Judge Taylor's NSA Ruling

Federal District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor has ruled the NSA wiretaps to be unconstitutional. Her decision has been appealed and will almost certainly be overturned by an appellate court. Meanwhile, although the Dems are gleeful about the ruling, more sober observers seem to think that it's pretty disgraceful:

PowerLine's lawyers find the decision completely devoid of legal reasoning, sound or otherwise. One of them says:

Readers may recall that, unlike my partners, I think it's probably a close question whether the NSA program is lawful. Thus, I would have been eager to read and engage a well-reasoned decision that struck down (or affirmed) the program. Unfortunately, this court provided virtually no reasoning at all.

The Washington Post, no friend of the Bush administration, roasts the decision over a hot flame:

The nation would benefit from a serious, scholarly and hard-hitting judicial examination of the National Security Agency's program of warrantless surveillance. The program exists on ever-more uncertain legal ground; it is at least in considerable tension with federal law and the Bill of Rights. Careful judicial scrutiny could serve both to hold the administration accountable and to provide firmer legal footing for such surveillance as may be necessary for national security.

Unfortunately, the decision yesterday by a federal district court in Detroit, striking down the NSA's program, is neither careful nor scholarly, and it is hard-hitting only in the sense that a bludgeon is hard-hitting. The angry rhetoric of U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor will no doubt grab headlines. But as a piece of judicial work -- that is, as a guide to what the law requires and how it either restrains or permits the NSA's program -- her opinion will not be helpful.

Judge Taylor's opinion is certainly long on throat-clearing sound bites. "There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution," she thunders. She declares that "the public interest is clear, in this matter. It is the upholding of our Constitution." And she insists that Mr. Bush has "undisputedly" violated the First and Fourth Amendments, the constitutional separation of powers, and federal surveillance law.

But the administration does, in fact, vigorously dispute these conclusions. Nor is its dispute frivolous. The NSA's program, about which many facts are still undisclosed, exists at the nexus of inherent presidential powers, laws purporting to constrict those powers, the constitutional right of the people to be free from unreasonable surveillance, and a broad congressional authorization to use force against al-Qaeda. That authorization, the administration argues, permits the wiretapping notwithstanding existing federal surveillance law; inherent presidential powers, it suggests, allow it to conduct foreign intelligence surveillance on its own authority. You don't have to accept either contention to acknowledge that these are complicated, difficult issues. Judge Taylor devotes a scant few pages to dismissing them, without even discussing key precedents.

Apparently, Judge Taylor believes that the constitution says whatever she wants it to. It is astonishing to us that the president's political opponents feel so free to claim that he's doing something nefarious by employing these surveillance techniques to protect the lives of Americans when precisely what the law is on the matter is so murky that not even a federal judge can discern what the exact violations of the law are.

That being the case, shouldn't the president be given the benefit of the doubt until the courts finally sort this out and clarify exactly what the law prohibits and what it allows?

Speaking of the delight with which the Democrats have received this decision, Chuck Asay asks a rather pointed question:

Losing Round One

Having cited Strategy Page's analysis the other day in which they argue that Hezbollah suffered a grievous defeat at the hands of the Israelis we offer today a different point of view.

Ralph Peters, for example, claims in the New York Post that Israel lost the first round.

Israel's rep for toughness in tatters. Hezbollah triumphant. Iran cockier than ever. Syria untouched. Lebanon's government crippled. An orgy of anti-Semitism in the global media. Anti-Americanism exploding among Iraqi Shi'as inspired by Hezbollah. Thanks, Prime Minister Olmert. Great job, guy.

The debacle in Lebanon wasn't even a war. It was only round one of a war. And Israel's back in its corner, dazed and punch-drunk. Israel got in a gut jab, but Hezbollah landed three ferocious haymakers:

* Despite the physical damage the Israeli Defense Forces inflicted, Hezbollah's terror-troops were still standing (and firing rockets) when the bell rang.

* At the strategic level, Hezbollah's masterful manipulation of the seduce-me-please media convinced the region's Shi'a and Sunni spectators alike that Hassan Nasrallah is the new Great Arab Hope. He's got a powerful Persian cheering section, too.

* While Israel couldn't plan or execute a winning campaign, it also failed to think beyond the inevitable cease-fire. But Hezbollah did. The terrorists had mapped out precisely what they had to do the moment the shooting stopped: Hand out Iranian money, promise they'll rebuild what Israel destroyed - and simply refuse to honor the terms of the U.N. resolution.

Israel couldn't wait to throw in the towel and start pulling out troops. Then Hezbollah's fighters emerged from the rubble of towns Israeli leaders lacked the courage to conquer - and the number of terror-soldiers who survived shocked the Israelis.

