Men of good faith and high mental caliber, like Josh Claybourn (for whom I have little but respect), are upset about the lack of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq -- they feel that this means the Administration was -- or might be -- lying.

I'm gonna differ with those folks, largely because I never thought weapons of mass destruction had a damned thing to do with it. WMD (yes, that acronym has gotten too popular) was just the way we sold this to the UN. Who -- seriously -- thinks Saddam didn't want to bathe in our blood? Who thinks Saddam wasn't slaughtering and torturing and, from a Realpolitik perspective, destabilizing the whole damned area? Did he have WMD? Almost certainly. Was that the point? Hell no.

The point, my one or two dear readers, was this: Never again can September 11th be allowed to happen. Never. Never again can some nutjob blow up our innocents for fun and profit. Bush gets this implicitly and explicitly. Clinton did, and does not; Clinton is not a serious man.

So when we go knock over Iraq -- and, knock on wood, Iran -- the point is not to preserve world peace. World peace, without putting too fine a point on it, is a fantasy, and not one worth spending blood on. The point is to show that we have serious cajones, that it is a deeply bad idea to screw around with the United States, that doing so will inevitably end in your own painful demise, and that we have the oomph to do it.

The point is to make the world a safer place for us, not for the world; if the world does better for it, whoop-de-doo. Anything else is irrelevant.

Maybe it's because I see so little TV, and get my news almost exclusively by print, but I never thought the case for sending Saddam to Satan's harem for all eternity rested on WMDs. I read a trillion reasons, to my mind all good, for blowing his ass out of the water. WMD possession was one. So was torture. Funding suicide bombers. Helping Palestinians murder Jews. Helping Palestinians murder Americans. Helping other Arabs murder Americans. Standing as a big, honking reminder that sometimes America's foreign policy establishment gets the military and diplomatic equivalent of premature ejaculation. Trying to kill a former President (sniping aside, y'all do know that, traditionally, that's about as big a declaration of war as they come, right?). Violating (snort) UN Resolutions, God only knows how many and which ones. Get the idea?

If you play any games like Warcraft or Starcraft, you'll get an idea about how this Administration -- correctly -- views foreign policy: To stop the Ogres or Zerg from overrunning the damned place, you must fight back; then strike, one by one, at the enemy-production centers. When you kill a Zerg base, the Creep -- this slimy stuff that grows on the ground and gives the Zerg a place to breed and absorb life -- recedes, then disappears. Kill the central base, and the whole thing goes bye-bye (especially when you turn the heavy artillery on the outlying structures). The fewer bases, the easier it is for your little band of humans (or Protoss) to live to another day.

So with the Middle East. Let's not be coy about it; at this exact instant, that's where the bulk of the nutjobs with a yen for blowing us to pieces live. There's North Korea, but I don't think they've got the genitals to put on the table (to badly mix metaphors). We know that 3,000 Americans and assorted others lie dead because of the headcases in the Middle East.

So we go and blow up their central bases. We destroy Creep wherever we find it. We take away the breeding grounds for pathological terrorism. Iraq is gone as a source of this problem, and the Creep has begun to recede. Iran is a really developed base, with those nasty claw-wing things, and it's sending out some serious waves of Zerglings and Hydralisks. Palestine and Syria have started to develop those little kamikaze flyers. And, yes, North Korea would badly like to send an Ultralisk our way.

So I couldn't care less if we never find a WMD in Iraq. What I care about is making sure this mess never happens again. Given the past few months, I'm betting the Bushies do, too.

Lileks says it well here.

This, by the way, is a silly argument. So, killing Saddam disseminated those weapons to terrorists, but leaving him alive wouldn't've? Sure. He's set up a false choice: Either we depose Saddam (which must necessarily lead to terrorists getting nasty weapons) or we don't (which probably would've led to terrorists getting nasty weapons, and which definitely would've led to Saddam having nasty weapons). Is Mr. Balkin in favor of reconstructing the USSR? After all, it became a lot easier to get nuke material when that venture went out of business.

On second thought, he probably is in favor of bringing back the USSR. Never mind.

UPDATE: Josh Claybourn, to whom I tried to mail a copy of this, and gave up during a power outage (and for that, I am sorry), responds and clarifies his point (full text included by way of apology):

Thomas Crown responds to criticism over the lack of WMDs by saying I'm wrong for suggesting the President is lying. But I never suggested that, and I don't think Bush lied. In fact, I've had several posts explaining at length why I don't think he did, so I'm a bit disappointed in the mischaracterization. I think the more likely scenario is a poor - very poor - intelligence job and an unwillingness by the administration to resolve conflicting reports. Look, it's clear that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction at some point, and it's clear that 5,000 gallons of chemical agents are unaccounted for. But was the threat as imminent as the administration made it out to be? That has yet to be proven.

Crown sticks with the now-standard position that his case for war never rested on WMD. Fine, but who cares? The point is that the President's did, so he has an obligation now to prove that his gloom and doom outlook was indeed accurate, especially in light of fabricated British intelligence reports (by whom we don't yet know) used in the State of the Union. Patrick Ruffini makes the case that after September 11 the definition of "imminent threat" has changed. He makes a good point, but once again, the President's definition, stated clearly each day in every policy speech, was that the imminent threat stemmed from known WMD. So I want to know, where are they? And if there are none, who screwed up? What will be done to prevent future errors? I'm willing to grant more time to find them, but way too many conservatives have already decided it doesn't matter.

Initial disclosure: I wrote too broadly; I misread Mr. Claybourn's thrust. I now see that he wasn't saying that Bush appeared to be lying. I apologize.

For the rest: It doesn't matter to me, insofar as there were trillions of reasons to do what we did, and the Bush Administration tossed them out left and right before October 2002. (And like I was trying to say, I don't think the Administration either had, or was trying to present, only one causus belli. Lack of WMD does not mean, to me, that the Administration was mislabelling goods; it just means that one of several tacks was not as good as all the others.) Any intel failure does matter to me; if there was one, I'd like to have it corrected promptly, thank you. Next time, it might not be a harmless error.

UPDATE TWO: THE WRATH OF UPDATE: Just for reference, this was the post of Mr. Claybourn's that got me going. It was a mistake, but a reasonable one.

Test.

I've been meaning to link to it for a while, but Rachel Alexander has an interesting take on a conservative's approach to breaking Microsoft that bears some reading.

Trust her; not only is she brilliant, but she also knows that Linux isn't Lucy's little brother from Peanuts.

Matt Hoy asks a good question here:

Ms. Clinton's description of the "network" that was "out to get" her husband from Day One sounded very similar to the vast, left-wing network that has been out to get President George W. Bush from his first day in office. Is it possible that this behavior is simply politics as usual? That, at least in this, Bill Clinton wasn't anything special or out of the ordinary? Just something to think about.

Can't be -- because then the Clintons wouldn't be world-historical, and I don't think their egos can handle it.

The alternative, of course, is that the political war has gotten so out of hand (and started to do so with Clinton, or maybe Nixon) that both sides engage in massive ideological and personal warfare on their opponents, all the time; however, I don't think we're quite there, yet.

My wife has a pretty good joke, which I believe to be original:

Q: How many Frenchmen does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

A: None: They don't need to. They can see by the light of the burning synagogues.

For more on this grim topic, see here.

Not entirely accurate, and a little overdrawn, but largely correct: how men get screwed by modern divorce.

As someone who's been in on a few of these cases, I will say this: The article is right about the restraining order. I've seen dozens of women -- and their lawyers -- use it as an initial weapon in the custody battle. Yes, by its nature, such an order leads to a hearing of right; but judges (who are normally predisposed to extend injunctions anyway) tend to let it stand. And I think a lawyer could be sued -- not correctly -- for malpractice for not getting it in place, if it's in his client's best interest.

Hat Tip: Jimmy.

Good one from Jimmy:

YOU KNOW YOU ARE IN PHOENIX in JULY WHEN...

The birds have to use potholders to pull worms out of the ground.

The trees are whistling for the dogs.

The best parking place is determined by shade instead of distance.

Hot water now comes out of both taps.

You can make sun tea instantly.

You learn that a seat belt buckle makes a pretty good branding iron.

The temperature drops below 95 and you feel a little chilly.

You discover that in July it only takes 2 fingers to steer your car.

You discover that you can get sunburned through your car window.

You actually burn your hand opening the car door.

You break into a sweat the instant you step outside at 7:30 A.M.

You realize that asphalt has a liquid state.

The potatoes cook underground, so all you have to do is pull one out and add butter, salt and pepper.

Farmers are feeding their chickens crushed ice to keep them from laying boiled eggs.

The cows are giving evaporated milk.

They forgot:You take your girlfriend home in the evening, and it's so cool, you lower your windows and enjoy the breeze; it's only when you pass a bank that you realize it's ninety-eight degrees outside.

My archives are apparently worse than terrible. Apparently, Blogger is positive that I have a null character in my template somewhere. I don't.

Sorry about that.

Does anyone know what happened to VodkaPundit? I can't find his text, and his archives ended some time ago.

The problem with dealing with Federal bureaucrats is that, ceteris paribus, you end up talking to the sort of people who are enraged that Communion hosts aren't sporting RDA labels and nutritional information.

Just saying.

Hit Job.

Same hat tip.

Hint: They're not "priests" if the "have issues" with the ability of priests to undertake the sacrament of marriage, "clergy sexual abuse, divorce/remarriage, interfaith marriage, birth control, sexual orientation, abortion and disillusionment regarding the political agenda of the hierarchy."

