Remains of St. Paul?

Here's a fascinating story out of the Vatican:

Vatican archaeologists have identified a sarcophagus under Rome's second-largest basilica as the tomb believed to contain the remains of the Apostle Paul. But they still don't know what's inside, experts said on Monday.

The Vatican does hope to be able to examine it more closely and maybe even to open it. But Vatican archaeologist Giorgio Filippi said the researchers' first concern now is to free it from centuries of plastering and debris, in the hope of finding other clues on the sarcophagus itself.

Then they will look for ways of getting inside. "We cannot make a hypothesis, it is useless to ask if there is the body of a woman inside, of two men, of three men or whatever. It is useless to ask because we have not seen inside. The sarcophagus has never been opened," said Filippi.

According to tradition, St Paul, also known as the apostle of the Gentiles, was beheaded in Rome in the 1st century. The sarcophagus, which dates from AD 390 and is buried under the main altar of St Paul's Outside the Walls Basilica, has been the subject of an extended excavation that began in 2002 and ended last month.

"This is not a discovery for us. We know and we have always known this sarcophagus contains St Paul's tomb." Cardinal Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo, head of the basilica, told reporters. The project's original purpose was to make the sarcophagus, buried under layers of plaster and further hidden by an iron grate, more visible to pilgrims and tourists visiting the basilica.

Work in the small area under the altar, to clear the debris and insert a transparent glass floor for better viewing, unearthed new evidence of the authenticity of the sarcophagus, said Filippi, who headed the project. "There are no doubts that this is St Paul's tomb. We do not know what it contains, we have never explored it, but at least pilgrims can now see it," Cardinal Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo added.

I don't know how they know it's Paul's sarcophagus, but if they're correct about that it would be an astonishing find.

Big Government Or Conservation

A friend once asked why I don't like Big Government. Government does many good things, he opined, and we need more of it. Well, I don't think so. There are lots of reasons why bloated governments are undesirable in themselves and some reasons why they are undesirable as symptoms or side effects of forces which are doing harm to our nation. One example of the latter is that Big Government is a necessary enabler to forces currently degrading our natural heritage. Let me explain.

I'm deeply saddened by the loss of our fields and forests and natural places which are being gobbled up by developers at a gluttonous pace. I believe that one of our obligations as stewards of the earth is to protect our open spaces and wildlife habitat and to preserve them for future generations to enjoy.

This is a futile enterprise, however, as long as our population continues to expand. People need jobs and places to live and thus more and more land will need to be paved over and dug up and open spaces will become increasingly more scarce as we continue to grow.

Conservation is incompatible in the long term with population growth and thus if our natural beauty is to be saved we have to limit the size of our national population which means reproducing at the replacement level of approximately 2.1 births per woman and limiting immigration to a few thousand people per year.

So what does this have to do with Big Government? Government grows as entitlements grow. A vast entitlement system requires a vast bureaucracy to administer it. The most obese of our entitlements are social security and medicare. As the baby boomers grow into their golden years the demands on these entitlements will expand rapidly. In order to continue funding them at present levels we must expand the size of our wage-earning population, which is one reason why both Republicans and Democrats are loath to do anything about immigration reform. They see immigrants as the solution to the social security crisis looming on the near horizon.

Native-born Americans are reproducing just about at the replacement rate which means that we must import tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of new taxpayers every year to insure that revenues will continue to meet the needs of the older generation who will demand all the benefits promised to them.

As the population expands, however, it puts enormous stress on both wildlife and the land. These are subjected to cumulative insults that gradually diminish the diversity of the former and the quality and quantity of the latter. Housing, malls, roads all consume vast quantities of acreage every year in this country, permanently wiping out habitat and scenic beauty that nourish the human soul.

A better solution from a conservationist point of view would be to limit immigration, raise the age of eligibility for entitlements, cut back on some benefits, and thus reduce the size of the bureacracy that manages the system, but these measures no politician who values his or her job has the audacity to propose. The easy way out, which is too often the preferred egress for our political leaders, is to maintain the entitlement status quo, thus keeping government big and keeping the population growing, which means opening the borders to anybody who wants in. Thus our numbers burgeon and more and more of our natural lands get turned into asphalt and endless seas of housing developments to accomodate the growth.

