Obama and the 'L' Word

By PETER WEHNER
April 2, 2008; Page A14

When it comes to being labeled "a liberal," Barack Obama is dismissive. "Oh, he's liberal. He's liberal," he said recently in describing a characterization of him by Republicans. "Let me tell you something. There's nothing liberal about wanting to reduce money in politics. It's common sense. . . . There's nothing liberal about wanting to make sure that everybody has health care."

Mr. Obama needs to inoculate himself against the claim that he's a liberal. For the past quarter-century it has been consistently the most effective charge made by Republicans against Democrats. America is a center-right country and in modern times has not elected a thoroughgoing liberal as president (Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton ran as moderate Democrats). The problem is that, by any reasonable standard, Mr. Obama is an orthodox liberal.

National Journal rated him as the most liberal person in the Senate in 2007, and for good reason. On economic policy, Mr. Obama favors higher income, Social Security and corporate taxes. He supports massive increases in domestic spending and greater government regulation of the economy. He favors a significantly larger role for the federal government in health care. He opposes the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Mr. Obama has criticized the Supreme Court's decision to uphold a partial birth abortion ban, and he wants to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. He voted against John Roberts and Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court. In Illinois, Mr. Obama supported banning the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns. And he supports granting driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.

On national security matters, Mr. Obama voted to deny legal immunity to telecom companies that have cooperated with the government in warrantless wiretapping of suspected terrorists. He wants to grant habeas corpus rights to detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. He supports a full-scale withdrawal from Iraq. And he says, in his first year in office, he would meet with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea without preconditions.

It's no wonder that Mr. Obama has been endorsed by Moveon.org – one of the most radical groups within the liberal universe.

Adding to Mr. Obama's problems is his close association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., whose anti-American rantings are the kind of thing routinely said by the far left.

For whatever reason, Mr. Obama has failed to do what Mr. Clinton did in 1992 – run as a "new" Democrat who favors some conservative policies (ending welfare as we know it, supporting free trade, criticizing the "butchers of Beijing," and famously criticizing Sister Souljah).

Since Mr. Obama's record reveals him to be a doctrinaire liberal, he dismisses ideological labels as simplistic, misleading and outmoded. When asked if he's comfortable with the liberal label, he says, "This is what I would call old politics. This is the stuff we're trying to get rid of . . . Those old categories don't work, and they're preventing us from solving problems."

In fact, "liberal" and "conservative" can be useful (if incomplete) monikers – a shorthand way of describing where an individual stands on issues and, as importantly, their political philosophy. They are an indicator of a person's underlying assumptions, the propositions they embrace or reject. Mr. Obama's effort to present himself as a post-ideological figure is an effort to avoid an important national debate. And John McCain should not let Mr. Obama (assuming he wins the Democratic nomination) get away with it.

But because the political environment and challenges facing America have changed significantly since Ronald Reagan was president, it will not be enough for Mr. McCain to invoke the word "liberal" against Mr. Obama. Mr. McCain needs to present a compelling case on the foundational beliefs that divide liberalism and conservatism – on matters like the size and role of government, competition and accountability in education, health care, and whether higher taxes encourage or retard economic growth. Mr. McCain also needs to force a debate on the proper role of the judiciary, the protection owed to unborn children and the rights owed to unlawful enemy combatants, and whether promoting liberty should be a central aim of American foreign policy in combating militant Islam.

Mr. McCain needs to become an educator-in-chief on matters of political philosophy. He won't be able to fulfill that role nearly as well as Reagan, who was a philosophical conservative in the way that Mr. McCain (and most other Republican politicians) is not. And Mr. McCain himself has, until now, been sui generis on matters of conservatism. His challenge is to make his case well enough to convince Americans not only that Mr. Obama is a liberal, but that having a liberal in the White House would do real damage to our country.

Mr. McCain has overcome harder challenges than this one.

