Electoral Strategy

Jonathan Chait has hit upon the answer to the problem of Democratic electoral failure. Unless I misunderstand him he's advising Democrats to leave talk of principles and ideas to the Republicans, who are apparently better at it, and just promise to govern on an ad hoc basis.

Tired of conceding elections to Republicans, Chait wants to concede the sphere of principles to them as well. His argument, I think, is that Republicans articulate a lot of high-sounding principles about low deficits and small government, but they govern according to the expediencies of the moment. This doesn't seem to hurt them at the polls so the Democrats ought to go and do likewise.

I doubt his advice will be followed, nor should it be, but if it were it might portend the end of ideology in our time.

Hardball in Gaza

Israel is playing hardball:

Israel last night threatened to assassinate Palestinian Prime Minister Ismael Haniyeh if Hamas militants did not release a captured Israeli soldier unharmed. The unprecedented warning was delivered to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a letter as Israel debated a deal offered by Hamas to free Corporal Gilad Shalit.

It came as Israeli military officials readied a second invasion force for a huge offensive into Gaza. Hamas's Gaza-based political leaders, including Mr Haniyeh, had already gone into hiding. But last night's direct threat to kill Mr Haniyeh, a democratically elected head of state, sharply raised the stakes.

Ed Morrissey at Captain's Quarters considers the objection that Israel is exceeding the law by targeting Palestinian political leaders, and concludes it is without merit.

Update on <i>Hadji Girl</i>

Michelle Malkin is concerned that Cpl. Josh Belile, the creator of the controversial song Hadji Girl, is being muzzled by the Marine Corps in ways inconsistent with the First Amendment. They apparently have ordered him not to record the song commercially as he intended to do.

I think Michelle's concern is misplaced. The Marine Corps has every right to insist that its image as a professional military service be protected and enhanced by those who represent it.

In their judgment (and mine) Hadji Girl does not do that. The lyrics toward the end of the song are coarse and disturbing and seem to convey a zest for killing that our troops don't need to have associated with them. As much as it is necessary to kill Islamists it should not be something in which we revel. Songs which extol killing tarnish the United States, and for that reason I think the Corps was correct to prohibit Cpl. Belile (if, in fact, they did) from recording his song as long as he is a Marine.

Having said that I should add that Hadji Girl is relatively tame, as far as its lyrics go, compared to much of what passes for music in our popular culture. Nevertheless, the Marine Corps prides itself in setting a higher standard of conduct than set by American popular culture and is justified in expecting its Marines to hold to that standard.

Vindicating Sharon

Doug Hanson at The American Thinker makes the interesting point that Israel's ability to move freely in Gaza during its current operation there is possible only because there are no longer dozens of Israeli settlements impeding their military maneuvers and lines of fire.

In other words, Ariel Sharon's decision to withdraw from Gaza, though very unpopular at the time, seems to have been militarily prescient. The Israeli Defense Forces have much more freedom of movement in Gaza today than they would have had two years ago and far fewer Israeli lives are at risk from Hamas than would be were the Israeli settlements still in place.

Perky Economy

The Bush economy continues to chug along like the little engine that could despite the woeful prognostications of those who, perhaps for political purposes, seem to prefer to see it bogged down in the mire of recession:

The economy sprang out of a year-end rut and zipped ahead in the opening quarter of this year at a 5.6 percent pace, the fastest in 2 1/2 years and even stronger than previously thought.

The new snapshot of gross domestic product for the January-to-March period exceeded the 5.3 percent growth rate estimated a month ago, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. The upgraded reading - based on more complete information - matched economists' forecasts.

No doubt Paul Krugman at the New York Times will manage to find the bad news in this somehow.

Putin's Answer

A couple of days ago we wondered how the Russians would react to the murders of four of their diplomats at the hands of Iraqi insurgents. It looks like the answer is in:

President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday ordered Russia's special services to hunt down and "destroy" the killers of four Russian diplomats in Iraq, the Kremlin said.

Nikolai Patrushev, the head of the Federal Security Service - the main successor to the Soviet KGB - later said that everything would be done to ensure that the killers "do not escape from responsibility," the Interfax news agency reported.

"The president has ordered the special forces to take all necessary measures to find and destroy the criminals who killed Russian diplomats in Iraq," the Kremlin press service said in a brief statement.