It all seems terribly myopic, but to those who think only in terms of political expediency and economic profit the beauty of our countryside is an expendable resource there to be exploited.

The Decline of the Secular University

Stephen Carter reviews C. John Sommerville's Decline of the Secular University at Christianity Today:

A few years ago, while visiting an explicitly Christian university, I met two students who said they had been ridiculed for raising a biblical perspective in the classroom. Their travails remind us how diligently most contemporary scholars struggle to separate their pedagogy from their religious faith. American universities are famously in love with the ideology of secularism. On the flip side, they are notoriously skeptical or even hostile toward religion. In his masterful Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, John Milbank defended the primacy of theology for the Christian scholar.

Since Milbank's call, unfortunately, the situation on campuses has worsened. C. John Sommerville, in The Decline of the Secular University, warns that campus life is swiftly bypassing secularism in favor of post-secularism. That is, the appeal to reason is being replaced by the appeal to fashion. The secular university, says Sommerville, "was a flawed concept from the beginning," because it focused on the education of young people without any sense of why they were being educated.

Worse still, to the extent that the university becomes post-secular, it will hopelessly flounder at preparing students to use the knowledge they gain. The modern campus, Sommerville says, does nothing to help students ponder the most significant questions in life-that is, the categories that religions believe they can address. Religious studies departments at most major universities do nothing to improve matters. He says professors prefer not to do theology and thus study religion from the outside rather than the inside. As for scientists, Sommerville is troubled by their refusal to take up the questions he finds truly interesting-for example, the ability of some part of the universe (us) to become "aware of itself."

Although Sommerville's concerns might be exaggerated, most of his criticism hits the target. We are questioning, wondering creatures, and Sommerville wants universities to help us question and wonder better. Because the secular project demanded "destroying traditions," it kicked away the props on which might rest answers to the great questions. As the university now becomes post-secular, it replaces those props with a celebration of feeling and "fashionable moralizing."

My date book contains cartoons first published in the New Yorker. One shows a young boy in front of his class, doing arithmetic at the blackboard. He has just written "7 x 5 = 75" and says to his astonished teacher, "It may be wrong, but it's how I feel." There, in a nutshell, is the problem with the post-secular university. Faith is dead, reason is dying, but "how I feel" is going strong. Should we ignore warnings like Sommerville's, "how I feel" will be all there is.

Indeed, in a secular setting nothing students study has any real meaning or significance. All that matters, in many cases, is having the right attitude about things, holding fashionable opinions, achieving status among one's peers, projecting a proper image, having sex. The knowledge content students are tested on in their classes is so much background static in their lives. It means nothing to them in any life-enriching sense. It's just a hoop they have to jump through in order to get a degree and get a job. This is certainly not true of all students, but it's true of many, maybe even most, and the secular university offers nothing that can help fill a student's emptiness except the opportunity to participate in weekend bacchanalia with other similarly emotionally and intellectually deracinated young people. It's all quite sad.

Tom Wolfe captures, perhaps unintentionally, the hollowness of campus secularism and the spiritual impoverishment which results with especial skill in his novel I Am Charlotte Simmons. It's a book every parent should read before sending a son or daughter off to a secular college.

Glick Gets It

This article by Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post is as clear a call to face up to the peril we are in as any we're likely to hear from anyone, especially from our political leadership. This is a must read essay. It begins with an indictment of the foolishness that is the Iraq Study Group report but moves quickly into what Israel must do to meet her responsibility to protect her people from the madmen in Iran:

When the history of our times is written, this week will be remembered as the week that Washington decided to let the Islamic Republic of Iran go nuclear. Hopefully it will also be remembered as the moment the Jews arose and refused to allow Iran to go nuclear.

With the publication of the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group chaired by former US secretary of state James Baker III and former congressman Lee Hamilton, the debate about the war in Iraq changed. From a war for victory against Islamofascism and for democracy and freedom, the war became reduced to a conflict to be managed by appeasing the US's sworn enemies in the interests of stability, and at the expense of America's allies.

