Arguments Yard

I guess not.

NY Times columnist Tom Friedman returns to a theme today, going after President Bush for supposedly having failed to come up with any big domestic ideas.

The piece isn't completely negative. "On foreign policy, President Bush has offered a big idea: the expansion of freedom, particularly in the Arab-Muslim world, where its absence was one of the forces propelling 9/11. That is a big, bold and compelling idea - worthy of a presidency and America's long-term interests," he writes.

That would be enough for most presidencies. But Friedman wants more. "On the home front, this team has no big idea -- certainly none that relates to the biggest challenge and opportunity facing us today: the flattening of the global economic playing field in a way that is allowing more people from more places to compete and collaborate with your kids and mine than ever before," he writes.

Friedman wants "Bush to do something he has never done: ask Americans to do something hard" domestically.

OK, let's imagine the president did call on Americans to, say, reform education. Or reform Social Security. Difficult things. Here's how the press would respond (and these aren't symbolic questions, they're actual questions from last night's news conference):

"Terry Hunt: Mr. President, a majority of Americans disapprove of your handling of Social Security, rising gas prices and the economy. Are you frustrated by that and by the fact that you're having trouble gaining traction on your agenda in a Republican-controlled Congress?"

"Q: We like to remind you that you came to Washington hoping to change the tone, and yet, here we are, three months into your second term and you seem deadlocked with Democrats on issues like Bolton, DeLay, judges. Is there any danger that the atmosphere is becoming so poisoned, or that you're spending so much political capital that it could imperil your agenda items like Social Security, energy?"

"Q: I'd just like to ask, simply, what's your view of the economy right now? First-quarter growth came in weaker than expected, there have been worries about inflation and lower spending by consumers. Are these basically just bumps in the road, in your opinion, or are they reasons for some real concern and could they affect your agenda on Social Security?"

"Q: Mr. President, you've made No Child Left Behind a big part of your education agenda. The nation's largest teachers union has filed suit against it, saying it's woefully inadequately funded. What's your response to that? And do you think that No Child Left Behind is working?"

The bottom line is this: I agree with Friedman to an extent. I think the president has missed opportunities to challenge the American people.

However, when he has tried, as on S.S. and education, the media stands ready to shoot him down before his big idea can even get off the ground.

That's good with education. No Child Left Behind isn't the answer, as it merely represents the federal government throwing billions of dollars at the same failing bureaucracy and union structure we've been saddled with for years.

But S.S. privatization is a good idea, one that could improve the lives of countless Americans.

Let's achieve our big ideas one at a time. Freedom for the Middle East abroad, and S.S. reform here at home before we tackle other problems.

Oh, and for the media, maybe you guys could try to be a little more positive?

A reader writes in with a correction to a piece I wrote last year.

On Jan. 31, 2004, I was writing about journalists giving money to political candidates. I wrote: "Sometimes the connection is even more direct. [Howard] Kurtz [of The Washington Post] wrote that Jami Floyd, an ABC correspondent who reported on the 2000 Florida recount, gave $500 to the Democratic National Committee that year. Since she is a legal reporter, it makes sense Floyd would be assigned to cover the biggest legal battle of the year. And maybe she was completely fair in her reporting.

"But, at least subconsciously, she had to realize that if Bush beat Gore in Florida, her $500 was wasted. It’s not a backbreaking amount to lose, but still raises fair, and avoidable, questions about her objectivity."

Floyd writes in to note that she never gave $500 to the DNC. Here's her e-mail to me:

"Kurtz, as is often the practice of print journalists, notified ABC of the article just before it went to print. Immediately I began digging into how this could be. I have never made a secret of my service in the Clinton white house, my work for Al Gore, or my membership in the Democratic party.

"However, I had no recollection of having made this contribution and while $500 isn't a lot of money to many people, it is to me, so I found it odd. Moreover, while I think the notion of "objectivity" is antiquated, I made it my practice to neither attend political events, nor make political contributions while at ABC news.

"Turns out, I attended a concert thrown by the DNC. Many people from ABC and other news organizations attended to gather sources and generally cover the event. Because of my previous status as a staffer for the White House, I was put on the wrong list -- the list of contributors, rather than the press list. And that is the form which Howard drew his list of names.

"We asked for a retraction, but never got one."

I apologize for the mis-statement (some would say that's what I get for believing what I read in the papers!) but stand by my thesis that journalists shouldn't be giving money to support political candidates.

But it might in the next.

If Britain has to raise taxes, that could spell a quick end for Gordon Brown, assuming he succeeds Tony Blair next year.

It's always dangerous to make predictions. Maybe Jennifer Wilbanks really did just walk away from her wedding, scheduled for tomorrow.

"It's a very real possibility she did get cold feet. I mean, how many husbands have gone out for a pack of cigarettes and not come back?" Duluth police Chief Randy Belcher announced.

Maybe. Maybe she'll turn up at a hotel in South Carolina, and say, "I'm sorry, I just couldn't get married."

But why would she walk off without any cash or credit cards? Sure she's a marathoner, but how far could she have gone at 8:30 at night?

The sad thing is that the grief of these families is being played out on CNN, with live news conferences, etc. This is a story that can only end badly. I can't imagine going through this sort of thing. The televised aspect of it only makes it that much worse -- and helps explain why ordinary Americans so strongly dislike journalists.

MSNBC reports that half of all blogs are written by teens.

Man. Next thing you know, I'll be dating a girl 16 years younger than me.

CNN does a story about a Little League team that's coming out against steroids.

The boy in the interview is wearing a SF Giants uniform. Now, where have we seen a Giant on steroids?

Yesterday, CNN announced that researchers have cloned a horse.

Through the magic of Nexis, here's the transcript:

"CAROL COSTELLO: And a possible first in North America. Officials at Texas A&M University say a team of American and French researchers have successfully cloned a horse. That's him eating. The foal has been named Paris, Texas. Get it? The process apparently took 400 tries over a period of four months. But there you have it, that little guy, the first cloned horse. Paris, Texas.

BILL HEMMER: We've got a sheep, right? We've got a sheep, Dolly. Right?

COSTELLO: Yes. Now, there's a horse. Who knows what's next?

HEMMER: Cow.

COSTELLO (laughing): Person. No, I don't think so.

HEMMER: Eventually."

But this is exactly the point. As long as we're messing around with this stuff, somebody eventually will attempt to clone a human.

Let's set ethical matters aside for a moment (although they're important in the long run) and look at the big picture. It took them 400 tries to clone this horse. That's 399 dead horses, in various states of disfigurement. How many cows, or, "eventually," humans, are we willing to so torture so we can clone someone?

Congress should outlaw cloning now. Before it's too late.

"Thank Heaven for ABC."

ABC reporter just said, "John Bolton is described as a man who chases people around hotel rooms and throws staplers at them..." Uh, no. That would be like saying "President Clinton is described as a serial rapist." No, actually, there would be more evidence to support the Clinton claim than the Bolton one.

Look, one woman with an axe to grind says he hollered at her in 1994. The people who were her co-workers at the time say that's not true. Bolton says it's not true. How come, in the absence of supporting evidence, Bolton doesn't get the benefit of the doubt?