Politicians and generals everywhere, repeat after me: "Air power alone can't win wars; you can't defeat terror on the cheap with technology; and (in the timeless words of Nathan Bedford Forrest) War means fighting, and fighting means killing."

The U.N. resolution called for Hezbollah to disarm - a fantasy only a diplomat could believe. As soon as the refugees began flowing southward and packing the battlefield, Nasrallah told the international community to take a hike. He knows that U.N. peacekeepers won't try to disarm his forces - if they ever show up - and the Lebanese military not only won't try, but couldn't do it.

The world's response? The French (who talked so boldly) took a cold swig of Vichy water: Now they say they won't send in their peacekeepers until Hezbollah is completely disarmed - which isn't going to happen. And Lebanese leaders stated openly that not only wouldn't the Lebanese army attempt to take away the terrorists' weapons, it wouldn't even confiscate caches it stumbled on.

Sucker-punched (well, don't fight with your eyes closed), Israel's complaining to the ref. While staring around in bewilderment.

Want more good news? After finally calling our enemies by the accurate name of "Islamo-fascists," President Bush backtracked so fast the White House lawn was smoking. Then he declared that Israel had won.

That's about as credible as insisting the Titanic docked safe and sound. And that ain't all, folks. If you're an Israel supporter - as I proudly admit to being - get ready for some tough love: Not only did Israel's abysmally incompetent government start a war impulsively and prosecute it half-heartedly, the country's military leadership failed, too. Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, who was going to destroy Hezbollah from the skies, reportedly put his main effort on the eve of war into selling off his stock holdings before his bombs could weigh down the market. Now that's insider trading!

But that was just one jerk-general dishonoring his uniform. The serious news is that the IDF's reserve forces were a shambles when they mobilized. Information from an inside source reveals that, when the reserves' warehouses and depots were opened, key stocks were missing - stolen.

What was gone? Fuel, weapons, ammunition, food, spare parts - all that a modern military needs to go to war. And I doubt it ended up in Iceland. The IDF has great combat leaders and brave soldiers. But Hezbollah's boys proved tougher - and we can't pretty it up. The terrorists were willing - even eager - to die for their cause. Israeli leaders dreaded friendly casualties. And IDF troops - except in elite units - lacked the will to close with the enemy and defeat him at close quarters.

Israel tried to fight humanely. Hezbollah was out to win at any cost. The result was inevitable. On the ground in southern Lebanon, the IDF was able to muster a ten-to-one advantage around contested villages. But its leaders lacked the guts to do what needed to be done. And Hezbollah's front-line fighters survived. You can't win if you won't fight.

The IDF needs pervasive reform. Still structured to defeat the conventional militaries of Syria and Egypt, it faced an enemy tailored specifically to take on the IDF. Historical reputation isn't enough - the IDF must rebuild itself to take on post-modern threats. As one senior American general put it, "The IDF's been living on fumes since 1967." Hezbollah cleared the air.

All this is heartbreaking. I wish it were otherwise. I wish I could back up our president's surreal claim that Israel won. I wish Israel had won. I wish it had the leadership the Israeli people deserve. And that's what's tragic: Israel's politicians turned out to be even more profoundly out of touch with their people than the pols in Washington. Israelis were willing to fight. They wanted to win. The rank and file of the IDF would have done what needed to be done. And their leaders failed them.

There will be consequences. Iran's convinced it's on a winning course. Syria got away with murder (literally). And Hezbollah will come back more determined than ever.

Oh, I almost forgot those two IDF soldiers whose kidnapping triggered all this. But I can be forgiven, since Israel's leaders forgot about them long before I did: The U.N. resolution Olmert welcomed makes no binding and immediate demand for their return.

And the world is going to let Iran build nuclear weapons. Get ready for Round Two.

Whether Israel won or lost is not so easy to discern. Certainly quitting the field before any of their stated objectives were met sounds much like a defeat, but if the cease-fire works Israel will have gained one objective which is the security of its northern border. Of course, the cease-fire is very unlikely to work, for reasons Peters enumerates, in which case all depends on how Israel reacts to that. If they temporize and vacillate, as they have under Olmert, then it will be their complete undoing. The rest of the Arab world will catch the scent of weakness and fear and they will pounce like ravenous wolves, ripping the country to bits.

If, on the other hand, they respond with resolve and crushing force against Hezbollah and clear them out, not only of the south but also the Bekaa, the one month war will be seen as little more than a false start.

Hezbollah refuses to disarm, the kidnapped soldiers have not been returned, the U.N. appears to be reverting to form and reneging on their promise of a peacekeeping force, the French are reverting to form and have lost interest. It's just a matter of time until hostilities break out again. Are the Israelis preparing for the inevitable?