Putin also said Russia "will be grateful to all its friends for any information on the criminals," the Kremlin said.

That the murderers will be found is probable. What remains to be seen is what their fate will be. Right now they're probably hoping that if they're caught it'll be by the Americans.

Insurgents Want Us to Stay

Sunni insurgent groups negotiating for a cessation of hostilities are predicating their cooperation with the Iraqi government on an agreement that coalition troops withdraw within two years:

Eleven Sunni insurgent groups have offered an immediate halt to all attacks - including those on American troops - if the United States agrees to withdraw foreign forces from Iraq in two years, insurgent and government officials told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Withdrawal is the centerpiece of a set of demands from the groups, which operate north of Baghdad in the heavily Sunni Arab provinces of Salahuddin and Diyala.

The Democrat left has repeatedly demanded that we withdraw immediately or within one year, but it seems that the insurgents think a longer stay is necessary to ensure the stability of Iraq and the security of the Sunnis. Indeed, it looks like the insurgents actually want us to stay in Iraq longer than the Democrats do.

This puts the Dems in the awkward position of insisting that our troops are more destabilizing than the insurgents think they are, but then awkward positions are not foreign to the Reid, Kerry, Kennedy bunch.

Numbers Stirs Up the Hornets

One of the most prominent historians of science, Ronald Numbers, had some interesting things to say in an interview by PBS. For example, he deconstructs one of the favorite dogmas of those hostile to religion:

QUESTION: I'd like to move on, to talk about the Galileo case. Many people have a mythology that during his trial there was somebody down in the basement stoking the pyre and oiling the rack - that he was in imminent danger of losing his life. Is this a true representation of the case?

MR. NUMBERS: Contrary to common myth, Galileo suffered very little abuse at the hands of the Catholic Church. He was never tortured, he never faced death. In fact, he was never imprisoned. His penalty was house arrest at a pleasant villa on the outskirts of Florence, Italy.

Galileo's problems with the church stemmed far less from his astronomical and physical views than from his lack of diplomacy, and from his impertinence in trying to instruct the church on how to interpret Scriptures, as some Protestants had attempted to do in the previous century. Furthermore, in writing his controversial book, Galileo had the impertinence to attribute the Pope's views to a simple-minded character named Simplicius. This Pope [Urban VIII] had once been a patron of Galileo's and had supported his scientific efforts, so such a lack of diplomacy turned even the Pope against his one-time friend.

...there seems no reason to believe that Galileo at any point faced the threat of death. There was never any indication in the court records of death being a possible penalty, and no other scientists were put to death for their scientific views....I can think of no scientist who ever lost his life for his scientific views.

Having roundly kicked this much-beloved prop out from under the religion-haters he went on to infuriate them with this remark:

To me, the struggle in the late 20th Century between creationists and evolutionists does not represent another battle between science and religion because rarely do creationists display hostility towards science. If you read their literature, you'll rarely come across an anti-scientific notion. They love science. They love what science can do. They hate the fact that science has been hijacked by agnostics and atheists to offer such speculative theories as organic evolution. So, they don't see themselves as being antagonistic to science any more than many of the advocates of evolution - those who see evolution as God's method of creation - view themselves as hostile to Christianity.

The public often gets the impression that most scientists are non-believers. But, that's not true. Just within the past year the journal Nature published a study that revealed even today roughly the same proportion of scientists believe in God as did 75 years ago. [The figure is almost 40%]

Now the reader might wonder why this should infuriate the anti-religion crowd. Well, I invite the curious to visit The Panda's Thumb and read their version of an intelligent discussion that was triggered by this interview with Prof. Numbers.

At Panda's Thumb, run by a choleric college biologist named P.Z. Myers, the visitor will be astonished by calls for lining up Christians and shooting them and will witness other marvelous examples of the love some Darwinian atheists have both for Christians (See, for example, comments #107907, 107913, 107982 by a mentally ill person named Kevin of NYC), and for other Darwinian atheists who have the temerity to disagree with them on some minor point (See #108356 and a reply here).

The "dialogue" really is amusing, sad and a bit scary all at once.

Noah's Ark

Wouldn't this throw the whole debate over evolution topsy-turvy:

A team of Texas archaeologists believe they may have located the remains of Noah's Ark in Iran's Elburz mountain range.