Hat Tip to The Curt Jester.

There are three groups of people who will read this post; two will know what it means, and understand the reason to varying degrees; one will not. I'm sorry.

Those who know me, will either know already and understand, or understand and know on reading this.

Those whom I first informed that I would start this blog, and why, either know and understand (sorta -- y'all only heard a tiny bit of my awesome ability to gripe), or will know, and sort of understand, on reading this.

The rest: Sorry. Part of being a psuedonym is keeping this sort of thing cryptic.

So, without further ado:

FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So this bit, by Ryan Lizza, is proof that John Kerry is "[n]ot aloof, but plodding, unimaginative, bone dry," according to Patrick Ruffini. (I like the title of that post: "Mondale With Hair.")

And he's right. But it's also proof that Dean is deranged:

Dean is almost irrationally protective of "Bush Lite." Indeed, several weeks before Dean blasted Kerry, Dean's aides went after Gephardt for using the term. But, this week, alerted to the fact that Dean's campaign had accused their man of stealing Dean's supposedly trademarked expression, the Gephardt campaign quickly responded with a "Brief History of 'Bush Lite,'" a paper documenting 15 years of the term's use, from its origins as a reference to Dan Quayle in the late '80s to its emergence as a description of Bill Clinton's early foreign policy to its widespread application as a derogatory moniker for George W. Bush during his 1994 gubernatorial campaign. As recently as 2000, according to the Gephardt study, the term was being used in the same context in which Dean now uses it: "The first modern documentation of a Democrat being considered `Bush Lite'" occurred in 2000 when someone hurled the epithet at Al Gore, the Gephardt report states. "When will [Dean] file the lawsuit against Bud and Miller?" asks Gephardt's spokesman, Erik Smith.

You know Jackass politics have descended to a new low when (1) this is a significant issue, and (2) the yutz who keeps dragging it up is an outside favorite to win the nomination.

One of the first things they teach high school freshmen -- assuming that the kids haven't absorbed the lesson by then -- is that, when writing an essay, you have two elementary goals: First, construct an argument to persuade your reader that you are correct; and, second, make sure that you actually constructed an argument.

The first is widely considered to be the harder of the two: We've all had an argument at some time or other, and brought facts and emotional ideas to bear to win; yet even Christ lost some arguments, in the sense that folks thought he was nuts (even if he ended up winning the war). Yet, in truth, it is making sure that you've actually rendered a coherent argument -- that you stayed homed in on your greatest point while making smaller, contributory ones -- that marks the difference between writing and musical prose.

Manifestly, however, it is apparent that some columnists (cough, Maureen Dowd) never truly internalized this lesson.

Mr. James Pinkerton is such a one, as well (or at least, so his writing seems to suggest). I don't do fiskings, for the most part, for a host of reasons; however, it has been some time since I graded a paper, so we'll try that.

The new hit movie "Bruce Almighty" has millions of Americans thinking about - or at least laughing about - playing God.

I would accept this opening sentence from a sophomore English essay, albeit with a grimace; as of the senior year in high school, it is too simplistic an opening to be acceptable.

But let's leave Jim Carrey and his record-breaking movie out of the equation for the moment.

No, let us not. Or more accurately, let us choose a better segue; if you insist on starting your essay in this manner, you should be prepared to at least incidentally incorporate it into your thesis with a bit more panache than this.

In the real world, concerns about playing God are rising as new biotechnology makes more cures possible.

Rather banal, and dragging on, but not wholly objectionable.

And so here's the real question: who is playing God? Those who seek to save and improve lives through miraculous and controversial techniques? Or those who wish to prevent the use of such techniques?

This is a non-sequitur. To "play God," traditionally, is to arrogate power to oneself such that only the Divinity has any right to wield; it is unclear how those who seek to prevent the use of "miraculous and controversial techniques" are playing God. Quite the contrary: In the same way that Moses, with God's aid, conquered the Pharoah's magus, so might the ones who seek to stop the rampant abuse of power be working God's will. Or not. Rhetorical excess is not helpful when one has not even explicitly rendered one's thesis.

The issue continues to torque up as new discoveries ramp up. The newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun revealed that a team of researchers in Japan has found a gene in embryonic stem cells that seems to switch cancer "on"; the hope is if such a switch can be found, it can be switched "off." The periodical Cell observed that scientists in Scotland and Japan have found a "master gene" in embryonic stem cells; this gene, dubbed "nanog," might yield the secret of "pluripotency" - eternal youth, for lack of a more explanatory term.

Except, of course, that "pluripotency" actually means, literally, many powered (plurus + potens), and that, in this context, it means the ability of a stem cell (or any other cell in a similar state) to transform itself into any specialized form.

Aging in a cell occurs because of shortened telomeres at the ends of chromosomes. It is unclear how pluripotency would reverse this fact. Please insert a footnoted explanation in your rewrite.

Just on Tuesday, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that scientists at the Scripps Research Institute and the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation have identified a technique for prompting embryonic stem cells in mice to grow into brain cells. The idea would be to apply the same technique to humans, thus alleviating such brain disorders as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

Hasn't this been done before?

Most Americans aren't following these specific stories too closely, but the cover of Newsweek, which asks, "Should a Fetus Have Rights?" puts these and other hot-button concerns into one package. The magazine notes, for example, the increasing trend toward the "humanization" of the fetus, thanks to ultrasound, enabling prospective parents and others to see their unborn child in close detail. Such images not only increase the "quease" factor in abortion, but also undergird the trend toward treating the fetus as a child for legal purposes. The most spectacular example of this trend is the tragedy of Laci Peterson, the eight-months-pregnant woman who was allegedly murdered by her husband. But prosecutors have chosen to charge Scott Peterson, in addition, with the murder of the fetus, who has been named Conor. "Conor was a person," insists Laci's mother. If that assertion is deemed to be the truth - that an unborn baby is the same as a baby - then abortion rights will be jeopardized, as every fetus could be given not only a name, but also legal status as a human.

I appreciate the rather large factual background, but is there a point coming here somewhere?

And not only will abortion rights be at risk, but so will embryonic research. And that will mobilize a counter-trend. The same Newsweek story cites a Connecticut couple, Pieter and Monica Coenraads, parents of a daughter suffering from Rett Syndrome; Monica Coenraads was so opposed to abortion that she refused amniocentesis. But now that she has a daughter suffering from a debilitating neurological disease, she sees the fetal issue somewhat differently. "My conscience tells me that for me personally having an abortion would not be the right thing to do. That same conscience tells me that stem-cell research is needed," says Monica. Indeed, Mrs. Coenraads is now an activist on behalf of the embryo-based research aimed at helping her daughter and 15,000 other children with the same malady.

A fine example, but do tell: Where is the "counter-trend"? For surely, it is not a massive resurgence of pro-life attitudes that drove Mrs. Coenraads to her current position, but rather the suffering of her daughter, and her (inconsistent) morality?

No doubt a huge clash is coming, as two groups with heartfelt views - pro- and anti-stem cell research - square off in the public square. Each side will be armed with its special pictures. The anti-stem cellers will have "baby pictures," featuring not only nearly-born fetuses, but also 8-cell blastocysts; the pro-stem cellers will have their own images of sick children and others, of all ages, with severe ailments. And of course, the debate will be international, as well as domestic; already much of the cutting-edge research has migrated offshore, as the Scottish and Japanese datelines in the above-mentioned news accounts suggest.

I take issue only with the choice of the verb, to migrate. This implies it was here originally, but has left. Might it not instead have originated in Scotland and Japan, two nations with advanced scientific cultures of their own?

In the meantime, Congress slogs along, trying to come up with legislation that satisfies the need for reverence for life and the need for research to save lives. So far, no success.

By my analysis, we are now thirty-four percent finished with this two-thousand word essay. Were this a high school term paper, you would now qualify for no more than a C. Some factual background establishes your broader perspective, and gives light to your arguments; too much makes a reader (such as this one) begin to question why he should bother considering your argument. On your re-write, please try to present your thesis within the first three or four hundred words.

But because the issue is destined to get hotter, it's worth pausing over some of the major players seeking to shape the debate. One such is Leon Kass, a professor in the Commission on Social Thought at the University of Chicago who chairs the President's Council on Bioethics. As Kass says, "Among the most urgent of the Council's intellectual tasks is the need to provide an adequate moral and ethical lens through which to view particular developments in their proper scope and depth."

OK, fair enough. Let's look for a moment through Kass's moral and ethical lens. The obvious place to start is a book Kass published last year, Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics. In it, he reviews issues of bioethics from organ sales to assisted suicide to cloning. And while his conclusions cleave toward those of the man who appointed him to the post, George W. Bush, Kass can turn a phrase, as when he laments, "What looks like compassionate humanitarianism is, in the end, crushing dehumanization." In other words, technology may save lives, but it costs souls.

Kass realizes that he faces a daunting task of bringing 'round his critics; he prefaces his tome with this lament: "I fear that nothing I can say will prevent many readers of this book from regarding it as a Luddite tract, and me as hostile to science and technology, or as a natural pessimist, or someone simply fearful of the future." Doth he protest too much? Or is he merely unconvincing in his denial that he is future-phobic?

Out of a sense of generosity, I will assume that this is your thesis, or at least a hint at your argument.

It is worth noting, Mr. Pinkerton, that the rather elementary "five paragraphs, first intro, three argument, one conclusion" form taught in our schools is a descendant of the original French form, and contains within it much wisdom. Though it might seem puerile to you, it might help you in your writing to return to that form, or at least to echo its spirit.

