Deeper and Deeper

 

By JAMES TARANTO
March 28, 2008

"I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community," Barack Obama said last week about his "spiritual mentor," the Rev. Jeremiah "God Damn America" Wright. But now, CNN reports, Obama is changing his tune. Well, sort of:

In an interview scheduled to air Friday on ABC's "The View"--excerpts of which aired on CNN on Thursday night--Obama talks about Wright's reaction to the controversy.

"Had the reverend not retired and had he not acknowledged that what he had said had deeply offended people and were [sic] inappropriate and mischaracterized what I believe is the greatness of this country, for all its flaws, then I wouldn't have felt comfortable staying there at the church," the senator said.

Does this mean he would have left? Or does it mean he would have stayed but felt uncomfortable? And when did Wright apologize? Blogger Tom Maguire undertakes an extensive investigation, and the answer appears to be: Never. In fact, Obama came close to apologizing to Wright. CNN again:

Obama also said on the ABC talk show that he has spoken with Wright since the uproar over the pastor's comments.

"I think he's saddened by what's happened, and I told him I feel badly that he has been characterized just in this one way and people haven't seen the broader aspect of him," Obama said.

And if Obama wouldn't now feel "comfortable" belonging to Wright's church, how does he feel about Wright's successor, Otis Moss? Fox News reports that in his Easter Sunday sermon, Moss delivered quite a spirited defense of Wright:

"No one should start a ministry with lynching, no one should end their ministry with lynching," Moss said.

"The lynching was national news. The RNN, the Roman News Network, was reporting it and NPR, National Publican Radio had it on the radio. The Jerusalem Post and the Palestine Times all wanted exclusives, they searched out the young ministers, showed up unannounced at their houses, tried to talk with their families, called up their friends, wanted to get a quote on how do you feel about the lynching?" he continued.

The criticism surrounding Wright has not softened the services at Trinity United Church of Christ, where Obama has been a congregant for 20 years. Instead, Moss defiantly defended their method of worship, referencing rap lyrics to make his point.

"If I was Ice Cube I'd say it a little differently--'You picked the wrong folk to mess with,' " Moss said to an enthusiastic congregation, standing up during much of the sermon, titled "How to Handle a Public Lynching."

The ABC News report on Obama's "View" appearance quotes the senator as calling Wright a "brilliant man who was still stuck in a time warp." Quips blogress Jennifer Rubin: "So brilliant, apparently, that he has uncovered the plot by white America to kill African Americans."

Meanwhile, the Ithaca (N.Y.) Journal reports on a seminar at Cornell University, where the Rev. Kenneth Clarke, who heads an interfaith campus organization, offered a defense of Wright:

Clarke, director of Cornell United Religious Work, defended sermons by Wright that caused the controversy leading to Obama's speech.

Clarke challenged the audience to go beyond the sound bites and listen to Wright's entire sermon from Sept. 16, 2001 where he criticizes America. Clarke compared Wright's criticism of America to commentary found in speeches by Fredrick Douglas [sic] and Martin Luther King Jr.

The critiques are not unpatriotic, Clarke said.

The statements "reflect a different style of patriotism to which the larger society is often not accustomed," he said. "It is a willingness to criticize the nation and its practices to help the nation, as Dr. King once said, 'to be true to what it has put on paper' in relation to the Declaration of Independence and The Constitution."

A charitable way of describing this is that it requires an Ivy League level of intellectual sophistication to rationalize anti-Americanism as "a different style of patriotism," as if the choice between "God bless America" and "God damn America" were the equivalent of wearing a flag pin or not.

To those of us who are not so sophisticated--or who have a modicum of common sense in addition to a facile intellect--Clarke's defense of Wright sounds either crazy or disingenuous.

ABC News quotes Obama:

"Part of what my role in my politics is to get people who don't normally listen to each other to talk to each other, who [say] crazy things, who are offended by each other, for me to understand them and to maybe help them understand each other."

And there's no question that Obama has promoted understanding between left-wing intellectuals and purveyors of resentment in the black community. That's not so hard, though. These groups have a natural affinity owing to their adversarial attitude toward America--sorry, "different style of patriotism." They are not, however, numerous enough to elect a president.

Explaining the Defections

Bart Hinkle of the Richmond Times-Dispatch responds to our item yesterday on why supporters of Hillary Clinton are considerably more likely to vote for John McCain over Barack Obama than Obama supporters are to defect if Mrs. Clinton gets the nod:

As Yale's Ebonya Washington found out in a study a couple of years ago, Democrats are considerably more likely to bolt their party to avoid voting for a black candidate than Republicans are. As Washington Post columnist Richard Morin summarized her findings in 2006, "White Republicans nationally are 25 percentage points more likely on average to vote for the Democratic senatorial candidate when the GOP hopeful is black. . . . White Democrats are 38 percentage points less likely to vote Democratic if their candidate is black."

Democrats who harbor racial animus obviously have less reason to bolt the party if Clinton wins the nomination. That explanation would seem best suited to pass the Occam's Razor test. Don't sit on a hot stove waiting for the Democratic cheering section to consider that possibility, though.

While Hinkle's conclusion is certainly tempting, Morin's column, published in April 2006, illustrates the problem with drawing conclusions based on Washington's study (which is available here). Morin begins as follows:

Bad news for Michael S. Steele, the leading Maryland Republican candidate for Senate in November: The scuttling noise he hears on Election Day could be the sound of tens of thousands of white Republicans crossing over to vote for the Democrat.

Steele in fact got the nomination, but Morin's prediction was wrong. According to exit polls, only 6% of Republicans voted for his opponent, Ben Cardin. Steele did twice as well among Democrats as Cardin did among Republicans, getting 12% of their vote. Cardin won nonetheless, because Maryland is a heavily Democratic state and he outpolled Steele among independents.

Contrast this with another Senate campaign with a black Republican nominee--in Illinois in 2004. Exit polls there show that 40% of Republicans deserted their party to vote for Alan Keyes's Democratic opponent, a young up-and-comer called Barack Obama. Obama also outpolled Keyes among Democrats, 94% to 5%.

Did Republicans abandon Keyes because he was black, or because he was not a serious candidate? What would we do without rhetorical questions?