Brites

Here's a web-site that offers a funny parody of the movement among evolutionary atheists to refer to themselves as "brights". The first paragraph of their description of Intelligent Design goes like this:

Intelligent Design is the latest attempt by creationists to force the God myth into science and destroy evolution. It is the most dangerous form of creationism to date because it self-consciously avoids reference to God and engages evolution directly on an intellectual basis. Its creationist agenda bleeds through its empty rhetoric at every turn. It is in fact a facist politico-religious movement that masquerades as science and attempts to force a wedge between the scientific community and the wider culture. Its ultimate goal of this wedgie is to establish a theocracy in which the Bible becomes federal law and the creation account in Guiness is taught as fact.

That's about right. If you visit them make sure you check out their piece on the evolution of the bacterial flagellum.

Reason and Ethics

Rebecca Goldstein recalls with fondness Baruch Spinoza's dream of founding ethics on reason. She concludes her essay with these words:

Spinoza had argued that our capacity for reason is what makes each of us a thing of inestimable worth, demonstrably deserving of dignity and compassion. That each individual is worthy of ethical consideration is itself a discoverable law of nature, obviating the appeal to divine revelation. An idea that had caused outrage when Spinoza first proposed it in the 17th century, adding fire to the denunciation of him as a godless immoralist, had found its way into the minds of men who set out to create a government the likes of which had never before been seen on this earth.

Well, not exactly. The Founding Fathers valued the virtues that Goldstein and Spinoza praise, but they realized that those virtues cannot ultimately be based upon reason. They can only be based upon the will and nature of a transcendent Creator. Reason can tell us how best to accomplish some goal, but it cannot tell us whether the goal itself is good or right. If one's goal, for example, is to set up a government wherein all men are equal then reason might be able to inform us of the most effective way of going about achieving that goal, but it cannot tell us that the goal itself is any better or more right than establishing a state wherein some men are slaves.

Contra Spinoza the proposition that "each individual is worthy of ethical consideration" is not a law of nature. Nature nowhere imposes upon us a duty to assign worth to other human beings. The ethical law of nature, if there is one, is that each of us should look to our own interests. Nature teaches that life is every man for himself. The only basis anyone has for imputing dignity and worth to others is the conviction that all men are created in the image of God, that each of us belongs to and is loved by God. He demands that each of us respect what is His, the objects of His love. If there is no God, as Goldstein seems to hope, then human beings are no different than cattle, a herd of animals to be manipulated, exploited and slaughtered by whomever has the power and the desire to do so.

Not only must moral value ultimately be grounded in a transcendent God if it is to have any existence at all, but so, too, must our confidence in reason itself. If all we are is material stuff, chemical reactions, then what grounds do we have for believing that our cognitive faculties are reliable? They have evolved to suit us for survival, not to lead us to truth. Sometimes reason produces truth, sometimes it leads to error. What grounds do we have for trusting it if all it is is a series of biochemical reactions occuring in nerve cells in the brain? Unless there is a God who has created us and instilled in us the cognitive apparatus required to discover truth we have no basis for thinking that any belief we hold on the basis of reason is correct. Indeed, in order to argue that reason is trustworthy we have to employ our reason, and thus we must assume the very thing we're trying to prove. The only appropriate philosophy for the materialist is a radical skepticism about everything.

Goldstein wishes to be a skeptic about God but not about reason, but people like her delude themselves if they think that human reason is the key that enables them to shed the chains of theistic belief. Autonomous reason, unanchored to theistic belief, is like a mirage which appears substantial enough until it is approached, at which point it just seems to evanesce. Trust in reason alone, if pursued all the way to the end, winds up in nihilism and despair.

Pyrrhic Victory

Strategy Page argues that Hezbollah suffered a serious defeat in its month-long war with Israel:

The success of the ceasefire in Lebanon hinges on a condition that Lebanon and Hizbollah both insist will not happen. Hizbollah is supposed to disarm, but says bluntly that it will not do so. The Lebanese government says it will not force Hizbollah to disarm. So what's going to happen? It appears that Israel is going to hold the UN responsible for carrying out its peace deal, and disarm Hizbollah. To that end, Israel will withdraw its troops from Lebanon, and leave it to UN peacekeepers to do what they are obliged to do. But here's the catch, not enough nations are stepping forward to supply the initial 3,500 UN forces, much less the eventual 15,000 UN force. However, it is likely that, eventually, enough nations will supply troops. But many of those contingents may not be willing to fight Hizbollah. Israel says it will not completely withdraw from Lebanon until the UN force is in place.