Oh, and Sen. Biden is flat out wrong. He says the Social Security trust fund is filled with Treasury bonds, the same thing as people buy. Like Savings Bonds, he says. No. Wrong. Simply wrong.

The SS trust fund is filled with IOUs. These special government bonds can't be bought or sold. As David John of The Heritage Foundation notes, "The Social Security trust fund contains nothing more than IOUs (in the form of special issue U.S. Trea­sury bonds), which the federal government can repay only though higher taxes, massive borrowing, or massive cuts in other federal programs.

"While many workers thought that the system's annual sur­pluses were being used to build up a reserve for baby boomers, the federal government has been spending this money to fund other government programs and to reduce the government debt."

(mostly)

My reaction to the president's position on gasoline was, again, that he didn't go far enough. When John Roberts asked him what the government was going to do about high prices, I thought the answer should have been: "Nothing. The government doesn't sell gasoline. Private companies do."

The only thing that will bring down gas prices now is the same thing that brought them down in 1998 (when I was filling up my Saturn SL [40 miles to the gallon] with gas that cost 78 cents per gallon) -- an economic collapse in Asia.

Back then, the Asian contagion slowed down Indonesia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, etc., causing gas prices here to tumble. However, if that sort of slowdown happens again, it may spread worldwide. That's kinda risky.

In the long-term, we need new technology to replace the internal combustion engine. When gas is 78 cents per gallon, nobody's going to bother developing those technologies. When gas is 2.50, somebody might. So let's hope American ingenuity steps up and solves this problem, because it's absolutely certain the government can't.

Gotta make sure we hear from Tim Russert before we get to "The Apprentice."

Oh, and at 9 PM there goes FOX. Can't cut off the "Simple Life." Is this what cultural life in the United States has come to? Televised silliness trumps a presidential news conference? As Ross Perot might say, "That's just sad."

Never thought I'd hear myself saying, "Thank Heaven for ABC!"

This afternoon on CNN, their segment on blogs featured talk of several liberal blogs complaining, "how dare the president have a news conference! I'll miss 'The O.C.'."

I thought that was silly -- it reminded me of when I was 10, and used to get upset because President Carter would hold news conferences during "Happy Days." I outgrew those concerns, but apparently some big thinkers didn't. And, as it turns out, the networks agree with the liberal bloggers.

Again, nothing to say except it's sad.

el Presidente's strongest format.

He looks pretty flat in the opening statement, and sometimes seems to get his tongue all tied up while answering.

Still, he makes some important points, even if he doesn't go far enough.

Take, for example, Iran and North Korea. He's often criticized for failing to get them both to disarm. But the bigger problem here is really the Russians and the Chinese. The Russians will be critical in Iran, as the Chinese will be in North Korea.

Both Russia and China love to tweak the United States, and by dancing with Iran and North Korea, they're doing just that. But let's keep in mind that neither Russia or China can possibly want an unstable nuclear nation on their borders. If Russia wants to keep messing around in the Stans and Chechnya, and if China wants to keep expanding like a hot air balloon, they'd better do everything they can to prevent Iran and North Korea from getting nukes.

When Russia and China get serious about doing what's in their best interests, they'll be doing what's in our best interest, too.

This seems to be Dubya's new soundbite, that the high price of gas is like a tax on people. Maybe that's true, but I'd argue that for a lot of people (not all) it's a largely voluntary tax. Much in the same way that the lottery is a functional tax on those who are bad at math, the price of gas is a tax on a country that demands a lot of it.

I'm glad to see the President encouraging the country to buy more hybrid vehicles and the like. But come on, would it be too much for him - a guy who has the freedom to no longer worry about re-election - to suggest that maybe we could all make a smidgen of a sacrifice in trying to reduce our national consumption of energy?

Things have been so quiet on the British election front that I just figured they decided to skip it. But, turns out there have been some things going on.

What amuses me is where it says, "It was the closest thing to the American presidential debates Britain is going to get." Oh, really? it doesn't sound to me like it was an even so heavily negotiated and screened and unchallenging as to be meaningless. It sounds like these guys might not have been able to rely on canned talking points, and that they might actually have even been challenged if they tried.

American presidential debates are to real debates what Velveeta is to real cheese - a visual facsimile with no flavor or substance. These glorified campaign commercials just need to be stopped. Either let's have something real or let's have nothing at all. Let independent commissioners define what the debates will be, and let it fall upon the candidates to wimp out if it's not perfectly to their liking. Let the questioner actually call bulls**t on an evasive answer. But let's be done with this pathetic visual show wee have now.

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius is an invaluable observer of the Middle East.

However, today he misses the mark.

Writing about the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon, he says, "It was George Bush's good luck that this Lebanese uprising coincided with his calls for Arab freedom and democracy."

The reverse is true, actually.

The Lebanese were encouraged to rise up because they'd heard Bush's calls for freedom and democracy, and they knew he would not hang them out to dry. The Syrian leadership knew that, too, which is why they were so quick to pull out.

Now, go home.

Syria finally pulls its troops out of Lebanon. As the NY Times put it, "Using an expression of farewell that literally translates as "Until next time," the two sides appeared to try to portray the occasion as less of an end to their relationship than a chance to start a new one."

Indeed, a new relationship, as equals, rather than as Lebanon as a vassal of Syria.

Who could have seen this coming?

It was bad enough when both candidates last year made sure to use the police power of government to shut out any potential protestors from their campaign events. But apparently the Bush admin has decided that it worked so well for the campaign that they should continue it as a matter of everyday operation.

So we have two stories. The first details three people who were appropriately dressed and had tickets to one of Bush's patented fake town hall meetings.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2005/04/25/denver_incident/index_np.html
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~417~2790213,00.html

Howeever, they were barred from entry by someone claiming to be a secret service agent saying it was a private event; turns out it was not a secret service agent, and it was in fact a public event. The reason they were barred - an anti-admin bumper sticker on their car.

The second case involves telecom industry executives wishing to attend an regular north and south America conference on telecom policy. In the past any exec who wanted to has pretty much been allowed to go. No more. The Bush admin has decided that anyone who donated to the Democratic Party or to the Kerry campaign is verboten.

The former was chalked up to an overzealous staffer, but the latter shows the true mindset of wanting everything and everyone to be lockstep and controlled. This is our president, but the guy who claimed to be a uniter, not a divider, wants apparently only to unite those who already voted for him, and to silence those who did not.

Here in Washington, we're on Eastern Daylight time. Well, most of us are.

The Senate remains on something I'll call Senate Standard time, which moves somewhat more slowly. So if it seems Senators have been discussing "The nuclear option" for judicial nominations forever, that's because they have.

But, we're told, there may be some movement this week. Or next. Or after the Bolton nomination is considered. Or sometime.

Now, Senators are "busy," (just ask them and they'll tell you), but maybe they have time to take a quick quiz. Democrats have repeatedly described some of President Bush's nominees as "out of the mainstream.

For example, here's how Sen. Pat Leahy, the top Dem on the judiciary committee, puts it: "This is about Justice Brown’s approach to the law – an approach which she has consistently used to promote her own ideological agenda, an extreme agenda that is out of the mainstream."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein says she's "never seen a nominee who in their public utterances and while sitting on a court states such extreme views - views that are starkly out of mainstream American thought."