Baker and his associates claim that the US cannot win the war in Iraq and so the US must negotiate with its primary enemies in Iraq and throughout the world - Iran and Syria - in the hopes that they will be persuaded to hold their fire for long enough to facilitate an "honorable" American retreat from the country.

Like his unsupported assertion that the US cannot win in Iraq, Baker also asserts - in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary - that Iran and Syria share America's "interest in avoiding chaos in Iraq." Because of this supposed shared interest, Baker maintains that with the proper incentives, Iran and Syria can be persuaded to cooperate with a US withdrawal from Iraq ahead of the 2008 presidential primaries.

Unless something is done in the next six months, Glick believes, both we and Israel are almost certainly headed for a nuclear attack on our homelands. Don't miss the rest of her disturbing but important essay.

A Lawyer's Christmas Greeting

A friend passes along this parody of what modern liberalism has done to Christmas:

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all...

And a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2007, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great (not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country or is the only "AMERICA" in the Western Hemisphere), and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith, or sexual preference of the wishes.

(By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher.

This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year, or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.)

Past performance does not guarantee future results.

And Happy HannuKwanzmas to you.

Skewering the ISG

John Podhoretz skewers the ISG and its hapless report in an essay in the New York Post. The whole column is worth reading but especially the beginning and the end. He starts with this:

The profound quality of the suggestions offered by the Iraq Study Group - the panel headed by former Secretary of State James Baker that presented its report with such fanfare to the president yesterday morning - can be inferred from the following passage on page 60:

"RECOMMENDATION 19: The President and the leadership of his national security team should remain in close and frequent contact with the Iraqi leadership."

Truly, a grateful nation should fall on its knees and thank the benevolent Creator that the nine wise men and one woman who comprise the Iraq Study Group were willing to sacrifice themselves and come together so that such a recommendation could be placed before our leaders and the world.

The nation's capital hasn't seen such concentrated wisdom in one place since Paris Hilton dined alone at the Hooters on Connecticut Avenue.

After all, only genius approaching the level of Paris could have written this sentence: "The Support Group should consist of Iraq and all the states bordering Iraq . . . and, of course, Iraq itself." Yes, that's some Support Group, what with Iraq and Iraq in it together to support, um, Iraq.

And ends with this fine summary of the ISG's findings:

Oh, and what about that war in Iraq, the ostensible subject of the Study Group's work?

Well, we're losing it, and there's no way we can win it, and we don't have enough troops to do it, and we can't get any more troops, and the ones we can get will be tired and mad, but we shouldn't pull out of Iraq because, after all, that would be a disaster. But don't worry, everybody! Iran and Syria will save our bacon! All that needs to happen is for Israel to cease to exist!

This report has been catnip to the liberal media but other than the fact that it's critical of the Bush administration I can't see why. Reading through the full report one is struck by how many of the 79 recommendations are either redundant, irrelevant, banal, or impractical. I guess it doesn't take much to gain applause from the left as long as it's possible to portray the object of their ovation as a slap in Bush's face.

The Gathering Storm

Rick Santorum delivers his farewell speech to the Senate and sounds like a modern day prophet. He is certainly, among politicians, a voice crying in the wilderness. The speech is long - it takes 10 to 15 minutes to read - but it may be the most important speech anyone has ever given on the Senate floor. In explaining why he was one of only two senators to vote against the nomination of William Gates to be Secretary of Defense, he outlines the parlous position we are in today, where the threats to our national existence lie, and what we must do if we are to survive. Here's an excerpt:

If there has been a failing--obviously, for the last several weeks and months we have been talking about the failings of the administration with respect to the policies within Iraq--I would make the argument that the larger failing, not just of the administration but of the Members of Congress and leaders in this country, is that we have not had the courage to stand up and define the enemy as to who they are and study and understand them and explain to the American people who they are.

I defined the enemy back at the National Press Club speeches as Islamic fascism. I said that is the biggest issue of our time, this relentless and determined radical enemy that is not just a group of rag-tag people living in caves but, in fact, people with an ideology, a plan, and increasingly the resources to carry out that plan, as well as, increasingly, a bigger and larger presence throughout the Islamic world, these radical Islamic fascists.