The Israeli strategy appears to be to allow the UN deal to self-destruct. If the UN peacekeepers can disarm Hizbollah, fine. If not, Israeli ground troops will come back in and clear everyone out of southern Lebanon. At that point, it will be obvious that no one else is willing, or able, to deal with the outlaw "state-within-a-state" that Hizbollah represents. Hizbollah will still exist after being thrown out of southern Lebanon, and it will be up to the majority of Lebanese, and the rest of the Arab world, to deal with Hizbollah and radical Shias.

Hizbollah suffered a defeat. Their rocket attacks on Israel, while appearing spectacular (nearly 4,000 rockets launched), were unimpressive (39 Israelis killed, half of them Arabs). On the ground, Hizbollah lost nearly 600 of its own personnel, and billions of dollars worth of assets and weapons. Israeli losses were far less.

While Hizbollah can declare this a victory, because it fought Israel without being destroyed, this is no more a victory than that of any other Arab force that has faced Israeli troops and failed.

Michael Ramirez is also a little skeptical of Hezbollah's claims to have won their confrontation with Israel:

Hezbollah's survival of the Israeli onslaught is indeed similar to the survival of other Arab nations whose militaries engaged the Israelis. That the governments of Syria, Jordan and Egypt withstood the Israeli military in the sixties and seventies could be claimed to be "proof" that these nations fought the Israelis to a draw, but that doesn't seem to be an interpretation supported by the fates of their respective armies.

The big question raised by SP's analysis is whether an Olmert government will have the will to reinitiate hostilities when it becomes clear that Hezbollah has no intention of disarming or being disarmed.

Darwinism on the Way Out?

The Guardian reports the shocking news that Darwinism is on the way out in England. Too many students are accepting the notion that God had something to do with their being here. Here are a couple of excerpts from the Guardian article:

In a survey last month, more than 12% questioned preferred creationism - the idea God created us within the past 10,000 years - to any other explanation of how we got here. Another 19% favoured the theory of intelligent design - that some features of living things are due to a supernatural being such as God. This means more than 30% believe our origins have more to do with God than with Darwin - evolution theory rang true for only 56%.

Opinionpanel Research's survey of more than 1,000 students found a third of those who said they were Muslims and more than a quarter of those who said they were Christians supported creationism. Nearly a third of Christians and 10% of those with no particular religion favoured intelligent design. Women were more likely to choose spiritual explanations: less than half chose evolution, with 14% preferring creationism and 22% intelligent design.

Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College London, who gave a public lecture on "Why evolution is right and creationism is wrong" at the time, has been talking about evolutionary biology in schools for 20 years. For the first 10 of those he was lucky to find one student in 1,000 expressing creationist beliefs. "Now in any school I go to I meet a student who says they are a creationist or delude themselves that they are."

He blames the influence of Christian fundamentalists in America and political correctness among teachers here who, he says, feel they have to give a reasonable hearing to beliefs held by people from other cultures, particularly Muslims.

Imagine. As soon as a teacher gives a "reasonable hearing" to non-Darwinian accounts, students abandon the Darwinian version. I wonder why that is. There's no wonder, though, why the Darwinians don't want ID taught in American public schools. If it were, within a generation or two Darwinians would be as scarce as passenger pigeons.

HT to Uncommon Descent.

State of Emergency

Tony Blankley has high praise for Pat Buchanan's latest book, State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America. Here are some excerpts from Blankley's column:

Most people will be familiar with Buchanan's view on immigration. But even those who have read his earlier books and read his columns, as I have, will not be prepared for the remorseless presentation of unimpeachable facts with which he makes his convincing case for the reality of his book's subtitle: "The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America."

Here he deepens his case against illegal immigration (and his case for a moratorium on even legal immigration) with statistic after statistic concerning, among many topics, the shockingly disproportionate degree of disease and crime that illegal Mexican and other immigrants are transmitting into the country.

For example, in Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide, which total 1,200-1,500, are for illegal aliens. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, California now has almost 40,000 cases of tuberculosis (a disease only recently thought to be virtually extinct in America).

He presents compelling evidence that the "Reconquista" of southwestern United States is not merely the silly conceit of a few extremists but is widely desired by Mexicans (he cites a 2002 Zogby poll showing that by 58 percent to 28 percent of Mexicans believe the American Southwest belongs to Mexico).

Of course, there is nothing more dangerously controversial than trying to define the ethnic, language and cultural nature and desirability of America. But until we as a country come to terms publicly with what kind of a country we think America is and should be, we can never have a rational and full debate about what kind of immigration policy we should try to enforce.

Buchanan quotes the French poet Charles Peguy: "It will never be known what acts of cowardice have been motivated by the fear of looking insufficiently progressive."

By that standard, Buchanan, in this book, is positively fearless. He is also right. Americans, from whatever nation or ethnicity we originated, have formed a common culture worth preserving and a common history worth continuing.