You see, we are not all gifted with an infinite amount of time in which to bask in your wisdom. I, for example, have work to do (a concept, based on your writing, with which you are apparently unfamiliar). I cannot spend forever waiting for you to make your point; indeed, having now arrived at your point, I am forced to conclude that you did not know it when you started.

This essay began as a fairly clear argument over the morality and logic of placing social and legal controls over certain experiments and techniques. It appears to be turning into an ad hominem attack on Mr. Kass. While the two are doubtlessly related, they are not identical.

Furthermore, as a rule, you tend to produce intellectual discord when you suddenly re-route your argument. The point of an essay (from the French essayer, to try) is to present, succinctly and intelligently, an argument for a reader to review; to engage his mind; and to persuade him of the relentless logic of your position by trying, in the judicial sense, your argument before him, with facts, logical inferences, and conclusions. You will inevitably fail in this when you leap from point to point; where there should be burgeoning order, you have instead created unmitigated chaos.

Anti-modernism had already become apparent in an earlier book of Kass's, co-authored with his wife, Amy A. Kass, in 2000. That work, Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar: Readings on Courting and Marrying, is an anthology of wisdom about human interaction featuring the work of thinkers and authors from Aristotle to Shakespeare to Tolstoy to Sullivan Ballou, the Union officer who wrote a duty-before-love letter to his wife just before he was killed at the battle of Bull Run in 1861; the Ballou letter was immortalized in Ken Burns' 1990 epic for PBS, "The Civil War."

It's hard for anyone with a sense of civilization to argue with all the wisdom that Kass & Kass assembled, but it's also hard to argue that the clock can be reversed as far as the Kasses wish to winch it back. In Wing to Wing they offer a "partial" list of changes that "hamper" courtship and marriage. Get ready, because here it comes: "the sexual revolution," "effective female contraception," "the ideology of feminism and the changing education and occupational status of women," and the "destigmatization of bastardy, divorce, infidelity and abortion."

If one is to argue that another's arguments are without merit, it is incumbent upon the essayist to explain why they are without merit. You have used one thousand, one hundred and thirty-three words to this point in your essay, and I fear that you are no closer to an actual argument than when you started.

At this point in the essay, you should be doing one of two things: Explain why the diversion into the Kasses' writing is relevant (without simply assuming that your audience shares your predelicitions and presupposed ideas; it would then not be an argument, but a chorus); or, in the alternative, explain why the Kasses are wrong in their work. Your grade will improve if you perform the former, and may improve if you effect the latter.

Simply put: Tell me what this has to do with the first six hundred words of this essay.

Let's go over some of the items in that last clause.

No, let us instead go over why this is related to your larger point, or why I should care about your idea. Not to be too snide about this, but if my youngest sister, a senior in high school, produced this drivel, I would weep, then take to it with a red pen, regardless of whether it had already been graded.

"Bastardy" is in the dictionary, even if the word is so antiquated that my Microsoft Word program regards it as a spelling error. "Bastardy" is a great word for condemnation, but is it a word for persuasion? As for divorce, it is obviously antithetical to marriage, but what is to be done about the reality of bad marriages, including such doleful phenomena as spousal and child abuse?

And what is to be done about the reality of this essay's almost inhuman efforts at failure? This is a tangent-within-a-tangent; you are not now arguing about Dr. Kass's position(s) on bioethics, or (dare to dream) anything to do with bioethics, but rather with a few lines from a book Dr. Kass wrote with his wife, on a subject not related to bioethics. You are, in short, descending into mere ad hominem, and, what is worse, irrelevant ad hominem.

(As an aside, it is illogical to say, as I presume you are trying to do, This Kass fellow cannot be trusted to make policy proposals, for his views on other matters are simply wrong. Try it from the converse: This Stalin fellow can be trusted to make policy proposals, for he is heartily in favor of industrialization and women's rights. If that sounds illogical to you, there is a good reason for it; if not, it simply confirms my worst suspicions about the results of removing Rhetoric from the standard junior high syllabus.)

An alert reader (assuming such a thing would or could reasonably exist at this point in your diatribe) might ask, What exactly does all of this have to do with controversial scientific and medical techniques? He would raise a valid point, which in turn leads to a larger point: No essay should ever leave a reader bewildered. It is your goal as an essayist to bring light into darkness, to explain to the reader why your position is correct, and why the facts inevitably point in that direction.

You are failing in this goal, no matter how it is stated.

But the Kasses aren't through yet. To their list of hampering factors, they add, "the general erosion of shame and awe regarding sexual matters," "widespread morally neutral sex education in schools," "great increases in geographic mobility," "a popular culture that celebrates youth and independence," and finally, "an ethos that lacks transcendent aspirations and asks us of no devotion to family, God, or country."

Whew. What an inventory. Three years ago, the Kasses produced a litany of social ills that seems overwhelming in its determinative weight. And yet today, the world looks different; hundreds of thousands of young people, all products of this un-virtuous culture, performed honorably - on 9-11, in Afghanistan, in Iraq.

An inventory it might be, but it has going for it something this work altogether lacks: Intellectual coherence. And I must object to that last sentence: Not only is it irrelevant to your argument, assuming that I have cobbled it together correctly; it manifestly fails to respond to the Kasses's argument except to say, Oh yeah? Well, in the face of conflict, these folks respond well. This is yet another non-sequitur; Kass does not, at least insofar as you deign to quote him, argue that the things about which he complains render Americans incapable of dealing with atrocity and war; rather, he asserts that the nation's moral life is crumbling.

And again, I remind you, this has nothing to do with the first third of this essay.

But if the War on Terror has reminded us that the wellsprings of true virtue are deeper than most cultural conservatives imagined, Kass, writing by himself in his 2002 bioethics book, would not let go of his earlier critique. Indeed, he seems so in love with his silky phrasings that he spins himself further into conservative crank-dom: "The project for the mastery of nature, even as it provides limitless powers, leaves the 'master' lost at sea. Lacking knowledge of ends and goals, lacking standards of good and bad, right and wrong, we know not who we are nor where we are going." Now just a second here. Do you, dear reader, feel that this describes you? Your family? Your town?

Dear readers, how many of you are actively manipulating sliced-up human fetuses for research purposes? How many of you are currently experimenting on human life to extend your own?

Indeed, how many people truly know "where [they] are going"? Is this not an ancient philosophical question? Are you asserting, Mr. Pinkerton, that the most basic philosophical questions of all time have been neatly and patly answered, and that those answers are at the tips of modern Americans' fingers? For if you are so asserting, I must stridently disagree with you.

And again, I point out that you have not tied this into your larger point (though I do sense a gossamer connection lurking out there somewhere).

Indeed, Kass continues in the same Weltschmerz-y way, "We travel fast and freely, progressively achieving our own estrangement - from our communities, from our nature, from our very selves." At this point, Kass's critique is becoming familiar - familiar, that is, to Leftists, even more than Old Rightists. "Estrangement": isn't that another word for "alienation," one of the classic buzzphrases of Marxists and their neo-descendants? Do you, poor thing of a reader, feel alienated? From your job? Your car? Your computer? Which of those would you give up to feel united once again with the collective and the community? And when Kass tells us that we are estranged from our "nature," and our "selves," what follower of Rousseau, what Greening of America New Ager, would dispute him? Is this what 21st century conservatism amounts to - a merger with the Left?

Alas, that hope of a connection appears to have been premature. Arguing with ennui is not a sufficient way to advance your thesis.

And here's where Kassism does, in fact, veer into Luddism. He praises "modern science" as "one of the great monuments to the human intellect" but is unwilling to say much of anything nice about future science. Indeed, he rolls out his rhetorical skills to mock the ambitions of those who would seek to improve the human condition. Setting up a straw man for a later burning, he writes, "According to many a prophet in the temple of science, biology has no permanent limitations. Instead, it faces an endless frontier -eagerly, gladly, confidently." That's Kass's style: wrap everything in a swaddle of syllables, all of them thoughtful and euphonious, all of them serving to set up his ultimate point: that progress is ironic, even illusory.

Mr. Pinkerton, if nothing else, I must congratulate you on your return to the original point of your ad hominem tangent. You have successfully -- though incorrectly -- called Mr. Kass a Luddite. Your use of the term, while almost completely inaccurate (a Luddite, properly speaking, seeks to eradicate modern technology, as well as future work), suggests an appreciation for the concept of related writing that gives me a faint wisp of hope for your future.

And I might add that, given your own stylistic shortcomings, it may not be wholly appropriate to mock Kass's rhetorical style; or, put differently, those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

But is progress an illusion? Try telling that to parents whose children will - or will not - be cured of here-and-now diseases. They might take comfort in Kass's lyrical treatment of the human condition, but they are more likely to find solace in the specific treatment of their kid's medical condition. But here Kass offers no comfort: on page 169 of the book he concludes that the only way to deal with "therapeutic cloning" is the same way as he would deal with "reproductive cloning" - a total ban.

Eureka! At last! The hope that you could somehow tie the middle one thousand words of this essay to the first six hundred is consummated, however sloppily! You fail, of course, to explain why Kass's positions on "therapeutic cloning" and "reproductive cloning" are ipso facto contrary to the wishes of those parents and children; nonetheless, I am so overcome with rapture at this paragraph, I am prepared to pretend that you just made a coherent point!

But Kass is operating on a far larger stage. As his earlier book attests, his interests go far beyond science, to what he sees as the good life - a life within sharp limits.