The list could go on and on, but let's get to the quiz. Here are two statements. Which is "out of the mainstream?"

A) "Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. . . . The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining, and virtue contemptible." (link)

B) "Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids,school children could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens of whom the judiciary is — and is often the only — protector of the individual rights that are at the heart of our democracy." (link)

Again, which statement would most Americans agree with? I think the first, said by controversial nominee Janice Brown in 2000, is plenty closer to the "mainstream" view than the second, hollered by Ted Kennedy in 1987.

I'll defend Brown's statement line-by-line in a later post, but this one has already become long enough...

but I must -- ouch -- answer -- ohhh -- one more -- ouch -- e-mail!

The Senate Foreign Relations committee apparently needs things to work on. So it's holding over John Bolton's nomination to be ambassador to the United Nations while the esteemed Senators investigate whether Bolton hollers at people.

Maybe they should hold hearings on the $50 billion the United States has handed over to Egypt since 1979.

Are Americans even aware that our government invests $1.3 billion each year in Hosni Mubarak's autocratic government?

Sen. George Voinovich portrays himself as quite the deficit hawk. Maybe, if the Senate held these hearings, he'd actually bother to show up, and vote against providing further aid until Egypt follows Iraq down the road toward democracy.

...the answer would be right at our fingertips.

I wonder how appealing this woman will find the food in prison?

with Colin Powell.

He always emerges victorious.

by David Brooks in the NY Times.

His point is that abortion has divided the nation for decades, because in 1973 it was removed from public debate and was decreed by nine judges. Decided by fiat, as it were. (Not by Fiat. Although I'm sure Fiat drivers also voted for Kerry. See posting below.)

Brooks traces a path from Roe v. Wade to today's tempest over changing the Senate's filibuster rules. The columnist concludes that if the rules are changed now, it will destroy the traditions of the Senate forever. Maybe.

It's certainly true, as Bob Dole mentioned, that the Senate is "not always going to be Republican." He wants the GOP to "think down the road." But surely, even if the filibuster rules are changed now, the first thing Democrats would do upon regaining power would be to change those rules back.

After all, "When it comes down to it, stripping away these important checks and balances is about the arrogance of those in power who want to rewrite the rules so that they can get their way," Sen. Minority leader Harry Reid announced recently.

Surely, anyone who so strongly believes in the power of the minority would immediately extend those checks and balances against even his own party. Right?

Because otherwise -- if Democrats would do the same thing Republicans are doing and attempt to extend their own influence as far as possible -- I don't know what we're arguing about here.

oh, and you Volvo drivers, too:

We all know you voted for Kerry. In fact, we knew you were going to vote for whomever was on the Democratic line last fall, even if it was former hockey player Miroslav Satan. Satan for president. There's a campaign slogan!

Nevertheless, the election was six months ago. You can go ahead, moveon.org, and scrape the Kerry bumper sticker off your imported car.

Oh, and while you're at it, remove the "John Edwards for President 2004" sticker that's underneath the Kerry one. And the "Howard Dean for America" one under that.

After all, it's almost time to roll out the "Robert C. Byrd for president in '08" stickers.

BTW, up above I used the word hockey. H-O-C-K-E-Y. What an odd combination of letters. I wonder if it meant something to a previous civilization?

This week I've been teaching classed about paranoid personality disorder and paranoid schizophrenia. So it was with no small amount of amusement that I read Tom DeLay claiming that a "left wing syndicate" is out to get him.

Given how laughable Republicans thought it was when Hillary Clinton used the phrase "vast right-wing conspiracy", I'm sure we can expect much Republican mocking of Delay's conspiracy theory. Of course, what makes it truly absurd is that it assumes a level of coordination and competence that the Democrats completely lack.

The latest Democratic talking point seems to be that John Bolton is unqualified to be ambassador to the United Nations. Because he yells at people.

From the, "Hey kettle, you're black!" department, check out the front page of today's Wash Post. Notice the picture on the left side of the page. That's Sen. Joe Biden, one of Bolton's harshest critics. What's he doing in that picture?

And the story notes, that Sen. Chris Dodd also raised his voice. "'This ought to be indictable,' Dodd shouted," is how the story puts it. So, yelling at senators is OK, yelling at underlings isn't. Gotcha.

Here's the bottom line: Democrats are over a barrel here. They trust the United Nations, and oppose Bolton because he doesn't. But they can't say that, because most Americans agree with Bolton. We distrust the UN.

So instead they're trying to derail him on charges that Bolton yells. Here's a prediction: When all the shouting is finished, Bolton will be approved.

Tune in tomorrow to Heritage.org for more of a continuing panel discussion about the future of Social Security.

For some reason, today's panels aren't available on the Web. Bummer.

The most refreshing speaker was Heidi Hartmann, the President/CEO of the Institute for Women's Policy Research. For one thing, she frequently admitted that Social Security is an "income redistribution" program. She also called it an "insurance" program. But she was clear that she supported redistributing income from rich to poor. I doubt most Americans agree.

Her most interesting comments were on a completely different topic. I'll paraphrase, since no transcript is available. Hartmann said she'd favour a "sin tax" on fast food, and noted that a Scottish visitor recently commented on how cheap and plentiful fast food is in this country.

Wow! What a problem. Cheap, plentiful food.

Now, this isn't to say that overeating doesn't cause health problems. Of course it does. However, as those who followed the Terri Schiavo case can attest, undereating has much swifter effects than overeating does.

Just another example of how good Americans have it.

The bells of Rome are chiming to announce the selection of a new Pope.

TV reporters talk right over it, saying, "I don't know if you can hear the bells..." Well, no, I can't. Because you're talking.

Some events are solemn, and should be allowed to speak for themselves.

Eating right gets even more confusing.

Let's boil it down: Eat less, exercise more.

will all that black smoke contribute to global warming?

I didn't get to Mark Steyn's column yesterday because my home phone line was (and is!) down. So, if you're planning to prank call me, the joke's on you.

In any event, Steyn's right on the nose with the Bolton administration. Or should I say on the hip?

He writes: "From the shockingly brutal testimony of Thomas Fingar, assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Intelligence Research:

Q: Could you characterize your meeting with Bolton? Was he calm?

Fingar: No, he was angry. He was standing up.

Q: Did he raise his voice to you? Did he point his finger in your face?

Fingar: I don't remember if he pointed. John speaks in such a low voice normally. Was it louder than normal? Probably. I wouldn't characterize it as screaming at me or anything like that. It was more, hands on hips, the body language as I recall it, I knew he was mad."

As Steyn notes, "[Bolton's] opponents have seized on one episode -- an intelligence analyst in a critical position with whom Bolton and others were dissatisfied -- and used it to advance the bizarre proposition that every junior official should be beyond reproach, and certainly beyond such aggressive 'body language' as putting one's hands on hips."

In other words, Congress is saying, "We'll talk reform, we'll pass reform bills, we'll merge and de-merge and re-merge every so often, we'll change three-letter acronyms (INS) to four-letter acronyms (BCIS) just to show how serious we are, and a year or four down the line we may well get real tough and require five-letter acronyms.