Mr. Wehner, a former deputy assistant to President George W. Bush, is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

Nigh Times

By JAMES TARANTO
April 2, 2008

Mary Ann Lindley is an editor at the Tallahassee Democrat, the main newspaper in Florida's capital. In a blog entry on the paper's Web site, she writes that a friend recently gave her a copy of the Democrat dated Jan. 21, 1981--the day after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated and the mad mullahs who ran Iran released the American diplomats they had taken prisoner, a crime that has gone unpunished in the 27 subsequent years.

"But the thing that caught my attention in that 27 year old newspaper," Lindley writes, "was a letter to the editor from a Darrell E. Levi":

In 1981, Mr. Levi's concern was the "accelerating devastation of the world's tropical forests and with that the possibility of major changes in the world's climate." 

He went on to write that "over the past 20 years, it has become clearer that the main, most inexorable threat humans face is not political or ideological conflict, social disintegration or economic chaos--as real and important as these things are--but destruction of the very biolgoical [sic] basis of life."

That was long ago, and yet the warnings he issued are almost precisely the ones we hear today: that we run great risk if we ignore our interdependency with soil, air, water, plants and animals and that a global ecological crisis is upon us and will destroy us without an informed citizenry prepared to respond and help steer a new course for "Spaceship Earth."

Now, we're not exactly sure what kind of "changes in the world's climate" Levi meant to warn about. Back in the 1970s, people worried about a new Ice Age, but at some point between then and 1988, the concern shifted to global warming. It's possible that in the interim, an informed citizenry did steer a new course for Spaceship Earth, one that took the craft dangerously close to the sun.

Possible, but--let's be honest--not probable. We like to think we're pretty informed, and we don't remember anything like this happening. Anyway, the Earth isn't really a spaceship. Its course is fixed by nature, God or some combination thereof.

The lesson of Darrell E. Levi would seem to be that doomsayers will always be with us. They were with us in 1981, they are with us in 2008, and we feel confident predicting that they will be with us in 2035.

Incredibly, though, Lindley draws the opposite conclusion--that Levi's predictions were prescient not because they came true but because people are making similar predictions now:

It's easy to dismiss today's "alarmists" who speak of the dire consequences of our various policy choices and personal decisions. But Mr. Levi's letter is riveting. He was--and is--right on the money. Everything he said then still applies, squared.

The good news is that some of today's citizenry is more informed and some leaders, such as Governor Crist, are aiming their sites [sic] on solutions, however incremental, to save the ship known as Spaceship Earth.

LiveScience.com, meanwhile, reports that the climate was changing millennia before the Industrial Age:

Humans may have struck the final blow that killed the woolly-mammoth, but climate change seems to have played a major part in setting up the end-game, according to a new study. . . .

Scientists have long debated what finally drove the furry beasts over the edge. Researchers led by David Nogues-Bravo of the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Spain used models of the climate, as well as models of woolly-mammoth and human populations, to study the relative importance of various factors leading to the mammals' demise. . . .

The team found that the brunt of the damage done to mammoths was due to Earth's warming weather around 8,000 to 6,000 years ago. Since Earth was coming out of a glacial period at that time, temperatures were climbing and recasting the planet's landscape, and the mammoth's preferred habitat, steppe tundra, was vastly reduced.

As far as we know, no one worried about climate change back then. They were too busy worrying about getting trampled by mammoths.

Remedial Math

Here's a fun story from the New York Times, headlined "Elite Colleges Reporting Record Lows in Admission":

The already crazed competition for admission to the nation's most prestigious universities and colleges became even more intense this year, with many logging record low acceptance rates.

Harvard College, for example, offered admission to only 7.1 percent of the 27,462 high school seniors who applied--or, put another way, it rejected 93 of every 100 applicants, many with extraordinary achievements, like a perfect score on one of the SAT exams. Yale College accepted 8.3 percent of its 22,813 applicants. Both rates were records.