"I can't imagine what it could be if it is not the Ark," said Arch Bonnema of the Bible Archaeology Search and Exploration (B.A.S.E) Institute, a Christian archeology organization dedicated to looking for biblical artifacts. Bonnema and the other B.A.S.E. Institute members hiked for seven hours in the mountains northwest of Tehran, climbing 13,000 feet before making the apparent discovery. "We got up to this object, nestled in the side of a hill," said Robert Cornuke, a member of the B.A.S.E. Institute. "We found something that has my heart skipping a beat."

At first, they didn't dare to hope it was the biblical boat.

"It wasn't impressive at first," Cornuke said. "Certainly didn't think it to be Noah's Ark. But when we got close, we were amazed. It looked similar to wood." In addition, some B.A.SE. members say, their discovery didn't look very distinctive. "It looked like the deck of any boat today," Bonnema said.

The Bible places the Ark in the mountains of Ararat, a mountain range theologians believe spans hundreds of miles, which the team says is consistent with their find in Iran. The Bible also describes the Ark's dimensions as being 300 cubits by 50 cubits -- about the size of a small aircraft carrier. The B.A.S.E. Institute's discovery is similar in size and scale.

"It is provocative to think that this could be the lost ark of Noah," Cornuke said.

Throughout history, people have been searching for the Ark to help prove God's existence. "There's this idea, if we can prove that the ark existed then we can prove that the story existed, and more importantly, we can prove that God existed," said Bruce Feiler, author of "Where God Was Born."

The B.A.S.E. Institute's samples are being examined at labs in Texas and Florida. B.A.S.E officials concede that there would be no way to conclusively prove that their finding is actually Noah's Ark.

So the hunt goes on. The biggest hurdle in identifying Noah's Ark comes down to "gopher wood." The Bible says the Ark was made of gopher wood but no one knows what it is.

There's more at the link.

I doubt that discovery of the ark would "prove God's existence," as Mr. Feiler asserts, although it would certainly be powerful confirmation of the veracity of the early chapters of Genesis, and it would have a tectonic impact on current debates over the evolution of life. If it turns out that these really are the remains of a large ancient boat (and at this point we have no idea whether they are or aren't) then the question that will emerge is how did a huge vessel get to an altitude of 13,000 feet unless borne there by water. Skeptics will be able to avoid admitting that Genesis is correct about the occurence of a vast flood by arguing that it's possible the boat was actually built there by ancient people as a shrine or some such thing, and, of course, such an explanation is possible.

Thus, even if this does turn out to be an artifact similar to what is described in Genesis, believers should not get their hopes up that it will be accepted by non-believers as a decisive proof of the Genesis story. Nevertheless, it will shift a tremendous intellectual and psychological advantage to those who have argued all along that the flood of Noah was a literal historical event and give enormous support to the arguments of the young-earth creationists.

Osama Loves .....

Ramirez cartoon:

Thanks to No Left Turns.

<i>Hamdan</i> a Republican Victory?

Andrew Cochran at Counterterrorism blog thinks that the Supreme Court ruling in Hamdan that slaps down the administration's attempts to put some Gitmo detainees before a war crimes tribunal, so far from being the defeat the media are portraying it to be, is actually a win, both militarily and politically, for the President. Here's his reasoning:

The news networks are proclaiming that the Supreme Court handed the President a "strong rebuke" in the Hamdan case by declaring the proposed Gitmo trials are illegal under U.S. law and international Geneva conventions.

Oh, really?

The decision is actually a huge political gift to President Bush, and the detainees will not be released that easily. The President and GOP leaders will propose a bill to override the decision and keep the terrorists in jail until they are securely transferred to host countries for permanent punishment. The Administration and its allies will release plenty of information on the terrorist acts committed by the detainees for which they were detained (see this great ABC News interview with the Gitmo warden). They will also release information about those terrorist acts committed by Gitmo prisoners after they were released. They will challenge the "judicial interference with national security" and challenge dissenting Congressmen and civil libertarians to either stand with the terrorists or the American people. The Pentagon will continue to release a small number of detainees as circumstances allow. The bill will pass easily and quickly. And if the Supremes invalidate that law, we'll see another legislative response, and another, until they get it right. Just watch.

If Congress and the President do seek legislation that would make trying these prisoners legal, and it appears Senators Graham and Kyl are going to do just that, it will make life miserable for Democrats who will have to either support the legislation or explain to their constituents why they're trying to get terrorist killers released from prison. Whatever reason they come up with, it won't be embarrassing.