A Pew Research Center poll does find some evidence of retrograde racial views among the Democratic electorate:

White Democrats who hold unfavorable views of Obama are much more likely than those who have favorable opinions of him to say that equal rights for minorities have been pushed too far; they also are more likely to disapprove of interracial dating.

To be specific, 28% of white Democrats with an unfavorable view of Obama disapprove of interracial dating, as do 8% of those with a favorable view of him. On the question of whether "equal rights for minorities have been pushed too far," the figures are 45% and 19% respectively, though in our view the question is so vague as to be nearly meaningless. Also, we can't for the life of us find Obama's favorable/unfavorable numbers among white Democrats in the Pew report, so there's no way of knowing how these pairs of figures compare.

Also, unlike the Gallup poll we noted yesterday, Pew finds no significant difference between Obama's supporters and Mrs. Clinton's as to their stated propensity to defect and support McCain.

Gallup has some follow-up numbers, which show that among Clinton supporters, Democrat-leaning independents and conservative Democrats are the most likely to defect to McCain if Obama is the nominee, while blacks and liberal Democrats are the least likely to defect. But the same groups are also at the top and bottom of the list of Obama supporters who are most likely to defect if Mrs. Clinton is the nominee. So this would seem to tell us something about which Democrats are most loyal generally, rather than about supporters of one candidate or the other.

Don't Know Much Geography

The Web site of KATU-TV in Portland, Ore., features an Associated Press story headlined "Portland-Area Marine Dies in Africa":

Lance Cpl. Dustin L. Canham has died in what the Department of Defense called a "non-hostile incident" in Djibouti, a country in eastern Africa.

But look at the graphic the station chose to illustrate the story;

Apparently the guys at KATU think Africa is in Iraq.

The 'Traditional Muslim Behavior' Defense

From the Arab News:

Shoura Council Chairman Dr. Saleh Bin-Humaid has urged US authorities to review the case of Homaidan Al-Turki, a 37-year-old Saudi student who was found guilty in a Colorado state court of 12 counts of sexually assaulting his Indonesian maid. . . .

Al-Turki, a former Ph.D. student at the University of Colorado, maintains that he did not sexually assault the woman, whose identity has not been disclosed due to the nature of the alleged crime, and has accused US officials of persecuting him for "traditional Muslim behavior." . . .

Al-Turki, who had been a graduate student in Colorado for nine years, was sentenced in August 2006 to 20 years for the rape charges and eight years for theft of the maid's wages.

Memo to our friends the Saudis: If you're trying to improve the image of Islam in the West, invoking "traditional Muslim behavior" to defend a rapist is probably not a good idea.

We Don't Believe This

"Just because something has appeared in a newspaper does not mean that is entirely accurate."--Washington Post, March 27

Not to Mention Her Like-a-Billy Problem

"Clinton Struggling With Her Likability Problem"--headline, CQ Politics, March 27

They Had Overstayed Their Welcome

"Clinton and Family Leave"--headline, Associated Press, March 28

U.S. Out of North America!

"Obama, Clinton respond to Bush's Speech on the War in Ohio"--headline, Time.com, March 27

Take That, Tom Friedman!

"I think that those people [global warming skeptics] are in such a tiny, tiny minority now with their point of view, they're almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the world is flat."--Al Gore, in an interview with "60 Minutes" to air March 30

We Blame Global Warming

"Thick Ice Hinders Controversial Seal Hunt"--headline, Reuters, March 28

The Competition Is Really Hurting

• "Tribune Reports $78 Million Loss"--headline, Chicago Sun-Times, March 22
 
• "Sun-Times Media Group Warned Its Shares May Be Delisted"--headline, Chicago Tribune, March 27
 

'Mom, Don't You Know Who I Am?'

"U.S. Biathletes Crave Recognition at Home"--headline, Reuters, March 28

It's Almost Big Enough to Be a BUS
"Gunmen Hold 55 Children Abducted in CAR: U.N."--headline, Reuters, March 28

Breaking News From 1986

"Russia to US: Scrap Missile Defense"--headline, Associated Press, March 27

News You Can Use

"It's Fun to Imagine a Housing Turnaround"--headline, St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, March 27

Bottom Stories of the Day

• "Scalia Criticizes News Media"--headline, Associated Press, March 27
 
• "Clinton Tells Democrats: Don't Vote for McCain"--headline, CNN.com, March 27
 
• "Storm Brewing Over Southern Manitoba"--headline, CBC.ca, March 28
 

Cold, Undead Hands

BG News, student newspaper at Ohio's Bowling Green State University, reports on an assault against the Second Amendment:

The University might hamper the second round of BG Undead's game play after the announcement was made last week to place an immediate ban on the use of Nerf guns on campus.

The game, a version of Humans versus Zombies, is still going to be played but it's going to be more difficult for the humans to survive, said senior Atonn Smeltzer, the web administrator for the group.

Humans versus Zombies is a game played between two teams, the humans and the zombies.

The goal of the humans is to survive the zombie attack by not being "bitten" and turned into a zombie. The human's main form of defense used to come in the form of Nerf guns, but is now being downgraded to balled up socks and marshmallows.

The zombies win the game by turning all of the humans after placing both hands on a human's shoulders.

Don't they know? Nerf guns don't kill humans, zombies kill humans!

WSJ – Clarence Thomas, Mr. Constitution

Clarence Thomas
Mr. Constitution

By DAVID B. RIVKIN and LEE A. CASEY
March 22, 2008; Page A25

Clarence Thomas leaps from his chair. He retrieves a wire coat hanger from his closet for a demonstration -- the same demonstration he gives his law clerks. He bends it and says: "How do you compensate? So, you say well, deal with it. Bend this over here. Oh, wait a minute, bend it a little bit there. And you're saying that it throws everything out of whack. What do you do?"

He holds up a twisted wire, useless now for its original purpose and the point is made. "If you notice sometimes I will write just to point out that I think that we've gone down a track that's going to cause some distortion, then it's quite precisely because of that. I don't do things that I think are illegitimate in other areas, just to bend it back to compensate for what's already happened."

Terry Shoffner

Interpreting the Constitution is the Supreme Court's most important and most difficult task. An even harder question is how to approach a Constitution that, in fact, is no longer in pristine form -- with the Framers' design having been warped over the years by waves of judicial mischief. There is an obvious temptation to redress the imbalance, which Associate Justice Thomas decisively rejects. Thus his coat hanger metaphor.