"But in the end we believe underperforming bureaucrats in key roles should be allowed to go on underperforming until retirement age."

Please, read the entire piece. It's funny, and right on the mark.

you must first survive the primary process.

It's not the world's most efficient process, nor is it especially fair. But it is what it is.

Many say Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska wants to be president. But, if he wants to survive the 2008 primary process, he'd better not vote against John Bolton.

Doing so would kill Bolton's nomination to the U.N., and would likewise kill Hagel's hopes of being nominated for president.

Good to see Gary Sheffield hit a fan before he throws the ball back in to the infield.

I’m sure his teammates were loving that.

David Letterman: "Today in Washington President Bush threw out the first pitch for the Washington Nationals home opener and an hour later, they threw out the first Kennedy."

Years ago I made the decision to be more of a teaching academic than a research academic. I actually don't mind research; what I mind is (a) writing up, which bores me, and (b) the fact that tenure requirements which are contingent on a large number of publications lead to a proliferation of journals and conferences wherein research gets ever more esoteric. Don't get me wrong, I think academic research is tremendously important, but schools can't seem to tell the difference between someone who churns out a few substantive contributions and someone who churns out volumes of stuff of interest to only a few other people.

So, at some level it both amuses and depresses me to see this. Here I am avoinding research because I don't see myself being able to meet standards of writing, and these guys churn out gibberish and get it accepted to a conference. Classic. There are a few ethical concerns with doing this kind of thing, but I think the benefits outweigh those by far.

I love my field, and the vast, vast majority of people who work in it are conscientious individuals who love what they do and do it well. But there are some bad apples, as in any field, who don't take things as seriously as they should.

in Washington.

Not that I saw it back in 1971. Had other things on my mind.

But, watching last night's game, it was hard to wrap my head around the idea that these guys will be here all year. That they're really D.C.'s team. As someone who's rooted for the Braves since 1993, I'm torn.

Besides, last night the Nats and Diamondbacks just seemed like two teams playing an an exhibition game in an old football stadium. Maybe in a week or so it'll seem real.

...of the New York Stock Exchange scandal is that the the exchange's chief regulatory officer is named ...

Richard G. Ketchum.

You know that down on the floor, traders were asking each other yesterday, "Dick Catch-em?"

Thank god for the UN

Last year, it seemed that everyone in every other country wanted to vote in our little election. Sadly, they couldn’t.

Anyway, because Brits were so willing to weigh in on our election, I’ll turn the tables and opine on theirs: Y’all ought to re-elect Tony Blair.

As Mark Steyn has noted, Blair’s a wuss on a lot of stuff, but he’s been stalwart on the one big thing. He gets the war on terror. During a visit last December, Blair told reporters, "there is another choice for Iraq: the choice is democracy, the choice is freedom, and our job is to help them get there because that's what they want."

Blair’s never wavered in his support for Iraqi freedom and democracy; Conservative party leader Michael Howard threw those ideas overboard when polls started going the wrong way. So, domestic considerations aside, Blair’s the man in this election.

Of course, as Steyn told radio host Hugh Hewitt, a Blair victory is actually good news for his number two man, Gordon Brown. “Even if you want to reward Tony Blair for his steadfastness, the chances are that in voting for Tony Blair's Labour Party this time around, you are enabling the rise of Gordon Brown to the Prime Ministership,” Steyn says.

Well, that’s true, but I doubt it’ll be a big problem. Because the fact is, this election doesn’t really count, because it specifically doesn’t include the one big issue facing Britain: Whether to join the new European constitution.

Within the next year, there will be a referendum on that document. Blair, of course, was instrumental last summer in getting that constitution passed by other European leaders in Brussels.

Next year Gordon Brown will be forced to take a stand in favour of the new constitution. Assuming it’s voted down (polls show overwhelming opposition), his political career will be over. And, if it passes and Britain becomes a member of the EU, it won't matter who’s PM, because the UK will have consigned itself to international insignificance, anyway.

"Film at 11."

Today's Wash Post reports that, "A decade of declining teenage birth rates has led to a notable reduction in the number of U.S. children living in poverty, according to a new analysis."

Wow -- who might have thought that would happen? Fewer teens having babies means fewer people living in poverty? Stunning.

Next thing you know, they'll be telling us that abstinence works.

but our successes in the Middle East have even President Bush's critics encouraged.

Just wondering where this whale was headed. To the ball game, maybe?

"Optimistically, the beluga whale may be "just wandering" and will find its way back into the ocean," the story says.

If they want him to leave, they ought to get that bozo Raffi to sing a few bars of "Baby Beluga." He'll be heading for open water in no time.

In December, chunks of the USA PATRIOT Act will expire.

In a recent NY Post column, the Manhattan Institute's Heather Mac Donald defends the act against its many detractors.

"The debate about reauthorizing the Patriot Act should be full-throated and vigorous," she writes. But in the end, "Defenders of the act should also affirm that government power to protect citizens is fully compatible with liberty and need not lead to abuse, thanks to the constitutional framework that retains its vitality to this day."

Now, there are certainly portions of the act that could be improved upon; hopefully congress will do so in the next few months. And of course I could say that about just about any law.

But it wouldn't make sense to toss the entire law out. Let's remember that it was the PATRIOT Act that finally tore down the disastrous "wall" within the FBI that separated intelligence and criminal investigators.

As Andrew McCarthy put it last year on NRO, "The Patriot Act dismantled the FISA wall. It exhorted intelligence and criminal agents to pool information, even going a step better by removing the complementary barriers that prevented criminal agents from sharing grand-jury information with their intelligence counterparts.

"But, precisely because of the same hyperventilating about theoretical civil-liberties abuses that inspired the wall in the first place, those vital reforms would have been left on Patriot's cutting-room floor had the act's sponsors not agreed to sunset provisions. This effectively means the FISA wall will be back on January 1, 2006, if a new law is not enacted to make information sharing permanent — or at least to extend it beyond the end of next year."

That's why, when it comes to the USA PATRIOT Act, congress should take the advice of that great political philosopher Bill Clinton: "Focus like a laser" on it, and "mend it, don't end it."

But there are two interesting NY Times op-ed pieces today.

Two in one day? Might be their quota for April. Anyway ...

Nicholas Kristof notes that journalists are now, shall we say, lightly regarded by the general public.

"If one word can capture the public attitude toward American journalists, I'm afraid it's 'arrogant,'" he writes, rightly. It's something that should concern all journalists, and would, I suppose, if they were a tad less arrogant.

Kristof's proposed solution makes a lot of sense. "We also need more diverse newsrooms. When America was struck by race riots in the late 1960's, major news organizations realized too late that their failure to hire black reporters had impaired their ability to cover America. In the same way, our failure to hire more red state evangelicals limits our understanding of and ability to cover America today."

Now, I know Colin's going to take me to task for supposedly favouring quotas, so let's head that right off. I don't think that news organizations should say, "we're going to hire 10 evangelicals, six white, two black, two Hispanic, five women, one transexual ..." And I don't think the government should step in and demand that news organizations hire the preceding list. That would be a quota system.