One of the oddest things about this decision, by the way, is that the Court ruled that the prisoners can be held for the duration of hostilities. Given that the war on terror could last for the rest of this century the upshot is that the administration can essentially hold these guys for life and never try them in court, but if they do try them it has to be in federal court rather than before a military tribunal.

That's just what we need - hundreds of terrorist trials clogging our court system while their buddies on the street threaten the jurors with their lives. What civilian jurors, or judges and lawyers, for that matter, will want to be involved in these trials?

America would greatly benefit from one more Bush Supreme Court pick before he's done. Perhaps Ginsburg (73) or Stevens (86) will soon retire.

Lerner and Wallis

Martin Edlund at Slate dissects the strategy of the religious left's two most prominent figures and concludes that they're like two immiscible liquids. Michael Lerner and Jim Wallis both seek to sway the devout toward the ideals of the Democratic party (whatever they may be), but they have two very different and mutually incompatible messages for two very different constituencies.

The difference is starkly illustrated by a pair of conferences hosted by each of these religious gurus. Lerner's conference drew:

...liberal people of faith who feel alienated by the narrow politics of the religious right, and the 26 percent of Americans who self-identify-according to a recent Newsweek/Beliefnet poll-as "spiritual but not religious." There was a strong Christian presence among the 1,200 attendees at the NSP conference, but it leaned heavily toward liberal denominations. Quakers and Unitarians outnumbered Evangelicals and Catholics. They were joined by scores of liberal Jews, fewer Muslims, and a sprinkling of Buddhists, Sufis, Baha'i, Wiccans, Native American shamans, and various metrospiritual seekers. Even secular humanists were welcomed.

Together the attendees all prayed in concentric circles, sang John Lennon's "Imagine" (with the line "and no religion too" tastefully amended), and meditated while eating vegan boxed lunches.

Wallis, on the other hand, wants to attract:

...two voting blocs that will be critical to the 2008 election, moderate evangelicals and Catholics. His plan is to focus on poverty, an issue he believes all Christians can get behind, rather than ceding the floor to gay marriage and abortion, which the religious right uses to estrange Christians from the Democratic Party.

Wallis' conference this week, Pentecost 2006, will bring hundreds of Christian activists to Washington to promote a Covenant for a New America aimed at eradicating poverty at home and abroad. Unlike Lerner's conference, Wallis' isn't going to be dominated by the liberal fringes: Among the speakers are Republican Sens. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Sam Brownback of Kansas, two of the most prominent voices on the religious right.

The source of Wallis' appeal is his apparent moderation, both political and theological. His argument is compelling in its simplicity: An overriding commitment to social justice is more basic to Christianity than the issues championed by Christian fundamentalists. But to prevail he must avoid seeming too militantly progressive.

Which means not being identified with the Michael Lerners in the party.

Wallis is much better positioned to appeal to voters who might otherwise drift Republican than Lerner is, but in my opinion his problem is this: Any candidate which implements his approach will, in order to appeal to the constituency that Wallis targets, have to base his call for social justice on Biblical mandates and principles. Otherwise, people will just see it as more Great Society liberalism that seeks to solve problems by throwing money at them.

This means that the candidate will have to firmly espouse a Biblical worldview or risk sounding phony. However, and this is the problem, anyone who firmly espouses a Biblical worldview is going to alienate much of the Democratic base which is resolutely secular. So a social justice candidate risks either sounding phony, like John Kerry did when he talked about faith, or sounding genuine and scaring away the secularists.

Examining Liberal Pretensions

Christopher Hitchens skewers his erstwhile comrades on the left for the stark inconsistencies in their position on Iraq. He titles the essay Four Projects for Righteous Anti-War Types, and he asks firstly where those who were so vocal in their opposition to land mines have disappeared to now that IEDs are being employed with such deadly effectiveness against Americans and their allies.

He also wonders why there are no human shields rushing to protect Iraqi schools and hospitals from the savageries of the insurgency as they rushed before the war to shield Iraqis from American bombs, at least until the bombs actually began to fall. He would like to know, too, why the left has changed its mind on sanctions which, they told us during the Clinton years, were killing Iraqi children. In the run-up to the war, however, it seemed that sanctions had suddenly become a much better way to deal with Saddam than deposing him. Finally, Hitchens notes that, now that Islamists make it a special point to target homosexuals, the left has quietly abandoned its demand to allow gays to serve in the military.