...And just that quickly, hope is dead.

You were so close, Mr. Pinkerton. You had the beginning of an argument at your fingertips. And you loosed your grip, to return to ad hominem attacks.

How sharp? He sees limits imposed not by modern science, or even modern law, but rather, by ancient religion.

Please explain why "ancient religion" necessarily invokes "sharper limits" than modern zeitgeist. The ancient Greeks were quite fond of religious orgies, frequently (although not always) in public, involving large masses of worshippers; are you asserting that those ancients' mores are stricter than our own?

It is, of course, too much to ask to expect you to explain what this has to do with stem cell research.

In his bioethics book he sometimes takes on the world-weary aspect of the Book of Ecclesiastes - everything new, seemingly, is vanity and vainglory. And so, for example, while a few "doctrinaire libertarians" might be so thick that they will "not consider that freedom can take us anywhere but upward," he offers us a different path.

What path is that? A path to the past, all the way back to the Old Testament. Is Kass really about citing the God of the Patriarchs as a guide for contemporary medical regulation? Telling people that they must suffer in medical ignorance and neglect while neo-prophets slay the golden calves of scientific modernity?

You think I'm kidding when I assert that the national bioethics chief wishes to go back 3,000 years? Tune in next week and behold.

Mr. Pinkerton: If possible, your conclusion was worse than the middle. Your metaphor was strained; your language was jarring; and you trailed off with an ad hominem of impressive, if possibly libelous, scope, thereby not only leaving your essay technically, but substantively, rhetorically flawed.

I commend you; although I am in the habit of reading some truly sloppy legal writing, The Nation, and the junk mail to whom National Review sold my name, you have surpassed them all. Congratulations. One hopes you were not paid too much for this work.

I award you a D-. I would fail you, except -- eternal optimist that I am -- your promise of more on this topic has rekindled that tiny flame of hope that you might actually expound on a point.

Please re-write and re-submit.

The hat tip goes to the inestimable Mr. Paul Cella, who is more generous to Mr. Pinkerton ("Now Mr. Pinkerton is no fool" -- an assertion to which I am open, though decreasingly so). Mr. Cella, as is his wont, makes numerous good points, and I commend the whole review to you; however, one bit in particular stands out to me:

Mr. Pinkerton seems amused by Dr. Kass’s use, in the course of assessing the decay of marriage and the traditional family, of the word bastardy. “‘Bastardy’ is in the dictionary, even if the word is so antiquated that my Microsoft Word program regards it as a spelling error. ‘Bastardy’ is a great word for condemnation, but is it a word for persuasion?” Whatever degree of persuasion it is that inheres in this strange and antiquated word, it is notably greater than that which inheres in adducing the authority of a mere computer program. Bastardy is a perfectly serviceable word; as is its cousin fornication, though the appearance of either is enough to trigger a kind of mild intellectual irresponsibility. Some may say, moreover, that an old Englishman called Orwell had the last word on modernity’s attitude toward language.

At base my dispute with Mr. Pinkerton and folks like him might run along these lines. “Attack Dr. Kass’s arguments if you must —- call them irrational, over reliant on emotion, antiquated, even that dread word reactionary; but please, for the love of God, do not attack Dr. Kass’s arguments purely because they are old. Let me gently remind you that assertion is not the same as argument; and it is a very dubious assertion indeed that things are dubious on account of their age alone. The antipathy toward the very concept of antiquity, in things and ideas, is among the ugliest characteristics of the modern world. And let me go further and say to Dr. Kass’s libertarian critics (for many of you call yourself libertarians) that Liberty itself is an ancient thing. A great lover of Liberty, the British statesman Edmund Burke affirmed this truth: ‘We know that we have made no discoveries, and we think that no discoveries are to be made in morality, nor many in the great principles of government, nor in the ideas of liberty, which were understood long before we were born, altogether as well as they will be after the grace has heaped its mold upon our presumption and the silent tomb shall have imposed its law on our pert loquacity.’

As I said, the whole thing is worth your time -- unlike Mr. Pinkerton's work.

Orrin Judd has the precise answer to Glenn Reynolds's mewlings on partial birth infanticide abortion ("THOSE 'CONSERVATIVES' who are celebrating the passage of partial-birth abortion legislation in the House are guilty of Congressional Activism. Constitutionally, Congress lacks the power to regulate abortion, and it's very difficult to style oneself a defender of limited government and federalism while supporting this legislation"):

It is true, as some are saying, that Congress really has no authority to regulate such things in a truly constitutional system. But neither did the Supreme Court have the authority to invent a "right of privacy", the sole basis for Roe v. Wade. The notion that the more democratic branches of government should defer to the usurpations of the least is not strict constitutionalism but lunacy. If the Court insists on intervening again the states, Congress and the Justice Department should simply ignore its ruling.

If the very system is under attack from within, the other branches should not sit aside quietly.

The Judiciary lacks the power to touch abortion, as well, strictly speaking; but I don't see a parade of Libertoids yammering about that, either (we call this "outcome determinative philosophy," or, more simply, "I know what I like").

I say, remove the issue from Article III review. It's in Congress's power.

Holy shiznit, I was linked on InstaPundit, on this post, and someone thought I was full of shit!

Don't Hurt Me, Dear

Thought I should get that out of the way first.

So, where exactly do I sign up to become King of Swaziland?

[King] Mswati is Africa's last absolute monarch. He is currently married to nine wives, with a wedding pending for wife number 10, and has chosen an additional fiancee after reviewing videos of topless maidens performing a traditional Reed Dance ceremony.

Now, I personally think polygamy is wrong, and it's generally bad for society as a whole, and I WOULD NEVER EVER EVER ENGAGE IN IT BECAUSE I FEAR LOVE MY INCREDIBLE WIFE TOO MUCH, but:

Dude, that's a heckuva way to live.

Via the ever-resourceful Ben Domenech.

My one Sammy Sosa post:

I believe him. None of his other bats are corked. This is overblown.

Here are some other thoughts:

Jimmy is cheesed off about Jose Canseco's diatribe (here), rightly, I might add. Michele of A Small Victory is more exacting, and doesn't come down on guilt or innocence one way or another. Ben Domenech points out that this is spinning out of control, like any other feeding frenzy, and correctly points out that Rick Reilly is an ass (my word, not his).

UPDATE: Lucas Sayre (another of those bright voices lost, kinda, if Google drops blogs from its hit parade), disagrees, and thinks Sammy just tried to sneak the bat in. Like I said, I think that's silly -- he's had slumps before -- but then again, I can't say that with certainty.

UPDATE (SQUARED): Little Tiny Lies has this gem on Jose "I'm Not Too Sexy for Steroids" Canseco:

T. Crown also mentions the fact that noted bonehead and Madonna-fluffer Jose Canseco is complaining that Sammy Sosa is being attacked because he is Hispanic and black. I don't know if you understand how funny it is to hear a Miami Cuban like Canseco complain about Latins getting bad treatment. Being Cuban in Miami is like being a Mormon in Salt Lake City. It's a major advantage.

Cubans are highly successful as a group, and being Cuban gives you networking advantages, but they're still entitled to government handouts because the government would rather die than admit Cubans are successful and Mexicans and Puerto Ricans aren't. It's a sweet deal.

When I was in law school, Florida was paying the tuition of Cuban students as long as they promised to work in Florida for three years after they graduated. Right, like you're going to pry a Cuban loose from Miami with a crowbar. This is home, baby. And why do we want lawyers to promise to stay? I think we should pay their tuition, regardless of race, only if they promise to move to Montana.

Can we just pay to have Canseco move somewhere?

So Google is taking blogs out of its equation, at least sorta.

I'm of mixed feelings on this: My own mild dread at seeing a Usenet link pop up (and the nostalgia I now feel for them), is offset by the knowledge that, as much as taking off the (politically frequently savvy) blog-niche from search results will reduce noise, it's going to cut out a lot of well-qualified academics in a broad variety of fields, as well as some incredibly bright guys whose jobs and insights are well-grounded, and who bring much needed expertise to laymen. Sometimes they even give a different perspective from a well-known medium.

And that doesn't even count the brilliant folks out there who aren't "credentialed" the way those others are, but who bring a different insight than the well-credentialed loonies of the world.

A Google search is like any other variable tool; sometimes you know exactly what you want; other times, you find what you want accidentally.

In some ways, the internet sucks a lot more than it did ten years ago.

I like this site -- there's a Howard Dean fisking!

I pharmaceutical companies are evil for making a profit, what does that make an industry with a twenty to fifty percent profit margin?

Just wondering.

Must... not... chortle.

The Old Oligarch on why paranoia is simple rationality:

The kicker: I installed a RAID array on the "experimental" computer. Since the power supply was fairly limited, I need to split the two molex-type power cables into four to power the four drives in the array. Radio Shack has always carried these molex Y-adapters. I go to the Radio Shack on Maple Ave. in Fairfax, VA. I browse around, but can't find where they've got the molex. They are clearly re-arranging the store (things in boxes, etc.), so I figure they might be hidden away. A saleswoman asks me what I'm looking for. I explain to her what I'm trying to do and what I want. (Since "molex" isn't really a standard term.) She tells me that Radio Shack doesn't make such a thing. I assure her they do. She tells me, no, I would have to go to CompUSA or Circuit City for that. I repeat that a) They make them, b) They usually stock them, and c) I don't know why she's sending me to their competitors. She's confident, however, that she's right, and goes to peddle an $80 robot to some kid whose parents are in the store.