Whether we know it or not, they have been at war with us, and the State of Iran specifically has been at war with us, since 1979 when they declared war against the United States. They have not rescinded that declaration. So when we talk about engaging Iran as the Secretary, the new, future Secretary of Defense has talked about, we are talking about engaging someone who is at war with us, who has declared war with us, and who has been at war and, and as I will talk about here, and I think it has been widely reported in the press, has been doing a lot to substantiate the claim that they have been at war with us.

The question is, are we at war with them? What are we doing to insure that they don't win? Take the time to read Santorum's entire speech. It's crucially important.

Follow Up To Heavens Declare

I came across this passage earlier this week and thought it dovetailed nicely with brother Dick's earlier post The Heavens Declare.

Theologians typically summarize the general works of God in three broad categories: creation, providence, and miracles.

...

Providence
Christ is the ruler and preserver of creation. This is the work of providence. The Westminster Larger Catechism offers a succinct definition of God's works of providence: "God's works of providence are his most holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing all his creatures; ordering them, and all their actions, to his own glory" (question 18). The key words are preserving and governing. Providence is the necessary corollary to creation. Because God is the creator, He owns creation and has the authority to rule it and keep it according to His own purpose. Let us be careful here not to equate a belief in divine providence with a "whatever happens happens" theology. That is fatalism and fatalism is paganism. There is a world of difference between believing in an uncontrollable operation of blind fate and believing that all things are working together toward a prescribed and purposeful end by One who is infinitely wise, infinitely good, and infinitely powerful so that His purpose cannot be threatened, frustrated or jeopardized. It ought to be most comforting for believers to know and rest in the constant truth that they are part of God's unfailing purpose.

The same two New Testament texts that declare Christ as the Creator also prove that the Lord Jesus is engaged in the ongoing work of providence. Creation and providence are inseparable truths. In Colossians 1:17 Paul says about the pre-eminent Christ, "He is before all things, and by him all things consist." The word "consist" means "to cohere or stand together." It is by Christ that the created world stands or sticks together. Hebrews 1:3 tells us exactly how Christ not only makes things stick together but moves them along to their prescribed end. The apostle says that He upholds all things by the word of His power. The word "uphold" means literally "to bear or carry along." The word "word" refers to an individual spoken word. The word "power" speaks of ability. As the Lord spoke the world into existence, so his spoken word ably and successfully keeps and directs the world. An interpretative translation of this text, then, would sound like this: "By speaking an irresistible and unfrustratable word, He carries everything along."

Beginning At Moses - A Guide to Finding Christ in the Old Testament
By Michael P.V. Barrett
pp.66-68

What I find truly amazing about all of this is that such a Being could care so much for you and me that He took human form as a man and became the ultimate sacrifice to God for the sins of man and in so doing makes reconciliation with God possible for those who believe.

Economic Justice

Here's an interesting illustration of the law of unintended consequences, a law that seems to attach like velcro to liberal legislation:

At the time, it was common for Aborigines...to work in the Australian cattle industry as cowboys etc. They were however viewed as unreliable employees (principally because of their custom of "going walkabout" (decamping) at unpredictable and inconvenient times) and were paid less than white employees. It was however one of the few employment avenues open to many of them because of their low levels of education etc.

Subsequently, empoyers were forced by law to pay Aborigines at the same rate as white employees -- thus bringing to an almost total end Aboriginal employment in the cattle industry. They are now heavily dependant on welfare payments from the Federal government.

What makes this piece of social engineering especially pernicious is that the judges who handed down the equal pay ruling said at the time that they knew that the Aborigines were less valued employees and that the ruling would throw most of them out of work.

Nevertheless, they chose to consign the Aborigines to abject penury in order to save them from the "injustice" of an unequal wage scale. Classic. In order to satisfy the liberal hunger for socio-economic egalitarianism they made a bone-headed ruling that they knew was going to harm the poor and help them not at all. This is a fine example of piling malevolence on top of stupidity in the name of ideological principle.