I think I have just enough time to purchase it and get it read by Labor Day.

Breaking Mr. Rauf

Word is leaking out that one of the suspects apprehended in Pakistan in the British airliner bomb plot gave up his information under conditions of duress. The liberal Guardian doesn't know what to think of this:

Reports from Pakistan suggest that much of the intelligence that led to the raids came from that country and that some of it may have been obtained in ways entirely unacceptable here. In particular Rashid Rauf, a British citizen said to be a prime source of information leading to last week's arrests, has been held without access to full consular or legal assistance. Disturbing reports in Pakistani papers that he had "broken" under interrogation have been echoed by local human rights bodies.

The Guardian has quoted one, Asma Jehangir, of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, who has no doubt about the meaning of broken. "I don't deduce, I know - torture," she said. "There is simply no doubt about that, no doubt at all." If this is shown to be the case, the prospect of securing convictions in this country on his evidence will be complicated. In 2004 the Court of Appeal ruled - feebly - that evidence obtained using torture would be admissable as long as Britain had not "procured or connived" at it. The law lords rightly dismissed this in December last year, though they disagreed about whether the bar should be the simple "risk" or "probability" of torture.

But none of this stops governments acquiescing in torture to acquire information, rather than secure convictions, as British as well as American practice has shown. It has been outsourced to less squeamish countries and denied through redefinition: but it is still torture and still illegal.... The defence ....[is that] it works. But does it? Torture and other illegality can offer authorities a short-term seduction, perhaps even temporary successes. Information provided by torture may have helped foil the alleged airliners plot. But evidence provided uder torture is often unreliable, sometimes disastrously so - and its use always pollutes the broader credentials of torturers and their allies. This battle must be won within the law. Anything else is not just a form of defeat but will in the end fuel the flames of the terror it aims to overcome.

It's hard to tell whether this is an argument for legalizing torture so that when it's done it's done within the law, or throwing out the case against the terror suspects because the information against them was gained illegally. At any rate, it certainly looks as if the claim that torture doesn't work, a different claim, to be sure, than the claim that it is never right, has been refuted in the case of Mr. Rauf.

With regard to the claim of those like Andrew Sullivan, who argue that torture is absolutely, categorically wrong, here's a thought experiment: Imagine that Mr. Rauf's evidence was crucial to uncovering the plot to blow up ten airliners. Imagine, too, that Mr. Rauf could not be enticed to yield his knowledge of the plot through any means other than being subjected to whatever measures the Pakistanis brought to bear. Finally, imagine that the person you love most of all, in all the world, would have been aboard one of those planes. Would you insist that, these hypotheticals notwithstanding, if you had your way Pakistan would not have been permitted to employ the methods they apparently did to persuade Mr. Rauf to talk? A simple yes or no will suffice.

If you answered yes, try this: look your loved one directly in the eyes and tell him or her that.

Off With Her Head!

This video clip gives us a good insight into the sort of tactics used by modern universities to ensure intellectual conformity on the matter of Darwinian evolution.

Free speech and academic freedom are values cherished only in the event that one's opinions converge with the materialist zeitgeist. Genuine dissent is often crushed by the academic brown-shirts whose pious professions of tolerance and celebrations of diversity are intended only to encompass opinions which flaunt the traditional worldview of whites, males, and Judeo-Christian believers.

The instructor in the video had the temerity to suggest that perhaps one of the strongest acids employed to corrode that worldview is not all that it's cracked up to be. For this heresy the poor woman was led to the academic guillotine.

HT: Uncommon Descent

Agreeing With Cynthia

I'm glad to see the back of Cynthia McKinney, who did nothing but disgrace the House of Representatives through her sundry lunacies, most notably her asseveration that George Bush had prior knowledge of 9/11, and her assault on a Capitol Hill policeman.

Nevertheless, I find myself in agreement with her about one thing. Open primaries are absurd. It makes no sense to allow voters of one party to select the candidates of the other party. I don't know how many states besides Georgia have open primaries, nor can I imagine what the argument is for keeping them, but they should be banished from our electoral system forthwith.

Vacillation and Timidity

Bill Roggio offers his "after-action report" of the Israeli/Hezbollah war. His conclusion is that Israel blew it. We concur. It is especially shameful that the United States, which claims to be at war against terrorists, which lists Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, which has suffered grievously at the hands of Hezbollah terrorists, nevertheless voted for U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 which permits Hezbollah not only to survive, but grants them legitimacy, and allows them to keep their arms. This is no way to fight a war on terrorism.

The Olmert government in Israel is not expected to survive a no-confidence vote and will thus pay the price for its vacillation and timidity. It should. We're afraid that the U.S. will pay a much more severe price for ours.

