic reactions of porkmeisters Ted Stevens of Alaska and Patty Murray of Washington to Coburn's attempt to introduce sanity and integrity to the Senate.

Stevens threatened to resign if he didn't get his bridge. We urge the voters of Alaska to assist him in finding his way out the door.

Murray threatened to block the pet projects of any senator who voted against her sculpture park. May we recommend that the first sculpture will be a huge hog feeding at the public trough.

Andrew Sullivan lists the number of pork projects by year and shows the dramatic increase from 958 in 1996 to 13,997 in 2005. The fat has actually doubled since President Bush came into office.

Ironically, I received a call yesterday afternoon from the RNC asking for a donation. I told the caller, who was not just a hired telemarketer, that I won't be contributing another cent to the Republican party until they start acting like Republicans and start acting like a majority party. Why, I asked her, should we vote for Republicans if they're just going to morph into Democrats? She gave me a number to call to voice my concerns. I suspect that the number, like the bridge in Alaska, goes nowhere.