Becoming As Gods

According to this NPR All Things Considered report some very reputable physicists are toying with the notion of actually building their own universe in the laboratory. Here are some excerpts:

Is this a joke? No, say a bunch of physicists. One day, it may be possible for a person to create a universe!

This is not going to happen tomorrow. Not even close. But according to Columbia University physics professor Brian Greene, it is theoretically not impossible (which is his way of saying the possibilities are not zero) that one day, a person could build a universe.

The very idea is so startling it's hard to know what this means. Think about it this way: One day (far off, no doubt), it may be possible to go into a laboratory on Earth, create a "seed" -- a device that could grow into a universe -- and then there would have to be a way to get that seed, on command, to safely expand into a separate, infinite, unexplorable but very real alternate universe.

In the July 8, 2006 issue, New Scientist writer Zeeya Merali put that question to Stanford cosmologist Andre Linde. "I sat down and really thought about why we should even care about creating a universe in the laboratory, " he told New Scientist, "We don't seem to be able to communicate with it at all."

Once it's formed, the inventor couldn't meet its inhabitants, mine its minerals, collect souvenirs or judge his or her success. The biblical god who many believe created our universe inspected us on the first through sixth day and decided that what He'd done "was good."

That's not an option for the human scientist who creates. So why do it? Well, Greene says given the chance to make a universe of his own, "I might have a little trouble resisting this possibility. Just because it's so curious, this idea that because of your volitional act, you are creating a universe that could give rise, perhaps, to things we see around us."

Linde seconded that in his New Scientist interview. "Just imagine if it's true and there's even a small chance it really could work," he said. "In this perspective, each of us can become a god."

Yikes! Isn't that what they were saying back when they were building the Tower of Babel?

We'll Miss Her

Cynthia McKinney is an embarassment to politicians everywhere and to Democrats in particular. Other than those who have been amused by her antics, few will lament that she'll be gone from Congress in January. As if to confirm the wisdom of the voters who elected her opponent in the Democratic primary, she has introduced, as her parting shot, a bill calling for the impeachment of President Bush.

This is the same woman who accused President Bush of knowing ahead of time of the terrorist attack on 9/11 but keeping quiet so that his rich friends would somehow profit from the destruction. This is the woman who introduced a bill to create a collection at the National Archive for the art of rapper Tupac Shakur, who called for a federal investigation into his murder, who punched a Capitol policeman who insisted she pass through the security apparatus at the Capitol building like everyone else, and who accuses everyone who disagrees with her and/or who thinks she's minus a few million synapses of being a racist.

Her bill has no chance of ever even coming to a vote which is a fitting epitaph to her congressional legacy.

Jeanne Kirkpatrick (1926-2006)

Former U.N. ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick passed away Thursday at 80 years of age. Throughout her professional life she set an example of intellectual rigor and ideological strength that probably did as much, or more, for the image of women in positions of statecraft as did anything accomplished by any other woman in the twentieth century with the exception of Margaret Thatcher. Even so, she was largely ignored by most mainstream feminist groups because she was too conservative to catch their notice or merit their praise.

There is an obit of Ms Kirkpatrick here and much comment about her life and service to her country at The Corner.

Why Parents Home School

And public school educators wonder why parents would ever want to pay the extra tuition to send their kids to private schools, or invest the enormous effort it takes to home school their kids. Why knock yourself out, they wonder, when there are professionally trained educators waiting and eager to teach your children the really important things.

As long as there are stories like this, though, public schools will continue to lose the esteem of most Americans:

Sixth-graders at a Queens school were getting quite an education - in homosexuality, French kissing and cursing - thanks to three books widely available in classroom libraries. But after numerous complaints from parents at Public School 150 in Sunnyside, the books - a profanity-laced poetry book, short stories about homosexuality and a novel called "First French Kiss" - were pulled from the shelves last week.

Several parents learned of the racy books after overhearing their kids snickering about the sexual themes. The poem "I Hate School" in a book called "You Hear Me?" includes the rhyme, "F--- this s---, up the a--. I don't think I'll ever pass."