Record lows, that is, just like the headline says. And the decline is precipitous: "Yale's admittance rate--the proportion of applicants offered admission--was nearly 18 percent in 1998, more than double the rate this year." If the trend continues, the admittance rate will be down around 4% by 2018 and 2% by 2028. Soon the faculty will outnumber the students, and by century's end there will be no Yalies left, as even the best and brightest are forced into open-admission state schools. It's another sad chapter in America's decline.

Or maybe not. Buried in the Times story is this clue to the origin of the declining admissions rate:

Ten years ago, slightly fewer than 12,000 students applied to Yale, compared with the 22,813 who applied this year, Mr. Brenzel said.

This is complicated, so bear with us. What the Times is saying is that the number of applicants has doubled while the percentage of those accepted has declined by half. What this means is that the number of students admitted is approximately the same as it was in 1998. The Times does get around to explaining this in the penultimate paragraph--a real anticlimax for anyone who bothers to read the story all the way through.

All the Rage

The campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination is getting even more heated. Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross of the San Francisco Chronicle report that Bill Clinton suffered "one of his famous meltdowns" over the weekend, during a meeting with California "superdelegates" at the state party convention:

"It was one of the worst political meetings I have ever attended," one superdelegate said. . . .

As the group moved together for the perfunctory photo, Rachel Binah, a former [Bill] Richardson delegate who now supports Hillary Clinton, told Bill how "sorry" she was to have heard former Clinton campaign manager James Carville call Richardson a "Judas" for backing [Barack] Obama.

It was as if someone pulled the pin from a grenade.

"Five times to my face (Richardson) said that he would never do that," a red-faced, finger-pointing Clinton erupted.

The former president then went on a tirade that ran from the media's unfair treatment of Hillary to questions about the fairness of the votes in state caucuses that voted for Obama. It ended with him asking delegates to imagine what the reaction would be if Obama was trailing by just 1 percent and people were telling him to drop out.

"It was very, very intense," said one attendee. "Not at all like the Bill of earlier campaigns."

Emotions are running so high that today's New York Times features a story headlined "Democrats' Turmoil Tests Party's Low-Key Leader." That would be . . . Howard Dean.

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Faint Praise

A congressional supporter of Hillary Clinton has some novel arguments against Barack Obama, the Associated Press reports:

Missouri Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, who is black, told Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that Obama "is articulate. In the black tradition, he would probably be mediocre."

"For White Americans, it's like, this guy can speak," Cleaver said in the radio interview. "If you put him on a level with a lot of other African-American public speakers, he may not even measure up."

Usually we hear that it's invidious to call a black person "articulate" because it implies that most blacks are inarticulate. Kudos to Cleaver to turning the stereotype on its head. Cleaver goes on to predict that Obama will win both nomination and election, an outcome that makes him uneasy, again for counterintuitive reasons:

He claims much of the support for Obama is driven by a sense that his election will prove the country has solved its problems with race.

"I think for many white Americans, they are looking at Barack Obama and saying 'This is our chance to demonstrate that we have been able to get this boogeyman called race behind us,' " Cleaver said. "And so they are going to vote for him, whether he has credentials or not, whether he has any experience--I think all that's out the window."

Yet Cleaver asserts that Obama as president could actually hamper efforts to curb racial injustice. He said future concerns about race "would be met with rejection because we've already demonstrated that we're not a racist nation."

Allow us to turn this on its head. What Cleaver seems to be saying is that those who claim they want to "curb racial injustice" have an interest in maintaining the perception that America is "a racist nation," regardless of whether that is true.

This is a game that no one can win. White guilt has been a powerful cultural force because it is rooted in history. But it seems destined to diminish as that history recedes. Encouraging blacks to think that racism is as strong as ever, meanwhile, promotes anger and defeatism--hardly a prescription for successful integration.

Where's Fox Butterfield When You Need Him?

The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reports that a "law and order campaign" among West Bank Arabs is being hindered by a shortage of prison space:

At Ramallah's civil penitentiary, a facility meant to hold no more than 180 inmates, there are 240 prisoners, according to the Palestinian attorney general.