Rebuttal of the Rebuttal

Last week we linked to Joe Carter's three part series on Ten Ways Darwinists Help ID. Since then atheistic Darwinian PZ Myers at Pharyngula has undertaken a rebuttal which Carter claims is actually a better argument for Carter's position than his original three posts. He offers his rebuttal of Myers' rebuttal here.

Speaking of the Darwin debates, Telic Thoughts links to a blogger who warns that ID is a leading cause of cancer. TT offers a warning sticker that pro-ID bloggers can post on their sites to caution readers who might carelessly be taken in by the claims of those shameless ID hucksters.

Consider yourselves warned:

Lola/Hezbollah

The folks at Junkyard Blog are nothing if not creative. Recall the tune from the old Kinks' song "Lola" and sing along to "Fauxla", a parody of the faked photos from Lebanon run by Reuters and other MSM outlets. Here are a couple of stanzas to get you started:

MSM stringers down in old Beirut
Nasrallah had some photos that he wanted them to shoot
Called 'em on his Motorola:
"We've a narrative to control-lah"
But the bloggers were a-watching all the clone-stamped smoke
Little Green Footballs said j'accuse! like Zola
Just like Emile Zola.

Oh Reuters, Reuters I can't understand
Why you keep on showing us the Green-Helmet Man
Taking bodies in and out of his mortuary van
While your cameras roll-ah
Doin' it for Hezbollah
And how many times have we seen the same scene
Where the same old woman-you know the one I mean
Pretends her home is now a hole-a.
Acts like she can't be console-a.

Clever, isn't it? Sing the rest at the link.

Media Miscellany

1. Cal Thomas calls for us to get serious in the war against Islamo-fascism. He says it's time we broke out of the legalistic civil rights mindset that has constrained us for the last forty years.

The British are still shocked that people who are born in their country, go to their schools, have British accents and eat fish and chips would kill their fellow Brits. They do so because their allegiance is not to Britain, or to the Queen, but rather to their perverted view of God and the instructions from the hate preachers telling them to go bag some Jews, Christians, Westerners and other "infidels."

Health officials respond to plagues by isolation and eradication. Their objective is not only to control the spread of a disease, but also to kill it so it won't infect others. If that is an effective method for combating a plague, why is it not also a good strategy for combating the islamofascist plague?

This isn't about "civil rights" and constitutional protection. These people use our Constitution to protect themselves so they can kill us. And this is decidedly not a game. It is life and death. We want to live and they want us dead.

The war against Islamo-fascism is centuries old and yet completely new. The rules that western states have devised to maximize justice for their citizens so that people could live in safety may no longer work in an age in which the enemy's chief grievance is that you do not share his religion, his chief goal is to kill you and his chief blessing is to die in the attempt.

2. Are we safer now than before 9/11? Of all the nonsensical questions that keep getting asked by media types this has to rank near the top. How can anyone answer it? What would count as evidence one way or another? How could anyone possibly know? As long as there are people out there who wish to kill us, and have the means to do so, then we are not safe. Period.

3. A CNN talking head was discussing the need to eliminate poverty and joblessness among European Muslims in order to eliminate terrorism. Poverty, she averred, breeds hopelessness and hopelessness breeds alienation and alienation breeds terrorism. Unfortunately for this thesis the plotters were all middle class and all had jobs. One pundit noted that some of them lived in nicer homes than did most of the policeman who arrested them. Too many liberals seem locked in the Marxist categories popular during the sixties, and are just unable to grasp that terrorism is not about economics, or land, or American foreign policy. It's about religion and the Islamist desire to conquer the whole world for Islam.

Gervais Refutes Darwinism, Sort of

I'm reluctant to link to this "talk" by comic Ricky Gervais because it's irreverent, vulgar, and it makes fun of beliefs which I have some sympathy for. Even so, it is funny so I'm crossing my fingers and letting you know about it. We have to be able to laugh at ourselves, after all.

Be forewarned that Gervais' language is R-rated.

Will the Cease-Fire Last?

Captain Ed at Captain's Quarters explains why he thinks the cease-fire in Lebanon is doomed to be short-lived. He quotes the Times of London:

Today was supposed to be the day when the much-maligned army of Lebanon took control of its borders and policed the UN ceasefire. Instead, its military commanders were left humiliated and its troops stranded as Hezbollah told them not to try to disarm its fighters.

The first infantry units were preparing to head south yesterday when Hezbollah demonstrated who exercised the real control by announcing that it had no intention of surrendering a single weapon. General Michel Sleiman, the commander-in-chief of the Lebanese Army, and his lieutenants had been invited to join in Cabinet meetings to finalise plans to deploy their 15,000-strong force in a buffer zone south of the Litani river. However, they ended up being lectured by Hezbollah's two Cabinet ministers in the coalition Government on what the army could and could not do.