But it's possible to cast a wider net when it comes to hiring journalists. And it wouldn't be setting a quota for a network news president to say: "Every single person in our newsroom agrees that the Palestians are heroes and the Israelis are murderers [to cite one example from my experience at CNN]. Maybe we ought to have one dissenting voice to speak out against suicide bombers?"

That would be a common sense approach that might, slowly, help members of the media come into touch with the rest of the country -- the very people they're purporting to be reporting on.

This might require actually hiring some new journalists, though -- perish the thought. (See “Why blogs will be the future below...)

Meanwhile, new columnist John Tierney (you know him -- he replaces William Safire as the token conservative on the page) talks up the on-line futures market Intrade. It allows common folk to bet real money on world events.

"If you watched the Intrade market throughout the campaign, you saw the traders serenely betting on a Bush victory," Tierney writes. "Most remarkably, the weekend before the election, the traders correctly called the winner in every one of the 50 states."

Well, it's not that remarkable, really. Everybody knows that a free market is smarter than any individual. Allow enough people to invest their money, and the market will make the correct decision.

"For now, the Intrade speculators are expecting the white smoke to signal an Italian pope," Tierney notes. That happens to be what I believe will happen too, by the way. Oh, and an older man. Probably in his mid 70s. I doubt the cardinals want another 20+ year papacy. But that's off topic.

Anyway, the power of the market is why it's unfortunate that, back in 2003, the Pentagon cancelled its plans for a Policy Analysis Market. The idea got a lot of bad press at the time, but would have made a lot of sense.

If there's anything we need these days, it's good intelligence. First the 9/11 Commission report, then the Robb-Silberman report have detailed the fact that our intelligence agencies aren't getting the job done.

Traders in the PAM wouldn't have been betting actual money, but they would have been predicting the future -- where will the next attack come, and so forth. The market would have combined the best intelligence of thousands of people from across the country in one place. It would have helped us identify weaknesses, and possibly shore them up.

For example, I sometimes ride the Washington Metro, and I could easily identify some of the weaknesses of that system (not that I'm going to write any of those down, just in case Osama's reading in from his cave. How're things going these days, old boy?). But I know nothing about, say, the situation in our ports. Are we vulnerable? Don't know. But somebody in Baltimore does, and could add intelligence on that. Bit by bit, it would give a good picture of our weaknesses.

Tierney concludes, "I'm praying, for purely selfish reasons, that Intrade gets this election wrong. When I consider those thousands of traders working around the clock, without salaries or health benefits, I hate to think I'm starting a column just as the job is being outsourced."

I'm hoping it succeeds, not just because it agrees with what I think will happen, but because maybe, if it works, the Pentagon will revive the PAM as one tool in our intelligence network.

because there soon won't be any reporters.

"The number of full-time journalists working at daily newspapers continues to fall while the number of minority journalists inched up nearly a half of a percentage point to 13.42 percent in 2004. Since the economic downturn of 2001, newsrooms have lost a net of more than 2,200 journalists while the number of minority journalists has increased," according to the ASNE.

The report continues, "Newsrooms lost nearly 1,000 reporters, nearly 600 editors, nearly 300 photographers and artists and just over 400 copy editors, as top editors and publishers in large and small papers reduced staffs to weather the anemic economy."

I love the passive voice. "Newsrooms lost ..." Lost? Are there search parties out? Any chance these reporters will be found soon?

Nobody was "lost." Many have been fired. There are fewer journalists because newspapers keep firing people, even when profits are soaring.

Eventually, there simply won't be any reporters left. And we'll all be dependent on bloggers.

"Democrats Approve Agenda in Final Push."

An agenda? I thought for a moment I'd have to revise my theory that the left has no ideas.

Luckily, the story's about the people's republic of Maryland, "with Democrats galvanizing hefty majorities in both chambers to muscle through a liberal agenda that has been endangered under a Republican governor."

That sentence speaks for itself.

They're soaring in my neighborhood.

"Even taking into account the last 10 years of taxes and taking out the effects of inflation, average home tax bills in Fairfax County have risen about 70 percent," says today's Wash Post.

A couple of years ago I warned my wife that if this continued, we'd have to move. There's no way my salary can keep up. And here's the problem: Property taxes are based on the county's assessed value of your home. But, while your home does indeed have an assessed value, it's not worth anything until you sell it.

Think of it as an expensive diamond ring. You can spend, say, $5,000 buying an engagement ring and, down the road, you can always be confident that the ring is worth $5,000. But it doesn't put any food on the table unless you sell the ring off.

(As an aside, when my wife and I were first dating, she told me she didn't want an engagement ring. I proposed on the spot. And she still doesn't have one.)

There must be a better way for local governments to raise money than to tax the expected value of an item that actually generates no revenue until it's sold.

Maybe they could collect taxes only when houses are actually sold. Or when new construction begins on a more expensive house (that would be a gold mine in my county). Or even increase sales taxes on other items. After all, I can always choose to purchase fewer things; but I've gotta live somewhere.

Last week, Tom DeLay was on the New York Times carpet. The paper rolled out a front page story about how much Delay's family members earned working for his campaign.

I didn't think there was much wrong with what Delay did. Scroll down to "On the Payroll" to see that exchange.

Today's Washington Post backs me up. The paper has a front page story about the failure of an expensive network of border cameras.

That story includes information about International Microwave Corp. (IMC), a contractor that has allegedly overcharged the government by millions of dollars. The paper notes that one employee of IMC is "the daughter of Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex.), a former Border Patrol official and key backer of the system of 12,000 sensors and several hundred cameras installed for the Border Patrol between 1998 and last year."

Really? Now, there's a stunner. A congressman's daughter, employed by a company that is doing work he supports at government expense. Luckily, the Post is able to exonerate Reyes. "There is no indication that Reyes took part in any impropriety, [investigators] said."

No, of course not. I'm sure there was no impropriety at all. Millions of tax dollars wasted, by a company that employs the daughter of a congressman. No problem. But let Tom DeLay hire his wife and children to work on his campaign, and pay them with private donations -- now that would be a front page story.

By the way, in my original post on DeLay, I mentioned that I'd rather have politicians hire their wives than to have those wives working as lobbyists, as Linda Daschle did while hubby Tom was the Senate Democratic leader.

A Nexis search reveals that Linda Daschle has been mentioned 16 times in the New York Times since 1986. 16 times.

The only time her name rose to page 1 status was in a 2002 story headlined "In Capitol, Last Names Link Some Leaders and Lobbyists." That may sound as if they're going to slam her, but the piece seems aimed more at Joshua Hastert and Chester Lott Jr., a pair of lobbyists who somehow happened to be the sons of the House and Senate Republican leaders.

In other words, we've now had as many Times stories about the employment of Tom DeLay's relatives (with private money) as we had in 9 years about Linda Daschle, who as a lobbyist helped convince congress to spend millions of our tax dollars.

and take the Nets with you.

Sorry -- a new take on an old Atlanta favourite expression.

Glad to see ole Tommy Glavine's skipping Atlanta. Again.

You know Tiger's drooling. Maybe some wrote his obit a bit too early.