In the town of Jericho, near the Dead Sea, 51 detainees cook, pray and wait in sweltering concrete cells so small they barely have room to stand up and stretch. The facility is meant to hold 40 people. "You sit here and you rot," said Yousef Judeh, a 34-year-old father of five accused of collaborating with Israel. His case still pending, he has been languishing here for two years.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's law and order campaign has improved security in some areas.

So the prisons are full despite a decline in crime. What a paradox!

Two Editorial Pages in One!

Republicans on Capitol Hill are warming to the idea of the government's bailing out homeowners who got mortgages they couldn't afford, according to the New York Times. The paper approves:

After weeks of often heated talk, including warnings from some Republicans that they did not want to commit taxpayer funds to what could be nothing more than a bailout for greedy lenders and irresponsible homeowners, there has been a more reasoned discussion in recent days about taking prudent steps to protect the wider economy.

Not a surprising position for a Times editorial to take--but the paragraph we've just quoted appears in a news story.

Metaphor Alert

"In the very near future, the Democratic Party Primary War will be over. When that happens, the joint right-wing/media monster will begin in earnest deploying sleazy sideshows to render toxic the character of the nominee--way beyond what they've already been doing--while further venerating John McCain and his political comrades, from Joe Lieberman to Lindsey Graham. Allowing that to fester unchallenged will cause it to take root and make it very difficult to undermine."--Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com, April 1

BUSH LIED, MARTIANS DIED!!!!

"Bomb Mars Show of Force in Basra"--headline, Associated Press, April 2

It Worked for Mata Hari

"ACLU: Military Skirting Law to Spy"--headline, Associated Press, April 2

If Only Col. Mustard Had One in the Billiard Room

"Home Defibrillators Save Lives in Study"--headline Associated Press, April 1

What's Wrong With a Navy Blazer?

"City Seeks Halt, Gag in Greene Suit"--headline, Detroit Free Press, April 2

En Garde!

"Government Issues Waiver for Fencing Along Border"--headline, New York Times, April 2

We Prefer to Call Them 'Undocumented Primates'

"Illegal Marmosets Seek New Home"--headline, Denver Post, April 1

News of the Oxymoronic

"Bill Would Require Parents to Volunteer at Schools"--headline, WEWS-TV Web site (Cleveland), April 1

Breaking News From 1842

"Dickens Stands as Key Hurdle to Rezoning of 125th Street"--headline, New York Sun, April 2

News You Can Use

"Study: Octopuses Lie, Cheat and Kill for Sex"--headline, FoxNews.com, April 2

Bottom Stories of the Day

• "Firefighters Rescue Guinea Pig From Burning Home"--headline, Chicago Tribune, April 1
 
• "Donnie Osmond Urges David Archuleta to Enjoy American Idol"--headline, Associated Press, April 2
 
• "Royal Canadian Air Farce Set to End"--headline, CBC.ca, April 1
 
• "Angry Journalists Vent Their Frustrations to the World"--headline, Agence France-Presse, April 1
 

If Homicide Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Commit Homicide

In an April Fool's Day session, the Los Angeles City Council considered a "ban" on homicide, the Los Angeles Times reports. We use those scare quotes advisedly, since the ban would be temporary and nonbinding. As the Times explains:

The symbolic ban on homicides had been proposed by Los Angeles author and political commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson, who had urged the city to make a bold statement about the recent increase in homicides.

"If this works, then the next logical thing is: If a city like Los Angeles can go 40 hours without one homicide, then why not 40 days?" said Hutchinson, president of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable.

Forty hours, 40 days--heck, why not 40 years? Apparently fearful of that slippery slope, the council said no:

Despite the expressions of support, council members voted only for a resolution that promised to build awareness and dialogue about "the root causes of violence and killing."

Our understanding is that in some places, homicide is against the law, so that if you kill someone, you can actually spend time in prison. Perhaps the L.A. council could take up a nonbinding measure urging the California Legislature to criminalize homicide statewide. Wow would that ever be bold.

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.