Ed adds this:

This national humiliation will not soon be forgotten by the Lebanese. If Hezbollah gained some sympathy and support during the Israeli invasion that they themselves provoked, it has dissipated in this mutinous reaction. The scales have fallen from the eyes of the political class in Beirut, and they see the danger to their existence standing baldly in front of them. Hezbollah has stripped them of their legitimacy, and now their theft of southern Lebanon has become crystal clear.

There's more at the link.

Islamic Justice

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad expresses dismay in his 60 minute interview with Mike Wallace that so many Americans are in prison. Perhaps his surprise is that we don't just execute them like they do in Iran. Consider the following example of Iranian justice.

I can't vouch for this series of photos sent to me by a friend. No documentation accompanied the e-mail which contained them. I will simply tell you what the e-mail claimed which is that the boy in the photos is 8 years old and is being publically punished in Iran for having stolen bread in a market. The punishment consists of crushing his arm. You are cautioned that these photos are very disturbing and may be very difficult to look at. I run them here for the same reason that I think it important that we saw pictures of what the Nazis did to Jews and others in the extermination camps, or that we see the pictures of Negro slaves with scars covering their backs where they were lashed, or that we see pictures of what happens to a fetus in an abortion. Nevertheless, you may prefer to pass them by.

Whether the claims accompanying the e-mail are genuine or not what is being done to this child is barbaric, and the adults responsible for it are primitive savages. Is this the fruit of the religion which has declared war on all other faiths? Are these the sort of people this religion produces? Is this the sort of world that lies in store for our children and grandchildren if we shrink from the threat that these people pose to our civilization? And Ahmadenijad has the chutzpah to chide us for our prison population?

The Moon

Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee, in their book Rare Earth, note that not only does our earth possess physical properties that may well make it unique in all the universe, our moon is quite special as well. It's not only rare in terms of its size relative to its planet, but it is absolutely essential in a number of ways to the existence of higher life forms on earth.

A large moon with strong gravitational pull is necessary to keep the earth's axial angle stable. If the earth's axis wobbled, as it would if it had no large moon to offset the gravitational tugs of other planets, the earth would experience enormous climatic variations which would make the evolution of higher life forms quite improbable. Moreover, the moon at its formation, pulled away from the earth many of the noxious gases that formed the early atmosphere. If the moon did not exist, for example, the earth would have retained an atmosphere high in CO2 causing a runaway greenhouse effect which would make the earth as uninhabitable as Venus.

A large moon also causes significant lunar tides which enrich the seas with nutrients and help make them more than vast biological deserts. The gravitational influence of our moon also slows the rate of earth's rotation allowing the atmosphere to be placid enough to permit life to emerge on the earth. Finally, a large moon protects the earth from meteorites from elsewhere in the solar system by drawing many of them toward itself.

Guillermo Gonzalez notes in Privileged Planet that the size of the moon is precisely what it needs to be to permit a total eclipse of the sun which allows for the study of the sun's atmosphere. This single fact has been responsible for much of the advance of scientific knowledge over the centuries. The precise fit of moon and sun during a total eclipse allowed early geometric calculations of the size and distance of celestial objects. It also allowed scientists to determine the nature of the sun's composition which has enabled them to determine much about the size and composition of other stars in our galaxy and other galaxies in the universe, including the fact that those celestial objects are rapidly receding from us and that the universe is expanding. This knowledge has enabled us to infer an initial Big Bang origin to the universe, and much else.

All of this simply because the moon is the size it is and the distance it is from the earth.

The moon was believed to be formed in a collision with a Mars-size object which impacted the earth early in its development. This collision probably melted the earth's crust and allowed surface iron to sink toward the core of the planet. This enabled the earth to develop a protective magnetic field and, by removing much of the iron from the surface where it would have bound up any oxygen in the vicinity, it permitted the atmosphere to become oxygenated.

If the material that formed the moon had taken a reverse orbit after this primordial impact, it would have decayed and fallen back to earth. If the impact had occured at a later stage in the earth's development the earth would have been too massive to allow as much material to be ejected, and the resulting moon would have been smaller and less effective.

Remarkably, in other words, this impact had to occur at just the right time, at just the right angle, with just the right force, by an impactor of just the right size and momentum, at just the right spot for a moon of just the right size to form.

What amazing coincidences nature and chance are capable of!

With Bobby and Gene in the Sixties

Readers of a certain vintage will appreciate Michael Novak's somewhat melancholy reflections on his association with Bobby Kennedy and Gene McCarthy back in the late sixties.