So is the most controversial Supreme Court justice an "originalist" when it comes to Constitutional interpretation? He says he doesn't like labels, though he does admit to being a "meat and potatoes" kind of guy.

Upon entering his spacious office overlooking the Capitol Dome in Washington, D.C., the first thing to catch your eye is his Nebraska Cornhuskers screen saver. Mr. Thomas never attended the University of Nebraska, or even lived in the state. He's just a fan. His office is also decorated with pictures of the historical figures he admires, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Booker T. Washington, Thomas More and Winston Churchill, and he speaks of them with knowledge and passion. Watching over all is a bust of his grandfather atop Mr. Thomas's bookcase -- its countenance as stern as a Roman consul. There is little doubt this man was the driving force in Mr. Thomas's life -- a fact he confirms, and which is reflected in the title of his recently published memoir, "My Grandfather's Son."

Mr. Thomas faced one of the most destructive and personally vicious Supreme Court confirmation hearings in American history -- described at the time by Mr. Thomas himself as a "high-tech lynching." Mr. Thomas's opponents smeared his character and integrity. To this day, disappointed and embittered, they feel entitled to insult his qualifications, intelligence and record.

In 2004, when Mr. Thomas's name was floated as a possible replacement for ailing Chief Justice William Rehnquist, then Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid called him an "embarrassment" to the Court, and attacked his opinions as "poorly written."

In point of fact, Mr. Thomas's opinions are well-written, displaying a distinctive style -- a sure sign that the Justice and not his clerks does most of the writing.

As for his judicial philosophy, "I don't put myself in a category. Maybe I am labeled as an originalist or something, but it's not my constitution to play around with. Let's just start with that. We're citizens. It's our country, it's our constitution. I don't feel I have any particular right to put my gloss on your constitution. My job is simply to interpret it."

In that process, the first place to look is the document itself. "And when I can't find something in that document or in the tradition or history around that document, then I am getting on dangerous ground. Because that's when you drift so much more towards your own policy preferences."

It is the insertion of those policy preferences into the interpretive process that Mr. Thomas finds particularly illegitimate. "People can say you are an originalist, I just think that we should interpret the Constitution as it's drafted, not as we would have drafted it."

Mr. Thomas acknowledges that discerning a two-hundred-year-old document's meaning is not always easy. Mistakes are possible, if not inevitable, as advocates of a malleable "living constitution," subject to endless judicial revision, never tire of pointing out. "Of course it's flawed" agrees Mr. Thomas, "but all interpretive models are flawed."

Simply following your own preferences is both flawed and illegitimate, he says. "But if that is difficult, does that difficulty legitimate just simply watching your own preference?" By doing that "I haven't cleared up the problem, I've simply trumped it with my personal preferences."

Mr. Thomas has also been criticized for his supposed lack of respect for precedent. Even his fellow conservative, Justice Antonin Scalia, was reported by a Thomas biographer to have claimed that Mr. Thomas just doesn't believe in "stare decisis." Latin for "let the decision stand," stare decisis is an important aspect of the Anglo-American system of precedent -- deciding new cases based on what the courts have done before and leaving long established rules in place.

Mr. Thomas, however, is less absolute here than his critics suggest. He understands the Supreme Court can't simply erase decades, or even centuries, of precedent -- "you can't do it."

At the same time, he views precedent with respect, not veneration. "You have people who will just constantly point out stare decisis, stare decisis, stare decisis . . . then it is one big ratchet. It is something that you wrestle with." History would seem to vindicate Mr. Thomas and his insistence on "getting it right" -- even if that does mean questioning precedent.

The perfect example is Brown v. Board of Education (1954), where the Supreme Court overruled the racist "separate but equal" rule of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which permitted legally enforced segregation and had been settled precedent for nearly 60 years.

It is the Plessy dissent of Justice John Marshall Harlan to which Mr. Thomas points for an example of a Justice putting his personal predilections aside to keep faith with the Constitution. Harlan was a Kentucky aristocrat and former slaveowner, although he was also a Unionist who fought for the North during the Civil War. A man of his time, he believed in white superiority, if not supremacy, and wrote in Plessy that the "white race" would continue to be dominant in the United States "in prestige, in achievements, in education, in wealth and in power . . . for all time, if it remains true to its great heritage and holds fast to the principles of constitutional liberty."

"But," Harlan continued, "in view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among its citizens."

That, for Mr. Thomas, is the "great 'But,'" where Harlan's intellectual honesty trumped his personal prejudice, causing Mr. Thomas to describe Harlan as his favorite justice and even a role model. For both of them, justice is truly blind to everything but the law.

More than anything else, this explains Mr. Thomas's own understanding of his job -- a determination to put "a firewall between my [PERSONAL\]view and the way that I interpret the Constitution," and to vindicate his oath "that I will administer justice without respect to person, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all of the duties incumbent upon me as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States."

This insistence by the Justice on judging based upon the law, and not on who the parties are, presents a stark contrast with today's liberal orthodoxy. The liberal approach -- which confuses law-driven judging with compassion-driven politics, enthused with a heavy distrust of the American political system's fairness -- was recently articulated by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, who emphasized the need for judges with "heart" and "empathy" for the less fortunate, judges willing to favor the disempowered.

Born in rural Georgia in 1948, Mr. Thomas and his brother were mostly raised in Savannah by their maternal grandparents. His grandfather, Myers Anderson, believed in work, and that rights come with responsibilities. According to his book, Mr. Anderson told the seven-year-old Clarence that "the damn vacation is over" the morning he moved in.

Says Mr. Thomas: "Being willing to accept responsibility, that sort of dark side of freedom, first -- before you accept all the benefits. Being ready to be responsible for yourself -- you want to be independent. That was my grandfather." Anderson also taught his grandson to arrive at his conclusions honestly and not "to be bullied away from opinions that I think are legitimate. You know, not being unreasonable, but not being bullied away."

For a man who has been subjected to a great deal of vitriol, Mr. Thomas manifests remarkable serenity. He rejoices in life outside the Court, regaling us with stories about his travels throughout the U.S., his many encounters with ordinary Americans, and his love of sports -- especially the Cornhuskers, the Dallas Cowboys and Nascar.