I ask the guy behind the counter for the catalog. I find the molex adapter part number. He punches it into the computer. Not only do they make them (big surprise), there are three right there in the store! I buy two, show them to the saleswoman, and leave. Idiot!

Been there, done that. I tried building a random-number generator (don't ask) out of Radio Shack parts many moons ago. Got the parts, two of the capacitors didn't work. Went back to the Shack, no more capacitors of the kind I need on the racks (duh), was told they don't carry capacitors. Showed them the package with their price tag. Must be a different store. There isn't another Radio Shack for fifty miles. Which store did you go to? We can call them up. I. Didn't. Go. To. Another. Store. I. Came. Here. But we don't carry that. I have not gone back to Radio Shack to purchase anything since.

Southerners can do electronics; we just gave up on Radio Shack a long time ago.

Been there, done that, never wrote it so well:

You call home to see what to get for takeout. No one answers. Hmm. They should have been home an hour ago. Do you:

1. Figure they’ll be home by the time you get there

2. Start imagining a sequence of events that ends with you finishing your will, surrounding yourself with pictures of your departed loved ones, swallowing 89 barbiturate tablets and putting a plastic bag over your head

If you answered 2, you are as bad as me. I tend to get . . . unhinged when wife & child are very very late, and I can’t raise them. They’d left at two for a bike ride; back in two hours, my wife said. To me that means 120 minutes, each composed exactly of 60 seconds. To my wife, and any other sensible person, it means that indefinable allotment of time that’s longer than an hour but shorter than the entire afternoon. Still, I don’t start to sweat when minute 121 has elapsed and I’ve not seen them through the spyglass or the thermal monitors. In fact I often don’t notice they’re late until they’re really late. Then the sequence starts: “I hope nothing’s happened” becomes “I suspect something happens” becomes “I know for certain that they both fell off a bridge into the Mississippi,” and this leads to horrible conjectures. How long will it take to find them?

“Here’s your credit card,” says the clerk who’s ringing up your order.

“At least it’s not winter,” you reply. “They’ll find the bodies faster.”

By now you’re resigned to the worst. You might as well pick up a pack of Marlboros on the way home. Start smoking again. What’s the point. You’ll have nothing to live for. Put your head in the oven . . . no, it’s electric. Great. Local man found dead. Roasticide suspected.

But then you get mad. Mad, somehow, that your wife was late, and didn’t get in touch with you by skywriter or mental telepathy.

The cold sweat and the hallucinations are the worst part.

Proof that Roe was a bad idea from the misbegotten start: When concluding sentences like this are common:

So far, the fight over fetal and embryonic rights is in a delicate stalemate. Each side risks overreaching. One government department that handles family-planning funds is already marshaling evidence about whether various birth-control methods—like the pill or IUDs—work by interfering with implantation of an embryo in the uterus. Trying to crack down on birth control may be a step too far. But arguing against “Laci and Conner’s Law”—which Congress will likely pass—could also be a losing battle. For now, with the majority of Americans behind it, Roe remains the law of the land. The question is whether the law can protect fetuses without eroding the rights their mothers fought so hard to win.

If you have to rely on the sufference of "a majority" of Americans for a "right" protected by the Constitution, it's probably not a right protected by the Constitution, and it's ultimately as malleable as the popular will demands.

I'm not sure what to make of this:


You are Neo, from "The Matrix." You
display a perfect fusion of heroism and
compassion.


What Matrix Persona Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Damn, just when I was good and lathered up about his most recent broadsides, Andrew Sullivan reminds me why I read his work.

Can we have a rule? Anyone who compares all Republicans or all conservatives to Nazis is morally equivalent to a Holocaust denier. I'm willing to extend the same to those who compare all liberals to communists.

It is profoundly unserious, at best, to engage in this bull****. The Jews were not rounded up and gassed, the gypies slaughtered wholesale, Slavs tortured, raped, and killed in numbers greater than the Jews (who weren't looking at minimal casualties, you know?), because of the Nazis' (National Socialists, I might point out) stands on abortion-on-demand or marginal tax rates. Comparing the two is the work of either an evil, or a diseased, mind.

I don't have time for lengthy comments on this theory about white-black achievement disparity, but I'd like to make two notes:

First, the idea that students of Latin American descent are "involuntary immigrants" in the same manner as blacks and Native Americans is both true, and not: Some are descended from the inhabitants of Texas before independence and the territory gained in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo; most are people whose ancestors (or they themselves) came voluntarily in the time after. I should note that, in my experience, the "involuntary" ones tend to be more Americanized, and better students; the "voluntary" tend not. You'll understand what I'm getting at when you read that piece.

Second, I find deeply offensive the idea that your existence is predicated on your ethnic history, both because I'm not terribly impressed with my ethnic history, and because it neatly writes free will out of the equation. (Question: How do folks who slander The Bell Curve reconcile its alleged findings with their belief that racial genetics is destiny?) Again, read the piece above.

The hat tip is to Stuart Buck.

I am ashamed to be an alumnus.

Apparently, a cardinal -- a Prince of the Church -- cannot recite Catholic doctrine at Georgetown without a hassle.

I've been out of school for a little while now, so I'd forgotten little gems like these:

The writer [of a post on a listserv] also praised "the amount of faculty and administrators that came to show their utmost support for the LGBTQ [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, Questioning] community. The students at the meeting conveyed the message that the LGBTQ community does not feel affirmed by the administration as a whole and that we feel like the university has a long way to go before it can call itself a truly accepting place. The faculty and staff present seemed responsive to this and signaled their desire to start changing things."

The listserve said a letter from the dean's office will be sent out to recent graduates and their families "to affirm the place of LGBTQ people at the Georgetown table and address the hurt the cardinal's comments caused."

Oh, the stories I could tell.

Anyway:

Questioning? Did I just include myself in that group by using the punctuation I'm about to use to end this interrogatory? What the hell? I gagged when they added transsexual transgendered to the list. (The damned word means nothing, you idiots.) Now it's people who ask questions, too?

(I know, it refers to those two people who aren't sure about which team they play for. Irony, folks.)

Oh, and this is priceless:

The students at the meeting conveyed the message that the LGBTQ community does not feel affirmed by the administration as a whole and that we feel like the university has a long way to go before it can call itself a truly accepting place.

Is Orwell still required reading anymore? Aside from the perversely simplistic and convoluted language, the point here could not be more wrong-headed: If there's anywhere in this world that this particular interest group can feel welcome, it's at a Jesuit school.

When my Neo-Templars sweep the Earth...

And of course the administration is sending out a letter, doubtless to apologize for Catholic doctrine actually being expressed on campus. Drinan's probably exploding with glee.

If the archbishop -- nay, the General of the Order -- had cojones, he'd clean the damned place up.

Hat tip: Ben Domenech, who rightly and succinctly says, "I love African Catholics. Like African Episcopalians, they actually believe in the theology they preach. Of course, Georgetown students find that fact surprising."

Just for fun: A Google search of intifada hot nude women.

Weird day. Sorry.

Ooh, neat site: Tales from a Yeti Suit.

Heads up, Jimmy: This site looks custom-designed for you.

Not to toot my horn, because there's nothing to toot, but I've been talking to folks about the continent-wide war in the Congo for years now. How come it's only just now receiving any attention? Is it because Mobutu is gone? Because Lumumba is decades dead? What gives?

Forget the blinking Eleventh Circuit, put this man on the Supreme Court.

If the only negative quote you can find on this guy from his native stomping grounds is from the Southern Keep People in Poverty Law Center, by Heaven, get him on the bench.

Funny, but also seriously in need of help.

It's true; no one really knows what the word "neocon" means any more.

Oh: Good pic, Ben, but was it cropped in the original? And does Andrew Sullivan really claim to be the premiere anything? I know he's an acquired taste, but he never struck me as being pompous -- certainly not that much so. And is all this guy can think to say about Josh Claybourn -- heckuva bright guy, intellectually serious and honest -- is that he's "[A] Hoosier Conservative"?

UPDATE: Boy, am I dense. What the hell kind of slur is it to make Sullivan the Queen of Hearts?

I've been away from his page for a while, but Matt Hoy is doing some flat-out fantastic work there. Stop in and check him out.

Before I begin working on a long post, I'd like to point out that the Old Oligarch has yet more thoughts on The Matrix that are well worth a read. And I'm not saying that just because he answered some questions of mine, or because he reminded me where I'd seen the word Merovingian before.

Warning: Spoilers. Second warning: His wife's thoughts on the Council are not yet posted.

Ok, look, I'm a little vague on his issues, but any man who could save the Godfather's chain deserves my vote.

I'm serious. My dream is to someday own a Godfather's restaurant right on my property, for my personal use (and that of any friends and relatives who stop by). It's a small dream, to be sure, but it's my dream, dammit. It's the best pizza ever. And the man who made that a possibility is a man I want to be a Senator.

Ok, one more, then beddy-bye time:

A while back, I wrote this post, inspired by Megan McArdle's seminal piece, on why it is bad to vote for Democrats. Tacitus did it better here. Ben Domenech now has a typically well-thought-out tangent on the matter here.

I'd like to add that this little bit about the U.S. taking on the E.U.'s anti-gen-mod crop regs (talked about here) has somehow gone completely missed by the Libertoids I read. Wonder how that happened.

Pete Beinart goes off his damned rocker, Charles Murtaugh genuflects.