Another poem compares eating an orange to having sex, while several passages repeatedly use vulgar slang for genitalia. And the book "Am I Blue?" is an anthology of stories about gay teenagers that parents found too adult-themed for 11- and 12-year-olds. Parent Gladys Martinez wrote a letter to her son's teacher after hearing him talk about "First French Kiss," which chronicles a teen's bumbling first makeout session in a closet.

"I mean, he shouldn't be sheltered from the world, but if he's going to learn that stuff, it shouldn't be at school," Martinez said.

"You Hear Me?" was suggested for sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders by the Columbia University Teachers College's Reading and Writing Project because it is the only anthology with poems written by minority teenagers, said Lucy Calkins, its founding director.

"It's a tricky balance to walk so we are putting books in their hands that they'll want to read," said Calkins, who had not seen the language in the book.

A tricky balance? The school officials can't find books that children will want to read unless they're laced with vulgarity? What does that say about the homes these kids come from? What does it say about the state of minority teenagers that the only poetry they can write is filled with vulgarity? What does it say about the school officials' familiarity with childrens' literature? What does it say about those who publish this stuff for sixth graders?

No answers educators can give to these questions are going to do much to instill confidence in their judgment on the part of parents who really care about the environment schools are creating for their children.

Thanks to Michelle for the tip.

The Iraq Surrender Group

According to those who've read the document in its entirety, the Iraqi Study Group's report never once mentions the possibility of an American victory in Iraq. It seems as if the report is entirely about how we can skeedaddle out of Iraq with a minimum loss of honor and dignity.

Lisa Benson succinctly states her opinion of James Baker, Lee Hamilton and the rest of the committee and their report in the following fashion:

Am I mistaken or am I correct that there is not one person on the committee who is actually an expert on the military, Iraq, Islam, or the Middle East? One member of the committee was Vernon Jordan whose major claim to expertise is that he's Bill Clinton's golfing buddy. There was also Sandra Day O'Connor, who recently retired from the cocoon of the Supreme Court, Leon Panetta was Pres. Clinton's chief of staff, and most of the rest of them were politicians. Only William Perry, a former CIA chief, Lawrence Eagleberger and James Baker, former secretaries of state, served in any capacity which remotely qualifies them to make recommendations that have military and strategic implications. They probably could have appointed five people out of the phone book who would have been as qualified for the task as most of the members of this committee.

Moreover, when the committee went to Iraq to gather data for their recommendations they reportedly never wandered outside Baghdad's Green Zone. It certainly causes us to wonder how they could get a feel for what's going on in the country without having actually visited the country. If all they were going to do was hide out in their hotel they could have just stayed in Washington and interviewed the bigwigs in Baghdad by conference call.

The People Don't Want It

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson demands that we forget about a border fence, insisting that the people don't want it. But what "people" is he talking about? Certainly not the American people. It turns out that he's apparently referring to the wishes of the Mexicans who live along the border and make their living off the trade brought their way by those preparing to cross into the United States:

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson says a fence at the Mexican border authorized by Congress this fall "gets in the way" of U.S.-Mexico relations, and he wants the new Democratic Congress to reverse the legislation.

"The fence is very unpopular on the border in Texas and New Mexico, in Chihuahua," Richardson, a Democrat, said after meeting Wednesday with leaders from the Mexican state of Chihuahua. "So one of the most significant and constructive acts the U.S. Congress should take is to get rid of it."

Richardson said he will call on Congress not to build the fence during an address Thursday. He also will press lawmakers to approve a bill that secures the border and provides a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

Gov. Richardson, who is planning on a run for the presidency, believes that the way to win the office is to appease the Mexicans who demand the right to dump their poor and oppressed in our lap and leave us to support them. Viewpoint prognosticates that Richardson's candidacy has just gotten terminally ill and will soon wind up looking like that unfortunate Russian spy who irritated Vladimir Putin.

Jack Cafferty at CNN pretty much takes Richardson apart one limb at a time on Wolf Blitzer's The Situation Room.

Pearl Harbor Day, 2006

Today is the anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor 65 years ago. It's fitting that on this day we stop to reflect on the perils we face in today's world. I've been reading Mark Steyn's oustanding book on this very subject titled America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It. Steyn has the unusual gift of being able to amuse the reader whilst informing him that calamity is on his doorstep, and indeed it seems to be. The following gloomy assessment is not necessarily Steyn's, but it was inspired by what he reveals in his book about the exploding growth of the Muslim population around the world and the diminshing populations of Europeans.