Mr. Thomas isn't much bothered by his critics. "I can't answer the cynics and the negative people. I can't answer them because they can always be cynical about something."

Mr. Thomas speaks movingly about the Court as an institution, and about his colleagues, both past and present. He sees them all, despite their differences, as honorable, each possessing a distinctive voice, and trying to do right as they see it. Our job, he concludes, is "to do it right. It's no more than that. We can talk about methodology. It's merely a methodology. It's not a religion. It is in the approach to doing the job right. And at bottom what it comes to, is to choose to interpret this document as carefully and as accurately and as legitimately as I can, versus inflicting my personal opinion or imposing my personal opinion on the rest of the country."

And why doesn't he ask questions at oral argument, a question oft-posed by critics insinuating that he is intellectually lazy or worse? Mr. Thomas chuckles wryly and observes that oral advocacy was much more important in the Court's early days. Today, cases are thoroughly briefed by the time they reach the Supreme Court, and there is just too little time to have a meaningful conversation with the lawyers. "This is my 17th term and I haven't found it necessary to ask a bunch of questions. I would be doing it to satisfy other people, not to do my job. Most of the answers are in the briefs. This isn't Perry Mason."

Messrs. Rivkin and Casey served in the Justice Department under President George H.W. Bush.

BOTWT 3-18

Obama and His 'White Grandmother'

By JAMES TARANTO
March 18, 2008

Barack Obama took the stage this morning to give what was billed as a "major speech on race." It was, of course, an attempt to rescue his campaign from the revelation that his so-called spiritual mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, espouses a virulently anti-American and antiwhite worldview called "black liberation theology."

Here is the part of the speech that bothered us most:

I can no more disown [Wright] than I can my white grandmother--a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

Our first thought was that it was pretty low of Obama to exploit his (still living) grandmother in this way. Is it really necessary for the whole world to know about her private expressions of prejudice? Doesn't simple decency dictate that a public figure treat embarrassing facts about loved ones with discretion?

Obama was trying to accomplish something very specific by dragging his "white grandmother" into this political mess. He was trying to diminish Wright's hateful theology by implying that it too is a private matter. Said Obama:

For the men and women of Rev. Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years.

That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Rev. Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning.

Note how Obama elides the difference between a comment at the "kitchen table" and a sermon delivered to a congregation of thousands and recorded on DVD.

Obama rightly faulted his spiritual mentor for using "incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation." But he tried to treat Wright's most outrageous comments as if they were aberrations rather than the most extreme expressions of an extreme ideology:

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Rev. Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain.

Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely--just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice.

Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country--a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America, a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

What Obama is evading is that this "profoundly distorted view" is not just some passing emotion. It is what Wright himself, in the "talking points" page of his congregation's Web site, describes as "systematized black liberation theology." As we noted yesterday, Wright credits James Cone of New York's Union Theological Seminary with having undertaken this systematization. Here again is Cone's description of black liberation theology:

Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community. . . . Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.

So here we have, on the one hand, an old white woman who would be completely ordinary and anonymous but for her grandson's astonishing political success, and who harbors some regrettable prejudices; and, on the other, a leader in the black community who uses his pulpit to propagate an ideology of hate.

Obama said this morning, "I have asserted a firm conviction--a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people--that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union."

But if he cannot speak out unequivocally against the public, organized bigotry of his spiritual mentor, how can he possibly live up to this promise?

Poor Little Rich Californians

Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics has lent his prestige to anti-Iraq hysterics, joining forces with Harvard lecturer Linda Bilmes to publish a recent tract called "The Three Trillion Dollar War." Our erstwhile colleague Tunku Varadarajan sums it up nicely: "The faux-precision of the book's title . . . is propagandistic. One might aver that the aim of the authors was not so much to write a book as to coin a catchphrase."

But this is hilarious. Bilmes and Stiglitz wrote an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times and apparently were asked to come up with a local angle. So they claim that "the cost will fall especially hard on Californians":

Californians are going to face a disproportionate share of the bill for three reasons. First, California's population is among the youngest in the U.S., with 26% under 18 (compared with 24% nationwide). Because of irresponsible fiscal policy (cutting taxes for the rich while a war is in progress and borrowing the money to pay for the conflict), the burden of paying for this costly adventure has been shifted to these younger Americans.

Irresponsibly cutting taxes on the rich, check:

The second reason California will pay a disproportionate share for the war is because its residents are so rich. California already contributes a disproportionate share of federal taxes--more than 14% of the total last year from a state that makes up only 12% of the nation's population.

Poor Californians! They're rich and undertaxed, and they're rich and overtaxed. If they weren't rich, they wouldn't have anything going for them at all!

Man Without a Party

From New York's Daily News, something we're really not sure we needed to know:

The thunderous applause was still ringing in his ears when the state's new governor, David Paterson, told the Daily News that he and his wife had extramarital affairs.

In a stunning revelation, both Paterson, 53, and his wife, Michelle, 46, acknowledged in a joint interview they each had intimate relationships with others during a rocky period in their marriage several years ago.

But at least the News doesn't tell us everything. For instance, it leaves out Paterson's party affiliation, as does the New York Times story on the same subject. By contrast, check out this Times story on another politician's nonprivate sexual misconduct:

City Councilman Dennis P. Gallagher resigned from office and pleaded guilty on Monday to two misdemeanors, admitting that he sexually abused a woman in his district office in Middle Village, Queens, last summer while he was intoxicated.

Mr. Gallagher, 43, a Queens Republican, told the court in a non-emotional tone that he touched the 52-year-old victim against her will, a position in contrast to his earlier claims that they had consensual sex after meeting in a bar.

The Times mentions Gallagher's party affiliation in the second paragraph, which means he's almost certainly a Republican.

Reliable Sources

The New York Times's Adam Liptak, in a story about state supreme courts, quotes an unidentified justice from an unidentified state:

Justices in other states did not embrace the study.

"Not to be too petty about it," one wrote in a detailed critique when asked by a reporter, "but a report by the chief supervising attorney of the Supreme Court of California and the reporter of decisions of California that concludes--voilà!--that California is the most 'followed' jurisdiction in the nation is presumptively suspect." The justice was granted anonymity to allow him to be petty.

We'll admit, that was witty. Hats off to Liptak.