Beinart cites three incidents for Bush's alleged "abuse [of] government power or the public trust": The Texas redistricting mess, the decision by the Senate leadership to break the filibuster, and Bush pushing for war with Iraq.

Ahem:

* What the duly elected representatives of the State of Texas choose to do, once elected, is not within the Mighty Bush's Unquestioned Control. More importantly, since Beinart implies that all the brouhaha would be something conservatives would be pissy about if Clinton did it, I have two responses:

(1) Given that the current districting was done by a Federal judge in response to Democrat screw-ups, might we reasonably suppose that The New Republic would be in favor of the legislature redrawing the silly thing if popularly elected Democrats were doing it?

(2) Let's not get cute and pretend that "packing blacks and Hispanics into overwhelmingly minority districts" is something only Evil Republicans do. The term of art is "majority-minority" district. Republicans do this; Democrats do this. I personally think it's wrong and unconstitutional on its face, but the Supreme Court -- including TNR's favorite four judges -- disagree with me on this. So does the DoJ. Minority Democrats love it. A lot of Republicans love it. A lot of white Democrats love it. It's not new, kids. (This mess -- the redistricting mess -- is now thirteen years old. Here's the case that started it all.)

* If you think the Senate is rolling over at Bush's command, you've forgotten something very important: Every morning, 100 men and women from that chamber look in the mirror and see a President looking back. (Well, not Zell Miller, but the rest.) I find it unlikely that Bush has so completely usurped the Senate leadership, or implanted mind-control fillings, that he's telling them what to do; I'd suggest that they're pushing their own agenda, and it corresponds with his.

* Oh, God, the drone thing again. Look, if you really believe Hussein wasn't looking for ways to kill us en masse, I have a lovely bridge in Brooklyn for sale. (Quick question: If Clinton had said this, and removed Hussein, would Beinart be on his case?) Oh, and this is priceless:

On October 7, 2002, President Bush declared in a nationally televised speech that "Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] for missions targeting the United States." That was a functional lie. Iraq's drones, the Bush administration later admitted, had a maximum range of several hundred miles. They could reach the United States only if flown from a warship stationed off America's coast (a virtually impossible scenario given Iraq's almost nonexistent navy).

Three days later, the Senate authorized the president to use force against Iraq.

Petey: Five words: Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.

There are good questions about the Bush White House out there; Beinart's apparently not the one to make them.

(I'd usually forward this to Murtaugh, or anyone else with whom I disagree in pixels, but I've emailed him three times in the past to no response, so I don't bother.)

UPDATE: The danger of writing at 2 a.m. finally catches up to me: Post hoc, ergo propter hoc is five words, not four.

More light posting, but I would like to point out that Lileks is somewhere between dead on and off-target when he writes:

Short version of the review [of The Matrix Reloaded] - Attention, Wachowski Brothers: put down the bong and step away from the script.

He also confirms what I thought I'd seen -- George H.W. Bush as an apparition of evil. Um, yeah. Squishy Republicans are right up there with Hitler, guys.

I liked the movie. It confirmed wild hunches I'd been carrying around since 1999. I wasn't as disappointed in the action scenes as I thought I'd be. The coital scene didn't bug me as much as the silly rave. There was a nice, if mildly predictable, twist. The visuals were still stunning. The mild philosophical lapses were pardonable. The philosophy almost managed to get deep again. And Laurence Fishburne deserves an Oscar.

And I'm gonna give it room I rarely give: It's Part Two. Part Two movies usually suck (Empire Strikes Back being the all-time great exception, Godfather II wasn't really a Part Two so much as it was a second story, the ideas of otherwise extremely bright people notwithstanding). Attack of the Clones looked so bad that I couldn't bring myself to watch it on rental.

But the Matrix series has a consistent plotline, and made no secret that this movie is just a prelude to the finale. So I'm giving slack.

Like that bright guy, I'm gonna say: Good, but not great movie. Let's hold out hope for the last one.

The Old Oligarch has a much more involved take.

Spoilers are below on his link, along with some damned good questions.

O.O.: If you're reading this, the answers to the questions about the Emanation are digging at me, too. I'm not sure if there are puzzles within what he said; was he just setting Neo up to effect the course of events he desired, or is there a deeper gnosis at work? Did he ever confirm that she -- she, in particular -- was, so to speak, another Emanation? Remember what he said, in response to Neo's question? "Please." With quite the condescending tone, too. Might he have been referring to someone else? Might he have been lying?

And the bit at the end has me mildly worried that there's a deeper solipsism (to misuse the word), so to speak, at work. Think of the end of MIB, and you'll see what I'm getting at. It would explain how Neo's evolution is working.

UPDATE: The Old Oligarch makes clear that he wasn't reviewing before, and he is now, with some more thought-out questions (and a nice philosophy recap for those of us who stopped reading Kleimann, Kant, and Russell some time around 1997) in this spoiler-heavy writing. READ AT YOUR OWN PERIL, even though it's quite good.

Ok, he wins. I give.

Because of this post, Little Tiny Lies officially makes the blog list at left.

Here's why:

I like parties fine, but this isn't a party. When lawyers hold parties for other lawyers, it's work. They talk shop, and they make contacts, and they look for new jobs. And some of the men look for quick sex without commitment, and some of the women look for successful men who might marry them and make it unnecessary for them to continue practicing law. I think that if I meet any nice-looking women, I'll introduce myself as a writer just so they won't smell blood in the water.

Going to law school convinced me that the very worst thing a man can do to himself is to marry a lady law student. Way too many of them have some attitude/chip/hormonal imbalance (yes, I'm ranting, don't kill me when you read this, dear) that produces a permanent sneer and personality disorder, akin to what most women in New Jersey and Noo Yawk carry around on a daily basis. For the life of me, given that women are the majority of law students, and have an easier in at every firm they interview, I'll never understand why, but most female law students (and way too many female lawyers) practically have a bright neon sign on their foreheads that reads I AM BEING OPPRESSED BY THE PATRIARCHY AND I WANT TO CUT OFF TESTICLES IN RETALIATION. And I'M OVERSEXED AND NEED TO GET LAID AND I HATE IT THAT NOT EVERY MAN IN SIGHT WANTS ME.

And lawyer parties suck. Badly.

I normally keep profanity off of this blog, insofar as possible; my kids might see it some day. But:

Bull-FUCKING-shit.

No, no, no no no. No. You did not just force one of the best coaches of the twentieth century to the sidelines. You did not just push aside a guy responsible for maturing Steve Francis, and winning your only two championships. You are simply not that stupid.

What?! Coulter's only a two?

I know -- given that the folks who did this probably don't really understand the concept of irony -- that I'm probably shooting in the wind here, but using a technique made famous by your enemies, and doing it lousily, is not really smart, ironic, hip, or anything else: It's just predictable.

I mean, c'mon: Peggy Noonan as a Queen? Ahmad Chalabi? Ken Lay (that story isn't there anymore, kids)? Lou Dobbs?

Be honest: You ran out of people you knew off the top of your head, didn't you? The NR masthead alone should help finish it. And why Nino Scalia, but not Clarence Thomas, who's been more reliably pro-Administration policy in his rulings? (Or are you capable of thinking that deeply?)

Via Andrew Sullivan, of whom I can't figure if he deserves higher or lower.

UPDATE: Jimmy points out to me that "it's a good thing the jackasses didn't put Condi Rice as the Queen of Spades." Yes, that would have been ironic.

Neat post here, even though not a bit of this (aside from the angle -- to quote Bad Boys, "That shit be havin' a slant") is new to me, I sometimes forget that not everyone is a complete politics junkie like I am. For those of you who don't get enraptured by the thought of a National Review-The Nation bloodmatch, but wonder what all the hubbub is about, this post is worth a read.

Hat tip to Cut on the Bias.

This may be the coolest waste of time I've seen in a while.

Via Lucas Sayre's Daily Contentions.

A little birdie slipped me a transcript of Sen. John Cornyn's statement on the Senate floor today. An excerpt (link to be added when Sen. Cornyn's staff puts it online):

In order for Iraq to grow and blossom from the rubble, it requires security. It requires order. It requires the rule of law.

First, we must begin by ensuring the basic security of the Iraqi people. People must be able to buy food at the market without fearing armed robbery or kidnapping. They must be able to worship without fearing snipers or skirmishes. Their children must be able to go to school without hearing the sound of gunfire nearby.

The Middle East looks like the Old West right now, and we need lawmen to help restore the peace. We must eliminate the threats posed by what remains of the Baathist Party and the common criminals who control the streets and highways. We must end the looting and restore the property rights of the Iraqi people. We simply cannot construct the foundation of a peaceful and just society when there is still no security in Iraq.

Dr. Karim Hassan, director general of Iraq's electricity commission, put it this way: “Give me security, and I will give you electricity.”

The brave men and women of our Armed Forces have done heroic work in Iraq. I know I speak for the people of my State of Texas, for all Americans, and indeed for all freedom-loving people when I give thanks that the operation in Iraq was concluded swiftly with a minimum loss of coalition lives. But it would be a grave mistake to burden our military alone with the job of ensuring security for the Iraqi people. Indeed, that is not their principal mission.

After security is restored, a functioning legal system must be established. There is the immediate problem of establishing a police force. Under Saddam's regime, the police were nothing more than shock troops bent on fulfilling the dictator's tyrannical bidding. Now they must act to protect and defend the people they formerly dominated and abused. The police in Iraq are no longer the law, violently expressed; they must now enforce and be held accountable to the law.

No system of justice can survive long in the absence of law and order, and there can be no democratic Iraqi state as long as lawlessness reigns. [...]