We are, as some have observed, in the same situation as was Europe in 1938. In the late thirties Hitler was testing Europe's resolve and finding their will agreeably weak he decided it was propitious to seize as much of their land as he could. Europe's lassitude was their undoing. War was to them such a distasteful prospect that they convinced themselves that it really was not in the offing, that Hitler was not really the threat to them that people like Winston Churchill were telling them he was. They deluded themselves into a sense of false security just as we're doing today.

The modern threat is not German Naziism, rather it is Muslim fascism. The Islamic world has been waiting for 500 years for their chance to destroy the Jewish and Christian worlds so that they can establish Islam and Sharia law everywhere across the globe. They believe that the fullness of time has come and that we are living on the cusp of a new Islamic age when all will worship Allah, bow to the imams and revere the Koran.Yet despite the lateness of the hour, Europe and much of the U.S. acts as if there really were no Panzer divisions poised to strike across the Rhine, no Japanese fleet poised to launch their aircraft at Pearl Harbor.

The Islamo-fascists are daily probing our will, testing our resolve, searching out our weaknesses. The recent bizarre behavior of the six imams who were removed from the USAir jet is just a recent example of the constant testing to which they are subjecting our security. The pressure is building, especially in Europe, and large tracts of that continent have displayed a deep desire to appease and a total unwillingness to resist. Spain, for example, capitulated to the dictates of the jihadis after the Madrid train bombings. They elected just two days after the carnage a socialist government that had campaigned on the promise to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq. Once in office they promptly withdrew their troops, and sent the Muslim world the message that they had had enough and would not offer any impediment to the spread of the Muslim caliphate when the time came.

And the time is coming. Right now the Muslim world is biding its time waiting patiently for several factors to coalesce. They know that soon they will have achieved ireversable demographic superiority in Europe which will give them political power to dictate European foreign policy. They also know that soon some of them will have nuclear weapons which will intimidate nations which might otherwise be inclined to resist them. And they know that soon George Bush will be either weakened by his political enemies or, by 2008, out of office, and the last man with the spine and strength to stand in their way will be gone.

As these three factors conflate over the next two years the Islamic juggernaut will grow unstoppable. There will either be war or bitter and humiliating surrender to these primitives everywhere across the globe. Time is on their side. Psychological certainty that they are doing the will of Allah works to their advantage, and the West is either oblivious to the danger or lacking the will to do what's necessary to forestall it. Most of Europe, including Russia, will fall into their hands with scarcely a whimper. Israel will face extermination. The U.S. will be isolated, alone, confronted not only by the threat of total war with the Islamic world but also by threats from China and North Korea. We will be unable, short of launching a nuclear war, to halt the Islamic annihilation of western civilization in its cradle.

Perhaps it's thought that I overstate the danger to the lives and well-being of our children posed by the Muslim world. Perhaps, but I can think of no better way for anyone who thinks so to spend whatever spare time one might have over the coming holidays than by reading America Alone. It may be too late to stop the Muslim tsunami about to inundate Europe, but if it can be stopped it will only be because people, unlike the Europeans in 1938, see clearly the gathering storm.

The ISG Report

The long anticipated report of the Iraq Study Group (ISG) is in and with the exception of the very strange recommendation to bring Iran and Syria into negotiations for implementing stability in Iraq, there doesn't seem to be much that they recommend Bush do that his administration isn't already doing.

The members of the ISG urge that we accelerate the training of Iraqi military and police so that they can take over more of their own security but by all reports such training is already proceeding as quickly as it can.

They call for a withdrawal of combat troops by 2008 if conditions permit. Does anyone seriously think that the Bush administration is not anxious to get combat troops out of Iraq as soon as conditions permit? If the ISG really means to recommend that troops stay as long as the situation there requires then they're simply affirming Bush's policy. If they're saying that we should leave in 2008 whether Iraq is stable or not then they're calling for abject surrender. Either way the recommendation is pointless.