Zero-Tolerance Watch

Fifteen-year-old Amanda Rouse of Seaside, Calif., had a scary moment on the school bus the other day. After a turn, the bus driver fell out of her seat and hit her head. Quick-thinking Rouse "jumped up and applied the brakes, bringing the bus to a halt after striking two parked cars. No one was injured."

So how did the school respond? As the Associated Press reports:

Rouse said she was punished because she wasn't supposed to be on the bus.

Rouse said she fell ill on the way to school, but instead of calling in sick, she asked the bus driver for a lift back to the bus yard before the accident happened. She must attend Saturday school as punishment for failing to call in sick that day.

In our day, when we got sick, we didn't "call in"; we just stayed home and brought a note from Mom when we returned. Schools now have phones, and we suppose that's progress.

Homer Nods

Yesterday's item on Eliot Spitzer (since corrected) referred to a photo caption from Agence France-Presse, not the Associated Press as we had it.

Someone Set Up Us the Bomb

"Cheney Wants Arab Envoys Curb Iran's Role"--headline, Herald Sun (Melbourne, Australia), March 18

News of the Tautological

"Pediatric Allergies Take Toll on Kids Too"--headline, Reuters, March 17

Breaking News From 1789-1919

"White Male Vote Especially Critical"--headline, Washington Post, March 17

News You Can Use

• "Bar Cams Reveal Where the Action Is"--headline, Pioneer Press (St. Paul, Minn.), March 17
 
• "The Perfect Gown Is One That Fits Your Body: Tall, Short, Skinny, Etc."--headline, Salt Lake Tribune, March 17
 

Bottom Stories of the Day

• "Beer Likely to Flow at Harley Festival"--headline, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, March 17
 
• "Woman Says Attorney Over-Billed; Attorney Says Claims Unfounded"--headline, Associated Press, March 16
 
• "Right Underrepresented in Press's Diversity"--headline, Washington Times, March 18
 
• "Chafee Raps Clinton as Bush Enabler"--headline, Associated Press, March 17
 
• "Belgium Forms Govt After 9-Month Crisis"--headline, Associated Press, March 18
 

Hell No, We Won't Go (Outside)!

In Grand Rapids, Mich., it's the 1960s all over again, reports the Grand Rapids Press:

Nearly 300 anti-war activists marched, drummed and chanted their way through the streets of downtown Saturday, calling for the end of the 5-year-old war in Iraq and dodging police cruisers trying to keep them on the sidewalk.

Three hundred, wow! That's a lot of protesters! Or is it? According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the population of Grand Rapids was 193,083 as of last year, so that only 0.155% of the population turned out. Where were the other 192,783? There is an explanation:

As 19-year-old Kirsten Zeiter watched the crowd gather, the Grand Valley State University student worried not enough people were coming out to protest.

"People are anticipating the end of George Bush's presidency," Zeiter said, theorizing they were staying home rather than protest.

As we noted yesterday, we also are staying home. We suppose we're out of step with public opinion, but we very much hope that George Bush is still president the next time we venture outdoors.

BOTWT 3-19

Pulpit Bullies

By JAMES TARANTO
March 19, 2008

When Barack Obama yesterday condemned the most invidious remarks of his "spiritual mentor," Jeremiah Wright, National Review's Byron York was there. The auditorium at Philadelphia's National Constitution Center, York reports, "was filled mostly with guests invited by the Obama campaign." Unsurprisingly, they "thought he delivered a great speech." Disturbingly, several whom York interviewed didn't understand all the fuss about Wright:

"It was amazing," Gregory Davis, a financial adviser and Obama supporter from Philadelphia, told me. "I think he addressed the issue, and if that does not address the issue, I don't know what else can be said about it. That was just awesome oratory."

I asked Davis what his personal reaction was when he saw video clips of sermons in which Rev. Wright said, "God damn America," called the United States the "U.S. of KKK A," and said that 9/11 was "America's chickens . . . coming home to roost." "As a member of a traditional Baptist, black church, I wasn't surprised," Davis told me. "I wasn't offended by anything the pastor said. A lot of things he said were absolutely correct. . . . The way he said it may not have been the most appropriate way to say it, but as far as a typical black inner-city church, that's how it's said."

Vernon Price, a ward leader in Philadelphia's 22nd Precinct, told me Obama's speech was "very courageous." When I asked his reaction to Rev. Wright, Price said, "A lot of things that he said were true, whether people want to accept it, or believe it, or not. People believe in their hearts that a lot of what he said was true."

Newsweek's Lisa Miller reports on WashingtonPost.com that black religious leaders take a similar tack:

Last Friday, in an effort to gauge just how "out there" Wright's sermons are in the context of the African-American church tradition, Newsweek phoned at least two dozen of the country's most prominent and thoughtful African-American scholars and pastors, representing a wide range of denominations and points of view. Not one person would say that Wright had crossed any kind of significant line.

"An effort on the part of Christians--both clergy and laypersons--to critique the United States in light of what they understand as biblically based moral and ethical guidelines isn't new," explains Anthony Pinn, a professor of religious studies at Rice University. "There is a dominant style in black churches and Rev. Wright's preaching is a prime example of this. . . . Some of what Rev. Wright says is controversial, but that doesn't make him unique."

The Rev. James Forbes, the recently retired longtime pastor of Riverside Church on Manhattan's Upper West Side explained that, broadly speaking, there has been a historical division in the world of black churches. One group thinks you should work hard, keep quiet and get ahead; the other thinks that you need to agitate and provoke to make progress. Forbes puts himself in the first camp but supports Wright's efforts. "Some of us wish we had the nerve that Jeremiah had," he said. "We praise God that he's saying it, so the rest of us don't have to." Does Wright ever cross a line? "I think if a person is a prophet and he's not seen as ever crossing a line, then he has not told the truth as it ought to be told."

And the Rev. John H. Thomas, general minister and president of Wright's denomination, the United Church of Christ, issued a statement yesterday excusing Wright on the ground that it was wrong to remove Saddam Hussein from power:

Many of us would prefer to avoid the stark and startling language Pastor Wright used in these clips. But what was his real crime? He is condemned for using a mild "obscenity" in reference to the United States. This week we mark the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq, a war conceived in deception and prosecuted in foolish arrogance. Nearly four thousand cherished Americans have been killed, countless more wounded, and tens of thousands of Iraqis slaughtered. Where is the real obscenity here? True patriotism requires a degree of self-criticism, even self-judgment that may not always be easy or genteel. Pastor Wright's judgment may be starker and more sweeping than many of us are prepared to accept. But is the soul of our nation served any better by the polite prayers and gentle admonitions that have gone without a real hearing for these five years while the dying and destruction continues?