At the inception of this country, George Washington, instead of seeking to rule as an emperor, a king, a president for life, returned to his Virginia farm, handing over the reins of the fledgling American nation at the end of two terms in office. The act was astounding at the time, a political humility unknown since the era of Cincinnatus. It prompted his old foe, King George the Third, to call Washington “the greatest character of the age.”

But Washington's actions were no accident. Washington recognized that for America to truly be a nation where the people were sovereign, it must first be a nation of laws.

We do not yet know which leader Iraqis will choose. But the identity of the democratic leader is far less important in the long term than the establishment of the rule of law, and not men. While leaders come and go, it is laws that make a nation.

Heckuva speech; dead-on, in fact. I'd say that whoever wrote this is one deeply talented guy, even if the Cincinnatus reference is probably lost on certain members of the Senate.

To My (Two) Regular Readers:

Posting will be light for a little while. Stomach flu and work. The latter doesn't make way for the former.

Sorry.

T.

So just for this (her own work) and this (been there, still moving, not her work), I may have to permalink Venomous Kate. She's got a cool shortcut banner, too.

She's a former lawyer who gave it up deliberately. Definite points for her.

Go, Tacitus! I especially like this:

The role of religion in public life. This was something that Clinton seemed to appreciate and understand. He did not hesitate to draw upon the rich tradition of religious imagery and allusion in American political life (see Jefferson's "Nature's God" in the Declaration, Lincoln's Second Inaugural, FDR's D-Day prayer), and so to implicitly endorse the rightful role of individual faith-based conscience in public dialogue and decisionmaking. It is an acceptance that I don't see the Democrats at large as sharing. From the overwrought horror and ridiculous predictions of theocracy every time George W. Bush mentions God, to the denial of the public legitimacy of religious conviction when it comes to abortion politics (though not, tellingly, when it comes to death penalty politics), it's pretty clear that if your politics are informed by your faith, you're going to have a hard time as a Democrat. (The counterexamples that spring to mind -- the mushy "mainline" Protestants, Jewish lefties, Baptists in Dixie -- don't strike me as anything more than local forces in the national party.) This isn't a choice Americans who wish to engage in public life should be forced to make.

He said better what I said here.

So I maintain four separate email addresses, one almost entirely dedicated to bulk (junk/spam/crap) email, one for private correspondence with friends and family, one for this blog, and one I use for everything else (work, formal correspondence, etc.).

I list the bulk email when I sign up for anything on the internet, and only check it to make sure my account isn't overloaded (these days, that's at least once every three days). I've discovered that no amount of "unsubscribe" emails will ever, ever get your name removed from most lists, and neither will most fast-links designed to do the exact same thing. No big deal; that's why I keep that account (that, and sentimental attachment).

Since my personal correspondence email address is in more than a few address books, I'm not surprised that I get spam there, too. A lot of my friends and family have been hit with the Klez worm, and I'm sure some of those Klezes went out from spam companies. (What surprises me is the rate of increase: just two weeks ago, I might get six "bulk" emails a day; now I get thirty-five.)

This leads to the point of this post: This blog's email address. The only folks who use this are friends through blogging, readers, and the occasional hate mail. (Dang it, only occasional.) I get maybe an email or two a day there.

Yet somehow, I'm getting an increasing amount of spam there, too. I know about pagecrawlers, and it's not beyond reason that one of my correspondents at this address (1) added me to this contact list and (2) got hit by Klez (or NetBus -- remember NetBus?) or the equivalent. Let's be honest, though, it's not like I get enough traffic to think this is coming in from pagecrawlers. In fact, it's rather amazing to me to see the spam pile up at all.

This post just shows how absolutely boring I am. I still haven't seen The Matrix: Reloaded. Good gravy, am I lame.

Yeah, the free market really bites, doesn't it?

Look, I know left wingnuts have their collective panties in a twist over the tastes of the common-people-they're-working-for-but-secretly-hate, but lines like this:

But with the chains' power has come criticism from authors, musicians and civil liberties groups who argue that the stores are in effect censoring and homogenizing popular culture. The discounters and price clubs typically carry an assortment of fewer than 2,000 books, videos and albums, and they are far more ruthless than specialized stores about returning goods if they fail to meet a minimum threshold of weekly sales.

What is more, the chains' buyers — especially at Wal-Mart — carefully screen content to avoid selling material likely to offend their conservative customers. Wal-Mart has banned everything from the rapper Eminem's albums to the best-selling diaries of the rock star Kurt Cobain. This month, in its latest bow to its customers' morals, Wal-Mart stopped selling the racy men's magazines Maxim and Stuff.

... only show that the power-brokers in Blue State Land are off their damned rockers.

Gasp! You mean they're effective capitalists with a strong market-response mechanism?

Hint: If folks want something different, they'll go elsewhere. If they like what Wal-Mart, Target, and so on, offer, then those companies will do well.

Of course, Scrappleface has the best take on this.

That's the hat tip.

UPDATE: What he said.

Wilbon mails it in. Story at 11.

With the exception of the update -- right is right, y'all, regardless of who's up and who's down -- Tacitus nails it on the overdrawn furor over DHS and the Rangers cooperating. I know all you weenie Dems hate Tom DeLay somethin' special, but put down the aspirators for a minute and ask yourself exactly what I asked myself when this hubbub started: How would I feel if this happened while Clinton was president, and it was the Dems involved as the majority?

For me, no change. If you're honest, Atrios-spawn, you'll see why there should be no change.

Been outta the loop for a couple days. Sorry about that.

Ben Domenech on why "it is always good to date the daughter of the head of Universal Pictures."

These folks are no more real Texans than Molly Ivins.

Amazingly, Bill Hobbs has a good take. So (not so amazingly) does fellow ex-pat Texan Jimmy. So, too, does Little Tiny Lies.

My solution? Hang 'em high.

I can't resist: Words of wisdom from Mark Steyn

When the rulers insist they know better than the masses, don't be surprised if the masses look elsewhere. I wouldn't vote for a state sodomy law, and some of the sex acts proscribed in the more broadly drawn anti-sodomy legislation I still dream fondly of getting to try one day, if I ever find anyone willing to have sex with me. But the gay lobby hasn't yet closed the deal with the American people on the equalization of homosexual relationships and, by insisting haughtily that it has and that the case is now closed, it's behaving in a manner more appropriate to the diseased Chiraquiste democracies of Europe than to the rough 'n' tumble of America.

Indeed.

(Heh.)

HE LIVES!

One more, then I'm out: Orrin Judd has a riposte to a well-written, if ultimately stupid, piece by Bill Greider.

One thing: Maybe I'm too far right to see it, but what exactly is wrong with

defenestrat[ing] the federal government and reduce its scale and powers to a level well below what it was before the New Deal's centralization. With that accomplished, movement conservatives envision a restored society in which the prevailing values and power relationships resemble the America that existed around 1900, when William McKinley was President. Governing authority and resources are dispersed from Washington, returned to local levels and also to individuals and private institutions, most notably corporations and religious organizations. The primacy of private property rights is re-established over the shared public priorities expressed in government regulation. Above all, private wealth--both enterprises and individuals with higher incomes--are permanently insulated from the progressive claims of the graduated income tax.

...aside from the bad metaphor, that is (defenestrating a government?)?

UPDATE: The Annoying Old Guy has an even better take (than mine) -- "I think OJ was much to kind."

So do I, buddy.

You mean... Boston Catholics are... liberal?!

I'm shocked. Shocked, I say!

Goodbye, kids. Good riddance. No one's forcing you to stick around. You'd just as soon be honest and get your butts gone now, before the purges begin.

Hat tip: David Cohen (who has a pithy rejoinder to the article's headline).

Ten Things to Hate About Star Trek: Heresy, in the old days, and maybe even now, but damned funny.

Hat tip: Cold Fury.

I do not understand why, but this old post refuses to accept further updates, so I'll just reprint it here, with the newest updates at the bottom:

I would like to talk about optimism and conservatism.

I've been thinking a lot about this lately, which is not to say that I'm any more enlightened on the topic than when I began, but I can say I'll sound nicer when I talk about it.

It is a fundamental premise of conservatism that someone, somewhere, is making the same mistake millions of others have made hundreds of times before -- and he won't be the last. Conservatism sees men, to borrow a line of Orrin Judd's thinking, as inherently comic -- fallible, fallacious, and always falling on their faces. Conservatism is to some extent premised on the notion that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Hence, I'd argue that conservatives were better prepared for the events of the last year -- the uselessness of debates in the U.N. Security Council, the machinations of the French and Germans (and to a lesser extent the Russians and ChiComs), the way America became a villain apparently overnight -- than our liberal friends, all because this is the way things always work. States are amoral actors. Men are selfish and self-serving. No true conservative should be shocked by most of the events of the last year -- including Bush's eventual "Aw, To Hell With 'Em," and its timing.

To put it succinctly, conservatives are the great pessimists of the world; we're never surprised when things turn out the way they inevitably do.

On the other hand, American conservatism is in some ways, and in some quarters, different from traditional conservatism. American conservatism was once called liberalism, and implicit in it was this: While men are Fallen, and deprived of God, they are not inherently depraved; they can better themselves, and their world, even though they will never come close in any real sense to perfection. It's the difference between Bill Buckley and Pat Buchanan; between Jonah Goldberg and Robert Novak; between, yes, Rush Limbaugh and (at an extreme) Father Charles E. Coughlin: The former in each pairing is a man who knows that men screw up, early and often, but has hope for them nonetheless; the latter is a man who is without doubt that men chart a direct path for Hell by waking up in the morning.