All he wants is to be in that last group on Sunday afternoon. He doesn't care if DiMarco's 8 up in the final round. If he gets his chance, you know Tiger's confident he can stare down the kid at Augusta.

Dude feels he's getting screwed on an installation charge at Best Buy, decides to pay them in $2 bills just to show them he's ticked off, gets arrested.

It's a stupid story about stupid people overreacting. But the most galling part at the end is the defense put forth by the police:

"Commenting on the incident, Baltimore County police spokesman Bill Toohey told the Sun: "It's a sign that we're all a little nervous in the post-9/11 world.""

Yeah, that's right! If we start letting people pay with $2 bills, then the terrorists have won!

It’s an article of faith here at Arguments Yard that the left is all out of ideas. And for some reason, liberals keep working ever harder to prove me right.

Here’s an e-mail I got yesterday from moveon.org, George Soros’ contribution to a better country:

“Dear MoveOn member,

When the president and his friends launched a huge public relations blitz to privatize Social Security, we launched Bush in 30 Years—a grassroots contest to find the best Macromedia Flash animation or game to stop the Republicans' scam.

We've received terrific entries showing the humor and creativity of ordinary Americans. We need your help to pick the winner.”

There you have it.

The president wants to reform Social Security by allowing personal accounts. That’s an idea. A “plan,” as John Kerry might have put it.

The left’s best idea? Create a cartoon mocking that effort.

No hint of an actual idea to address an actual problem. Just an attempt to mock an idea.

John Rocker to pitch on Long Island?

Will Cookie Monster still eat the letter of the day?

That seems less healthy than cookies.

They read the newspapers on the air.

Michael Oku of MSNBC was just reading newspapers, on the air, about the silly Prince Charles-Camilla wedding.

There never was much "there" there. And there's less "there" every day...

Or, if you're a reporter, at least follow up.

Judy Woodruff spoke with Democratic standard-bearer Robert Byrd Thursday on Inside Politics. It's a must-see hour of television, by the way.

Some say that Byrd once favoured changing the filibuster rule. So today, Judy Woodruff asked Byrd the key question about filibusters: Has he flip-flopped?

Here’s the transcript of that portion:

WOODRUFF: Well, when it comes to speaking out, let me ask you about this. You know the Republicans in the Senate are talking about changing the filibuster rules.

BYRD: Yes.

WOODRUFF: You've said you're against that. The Republicans say that's hypocritical, because they say, for example, back in 1977 not once, but they say four different times you helped to close a loophole that let the Republicans have their say.

BYRD: They're wrong.

WOODRUFF: They were the minority.

BYRD: They're wrong, they're dead wrong. And they've told themselves that so much that they probably believe it.It's not right. They're wrong.The ordinary people -- the elderly, the young, they're about to have their rights curtailed by this silly notion that filibuster ought to be eliminated. The filibuster is the last weapon, the lifeline of the liberty of the people. They need to back off that.

WOODRUFF: Last question, Senator. Are you running for re- election?

Blah, blah, blah. Of course he's running for re-rlection. At 88, he's the great hope of the Democratic party.

Now, why wouldn’t he provide details about his former support for getting rid of the filibuster? Or, if he never favoured doing that, explain why those who say he did are wrong? Instead of simply brushing them aside and saying "They're dead wrong."

And, if he didn't want to answer, Woodruff should have pressed him to do so.

Otherwise, he could at least admit he’s flip-flopped on this issue. His colleague Barbara Boxer recently did that.

"Boxer made a strong effort to address the uncomfortable fact that she once, in 1994, opposed the filibuster, back when Democrats controlled the Senate and were less concerned about minority power," Byron York wrote in National Review Online on March 17. "Now, like Byrd — whom she called 'the love of my life' — she has had a change of heart and believes the filibuster is vitally important. 'I thought I knew everything,' Boxer confessed. 'I didn't get it.'
'I'm here to say I was wrong,' she continued. 'I'm here to say I was totally wrong.'"

Nothing surprising about that, at least.

A pop-up ad for an online dating service says "We screen for felons and marrieds."

As a married guy, maybe I'll sue for discrimination. Any lawyers out there want to take the case?

First, Washington got a baseball team.

Now, The Newt's "Leaving Las Vegas."

Next, maybe the sun will explode.

What more can one say about this story? Other than to wonder what "national TV" outlet could want home video of a disco?

I'm just glad Chelsea Clinton never, ever, got into trouble.

A Wall Street Journal poll reveals some level of splintering among Republicans over the President's revcent agenda items, including his and Congress' handling of the Schiavo case.

I won't read too much into this, because he receives a lot of support in addition to a number of people ticked off. But at the same time, when you have a country split 51-49, even small cracks can lead to big problems.

That said, I don't think this will ultimately amount to too much. Bush is not going to be up for re-election, and I expect his successor as Republican nominee to be a governor rather than any of the congressional options - and even if one of them, the next election is a long way away. The poll suggests the greatest displeasure is with congress, and the House does have elections next year, but even that's a world of time away; and besides, gerrymandering means there aren't that many close races to begin with.

The only extent to which Democrats should draw any hope from this is if it portends further intraparty disagreement for the Republicans. No party can completely hold power too long before factions within start some infighting. But then, both parties likely learned something from watching as displeased Democrats splintered off to support Nader. Factions are interesting, but in the end fiscal conservative voters will continue to vote for the Republicans who spend like 70s Democrats, and that will be that.

We've been reading for weeks about the struggle to put together a new Iraqi government. Just two months after historic the election, many seemed to wonder, Was the entire project a failure?
Not so fast.

Let's remember that democracy is messy. It often involves people fighting for their interests, and the interests of the people they represent. That fighting can cause government to grind to a halt.

But that fighting also consists of words or votes -- not guns or bombs. By installing democracy, we've allowed the Iraqis to start creating a peaceful future. Today they took a big step forward.

"The interim constitution calls for power-sharing among the Sunni Arab minority that monopolized power under Hussein, the now-dominant Shiite Arab majority and the enthusiastically ascendant Kurds, who are Sunnis," says today's Wash Post.

The country now has a president, prime minister and two vice presidents, along with an elected assembly. They'll start work on an Iraqi constitution soon.

Also, and perhaps more importantly, the piece adds, "Shiite and Kurdish leaders say they are determined to continue divvying up power among the factions, seeing inclusion as the only way to end the Sunni-led insurgency and draw the independence-minded Kurds in northern Iraq into a federal nation."

Hum. Divided government. Sharing of powers. Where have I read about that system before?

It's Tiger's year. Again.

Oh, and have I mentioned that I went last year? A once-in-a-lifetime experience. The course is beautiful on TV, but about 50 times more beautiful in person.

The state of Maryland wants to force Wal-Mart to provide a certain level of health benefits to its employees.

"Lawmakers said they did not set out to single out Wal-Mart when they drafted a bill requiring organizations with more than 10,000 employees to spend at least 8 percent of their payroll on health benefits -- or put the money directly into the state's health program for the poor," today's Washington Post reports.

Paging Ayn Rand!

What if Wal-Mart shrugged -- decided to close all its stores in Maryland, rather than be bullied by the state. What would happen?