Hitchens is almost always a good read, and this column is particularly effective in exposing liberal pretensions of principled opposition to the war and inviting the left to show a little more sincerity by being a lot more consistent.

Golden Mosque Attack Leader Captured

Those who say the Iraqi insurgency is a home-grown affair might wish to read this report by Omar at Iraq the Model on the capture of the leader of the plot to blow up the Samarra Mosque:

In a news conference currently being broadcast on TV, Iraq's national security advisor Muwaffak al-Rubaie says Iraqi security forces arrested Abu Qudama al-Tunisi in a raid in the suburb of al-Dhuloiya north of Baghdad. 15 other foreign terrorists were killed in the raid according to al-Rubaie.

The terrorist of Tunisian origin confessed that he was responsible for the attack that destroyed the Askari Shrine in Samarra back in February 22 of this year. Muwaffak al-Rubaie said the security forces are still searching for Haitham al-Badri who is believed to be the field commander under whom Abu Qudama was operating.

Al-Rubaie described Al-Badri is a terrorist with connections to elements in the past regime who later became one of the leaders of Ansar al-Sunna and later al-Qaeda organization in Iraq.

Al-Rubaie adds that this terror cell was responsible for the assassination of the late al-Arabiya reporter Atwar Bahjat.

Al-Rubaie described how the bombing was organized and says details were taken from the confessions of the captured Abu Qudama:

Four Saudis, two Iraqis and one Tunisian entered the mosque at night, handcuffed and locked up the guards in a room and spent the night planting the bombs all around the mosque. Next day they kidnapped and murdered Atwar Bahjat while she was trying to cover the news of the bombing.

So, the captured leader was Tunisian, the perps were predominately Saudi and the fifteen killed in the raid were described as "foreign" terrorists. At least this cell sounds like it enjoyed enough diversity to delight the administrators at any American university.

Getting What They Wanted in Gaza

Hamas wanted war with Israel and it appears that now they're going to get it. They killed two soldiers and kidnapped a third, holding him in Gaza. The Israelis demanded the soldier be returned but Hamas demanded that Israel release all prisoners under 18 and all females. Israel refuses to negotiate and has apparently moved into Gaza in force and appears to have blocked all escape routes for Palestinian fighters.

Meanwhile, Palestinians in the West Bank kidnapped and murdered the 18 year old Israeli shown in this photo.

Now Israel has captured dozens of Hamas officials and is holding them in prison.

Hamas is the duly-elected governing party of the Palestinian people and they are carrying out acts of terrorism against Israel. The Israelis say they only want to get their kidnapped soldier back, but if that's all this is about there will be more kidnappings and murders to come. Hamas will not stop terrorizing Israelis no matter what concessions the Israelis make short of abandoning their country to the Palestinians. Surely the Israelis recognize that they are in a war over their right to exist, and the only way to protect their people is to eliminate the Palestinian killers.

Check out Captain's Quarters for updates on this unfolding conflict.

ID T-Shirts

CafePress has Intelligent Design T-shirts available some of which are quite clever and fun. Here's one of our favorites:

Go here to see their selection.

A Scientist Talks Religion

Noted physicist Steven Weinberg opines on science and religion:

In my experience most physicists are not particularly religious. A few are - no question about it. But most are not. In fact, I would say they're not so much irreligious as simply uninterested in this subject. They don't know enough or think enough about religion to qualify as atheists. And but I think that's not so limited to physicists. In my experience many Americans think of religion as important, and want to do whatever they can to support it. But if you ask them what they themselves believe, you'll find they're very uncertain about their religious beliefs. They don't actually accept the theology of their official church.

One piece of evidence I give for this is the fact that I have very good friends who belong to religious denominations whose teaching is that since I don't accept their teaching I am damned for all eternity. And you would think that these friends would try to convert me. But they never do. Now, you could explain this in various ways. It may be that they really don't like me very much and are just as glad to see me damned for all eternity -- that's a possible explanation.

But another explanation which I tend to think is more likely is that although they know what their church teaches and they give lip service to it, they really don't believe that if you don't follow that particular form of worship you're damned for all eternity. And when you talk to them about what they believe they're likely to say something like this: "That I think there is a great mystery; we don't know what it's all about. Who knows what's going to happen when we die? Who knows whether there's a heaven or hell? I was born into this faith. I think it's important to have a faith, therefore I will continue to attach myself to this faith." But it really is pretty much what Susan Sontag a long time ago called "piety without content." They believe in religion more than they believe in what religion teaches.