I'm caricaturing, but I'm trying to make a point. For all of the (ample) doom and gloom in The Federalist Papers, for all of Alex Hamilton's warnings, for the inherent suspicion of the masses implicit in our government's structure, consider this: Our Revolution was truly revolutionary. It posited that, for all of men's faults -- for which we needed checks, and countervailing governments, and limitations on the popular will -- there was a strong case to be made for freedom. The right to a jury trial, descended from the mother country, was enshrined in our Constitution. The freedom to agitate, to gather, to worship God free from the Federal government's over sight; the freedom in our homes from troops or lawmen of that same government; indeed, the very federal system, which posits paradoxically that men can be most free when there are two governments fighting to regulate them -- all of these are announcements, intimations, proclamations that when men are set loose upon the world, their work is frequently good. That freedom is a good thing because men are inherently capable of using it correctly is a profoundly optimistic assumption -- and one well outside of the spirit of the times.

I stress that this should not be confused with modern liberalism, or libertarianism, or progressivism, or what have you, for they all posit, at some level, that men are inherently good, or at least can be made so. It is the difference between believing that a coin tossed in the air may come up heads or tails, and having an ontological (if not epistemiological) certainty that it will come up tails. The former is hope; the latter is foolishness. The former is the American revolution; the latter is the French revolution, at best.

I'm walking down this road because I'm a Reagan conservative. Ronald Reagan was many things, among them a former liberal Democrat. In a sense, he was one of the first neoconservatives. And yet he was never that, and much more. Reagan made people believe in America again. Now admittedly, I missed the chunkiest parts of stagflation, and the Ford administration, and I was blissfully unaware of Jimmy Carter's existence until I was three. But looking back, to some of my earliest political memories, I can remember feeling good to be an American during Reagan's terms. Oh, and wanting to go to war with the Soviet Union over that Korean airliner. The first time I ever felt my skin tingle, that I can remember, is watching an American flag unfurl on television, in I think 1981.

Reagan believed in people's good side, along with their bad. He was convinced that men could get past the bad part, at least a little. He believed in the Shining City on the Hill. He wasn't resigned to the existence of the Soviet Union; he saw it for the evil it was, and like a good, pre-1960s American, rolled up his sleeves and went to work. He made America, in a sense, America again, by reminding us that we were Americans, dammit, and we're the last, best hope of humankind.

I'm not offering a paean to Reagan here (well, not just that); I'm fully aware of Reagan's limitations. But what I mean to say is, aside from some of the loonies over at LewRockwell.com and The American Conservative (but I repeat myself), no one doubts Reagan's conservatism. On the other hand, no one doubts his constant, sunny optimism. And implicit therein, to many minds, is a contradiction: For if men are always taking two steps back for every one forward, why hope that they can ever get ahead?

I'm not sure I know the answer to the alleged contradiction I've posited, traditional conservatism v. American conservatism. But I will say this: I don't see a Gordian knot at all. I'd argue that it's possible to have hope for mankind -- that's implicit in our being such a hope -- and that is a profoundly American, and conservative, sentiment. Having hope doesn't mean closing your eyes to reality, or ignoring the fact that men can be evil, as well as good; it just means that you know what you have to overcome, to make things better.

NB: On Lew and the American "Conservative" above: Note the lack of links. I don't make nice with folks who've turned on their own country, especially folks who should know better.

UPDATE: The ever-reliable Paul Cella correctly takes me to task for painting with too broad a brush where LewRockwell.com and The American Conservative are concerned. I should clarify: It is the editorial positions of the two publications -- especially Lew and Friends -- with which I take umbrage. In the same way that my much-beloved National Review publishes articles which strike me as wrong, or at least out of synch with a better understanding of the world, it must be said that Pat Buchanan's publication has been broadly willing to accept pieces from writers with whom they have profound ideological differences. Lew and kids... well, I have not been able to stomach that site for some time, so I'll just work with my last impressions and say that I think I was, for the most part, correct where Lew et al. are concerned, even if I was too broad with Pat and the Paleocons. And I should add that Pat Buchanan had the good grace, and moral correctness, to write this (which I originally read on Townhall).

Actually, this calls for a bit of a post in its own right; I'll get to that later. The very short of it is, I don't think conservatism was "hijacked" (could we please start using a better word than this? or at least a less visually evocative one?); my only beef with the much-dreaded neocons is that they actually supported John McCain; and a great deal of my respect for Pat Buchanan, and indeed most paleocons, has vanished in the last year, due in large part to their willingness to make common cause with the very hardest of the Left.

FURTHER UPDATE: Paul Jaminet, The Brother By Another Mother of the Brothers Judd, expands and offers a more eloquent version of what I was trying:

Now, Reagan's optimism, like that of many other American conservatives, was the result of his religious faith. If a good God rules the universe, we can trust and hope that things, in the end, will go well.

But I think there are two powerful non-religious reasons for conservative optimism. Both reasons have to do with the evolution of the economy. Together, they give us cause to be far more optimistic than conservatives of 50 years ago.

The first is the increasing rate of real, per capita economic growth in free societies. As a general rule, unfree societies are stagnant, whereas free societies grow. But in the past, the rate of growth in even the freest countries was small. In the history of the world, there was never a year when real economic growth exceeded 0.5% before 1800. Yet as technology has advanced, growth rates have steadily increased -- to 1% annually 1820-1920, 2% 1920-1980, and 3% since 1980. I won't be surprised if the U.S. economy soon grows at 4% annually.
...

The second reason for optimism is cultural. The economy provides everyone with a cultural training. The ideas and character traits which help us earn our living, we adopt, and transfer to other areas of life including politics. The modern world, I believe, has experienced three major cultural eras...

It's quite good. Read the whole thing.

Sorry I'm so late on this, but last week was ... an Elton John Marathon.

Double, final UPDATE: Paul Cella takes on the question with his usual flair and aplomb, and I'm tempted to say he has the better of the argument. Tempted.

Some guy I've never heard of before takes issue with Reagan and, incidentally, me. (Only incidentally; he's quite clear on that.) Permalink probably won't work, so scroll around.

SO-I-LIED-AND-THIS-IS-THE-FINAL-UPDATE: Paul Cella has more cogent thoughts on the matter, and quite adroitly points out that one may expect things to go to Hell, without being certain that they will. I'm pretty well with him on this: As he puts it:

If a man were to awake from a long and torturous fever-induced nightmare, and discover with a start that he is rushing wildly toward a precipice, all he need do is stop; having committed his will to simple survival, his vista opens wide from there. He need not thoughtlessly turn, almost as if beguiled by a new fever, and march precisely backward in his own wild steps. To his left may extend a daunting though ultimately navigable path along the mountainous crags back to his home; to his right may open a broad and primordial forest, imposing but by no means malicious, through which he can arrive at the home of his fathers. He may even find it necessary and desirable, after careful deliberation, to attempt a risky descent off the cliff before him, anticipating that below, perhaps, there is a solid road around the mountains or the forest; and for this he will need sturdy and reliable equipment, which upon consideration is readily available all about him, though most of it was dreadfully concealed by shadows and monsters in his nightmare. The point is that what he must not do, what in fact only a man of terrible insanity would do, is commit to a fatalism about his rush toward oblivion, or fancy somehow that oblivion is desirable, and plunge headlong in silence.

Like I've implied before, if you're looking for eloquence, you're in the wrong place; head over and check out Paul's work instead. (If I'd spent a year at it, I doubt I would have come up with such a nicely-phrased metaphor, or a more compelling image.)

Some of the best news I've seen all day.

Gracious, what with the Democratic field, it's like the Left is trying to help Bush win in 2004.

Pathetic.

Look, I'm not a journalist (ask this guy for that angle -- he's got a good post here), so I can't judge whether affirmative action was the driving issue here (although it bears noting that the article falls all over itself saying it's not).

But from an everyday standpoint, the institutional safeguards were pathetic. The deliberate oversights were worse. The whole thing reeks of either a soft internal culture (unlikely) or treating the fellow with kid gloves (much more likely). Either way, in my profession, we'd get in oodles of trouble for doing this, and rightfully so. The Times makes a great show of how unseriously they're taking this with excerpts like this:

For all the pain resonating through the Times newsroom, the hurt may be more acute in places like Bethesda, Md., where one of Mr. Blair's fabricated articles described American soldiers injured in combat. The puzzlement is deeper, too, in places like Marmet, W. Va., where a woman named Glenda Nelson learned that Mr. Blair had quoted her in a news article, even though she had never spoken to anyone from The Times.

"The New York Times," she said. "You would expect more out of that." [...]

Mr. Raines, who referred to the Blair episode as a "terrible mistake," said that in addition to correcting the record so badly corrupted by Mr. Blair, he planned to assign a task force of newsroom employees to identify lessons for the newspaper. He repeatedly quoted a lesson he said he learned long ago from A. M. Rosenthal, a former executive editor.

"When you're wrong in this profession, there is only one thing to do," he said. "And that is get right as fast as you can."

For now, the atmosphere pervading the newsroom is that of an estranged relative's protracted wake. Employees accept the condolences of callers. They discuss what they might have done differently. They find comfort in gallows humor. And, of course, they talk endlessly about how Jayson could have done this.

What happens, I wonder, if the panel suggests eliminating the "diversity" program? Or is it allowed to do that?

Pathetic.