Well, everyone now working at Wal-Mart would have to find another job. Now, if they could have found a job that paid as well and had better health benefits, don't you think they would have taken it already? So let's assume that, even if these thousands of people immediately find other jobs, they're going to be paid less.

Besides, there's no way all these people are going to find other jobs. That'll boost Maryland's unemployment rate, and force more people into the state's health care system.

This doesn't even touch on the fact that, with Wal-Mart gone, prices would rise across the state.

There isn't a Wal-Mart near my house, but during a trip to West Virginia last year, my family went to a Wal-Mart supercenter, and were amazed at how much less everything cost. Studies bear this out.

Without that downward pressure, other retailers will feel free to charge more for everything from soup to nuts.

In another story about a state over-reaching its bounds, New York now wants to tax out-of-state residents who spend very little time in the state. "The New York Court of Appeals has ruled that an out-of-state resident who telecommutes to his job with a New York company must pay income tax on 100 percent of his income--even though he spends just 25 percent of his time in the state," reports PCWorld magazine.

The state's Court of Appeals wrote that Thomas Huckaby "is the one who chose to accept employment from a New York employer (with advantages of a New York salary and fringe benefits) while maintaining his residence in Tennessee, some 900 miles and a two-hour plane trip distant from his New York employer's office."

Great move, New York! Now, Huckaby will probably take a full-time job in Tennessee. And no, I'm not being inconsistent here -- I'm sure there's a greater demand in Tennessee for one highly qualified computer programmer than there is in Maryland for thousands of hourly-wage Wal-Mart employees.

If he does, New York will get 100 percent of nothing, instead of 25 percent of something. Plus, the decision may cause Huckaby's employer, and other corporations, to pull out of New York.

They should. After all, as the spokesman for New York's assistant solicitor general put it, "It was a good decision because it strengthens New York's ability to tax the earnings of people who work for New York state corporations--even if they happen to be working out of state for their own convenience."

In other words, the state may now try to tax the wages of anyone who works for a company incorporated there. Yikes! Expect a mass exodus to New Jersey and Delaware if New York tries to press this decision to its logical conclusion.

Today's New York Times reports that, "The wife and daughter of Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, have been paid more than $500,000 since 2001 by Mr. DeLay's political action and campaign committees."

Half a mil? That's $4,166 per person, per month. Sounds like a lot of money.

Still, I'd rather have politicians employing their wives and children on their campaign, even at $4,000 per month, than have those wives and children employed as private lobbyists.

I wonder how much federal largesse top lobbyist Linda Daschle somehow convinced Washington to spend during her husband Tom's tenure as Senate Democratic leader over the years. Safe to say tens of millions of dollars? Maybe even hundreds of millions of dollars?

And that's all our money, folks -- it's tax money. At least campaign employees are paid from a fund made up of voluntary donations.

First there was CBS' Swarm.

Now a real swarm.

Coincidence?

Al Gore is launching a cable channel.

"Young adults have a powerful voice, but you can't hear that voice on television ... yet," Gore claimed.

Indeed, if there's any group under-representated on TV, it's 18- to 34-year-olds.

For finally sending Illinois home and finally getting Roy Williams a national title. Now, some random thoughts on the NCAA tourney.

Hey, CBS, what's the deal with the commercial breaks? They're WAY TOO SHORT. Some clocked in at less than seven minutes. Next year, let's have more ads and longer breaks.

Also, there were a couple of commercial breaks this weekend that didn't feature "Coach K." Maybe that was because of his squad's premature exit from the field, but I think that's a mistake. Next year EVERY SINGLE BREAK should feature a spot telling us how great Duke is. After all, this year, some recruits might not have gotten that message.

On a more serious note, how many timeouts does each team get? Over the weekend, one team called two timeouts just while attempting to get the ball in bounds. We need fewer of those "30 second" timeouts (especially since they actually last about 2 minutes.) And let's get rid of the rule that a player may call timeout while falling out of bounds. Props for the hustle, but it seems to me they should mandate that you have clear possession of the ball and, say, two feet on the ground to call TO.

Also, the new free throw policy is silly. In case you didn't notice, if a player is fouled when a TV timeout is due (after the 16:00, 12:00, 8:00 and 4:00 minute marks of each half) he doesn't get to shoot the free throw right away. They take the break and he shoots when they come back.

This is bad for two reasons: It's better to take your free throw(s) while in the flow of the game (Sean May missed one last night coming back from the TV break) and, at some point, they're going to come back and put the wrong guy on the line. Eventually, whether through human error or clever coaching, an 80 percent shooter will replace a 60 percent shooter. We saw an example, I think it was in the Michigan State game on Saturday, of the wrong guy getting to the line. It can, and will, happen.

Otherwise, a great tournament, as usual. And, congratulations again to the 2003 National Champion Syracuse Orangemen. I'll never tire of typing those words.

Prince Charles will remain a swinging bachelor for one more day.

Britain's election cycle is underway.

And it's only going to take a month, as opposed to our own four-year long cycle.

Of course, it's that cycle that keeps Inside Politics on the air. You do watch, don't you?

I wrote about the Schiavo case. Scroll down to "I've been avoiding talking about the Schiavo case" to read that.

My basic point is that I don't think this case hurts conservatives.

Mark Steyn makes a similar point today, except as always he's 100 times funnier.

Here's his final paragraph: "The Republicans did the right thing here, and they won't be punished for it by the electors. As with abortion, this will be an issue where the public moves slowly but steadily toward the conservative position: Terri Schiavo's court-ordered death will not be without meaning.

"As to 'crack-ups,' that's only a neurotic way of saying that these days most of the intellectual debate is within the right. [Also something I've written about] If, like the Democrats, all you've got are lockstep litmus tests on race and abortion and all the rest, what's to crack up over? You just lose elections every two years, but carry on insisting, as Ted Kennedy does, that you're still the majority party. Ted's quite a large majority just by himself these days, but it's still not enough."

Please, read the whole piece. And Mark's entire body of work.

Last Tuesday, Howard Kurtz wrote one of those stories that make you say, "Of course, everybody knows that."

"By their own description, 72 percent of those teaching at American universities and colleges are liberal and 15 percent are conservative," he wrote, quoting a new study.

Of course, stating the obvious always brings some controversy. Today, a Boston University law professor adds her views on the Post's letters page.

"The minimum qualifications of a university professor are a doctorate-level education. That's the relevant pool from which we'd need to find conservatives before we could begin to speculate about discrimination," writes Katherine Silbaugh.

This, however, raises the classic "chicken or egg" question. Silbaugh says there simply aren't enough conservatives getting doctorates. Well, why not? Could it be that they're being chased out of the academic world when they're still undergrads?

In a world where three quarters of professors are self-professed liberals, it's certainly understandable that a conservative would feel uncomfortable.

Silbaugh goes on to compare conservatives with women in the academic world. "Most reporting on the underrepresentation of women on college faculties, for example, points out that the percentage of women in the qualified pool may not be the same as their representation in the public at large," she writes.

But there's a key difference: It's almost always possible to identify whether someone is a man or a woman (although I've been fooled a couple of times.) As this comic illustrates, it's a lot more difficult to determine if someone is a liberal or a conservative. So it's possible for a university to track a professor's classes by gender -- if he's failing 75 percent of the women and passing 90 percent of the men, that'll stand out.