He closes with a thought with which probably every believer can identify:

In those days, I was fascinated by the overlap, in actions at least if not in words, of many people I knew, some of who were believers and some unbelievers. The latter seemed to me, in action, far more Christian or Jewish than they would admit to being. (They certainly were not nihilist nor even amoral, and not relativist nor morally indifferent.) And the Christians seemed to me to live in a deeper, darker night than they much speak about, closer in many ways to unbelief than to belief-at least so far as feelings go. There are many days when the believer, trying to become conscious of God's presence within, feels nothing at all, sees nothing at all.

Sometimes it is easier to act as a particular way of life demands than to say one believes in it. And it may be a quite noble way of life, indeed.

Let God sort us all out, I used to think (and still do). He sees it all more clearly.

C.S. Lewis notes in Surprised By Joy that believers (and others) often make two mistakes: They first make a state of mind their goal and then secondly attempt to produce it. He might have said that the surest way to miss a feeling of the presence of God in one's life is to seek it directly. If we set out to muster a certain spiritual feeling we usually wind up frustrated and disappointed. As in so many other areas of life, perhaps, the best course is to act as we should and not concern ourselves with feelings. We have all eternity to experience the sense of God's presence.

The Incredible Shrinking Deficit

Amity Shlaes has written a helpful column on the shrinking deficit and the causes thereof at Bloomberg.com. She writes:

If a deficit falls in the forest, does anyone hear it? And if no one hears it, did the deficit really fall? That's the question that administration officials must be asking themselves after the report that the Congressional Budget Office issued earlier this month. The CBO announced that the federal deficit is indeed falling, or narrowing, the more precise verb for the phenomenon.

This year, the new report says, the deficit will be $260 billion, or $111 billion less than the CBO estimated in March. For 2006, the government deficit will be 2 percent of gross domestic product, down from the old baseline prediction for 2006 of 2.6 percent. On Aug. 17, when the more extensive annual Update of the Budget and Economic Outlook appears, that 2 percent figure is likely to show up more definitively. But neither the budgeteers' news nor the prospect of a confirmation of it is generating much discussion.

This is surprising. The Economic Report of the President shows the federal deficit for 2004 was 3.6 percent. A narrowing of more than 1 1/2 percentage points in such a short time is itself a story.

The U.S. deficit is worth comparing, for starters, with the data for European nations. In the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, European leaders set a deficit goal of 3 percent of GDP. EU member countries have had trouble meeting that target since.

A shortfall of 2 percent of GDP is also news in the U.S. context. Sure, there was the surplus in the second half of the 1990s. But 2 percent is below the average for the federal deficit between 1980 and 1995.

The 2 percent figure stands out when you compare it with the deficit level in other periods of war. In 1944, as the U.S. poured its energy into winning World War II, the federal deficit widened to 22.7 percent of GDP. In 1968, the year of the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War, the deficit was 2.9 percent of GDP.

Much of the narrowing of the deficit in the 1990s -- and even the surplus of the late 1990s -- came because of reductions in military spending following the end of the Cold War. This was the short-lived peace dividend. The late 1990s boom also played a role: It brought in hundreds of billions more than forecast.

Also interesting is what caused the change between spring 2006 and summer 2006. Thrift on the part of lawmakers, needless to say, isn't the cause, though one reason the deficit narrowed is that the government hasn't been able to spend all the cash it had allocated for projects this year.

Unexpected tax revenue also contributed to the narrowing. Some of this money is payroll taxes. With employment so high, more workers are paying into Social Security and Medicare than predicted.

Yet another source of cash is income taxes. Over the years, the tax distribution tables shifted so that higher earners paid a much larger share of income taxes. Their payments are less predictable than those of lower earners, who don't exercise options, receive bonuses or have as much discretion in choosing when to realize a capital gain.

Extra corporate taxes also flowed in and are 27 percent higher than in the year-earlier period. Overall, the data suggest that tax revenue as a share of the economy for 2006 will be 18.4 percent of GDP, above the average for the past 30 years.

All this good news doesn't preclude budgetary bankruptcy in the future. Only structural change that includes both an overhaul of Social Security and reversal of the Bush administration's Medicare drug plan can do that....

....Yet such details obscure the larger meaning of the deficit change. The new data supply evidence that President George W. Bush is right: lowering tax rates doesn't cause deficits, and can even diminish them. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy is forging through a whole forest of difficulties right now -- the war, higher energy prices, a cooling housing market.

This is all to the good, of course, but the problem is that even if the deficit is just barely above zero percent of GDP the shortfall must be financed somehow and consequently the national debt continues to grow and the interest we must pay on that debt burgeons. Cutting taxes is a good step because it increases revenue, as Shlaes points out, but what we need now is for congress to cut spending so that we can achieve a revenue surplus and begin paying down the debt. Unfortunately, neither Congress nor the White House seem to be bothered by debt.