Whatever one's opinion of the Iraq war, this is a complete non sequitur. Wright is not responsible for the conduct of U.S. foreign policy, and in any case there is no reason to think he has exercised any influence on it by virtue of striking an obnoxious tone. He is responsible for the spiritual sustenance of his congregation. Does he serve that responsibility well when he uses his pulpit to stir up parishioners' hatred and anger?

As for "the soul of our nation," we have heard a lot of late about America's need for racial reconciliation. Thanks to the Obama-Wright episode, we also have learned that racial antagonism and anti-Americanism are much more common than we would have guessed among predominantly black congregations in America.

Is this not an obstacle to reconciliation? In 21st-century America, does any greater obstacle remain?

That's Entertainment?

Writing in the New York Sun, the Manhattan Institute's John McWhorter raises an interesting analogy:

I have written that it is part of the essence of the modern black American identity to be a victor in private but a victim in public. There is a sense that while initiative is important, blacks still have to display more of it than whites, and that this isn't fair.

Someone who feels this way can have done well and even be comfortable around white people. However, that sense that black America still labors under a general injustice can express itself in taking a certain pleasure in listening to someone like Jeremiah Wright.

They hear a stirring articulation of rebellion, listenable according to a sense that fealty to one's race entails at least a gestural nod to sticking a finger in whitey's eye now and then. The tone, the music of the statements is more vivid than the content. Sermons like this are Sunday morning's version of gangsta rap. . . .

If this is just political hardball, I get it. But I sense more to it. America prides itself on being ready for a black president lately. Well, in hearing Reverend Wright's agitprop as performance rather than hate speech, Barack Obama is black indeed--in a way other than the uninteresting one of melanin.

"Performance rather than hate speech"--in other words, Wright is just a showman, whose words we shouldn't take seriously. But did anyone say the same thing about the anti-American comments of Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell in the aftermath of 9/11? If those remarks had been racially inflammatory as well, would they not have drawn even more outrage than they did?

For that matter, consider what happened when someone who really is a mere showman said something racially offensive. This is an ABC News report from April 11, 2007:

In an interview with ABC News Wednesday afternoon, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., called for the firing of talk radio host Don Imus. Obama said he would never again appear on Imus' show, which is broadcast on CBS Radio and MSNBC television. . . .

Last week, Imus referred to the Rutgers University women's basketball team, most of whom are African-American, as "nappy-headed hos." He has since apologized for his remarks, and CBS and MSNBC suspended his show for two weeks.

"He didn't just cross the line," Obama said. "He fed into some of the worst stereotypes that my two young daughters are having to deal with today in America. The notions that as young African-American women--who I hope will be athletes--that that somehow makes them less beautiful or less important. It was a degrading comment. It's one that I'm not interested in supporting."

We agree with the position Obama took vis-à-vis Imus back then. But how does one square this with his decision to send his daughters to a church whose pastor preaches an ugly and bigoted theology?

Further, is there no common standard here? For decades, major institutions--schools, the law, the media--have driven home the message that when it comes to racial bigotry, words matter: that one should strive to overcome one's own prejudices, and at the very least keep them to oneself.

Yet here we have someone in a position of responsibility in the black community--no less than the spiritual mentor to a would-be president--who not only has failed to live up to this aspiration but has made a career of promoting racial resentment. In response we hear a litany of excuses about understandable anger, a tradition of rebellion and so forth. The kindest thing that can be said about this is that it is a form of soft bigotry.

Now It Matters

A great appeal of Barack Obama's candidacy was, as this column put it in January, that "Obama is black, and it doesn't matter." Bill and Hillary Clinton understood this, which is why they tried to liken him to Jesse Jackson early in the primary season. That effort backfired badly. But now Jeremiah Wright has achieved what the Clintons could not: defining Obama in terms of his race.

"After largely shying away from discussions of race during his 15-month campaign, Sen. Obama turned the spotlight on his identity as a biracial African-American candidate and embraced the idea that he is the vehicle for a dialogue about race," The Wall Street Journal reports. "Race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now," Obama said. But as Mickey Kaus notes, "Actually, a lot of voters supported Obama because they'd kind of like to ignore race, you know?"

To be precise, this was a large part of Obama's appeal to white voters. Does he retain that appeal after his speech? We are skeptical:

A similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. . . .

So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African-American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. . . .

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle-class squeeze--a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many.

And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns--this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

As Kaus notes, Obama's "explanations of white anger seem distant and condescending." The same is often true when white liberals proclaim their "understanding" of black anger--except that black anger is invested with a certain nobility for its having originated in genuine oppression. And Obama's agenda is not exactly bold:

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination--and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past--are real and must be addressed.

Not just with words, but with deeds--by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations.

It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

What he seems to be offering "working- and middle-class white Americans" is to label them "resentful" rather than "misguided or even racist," in exchange for which they are expected to support an expansion of left-liberal social programs. Will this bargain appeal to voters any more than it has in the previous 10 elections?

Accountability Journalism

"Barack Obama confronted the nation's racial divide head-on Tuesday, tackling both black grievance and white resentment in a bold effort to quiet a campaign uproar over race and his former pastor's incendiary statements," the Associated Press reports.

Wow, he's single-handedly confronting the nation's racial divide head-on! With bold efforts no less! And yes, this is a news story; the AP doesn't do editorials.

Then again, maybe the AP is just making up for this astonishingly anti-Obama piece the other day by Ron Fournier, avatar of "accountability journalism":

There's a line smart politicians don't cross--somewhere between "I'm qualified to be president" and "I'm born to be president." Wherever it lies, Barack Obama better watch his step.

He's bordering on arrogance.

The dictionary defines the word as an "offensive display of superiority or self-importance; overbearing pride." Obama may not be offensive or overbearing, but he can be a bit too cocky for his own good. . . .

But both Obama and his wife, Michelle, ooze a sense of entitlement.