But that same professor can fail 75 percent of the conservatives and pass 90 percent of the liberals without it standing out. He'll be the only one aware of what he's doing.

Amazingly, despite the lack of conservative profs, there are actually plenty of qualified conservatives out there. Where I work, there are more than a dozen folks with Ph. D.s. How many of them do you think would actually be hired by a university? I doubt any of them have even been recruited to teach full-time.

Until universities make an effort to hire conservatives, they'll be missing out on an element that liberals often insist is critical: Diversity. Diversity of thought, in this case. Which, it seems to me, is even more important than diversity of skin colour or diversity of gender.

So, if you're not interested, may as well navigate away from here now.

Anyone who needs a good laugh need only scroll down to see how laughably bad my predictions for the Final Four were. Illinois is my only surviving squad. That said, here's how one Syracuse fan hopes things play out this weekend:

Louisville defeats Illinois, thus finally sending home the most annoying fans I've ever met. Yes, worse even than Kentucky or Duke fans. And, let's note, at least those squads have brought home titles. Annoying Illinois hasn't ever won anything.

In the late game, North Carolina beats Michigan State. Although I respect Tom Izzo, and think he just might have the squad to pull the big upset here.

Then on Monday, Louisville wins it all.

S.U. fans, here's why this is important:

If Pitino wins, he'll get restless. That means he'll head back to the NBA either this summer or next. Give him, say, three years up there, to be reminded how different the game is and how much he hates it. He'll be ready to return to college.

By then, Jim Boeheim should have his 800 wins (if he can get past the America East champs) and be ready to retire. Pitino was a key assistant at Syracuse when Boeheim was starting out ("As a young Syracuse assistant hired on his wedding night, Pitino left his honeymoon to recruit a prospect named Louis Orr.")

He'd probably relish the chance to return to Syracuse, succeed his mentor, and win another national championship.

Hey, a guy can dream...

A good friend (who will remain nameless, because he works in a industry where he's not allowed to have an opinion) thinks that we've seen the last of Paul Wolfowitz.

What he means is, now that he's been confirmed, we won't have the press and liberals ignoring all evidence of progress and instead hounding Wolfowitz about supposed "failures" in Iraq.

I agree that this is exactly what's likely to happen. But I think we might just hear about Wolfowitz again. No, not if the World Bank does well (better than it's done in the past.) In that case, we've really seen the last of Wolfowitz, as far as the press is concerned.

But if there's another Asian contagion, expect Wolfowitz to be raked over the coals for having failed to predict it and head it off.

There will be one encore.

(Because this was one of my favourite recent columns. Best of the month, I guess you'd say.)

Bush lends U.N. some teeth

Thanks to U.S. policy, Syria knows it won't get 17 chances to comply

10:07 PM PST on Thursday, March 17, 2005

By RICH TUCKER

Well, that didn't take very long. Comparatively.

On March 12, Syria's president promised to withdraw a third of his country's 15,000 troops and 5,000 intelligence agents from Lebanon by the end of the month. Bashar Assad also says that any military and intelligence assets he decides to leave in Lebanon will be moved to the eastern Bekaa Valley by that time.

Now, Syria's had troops in Lebanon (most of us would say it has occupied Lebanon) for 29 years. So on that level, this redeployment has been a long time coming.

But by United Nations' standards, Syria's moving at lightning speed.

After all, it was only in September that the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 1559, which called "upon all remaining foreign forces to withdraw from Lebanon." Since Syria has the only foreign forces there, that message was aimed squarely at Damascus.

In other words, it's been just six months since the U.N. -- acting at the request of the U.S. and France -- passed a resolution, and already Syria's taking action.

Plus, this is only one resolution. The world has demanded -- clearly and definitively, one time -- that Syria should leave, and the Syrians are leaving.

Iraq Ripple

Contrast that with, oh, say, Iraq. Over more than a decade, from 1990 through 2003, the U.N. passed 16 resolutions ordering Iraq to give up its weapons of mass destruction and prove it had done so. In response, Saddam Hussein stalled, lied, hid, denied. He never complied.

Finally, in its 4,644th meeting (not all of them were about Iraq, although it sure seems as if they were), the Security Council passed Resolution 1441, giving Saddam one final chance to comply.
It ordered, "The government of Iraq shall provide to UNMOVIC, the IAEA, and the Council, not later than 30 days from the date of this resolution, a currently accurate, full, and complete declaration of all aspects of its programs to develop chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons."
Iraq didn't comply.

Think of it this way: You ask your child to take out the trash. Then you ask again. And again and again and again and again. He never does it. Eventually you take out the trash yourself.
It's not really his fault. If you make the same request 17 times and there are never any consequences if he disobeys, that simply shows that you really don't care whether he complies or not.

Well, the United States finally enforced those resolutions. That's what the war in Iraq was all about.

No one "lied" about weapons of mass destruction (except Saddam). We simply, finally, did what the United Nations had been vowing to do for years: enforce its resolutions.

And by getting rid of Saddam, we cleared the way for national elections and gave Iraqis a chance to taste freedom. That's an excellent bonus to what was already a good policy.

Some will call this too simplistic. After all, in recent weeks we've seen thousands of Lebanese marching in the streets demanding Syria leave. And those brave people certainly played a part in Assad's decision.

But most would agree that the Lebanese wouldn't have had the confidence to march if they hadn't recently watched the Iraqi people vote, and if they hadn't heard President Bush's inaugural vow to support freedom around the world, and if they hadn't seen American support for last fall's "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine.

Clear Eyes

Before he became president-for-life, Bashar Assad was an ophthalmologist. Clearly, after watching the United States finally enforce U.N. resolutions in Iraq, the scales fell from Assad's eyes. He realizes that dictators will no longer get 17 chances to flout the will of the world, so he'd better act on that first request.

President Bush says he wants to spread freedom and democracy throughout the Middle East. His critics were mocking him back in January -- now we're already seeing fruits from his labor. And in a region where change is often measured in decades and often depends on the death of a ruler -- like Bashar's father Hafez, or Palestinian leader and terrorist mastermind Yasser Arafat -- that's real progress.

Rich Tucker is a writer at The Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based public policy research institute.

Not much to say about the only big story of the day.

Although the most interesting story today is this one. Sandy Burgler admits stealing documents from the National Archives.

This is really laughable, on so may levels. Remember Clinton's defense of Burgler, lo those many months ago? ""Well, that's Sandy for you," Clinton told the Denver Post at a local book signing. "We were all laughing about it on the way over here."An unidentified Clintonite ex-colleague told The Washington Post: "For all those who know and love him, it's easy to see how this would happen."

Somehow sums up the entire Clinton administration, doesn't it? Sloppy, and eager to destroy evidence of that sloppiness.

Of course, this also shows something important: If you're gonna get caught doing something illegal, or plead guilty, or anything -- do it on a day when one of the world's most influential people is going to die! That way you won't have to face any media coverage. It's Tucker's rule of the press number 2.

Rule number 1 is, if you're famous, die on Thursday. That way, your picture will be in newspaper boxes on the cover of USA Today all weekend.