Weinberg is right about the impression of a lack of confidence in their beliefs that Christians often display. Not only is this true with regard to beliefs about eternal life but also with regard to beliefs about abortion. Many Christians believe, for example, that all abortions are tantamount to the murder of innocent children. Yet, very few are willing to storm abortion clinics and shut the places down as they would if born children were being slaughtered therein.

Perhaps deep down they don't really believe that abortions are the moral equivalent of killing toddlers, just as maybe deep down they don't really believe that God is going to condemn people to eternal hell because they did not hold a particular proposition about Jesus as part of their noetic set.

The rest of the interview with Weinberg is also interesting and can be accessed at the link.

Tehran's Guilt

Former FBI Director Louis Freeh, in this 2003 column, implicitly reminds Americans why hitting Tehran hard would be retaliation, not pre-emption, for the deaths of nineteen servicemen in the Khobar Towers attack.

Along the way he also reminds us why the Clinton years were so shameful.

Thanks to Michelle Malkin for the tip.

The War Against the Taliban

Bill Roggio reports on the security situation in Afghanistan. Here's the first part of his report:

The latest round of fighting in southeastern Afghanistan has claimed over 82 Taliban fighters in two separate engagements in Kandahar and Uruzgan provinces. Security Watchtower provides a breakdown of the estimated casualties of Taliban and Coalition forces in southeastern Afghanistan since the beginning of April. An estimated 600 Taliban have been killed and 22 captured, with 41 Afghan and Coalition security forces killed or wounded combined. The estimated Taliban casualties do not contain the number of wounded, which is often twice the number killed in combat.

As the Coalition ramps up its forces and adds another 9,000 troops to the southeastern theater, the Taliban continues to take a pounding on the battlefield. The security situation in the region is fluid, but the Coalition is clearly gaining the upper hand as it moves forces and devotes energy into regions largely ignored by the central Afghan government. Coalition and Afghan sources estimate the Taliban strength between 2,000 to 5,000 active fighters, while the Taliban puts their strength at 12,000. Using the high Coalition estimate of 5,000 and an estimate of 1,800 Taliban killed and wounded, the Taliban has experienced a 36% attrition rate over the past three months. Using the Taliban estimate of 12,000 strong, the Taliban has experienced a 15% attrition rate. Both are frighteningly high numbers, and belie the reports of a sophisticated and powerful Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan.

To underscore this point, I sat in on a platoon level briefing prior to a Canadian assault earlier this month on the Dari and Panjwai districts in Kandahar province. Intelligence indicated the Taliban were massed in the hundreds, and possessed assault rifles, RPGs (rocket propelled grenades), mortars and other more sophisticated weaponry (I will omit the weapons for security purposes). The grunts of Charlie Company of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, mobile assault team and the tip of the spear for Canadian forces, laughed at the intelligence reports the Taliban possessed mortars and other weapons, as they have shown little inclination to bring these weapons to bear on the battlefield. Mortars are hardly sophisticated weapons, they are a staple weapon of platoon and company sized infantry units. That the Taliban cannot effectively deploy these weapons speaks volumes of their sophistication and training.

This is all good news, of course, but the flip side is that Taliban strength is growing in western Pakistan. Read the rest of Roggio's report at the link for the details.

Churchill Gets the Boot

The DenverChannel.com News reports that:

The University of Colorado announced Monday that it will dismiss controversial professor Ward Churchill.

"Today, I issued to Professor Churchill a notice of intent to dismiss him from his faculty position at the University of Colorado Boulder," CU Interim Chancellor Phil DiStefano said Monday afternoon.

Churchill has 10 days to appeal, which entails making a request to have the university president or chancellor forward the recommendation to the faculty senate Committee on Privilege and Tenure. A special panel will then conduct hearings on the matter and make a recommendation to the president on whether grounds for dismissal are supported.

Another committee found Churchill guilty of research misconduct and another panel recommended that he be fired because of "repeated and deliberate" infractions of scholarship rules.

Churchill should never have been hired in the first place, and his dismissal is a small, but welcome, rollback of the grip the hard left has on major American universities.