One-eighth of a cheer to Fournier for not being a Democratic partisan. But really, guys, what's wrong with just reporting the facts and leaving the opinions to us pundits?

On the Sunni Side of the Street

John McCain has been taking some flak for a supposed "misstep" on Iraq, as the New York Times reports from Jerusalem:

Senator John McCain's trip overseas was supposed to highlight his foreign policy acumen, and his supporters hoped that it would showcase him in a series of statesmanlike meetings with world leaders throughout the Middle East and Europe while the Democratic candidates continued to squabble back home.

But all did not go according to plan on Tuesday in Amman, Jordan, when Mr. McCain, fresh from a visit to Iraq, misidentified some of the main players in the Iraq war.

Mr. McCain said several times in his visit to Jordan--in a news conference and in a radio interview--that he was concerned that Iran was training Al Qaeda in Iraq. The United States believes that Iran, a Shiite country, has been training and financing Shiite extremists in Iraq, but not Al Qaeda, which is a Sunni insurgent group.

But McCain is not the first to suggest that Iran is backing Sunni as well as Shiite terrorists in Iraq. As we noted in January 2007, American intelligence had unearthed documents in Iraq suggesting cooperation between Iran's Quds ("Jerusalem") force and people affiliated with al Qaeda in Iraq, among other Sunni groups, confirming the suspicion of Iraqi liberal Mithal al-Alusi that Iran was playing both sides in Iraq. And according to a July 2007 New York Sun article:

One of two known Al Qaeda leadership councils meets regularly in eastern Iran, where the American intelligence community believes dozens of senior Al Qaeda leaders have reconstituted a good part of the terror conglomerate's senior leadership structure.

That is a consensus judgment from a final working draft of a new National Intelligence Estimate, titled "The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland," on the organization that attacked the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

Like any intelligence, this may be a mistake, disinformation or otherwise false or not the whole truth. But the notion that because Iran is a "Shiite country" it would never cooperate with Sunni extremists is simpleminded nonsense. Iraq is majority-Shiite too, and the two countries fought a brutal war for eight years in the 1980s. Political alliances do not always follow the lines of sectarian or other natural affinities.

They Should Wear Bags Over Their Heads

"Congress Faces Depressing Economy"--headline, Politico, March 18

Propecia Really Works!

"Hair Restored as ICC Elite Umpire"--headline, BBC Web site, March 18

Breaking News From 1755

"Ben Franklin Aids Two Bethlehem Firms"--headline, Morning Call (Allentown, Pa.), March 18

News You Can Use

• "Time to Put That Gorilla on a Diet"--headline, Associated Press, March 17
 
• "Easter Warning: Crucifixion Is Bad for You"--headline, Daily Telegraph (London), March 19
 

Bottom Story of the Day

"Saudi Breeders Search for New 'Miss Camel' "--headline, Daily Telegraph (London), March 18

Our Friends the Saudis

"The Arab and Muslim nations of the world have been working diligently to get the United Nations to craft an agreement whereby it would be a 'crime' to disrespect or insult a religion"--that is to say, Islam--reports blogger Stuart Creque. The Media Line reports that free speech has found friends in an unlikely place:

The Saudi Arabian Parliament Monday rejected a recommendation to adopt an international agreement that forbids insulting of religions, prophets and clerics, the Saudi daily Al-Watan reported.

Seventy-seven members of parliament rejected the recommendation, claiming that if they adopted the agreement, they would have had to recognize the legitimacy of idolatrous religions, such as Buddhism.

These guys aren't exactly Voltaire, but sometimes you take your allies where you find them.

BOTWT 3-20

Obama and the American Flag

By JAMES TARANTO
March 20, 2008

Last October the Associated Press reported that Barack Obama had made a decision not to sport an American flag pin on his lapel:

Asked about it Wednesday in an interview with KCRG-TV in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the Illinois senator said he stopped wearing the pin shortly after the attacks and instead hoped to show his patriotism by explaining his ideas to citizens.

"The truth is that right after 9/11 I had a pin," Obama said. "Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we're talking about the Iraq war, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security.

"I decided I won't wear that pin on my chest," he said in the interview. "Instead, I'm going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great, and hopefully that will be a testament to my patriotism."

But did anyone notice that when Obama gave his "major speech on race" Tuesday--the one necessitated by the revelation that his "spiritual mentor" had, among other things, called on God to "damn America"--he did so amid a row of American flags? We checked the video and counted eight of them, of which four are visible in the photo nearby.

We didn't write about this back in October, because the whole kerfuffle was, at its root, silly. There are many ways of expressing patriotism, and if wearing a flag pin is not Obama's idiom, who cares? It was arrogant of him to imply that his own patriotism was more "true" than that of pin-wearers, but one could put this down to defensiveness at being asked a "gotcha" question.

But in light of his October comment, what are we to make of his extravagant use of the Stars and Stripes on Tuesday? If a flag pin on a lapel is "a substitute for true patriotism," is that not also true of eight flags on a stage as a backdrop to a political speech? Obama proclaimed himself too good for cheap symbolism, but resorted to it the first time he faced a real crisis. Is he really any different from the run-of-the-mill politician?

'A Typical White Person'

"Stick a fork in him, baby," writes blogress Taylor Marsh of Barack Obama. "If he makes it to the general election, he's done." Marsh, a liberal-left backer of Hillary Clinton, is referring to this comment Obama made on a Philadelphia radio station, explaining why he likened his grandmother to his spiritual mentor, Jeremiah Wright:

"The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn't. But she is a typical white person who, uh, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know, there's a reaction that's been bred into our experiences that don't go away and that sometimes come out in the wrong way and that's just the nature of race in our society. We have to break through it."

Marsh asks, "Can you imagine if Hillary Clinton said someone was a 'typical black person'?" Never mind if a Republican said such a thing.

The Obama-Wright imbroglio is laying bare the racial double standard in America. The New York Times's Nicholas Kristof hints at this but doesn't quite get the point:

To whites, for example, it has been shocking to hear Mr. Wright suggest that the AIDS virus was released as a deliberate government plot to kill black people.

That may be an absurd view in white circles, but a 1990 survey found that 30 percent of African-Americans believed this was at least plausible.