They also appear to regard Israel as a serious impediment to peace in the region, and, although they urge that all of Iraq's neighbors be involved in working out a peaceful solution in Iraq, they pointedly exclude Israel. It seems a bit perverse to urge that Iran and Syria, who are the cause of most of the problems in the Middle East, be included in the process but Israel be shunned.

There are 79 recommendations all told and many of them are doubtless good ideas, but they're not original ideas. For the most part, where the ISG makes a worthwhile recommendation they recommend what the administration is already doing. Where the recommendations are not good, as in treating Iran and Syria as if they were anything but thugs, criminals and assassins, they should be ignored.

Powerline says that the report is about as bad as advertised. Ed Morissey at Captain's Quarters has some excellent analysis as well.

Worst Mistake in History

Al Gore has to be one of the most pompous windbags on today's political scene. On the Today show this morning he opined that the Iraq war was "the worst strategic mistake in the entire history of the United States".

A question comes to mind: How does Mr. Gore know that the Iraq war is not going to result in the long run in a much less dangerous government in Iraq replacing the tyranny of Saddam Hussein? He doesn't, of course. But even if Iraq does turn out badly, to call this the worst strategic mistake in our history is just false. Even if we cut and run and leave the job unfinished it won't be as big a strategic blunder as was the Vietnam war which cost us over 50,000 lives and won us nothing. It may not even be as big a mistake as JFK's failure to support the Bay of Pigs invasion.

Gore was then asked if he would pull U.S. troops out of Iraq even it was seen as a defeat for the U.S., but he dodged the question. His limp response was that were he president, he would have "the full flow of information" and he would be able to test these ideas.

What does that mean other than that Mr. Gore lacks the courage to follow his convictions to their logical conclusions?

It's easy to take shots when you don't have the responsibility of actually making crucial decisions. Gore is a Monday morning quarterback who thinks he should be in the White House, and who insists on reminding us almost every time he speaks why we should be thankful that he's not.

Hubble Space Photos

One of yesterday's posts featured a photo of deep space taken by the Hubble Space telescope. A friend passes along this link to the entire gallery of photos taken by Hubble. The pictures are breathtakingly beautiful and majestic.

Voting Democrat in '08

This will cause some readers to think I'm either delirious or that I'm joking, but actually I'm neither. Well, at least I'm not joking. If the highly improbable, virtually impossible, happens and the Democrats nominate a fairly conservative candidate for the presidency in 2008 I will probably vote for him (her) even if the Republican candidate is equally as conservative. Here's why:

No matter how conservative a Republican president is, the left in this country, in the media and in the Democrat party, make it almost impossible for him to accomplish much good. Of the most important issues facing us today - the war in Iraq, the war on terror, the economy, immigration, social security reform and federal judgeships - Democrats are in a position to block every initiative a Republican president advances. And they will, just as they have in the past.

So why vote for a Democrat candidate? Because if a conservative (don't ask me who that could possibly be) were nominated by the Democrat party, both the media and congress would be much less hostile to his initiatives because they wouldn't see battling them as a partisan duty, and Republicans would, for the good of the country, be cooperative. In other words, a Democrat conservative in the White House could advance the same policies as a George Bush on social security reform, employ the same measures on the war on terror, wage the same war on the insurgents in Iraq, nominate a John Roberts to the Supreme Court, and keep the Bush tax cuts, and he would doubtless meet with little serious opposition from the establishment left (The Michael Moore left is a different matter, but without the MSM and congress they wouldn't be much of a factor).

Just as no one but a hardline anti-communist like Richard Nixon could achieve a rapprochement with communist China, so, too, it will probably take a Democrat president to achieve social security and immigration reform since congressional Democrats will not allow a Republican to solve these problems. Moreover, no Republican conservative would be likely to do much on another issue important to me personally - land use, conservation and preservation - but a Democrat might.

It may be, then, that our best hope to get anything worth doing accomplished in the next ten years is for the Democrats to pull a conservative rabbit out of the hat for '08. Unfortunately, however, that's about as likely as George Bush winning the Most Admired Man in Blue State America award. Since Zell Miller retired there just aren't any conservatives of prominence left in that party.