"That's a real standard belief," noted Melissa Harris-Lacewell, a political scientist at Princeton (and former member of Trinity church, when she lived in Chicago). "One of the things fascinating to me watching these responses to Jeremiah Wright is that white Americans find his beliefs so fringe or so extreme. When if you've spent time in black communities, they are not shared by everyone, but they are pretty common beliefs." . . .

Many African-Americans even believe that the crack cocaine epidemic was a deliberate conspiracy by the United States government to destroy black neighborhoods.

Much of the time, blacks have a pretty good sense of what whites think, but whites are oblivious to common black perspectives.

What's happening, I think, is that the Obama campaign has led many white Americans to listen in for the first time to some of the black conversation--and they are thunderstruck.

All of this demonstrates that a national dialogue on race is painful, awkward and essential. And that dialogue needs to focus not on clips from old sermons by Mr. Wright but on far more urgent challenges--for example, that about half of black males do not graduate from high school with their class.

What it really demonstrates is that whereas whites are expected to be respectful, sensitive and fair-minded when talking with or about blacks, there is little expectation that blacks will reciprocate--to the point that a black presidential candidate doesn't feel inhibited from making a statement about "a typical white person."

It is true that there was a time when white Americans had to be taught to treat black Americans with respect, and that is where our rules of racial etiquette came from. But "racial reconciliation," the need for which we've been hearing so much about, demands a new etiquette--one in which everyone, regardless of race, is expected to treat others with equal respect.

If Obama is as skilled a talker and conciliator as his supporters make him out to be, he could lead the way here. If he wants to become president, he would be well advised to do so. After all, he'll need white votes, and references to "a typical white person" are not likely to win them over.

The Onion Imitates the Onion

• "President Bush announced today that he will sign a bill providing an additional $2.8 billion for private organizations that emphasize the importance of hoping for change. 'This bill acknowledges the immeasurable role of hope in envisioning a better world for everyone,' Bush said during a press conference. 'Starting today, I ask all Americans to hope together as one nation that the difficult problems that grip our nation will go away someday.' "--Onion, Nov. 23, 2005
 
• "According to witnesses, a loud black man approached a crowd of some 4,000 strangers in downtown Chicago Tuesday and made repeated demands for change. 'The time for change is now,' said the black guy, yelling at everyone within earshot for 20 straight minutes, practically begging America for change. 'The need for change is stronger and more urgent than ever before. And only you—the people standing here today, and indeed all the people of this great nation—only you can deliver this change.' "--Onion, March 19, 2008
 

Accountability Journalism

Our item yesterday on the Associated Press's pro- and anti-Obama editorializing brought this response from Paul Colford, the AP's director of media relations:

AP Online Political Editor Ron Fournier writes a column, found on Yahoo News and many other sites.

You may have overlooked this tagline, attached to the column you singled out today and all of his others:

"EDITOR'S NOTE: Ron Fournier has covered politics for The Associated Press for nearly 20 years. On Deadline is an occasional column."

Fournier wrote the anti-Obama editorial. One AP scribe who doesn't write a column, as far as we know, is Ben Feller, author of a dispatch yesterday on a speech by President Bush:

President Bush defiantly defended the Iraq war Wednesday as U.S. troops began a sixth year of combat in the long and costly conflict that has dominated his presidency. Bush conceded the war has been harder and more expensive than anticipated but insisted it has all been necessary to keep Americans safe. . . .

Bush, in a speech at the Pentagon, offered some of his boldest assessments of progress and said the war's legacy is absolute: "The world is better, and the United States of America is safer."

A war-weary country isn't nearly so convinced.

Anyone have the war-weary country's phone number? We'd like to do our own interview with it.

Tell Us About Your Divorce!

This "reader inquiry" is running on the Web site of Minneapolis's Star-Tribune (we figure it's good form to redact the reporter's phone number and email address):

Are you a woman in the military whose marriage has ended?

We'd like to talk to you for a possible story.

Please call reporter Pam Louwagie at 612-XXX-XXXX or e-mail XXX@startribune.com

Please leave your name and a telephone number where you can be reached.

Just reporting the news, we're sure; there's no agenda here.

The Other 5 Million Forgot

• "10 Million Baby Boomers Face Alzheimer's, Report Predicts"--headline, HealthDay, March 18
 
• "More Than 5 Million Americans Have Alzheimer's: Report"--headline, Reuters, March 18
 

And the International House of Pancakes Doesn't Serve Just Breakfast

"Dershowitz: 'Int'l Court Doesn't Give Just Rulings' "--headline, Jerusalem Post, March 19

Good News for Male Students

"Mankiller Cancels BSU Lecture Due to Illness"--headline, Idaho Statesman, March 19

That Way, Their Collar Buttons Won't Show

"As U.S. Border Fence Rises, a Tribe Tightens Ties"--headline, Reuters, March 20

News You Can Use

"Body Piercing: Don't Get Stuck With a Toxic Stud"--headline, U.S. News & World Report, March 17

Bottom Stories of the Day

• "County Residents Are Staying Put"--headline, San Diego Union-Tribune, March 20
 
• "Grocery Prices Hold Steady in Alabama"--headline, Birmingham Business Journal, March 19
 
• "Poll: Bush's Popularity Hits New Low"--headline, CNN.com, March 19
 
• "Canada Gears Up for Olympic Soccer Qualifier Against U.S."--headline, CBC.ca, March 20
 

Spring Is Here, Blame Global Warming

Winter is over, spring has arrived, and the Associated Press is alarmed:

Pollen is bursting. Critters are stirring. Buds are swelling. Biologists are worrying.

"The alarm clock that all the plants and animals are listening to is running too fast," Stanford University biologist Terry Root said.

Blame global warming.

The fingerprints of man-made climate change are evident in seasonal timing changes for thousands of species on Earth, according to dozens of studies and last year's authoritative report by the Nobel Prize-winning international climate scientists. More than 30 scientists told The Associated Press how global warming is affecting plants and animals at springtime across the country, in nearly every state.

What's happening is so noticeable that scientists can track it from space. Satellites measuring when land turns green found that spring "green-up" is arriving eight hours earlier every year on average since 1982 north of the Mason-Dixon line.

Seems to us that worrying about this is awfully shortsighted. After all, if the "green-up" is coming eight hours earlier each year, everything will be back to normal in 3078.